fortheHealthofit

2004-02-16T14:01:00.000-08:00

Tom,

Thanks, I am about to go online again just to check that article. It
sounds like an interesting definition of depression which appears to
define it ultimately as affective zero or a catatonic line which would
have connections with aspects of Gothic and Baroque poetics. Silvan
Tomkins theory is somewhat different, perhaps, since I haven't yet read
the article, in that depression is a complex of interest,
shame-humiliation and anguish so it is not the absence of emotion but a
complex of affects which he defines as the depressive posture. In
Tomkins there is no essential distinction between affect psychology and
philosophy and I am assuming art or poetry, or at least I have yet to
find one which could be considered essential. Having said that, it is
still extremely important not to confuse the differences between art and
writing as therapy and what professional artists and writers do. (Using
that word professional with the required skepticism.) I know this from
my own professional background, more so. When I am employed to do
therapy in the broad sense of health care and use certain aspects of
creative writing in group situations or even individually that this is
very different and far more limited then what I would do as writer.
There are writing techniques that would be irresponsible to use or teach
in therapy situations. The emphasis and expected outcomes are different,
also. A complex discussion but I am sure Tom would be familiar with the
differences.

A little story from the other side of psychology which I find amusing. I
was interstate doing some research and became very ill with fatigue and
disassociation and as a result ended up being diagnosed with clinical
depression in the public health system by a junior doctor. I was then
stuffed so full of drugs that I became even more disorientated and
confused but I must have had enough survival instinct left to know that
if I refused the medication and refused to see the psychologist I would
be locked up. When I saw this psychologist, being right out the door on
powerful anti-depressant drugs and enough prescribed narcotic to kill a
normal human I admitted to being a poet and got asked if I had ever been
published to which I said yes and then got asked where was the last time
I was published to which I replied New York and gave a major publishers
name. As a result possible delusional psychosis got added to my case and
I was sent to a psychiatrist for further assessment. He gave me a script
for even more powerful anti-depressants which were something like taking
a tab of Ecstasy each morning for breakfast. On my second visit to the
psychologist I took my book and cv with me and that resolved that little
problem, somewhat, but I still had the clinical depression diagnosis
hanging over my head which meant that I could still be locked up for
non-compliance under the mental health act. Anyway, after about four
weeks the illness began to abate and I managed to get a bus ticket out
of town, packed up what possessions I could carry and fled back to New
South Wales where I was then diagnosed by doctors who knew me with
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The moral of the story, never admit to a
strange doctor that you are an internationally published poet.

best wishes

Chris Jones.

On Sun, 2004-02-15 at 14:54, tom bell wrote:
> Chris (and all),
> It might be of interest here that I am developing a dialog between ela
> kotakowska and Alsion Croggan on depression [the absence of emotion] for a
> future column in MAG
> http://www.theminimag.com/jan04/health/index.html
>
> tom bell
--
Chris Jones

2004-02-12T21:36:00.000-08:00

I like the use of 'anguish' for the romantic view of depression and suicidal
artists that seems so easy and common these days. I like anguish because
clearly creativity and joy can spring from anguish. Clinically it is also
helpful to think in those terms as the easy coupling of depression and
suicide doesn't work - the truly DEPRESSED don't have the energy or
inclination to act. "Agitated depression" is a clinical concept that might
equate to anguish except that 'agitated' connotes fear and trembling without
anticipation.

tom bell

2004-02-08T21:44:00.000-08:00

From "ela kotkowska"

"i don't know to what extent we can identify depression with "pre-lyrical
anxiety". | depression seems to be characterized more by the absence of
desire, a feeling of fatigue, disinterest, etc. ....."

Clinically, "depression" is typically seen as the absence of feeling rather
than it being a feeling in itself. It is this absence that medication
treats. There are, of course, many kinds of depression both clinically and
in literature

ela (and others) I would be honored to dialogue with you as part of the
column I've started at http://www.theminimag.com/jan04/health/index.html

2004-02-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

I like the idea of 'depression' as an aesthetic condition.
To muddy the waters even more I am starting to think of an aesthetic
condition that I call 'verboten' in that in this post modern world some
topics like feelings are verboten according to many editors. That is, if
you write about personal feelings be prepared for rejection? Augie Highland
(editor of MAG http://www.theminimag.com/jan04/health/index.html) and I had
a phone discussion of this awhile back.

tom bell

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alison Croggon"
To:
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 3:44 PM
Subject: Re: brain trauma and depression (fwd)/why "anti-modern"?

> I'm puzzled by this too - weren't a lot of modernists famously depressed?
Or
> were they anti-modern modernists? Or are all real modernists happy? Is it
> anti-modern to get depressed in a Corbursier flatlet? Was Celan
anti-modern,
> and Blaise Cendrars, and Ezra Pound, and Virginia Woolf and HD and all
those
> others? Is Barry MacSweeney an anti-modern poet? Is depression an
aesthetic
> condition?
>
> A
>
> On 9/2/04 9:26 AM, "tom bell" wrote:
>
> > I am to some extent aware when I am being 'anti-modern' and I think most
other
> > depressed people are also and this is one distinction from TBI? I
wonder if
> > 'anti-modern' might characterize poetry written by the 'depressed'. On
the
> > other hand much poetry that is 'depressed' about today's society has
reason to
> > be depressed much the same way that someone grieving has 'reason' to be
> > depressed.
>
>
>
> Alison Croggon
>
> Editor, Masthead
> http://www.masthead.net.au
>
> Home page
> http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
> Blog
> http://alisoncroggon.blogspot.com

2004-02-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-02/uoa-tpo020404.php
babytalk

2004-02-06T21:35:00.000-08:00

Robert,
Thanks for posting. One of the things I'm finding is that
psychologists (including me) and neuro people have not done well in
informing the general population about such things as depression (which for
some reason is seen as stigmatizing as you point out). The APA www.apa.org
does a good job of this but I suspect their site is not high up on search
engines - actually a search did turn up some worthwhile sites even if it did
not hit apa. I tend to blame this on the popular media but maybe I'm
talking myself into writing something.
Damasio has a couple of books out and I'm reviewing _The Anatomy of Hope
by Groopman which should be out this month. I'd appreciate any other sources
people
might be aware of?

There's no rush on the dialogue. I'm months ahead on the column.

tom bell

'^-_'^-_'^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^'""-------^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Visiting poet at The VA TENNESSEE VALLEY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM ALVIN C. YORK
CAMPUS

Columnist for MAG http://www.theminimag.com/jan04/health/index.html

Some not right for Hallmark poetry available through geezer.com
http://www.geezer.com/vendor.html?vendorID=2203&psid=dceaec145a83fbd666061e3
9c05fdadd

some hyperwork available through http://hyperex.co.uk/
Section editor for PsyBC www.psybc.com

http://www.metaphormetonym.com/

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900

not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2004-02-06T12:47:00.000-08:00

----- Original Message -----
From: David-Baptiste Chirot
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 1:12 PM
Subject: Re: Touorette's anyone?/Jim Eisenreich

A person you might want to look into is Jim Eisenreich--very good professional baseball player--in the Major Leagues--he had Tourette's--used to be ridden mercilessly by fans as he played the outfield and they could hear him when he had his spells--swearing and making strange sounds--

he was out of baseball for a bit to get treatment, and when he returned, playing as well as ever--was giving ovations wherever he went for his courage--after the pain people hadinflicted on him--

another ball player (among many) who played with mental difficulties--many wild and bizarre episodes--Jimmy Piersall--wrote a book of his experinces, recovery and return to baseball after being in instituitons--FEAR STRIKES OUT--was made into a film starring Anthony Perkins--

You should be able to find quite a bit on Jim Eisenreich (i used to have his baseball card) as lot was written about him--saw him play many times on tv, Minnesota Twins vs. Milwaukee Brewers back when the Brewers still in the American League--

>From: Vernon Frazer
>Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group
>To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
>Subject: Re: Touorette's anyone?
>Date: Thu, 5 Feb 2004 15:57:27 -0500
>
>Actually, Tourette's isn't any one "state," but several thousand. We're
>human beings with supercharged central nervous systems. Yes, I do experience
>f rushes that allow me to experience a certain kind of manic energy that has
>elements of the ecstatic or the possessed about it. You'll find that energy
>in a lot of my writing or in my jazz poetry recordings. But I also walk
>around pretty much normally, glad for the sun and muttering about the bad
>drivers. Tourette's is a much more complicated condition than anything I've
>described on this list. I've described my own life, one hair or freckle on a
>vast body. Kirby, your next-door neighbor was an interesting example of a
>more severe case.
>
>
>
>Maybe I was unclear. I intended to say that I think religious experience is
>more common than we believe. You just have to find the stimulus
>---sanctified church, Coltrane solo, skydiving---that brings you to the
>ecstatic moment. It doesn't have to do with Tourette, just how certain
>experiences elevate people's passions to an exalted level.
>
>
>
>Robert, how can I obtain Bedford's "/ (slant)"? I'm always interested in
>seeing how accurately other authors portray people with Tourette. Most of
>the ones I've read have been pretty close, if not 100% on.
>
>
>
>Vernon

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plan your next US getaway to one of the super destinations here.

2004-02-06T12:46:00.000-08:00

(note to self: don't use the l word when writing the l--t)

I was struck by some intuitions I had at a Martin Amis reading from
"Yellow Dog." The premise of that novel is that the main protagonist,
formerly a reformed "sensitive" middle-aged man, receives a knock on the
head and begins regressing to sort of imagined neanderthal and hence the
image of a knuckle-dragging, unreformed male.

Now, the faculty from the UW have recently published research that
correlate TBI (traumatic brain injury) with depression, substance abuse,
etc. What I was struck by in the Amis' account of his protagonist was how
the character's state of mind could as easily have been the result of
depression, particularly the bigotry that he starts to spout, as if the
brain shuts down more complex modes of thinking since they lead to very
causes of the depression.

While I don't want to pathologize what I think of as aberrant modes of
thinking, nor to make depression more stigmatized--despite the press that
depression has received, it still lingers in some repressive twilight even
in our health care system, which is unfortunate because what the victim of
depression needs most is sympathetic (and comprehending) attention--but I
am curious about the nexus of TBI, substance abuse, depression, and what I
think of as anti-modernist thought.

Whew. A lot there. Please do unpack, correct, or explicate as necessary.

thanks,
Robert

--
Robert Corbett, Ph.C. "Given the distance of communication,
Coordinator of New Programs I hope the words aren't idling on the
B40D Gerberding map of my fingertips, but igniting the
Phone: (206) 616-0657 wild acres within the probabilities of
Fax: (206) 685-3218 spelling" - Rosmarie Waldrop
UW Box: 351237

2004-02-01T11:54:00.000-08:00

Minimag out at http://www.theminimag.com/

2004-01-15T18:04:00.000-08:00

First of all, what hell is "healthy poetry" exactly? Is it something that
compels emotions from both the author and reader or is it something that
would be printed on a coffee mug or calendar? Having read Bush's poetry,
I'm inclined to think the latter.
Any poet who reads this article ought to be outraged. The chilling effect
these measures could have on our art is staggering. What would this
amendment allow or, for that matter, take away? Will federal funds be taken
away from writing programs that don't fit the mold? Will schools lose
funding if they don't teach a certain lesson plan?
The only thing you can hope for if this measure passes is that the backlash
creates a more subversive poetry culture.

>From: Ian Randall Wilson
>Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group
>To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
>Subject: What do you think? A good use of 1.5 billion?
>Date: Thu, 15 Jan 2004 19:16:56 EST
>
>January 14, 2004
>Bush Plans $1.5 Billion Drive for Promotion of Poetry
>By ROBERT ST. JOHN and DAVID LOWELL
>
>WASHINGTON, Jan. 13 â?" Administration officials say they are planning an
>extensive election-year initiative to promote poetry, especially among
>low-income
>poets, and they are weighing whether President Bush should promote the plan
>next week in his State of the Union address.
>
>For months, administration officials have worked with conservative groups
>on
>the proposal, which would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to
>help
>people develop interpersonal writing skills that sustain "healthy poetry."
>
>The officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely
>because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the
>federal
>government defend traditional poetry, after a decision by the highest court
>in
>Massachusetts. The court ruled in November that language poetry is
>legitimate
>under the state's Constitution.
>
>"This is a way for the president to address the concerns of conservatives
>and
>to solidify his conservative base," a presidential adviser said.
>
>Several conservative Christian advocacy groups are pressing Mr. Bush to go
>further and use the State of the Union address to champion a constitutional
>amendment prohibiting language poetry. Leaders of these groups said they
>were
>confused by what they saw as the administration's hedging and hesitation
>concerning an amendment.
>
>Administration officials said they did not know if Mr. Bush would mention
>the
>amendment, but they expressed confidence that his poetry promotion plan
>would
>please conservatives.
>
>Ronald T. Haskins, a Republican who has previously worked on Capitol Hill
>and
>at the White House under Mr. Bush, said, "A lot of conservatives are very
>pleased with the healthy poetry initiative. We need the world to make
>sense."
>
>The proposal is the type of relatively inexpensive but politically potent
>initiative that appeals to White House officials at a time when they are
>squeezed
>by growing federal budget deficits.
>
>It also plays to Mr. Bush's desire to be viewed as a "compassionate
>conservative," an image he sought to cultivate in his 2000 campaign. This
>year,
>administration officials said, Mr. Bush will probably visit programs trying
>to raise
>poetry awareness in poor neighborhoods.
>
>"The president loves to do that sort of thing in the inner city with black
>churches, and he's very good at it," a White House aide said.
>
>In the last few years, some liberals have also expressed interest in
>poetry-education programs. They say a growing body of statistical evidence
>suggests
>that children fare best, financially and emotionally when exposed to poetry
>early, in a two-poet family.
>
>The president's proposal may not be enough, though, for some conservative
>groups that are pushing for a more emphatic statement from him opposing
>language
>poetry.
>
>"We have a hard time understanding why the reserve," said Glenn T. Stanton,
>a
>policy analyst at Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian
>organization.
>"You see him inching in the right direction. But the question for us is,
>why
>this inching? Why not just get there? Rhyme is healthy!"
>
>The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of a national group called the
>Traditional Poesy Coalition, has started an e-mail campaign urging Mr. Bush
>to push for
>an amendment opposing the legal recognition of language poetry. "The stuff
>doesn't make any sense," Sheldon says, "and we have to get it out of our
>homes."
>
>Other groups, like the Southern Baptist Convention and Focus on the Family,
>are pushing more quietly for the same thing, through contacts with White
>House
>officials, especially Karl Rove, the president's chief political aide, who
>has
>taken a personal interest in maintaining contacts with evangelical groups.
>
>In an interview with ABC News last month, Mr. Bush was asked if he would
>support a constitutional amendment against language poetry.
>
>"If necessary," he said, "I will support a constitutional amendment which
>would honor poetry as something that should rhyme and make sense, codify
>that,
>and will â?" the position of this administration is that whatever poetry
>people
>want to write, they're allowed to write, so long as it's traditional and
>embraced by the state."
>
>Asked to cite the circumstances in which a constitutional amendment might
>be
>needed, Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said on Tuesday, "That is a
>decision the president has to make in due time."
>
>The House of Representatives has approved a proposal to promote poetry as
>part of a bill to reauthorize the 1996 communications law, but the bill is
>bogged
>down in the Senate.
>
>Without waiting for Congress to act, the administration has retained
>consultants to help state and local government agencies, community
>organizations and
>religious groups develop poetry-promotion programs.
>
>Wade F. Horn, the assistant secretary of health and human services, said:
>"Poetry programs do work. On average, children raised by two poets hearing
>healthy, stable traditional forms enjoy better physical and mental health
>and are
>less likely to be poor."
>
>Prof. Linda J. Waite, a demographer and sociologist at the University of
>Chicago, compiled an abundance of evidence to support such assertions in
>the book
>"The Case for Poetry" (Tripleday, 2000). Ms. Waite, a former president of
>the
>Population Poetry Association of America, said she was a liberal Democrat,
>but
>not active in politics.
>
>Some women's groups like the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund oppose
>government programs that promote traditional poetry. "Such programs intrude
>on
>personal privacy, and may coerce women to write in ways they don't want to
>write," said Timothy J. Casey, a lawyer at the fund.
>
>Administration officials said their goal was "healthy poetry," not poetry
>for
>its own sake.
>
>"We know this is a sensitive area," Dr. Horn said. "We don't want to come
>in
>with a heavy hand. All services will be voluntary. We want to help poets,
>especially low-income poets, manage their writing in healthy ways. We know
>how to
>teach problem-solving, negotiation and listening skills. This initiative
>will
>not force anyone to write in any particular way. The last thing we'd want
>is
>to increase the rate of writer's block."
>
>Under the president's proposal, federal money could be used for specific
>activities like advertising campaigns to publicize the value of poetry,
>instruction in poetry skills and mentoring programs that use traditional
>poets role
>models.
>
>Federal officials said they favored education programs that focus on high
>school students; young adults interested in poetry; and poets who marry
>when
>writers are thought to have the greatest commitment to their art.
>
>Alan M. Hershey, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research in
>Princeton,
>N.J., said his company had a $19.8 million federal contract to measure the
>effectiveness of such programs. Already, Mr. Hershey said, he is providing
>technical assistance to poetry-education projects in Alabama, Florida,
>Georgia,
>Indiana, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas.
>
>A major purpose, he said, is to help people "communicate about all the
>issues
>you see in poems: money, sex, child-raising and other difficult issues that
>come up."
>
>Dr. Horn said that federal money for poetry promotion would be available
>only
>to traditional writers. As a federal official, he said, he is bound by a
>1996
>statute, the Defense of Poetry Act, which defined poetry for any program
>established by Congress. The law states, "The word `poetry' means only a
>poem
>which rhymes and makes sense."
>
>But Dr. Horn said: "I don't have any problem with the government providing
>support services to other kinds of poetry. If someone wants to write
>language
>poetry, okay, that's their choice."
>
>Sheri E. Steisel, a policy analyst at the National Conference of State
>Legislatures, said, "The Bush administration has raised this issue to the
>national
>level, but state legislators of both parties are interested in offering
>poetry
>education to low-income poets."
>

2004-01-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

Thought I did. This reply thing on poetics is going to drive me bonkers,
yet.

tom

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kirby Olson"
To: "tom bell"
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2004 5:03 PM
Subject: Re: Creeley? renga?

> great! why not post it? it might nudge the conversation forward a bit!
I
> thought this was great!!!! -- KO
>
> tom bell wrote:
>
> > ECHO
> >
> > Back in time
> > for supper
> > when the lights
> >
> > (Selected Poems, p. 297)
> >
> > Kirby, why not just 'echo' the language here rather than explain what it
> > means?
> >
> > my echo might be:
> >
> > The
> > List silently
> > Responded
> > Back
> >
> > tom bell
> > shades of the renga of years back
>

2003-12-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

> In keeping with my persistent belief that experimental writing can be
> healthy I am starting a monthly column for August Highland's MAG
> http://www.muse-apprentice-guild.com which I'm calling Write for the
Health
> of It. If you care to send me 500 to 1000 words on how you write for
health
> (or mental health or illness if you must I'm looking to feature one
person's
> work every month.

2003-12-17T13:29:00.000-08:00

Shoe

If the shoe fits
Wear it
For better or worse.
Of course
You can't buckle it yet.
But some day soon
On a full moon
You'll don
Some cleats,
An explorer's boots,
A conductor's baton,
Or?

2003-12-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

Apples

Apples amply fall.
Folderol.
Apples fall amply
Foldimply.

Saddam out of his
Spiderhole
Into the light of day.
Hooray!
Politics as usual
In play.

Imply apples fall
Folderol.
Apples amply fall.

So let's sit
and chomp.

2003-12-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

A day of convergences: Ron Silliman writes about Woodland Pattern in Milwaukee and Dan Shapiro asks for crisis poetry _ Dan Shapiro posted a question which led to my sending him my PTSD poem
http://epc.buffalo.edu/rift/ which grew out of an ER evaluation I did years
ago. Actually this is a marketing survey kind of thing. Is there interest
on this listserv in an online course on 'crisis poetry'? At psybc we will
soon have in our library an article by Pennebaker.

tom bell
Visiting poet at The VA TENESSEE VALLEY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM YORK CAMPUS

Some not right for Hallmark poetry available through geezer.com
http://www.geezer.com/vendor.html?vendorID=2203&psid=dceaec145a83fbd666061e3
9c05fdadd

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

_______________________________________________
Lit-med mailing list
Lit-med@popmail.med.nyu.edu
http://endeavor.med.nyu.edu/mailman/listinfo/lit-med

2003-12-03T21:16:00.000-08:00

High Crimes and Misdemeanors

If I publish a poem and sell a book through geezer.com for $3000 a copy does
it become an example of high craft? Seriously though, Loney's essay on this
http://www.craftculture.org/archive/loney1.htm merits reading as it relates
to the explosion of bloogery or is it mere baloney?

tom bell
Visiting poet at The VA TENESSEE VALLEY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM YORK CAMPUS

Some poetry available through geezer.com

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-11-30T14:50:00.000-08:00

ARCHIVE
Craft and writing about it: some personal questions

by ALAN LONEY

Ex-editor of New Zealand Craft argues that craft needs to break with the 'grass roots' and pursue its ideals uncompromised by popularism.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Part one

In many discussions about ‘craft’, it is not too far into those exchanges that the term ‘grass roots’ is apt to appear. For many of us we want to know that there is something democratic, inclusive, and available to everybody about our activity as craftspeople. We often assume that ‘grass roots’ is a basically noble proposition, it keeps our feet on the ground, it keeps us honest, we avoid elitism, and we are staying in touch with our beginnings in a respectful way. We assume ‘grass roots’ to be a term which is ‘naturally’ understood by everyone and in the same, essentially positive, fashion. Short of an outright denial of these assumptions, I’d like to question them.

Art and literature function the way they do, and have their status in the wider community, precisely because they are severed from anything like ‘grass roots’. Evening painting classes, Sunday and local art groups, paintings by retirees or disabled people, that might if they are lucky get exhibited in a shopping mall or street market or country fair, are never featured in major galleries. Local writing classes, life-writing groups, the doggerel poets who occasionally appear in the ‘Poet’s Corner’ of a suburban or country newspaper, are never featured in major literary journals, nor are their books issued by mainstream publishing houses. The art galleries and the literary journals are simply not available to these modest, social, democratic, inclusive, and let’s say it, grass roots people.

Art galleries are generally distinguished by a radical sense of ‘apartness’ from other kinds of places where one can buy things. A sharp way of putting it would be to compare the almost arid and unwelcoming sparseness of an art gallery space with the colourful, even ebullient clutter of a craft shop. The art gallery walls are white, the floors are bare, one can feel very exposed, even vulnerable if there on one’s own, and every move you make is amplified by what seems more like an echo chamber than a place providing a visual feast or a space for contemplation. And the prices of things? Well, most people, on whatever income, cannot afford them. By contrast, the craft shop is inviting, cluttered, usually with lots of people milling about, the walls are covered with things to buy, and the prices are affordable by most people who are lucky enough to have an income.

Literary journals are individually affordable by most people lucky enough to have an income, but to keep up with all of them by subscription is too daunting for most. But whoever the editors of literary journals are, they all operate with some sense of context which is narrower than “all writing which is available”. Like the art gallery, the journal behaves on the basis of a history of writing which is profoundly selective, and which acts as the basis for future selections of work to publish. The field is large. But within it there is room for a considerable variety of editorial taste and preference without ever needing to draw from outside the editor’s sense of history. Well-meant and even funny doggerel about a fence-post and a row of cabbages on the farm will not make it onto the pages of a respectable literary magazine.

In art and poetry circles there is often much talk about contrasting ‘high art’ and ‘low art’ or ‘popular art’. Perhaps it is time to talk of ‘high craft’ and ‘popular craft’, and for craft galleries to concern themselves only with ‘high craft’ as art galleries concern themselves with ‘high art’, and literary journals concern themselves with the high art of writing.

How many craft galleries have difficulty preventing themselves from becoming ‘craft shops’? And how many of those slide into the category of ‘gift shops’, at least in some respects at some times? More than one craft gallery has shifted in this way in order to achieve a higher financial turnover. Of course we like to see hand-knitted jerseys on display in gift shops and we may very well buy one or more of them, but what are they doing in a craft ‘gallery’? My own experience in the field is that the ‘grass roots’ can exercise a lot of guilt-producing influence over other aspects of the life of craft in the community, particularly as members of craft organisations of one sort or another. If hundreds of hand-knitters suddenly join a major craft group, which runs a gallery and not a shop, how long would it take for the jerseys to find a way into the premises in any case? The arguments are very practical, and often bolstered by the fact that the makers involved are women. It is, certainly, a hard argument to counter, and I don’t have any answers to it. The problem is this: both sides of the argument are right. On the other hand, it is not hard to see that part of the problem is engendered by the simple mechanism of having an organisation that invites people to become fee-paying members. And that leads to further questions about the very purpose of such an organisation in the first place.

Part two

Modern craft technologies do not spring from a ‘grass roots’ individual dynamic. Some crafts have always been practiced by individuals, particularly those that rely on minimal technologies: knitting, sewing, lace-making, embroidery, technologies in fact which were those available to women (although lace-making workshops were set up in several European centres to serve nobility and the clergy in the fourteenth century, and some European convents had scriptoria where women hand-wrote and illuminated devotional books, particularly those known as Books of Hours). But factories, where items are made for wide social use and even export have been with us since long before the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century. Scriptoria, printeries, potteries, mines, gold and silver smitheries, iron-workshops, binderies, cloth and garment making plants, glass factories, paper mills, have all been part of the total socio-economic fabric of the wider culture since the fourteenth century, at least. It is important to remember that even the traditional, tribal hand-forming potters were not expressing their own creative individual selves fundamentally—they were providing resources that the tribe needed and upon which the tribe depended for its continued life as a tribe—exactly the need to which the industrial revolution responded. Practically the whole of the modern craft movement stems from the failure of its technologies to continue to supply society at large with what it wanted and what it could now afford to buy. Its beginning as a movement in the late nineteenth century was a reaction against the mechanisation of manufacturing processes which were deemed to dehumanise, exploit and endanger the human beings brought into the factories, often by foul means rather than fair. The earlier technologies, retrieved by the Arts and Crafts Movement and made redundant by the Industrial Revolution, were thus released from the larger social dynamic where industry now held sway, and made available for purposes that were primarily individual and creative rather than primarily social and commercial. This was something fundamentally new, and had not happened before this time. Craft as we know it is an invention of the late nineteenth century, but it draws its skills from commercial processes whose histories stretch back, in some cases, to over three thousand years and the beginnings of European and Asian pottery, jewellery, weaponry and tool-making.

One of the major factors in this change was that the earlier technologies were no longer economic as providers of social needs. Nobody needs, in the sense of general social utility, anything made by a contemporary potter. If what you want is a teapot, you can pick one up that works for a few dollars in any shopping mall. But if you want a teapot made by hand by a modern master, you can pay hundreds of dollars for it. Most of us know that the two activities that produce these two teapots are different, even if we might be hard-pressed to articulate that difference to someone who does not see the difference—“stone the crows mate, they’re just for pouring tea out of, aren’t they?”—and that, for my money, is a good question. Buying craftworks at the highest level is something not everyone can afford. For many years I made books by hand that I myself could never have purchased. To buy craftworks needs disposable income, just as the technologies employed to make them are also, in wider social terms, equally disposable, that is to say, the society at large doesn’t need them. On the other hand, and from another point of view, it is easy to be disappointed at being unable to buy works made by one’s friends. It is an interesting question, and applies even more acutely to paintings and sculpture.

It is unlikely that art galleries will ever show craftwork, because the profit margins will never be as high, and their status will never be as high, as they are for paintings and sculpture. In the age-old art/craft ‘debate’, in which art wants to keep craft out and craft wants to be accepted as art, there seems no resolution in sight. Might it be better to see it differently, that craft might simply take its separate place, without seeking to elevate itself to some proposed higher condition of ‘art’, or align itself to the supposed economic or social advantage of any other kind of activity, like design or fashion for instance. Its place would therefore be alongside, as all others are alongside, all the others: art, literature, theatre, music, dance and so on. But without clear division between craft gallery and craft shop, with the gallery focusing solely on ‘high craft’, the chances might not be all that good for success. The craft gallery, in other words, might need to sever all links to anything like ‘grass roots’, including those jerseys we might be perfectly happy to wear, in order to take its place alongside art and literature. Art will usually of course pay more than craft. When it comes to serious literature, especially poetry, which is still the high art of the written word in my view, the earnings of the best poets, as poets, come to almost nothing when compared to the earnings of even the most modestly achieving craftspeople.

Part three

Even the most cursory look through most magazines devoted to craft, particularly those emanating from craft organisations that have fee-paying members, reveals something very interesting about who, exactly, is being addressed. For the most part, those who write for these magazines are addressing, often very directly, the organisation’s members, or, to put it another way, other craftspeople. The exceptions are few, but usually striking enough to note with some care: they tend to be academic art historians who are used to addressing both those in their field and the general reader, or, they are those who have a real interest in craft but are not craft practitioners. Of course, most writers about craft would hope their articles were of interest to the general reader as well. But it is nevertheless fair to say that most of these articles and reviews are not openly addressed to the general reader, but to the practitioner-members of the craft organisation which publishes the magazine. It may seem blasphemous to say so, but I have often wondered whether this mode of address has been a long-term factor in the unwillingness of the general reader to buy magazines devoted to craft. They can be very easily seen to be more for craftspeople, than for the general reader about craftspeople. Another way of putting it is that the very mode of address in those magazines tends to exclude the general reader, regardless of anyone’s intention or hope or wish to do otherwise.

When it comes to art and literary magazines, it would be hard to find any that did not include writing that was overtly critical of or controversial about this or that writer’s or artist’s work. The appearance and functioning of this critical component does not seem to have any obvious negative influence on the sales or survival of those magazines. A craft magazine editor, however, who behaved like that can be very quickly informed by their constituency that the aim of the magazine is to present craft in the best possible light, and not include material that might prevent someone buying a particular craftsperson’s work, or attending a specific craft exhibition. In my experience, some of that pressure has amounted to a demand that the magazine be no more than an intelligent sales brochure (if that is not an oxymoron) for the people whose work is featured in it. But if that view is adopted, and the mode of address is membership focused and not general reader focused, then it’s hard to see how that strategy is going to work. At the present juncture, there is plenty of evidence for the view that craft magazines in Australia have not been working, and little evidence for the view that they have. I am not of course proposing that this failure has a single cause.

For many artists and poets there are critics who spend a great deal of their time keeping in touch, over decades, with the work of those artists and writers. These critics end up knowing more about their subject artists and authors than anyone else in the field. There are art historians and literary critics who would rather devote their lives to the study of one or two painters or poets, than become general reviewers who will tackle anything so long as it’s on a gallery wall or between the covers of a book of poems. I wouldn’t say that this phenomenon is the normal state of affairs, but it is common enough to be readily included in any accurate description of the normal state of affairs. My question here is: Is this true also of craft? Where or who are the critics to whom we naturally turn when we want to read about particular craftspeople in Australia? How many Australian craftspeople have been privileged by twenty or more years’ worth of attention by one or more critics worth reading who have faithfully followed their careers for that time, and who have regularly published about those careers across that time also? Our bookshops are full of books about this author or that artist, and that is as it should be. But if any of us thought of, say, ten great Australian craft workers, and looked around for the books about them and their work in our bookshops, what would we find? The answer is: precious little, if anything at all. Some readers of this article may be appalled at my next question, but it must be asked: What have we done, in our approach to craft and to writing about craft over the last thirty years to bring about this situation? I must say at this point that I include myself in this question, both as a printing craftsman for twenty-five years, and a publisher for the same period, and as the editor of New Zealand Crafts magazine for two years in 1989-91. There are of course historical reasons and processes we can describe that have lead to our present position. My question asks instead: What is it that we have not done, what historical processes have we not included in our otherwise busy lives, that have contributed to the current condition?

Epilogue

One of the recurring patterns of writing about craft concerns itself with how craft is to be defined or understood, especially relative to other sorts of creative activities. Whether it is to be by a sort of lexical definition of the word ‘craft’ or by its relations of similarity with and difference from other kinds of human cultural endeavor, there are long histories in both Australia and New Zealand of anxiety about craft’s meaning, status, location, and value in the wider community on the one hand, and for the individual worker on the other. Much of this writing is informed, intelligent and passionate about its subject. But whatever its merit, the anxiety behind it is perhaps not entirely helpful to us any more. After all, this kind of writing has been with us for a very long time, and with little, it seems to me, real effect, while acknowledging that much of it can still be read with interest.

If I am proposing anything here at all, it is patience. In a way, an impossible patience, but one that I think must be undertaken anyway. Instead of trying to define craft, and conduct our activities in line with that, let us allow our understanding of craft to emerge, over time, through our actual engagements, at the deepest levels, with what we take to be the critical craftworks and who we take to be the critical craftspeople of our history and of our day. To do this it must absolutely be understood and accepted that the work itself, and the writing about it, go hand in hand. No painting, no sculpture, no pot, no goblet, no chair, no necklace, speaks for itself. This old and common assumption that a work can ‘speak for itself’ is one of the cruelest, and to my mind, silliest proposals ever made about art/craft in Western culture. The work that survives and the writing about it have always gone hand in hand, and without that interactive and polylogic (which just means ‘many people talking’) dynamic, we would never know anything about what happened before we got here. Unless we write for and about the work of individual craftspeople, unless the articles and books begin running off the presses about the works of those we value—outside of issues to do with anxieties of location or the apparitional demands of fee-paying organisational constituencies—we will never have the patience to let the craft works themselves and the words that are inevitably their necessary shadow, tell us how we might understand them and their contexts, in all their variety, in all their depth, in all the privilege and wonder that they are in our lives.

Alan Loney is a Melbourne-based writer

2003-11-26T13:16:00.000-08:00

This is something I wrote describing the experience (Technicolor) of being
in the first few days on a med compared to not being on a med:

Technicolored TN Autumn

Orangeyellowed fingers reach
again
st feint blue at dusk
Greeny branches promise
red
's rebirth at dawn
Yesterday we saw
gray
s and (blacks and whites).

tom bell

Visiting poet at The VA TENESSEE VALLEY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM YORK CAMPUS

Some poetry available through geezer.com

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-11-21T14:02:00.000-08:00

Why AARP Says "Yes" to the Medicare Prescription Rip-off
by James G. Parkel, AARP PRESIDENT

Limbaugh Of The Bailey, Still Unbowed Unless The Money's Right:
'It's Only Hypocrisy,' Conservative Talker Says on His Return To Drugs:
In A Related Story, PNAC Flack & Envoy To Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad,
Desperately Tries To Blame The Poppie Iradicating Taliban For CIA Contracted
Bumper Crop Of Raw Opium:
"We Did It For Ted," A Tearful Thomas Clines Says:
Bush Tells Brits; "We Americans are sometimes faulted for our naive faith
that violence can change the world."
White House Documents Reveal Cheney Knew Halliburton Was Lacing GIs Drinking
Water With Horse Piss
by Boward Kurtzie
The Assassinated Press

Click here: The Assassinated Press

They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.

Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency
to render the head too large for the body. A standing military
force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe.
companions to liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson

"America is a quarter of a billion people totally misinformed and disinformed
by their government. This is tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even say
corrupt -- it's just beyond telling us anything that the government doesn't
want us to know."

Gore Vidal

2003-11-21T14:01:00.000-08:00

Gizmo Glitz

Gizmo
Glitz
Abysmal
Failure

Pismo Beach
Pepto Bismal

The cat in the hat
That's rhyme
All's well that
Ends
Well, that
Depends

Gizmo
Glitz
Glitter's gold
No
No

Michael Jack.
Been there,
Done that
Don't let
Yourself get sold a gizmo glitzy bill of goods.

Some poetry available through geezer.com

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-11-16T14:21:00.000-08:00

Technicolored TN Autumn

Orangeyellowed fingers reach
again
st feint blue at dusk
Greeny branches promise
red
's rebirth at dawn
Yesterday we saw
gray
s and (blacks and whites).

2003-11-14T21:49:00.000-08:00

You might have grounds to McSue Donald for copyright violation or
defamation?

Oh what fun to live in these litigious times!

----- Original Message -----
From: "barleydog"
To:
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 10:56 PM
Subject: Re: The ORIGINAL McPOEM

> Dear McPoetry fans,
>
>
> I wrote/performed this piece in Hollywood back in the pre-slam 80's,
> then transcribed it for my website 3 years ago.
> It's a 4 part poem entitled "Godzilla."
>
> The mcPoetry reference in part 3 is here:
>
> http://www.home.earthlink.net/~barleydog/godzilla3.html
>
>
>
> And the poem (beginning with part 1) is here:
>
> http://www.home.earthlink.net/~barleydog/godzilla3.html
>
>
> Enjoy,
>
> David Braden
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU]
> On Behalf Of Automatic digest processor
> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 9:04 PM
> To: Recipients of POETICS digests
> Subject: POETICS Digest - 12 Nov 2003 to 13 Nov 2003 (#2003-317)
>
> There are 43 messages totalling 2804 lines in this issue.
>
> Topics of the day:
>
> 1. Fw: McPoets Unite!
> 2. 2 sputtering questions (3)
> 3. ff
> 4. Bob Perelman visit to Canberra
> 5. Connecticut Poetry Circuit 2003
> 6. McPoets
> 7. young writers workshop final report
> 8. Correction re: McPoets
> 9. McDonald's not lovin' 'McJob' dictionary definition (2)
> 10. email address for Manuel Brito? (3)
> 11. gallaher contact info + open
> 12. larry milkmag, please email me
> 13. on - GENDER AND SPELIG
> 14. on- GENDER AND SPELInG )corxon(
> 15. STREET POET AS STEALTH HUCKSTER FOR NISSAN (3)
> 16. Call for Paper
> 17. Online Poetry Journals Reviewed
> 18. Congo
> 19. utility problem
> 20. Poetic (X) Justice
> 21. Factory School Fall Book Sale (2)
> 22. statehood for Iraq (4)
> 23. Events at the Poetry Project 11/17-11/19
> 24. Rodney Koeneke/Mytili Jagannathan at CCA San Francisco, Fri., 11/21
> (2)
> 25. ** Boog City Discount Ad Rate is Back** (2)
> 26. Need Some Email Addresses
> 27. poetry is still pretty
> 28. Emerald Bluing
> 29. busy
> 30. Cheney Gang Mulls Interim Iraqi Puppet Like The 'Good Ol' Days In
> Southeast Asia
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 00:06:06 -0600
> From: tom bell
> Subject: Fw: McPoets Unite!
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tom bell"
> To: "UB Poetics discussion group"
> Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 10:33 PM
> Subject: Fw: McPoets Unite!
>
>
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "tom bell"
> > To: "UB Poetics discussion group"
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 6:06 PM
> > Subject: Re: McPoets Unite!
> >
> >
> > > How does one get a copy of this McPoetry book by a McAcademic?
> > >
> > > Not sure If I'll get another post today (in which case you'll get
> this
> > post
> > > after 12) but my first book of McPoems will soon be available
> through
> > > Geezer.com = _Not Yet a Crazy Old Man with the first 25 signed
> edition.
> > >
> > > tom bell
> > >
> > > ----- Original Message -----
> > > From: "mIEKAL aND"
> > > To:
> > > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 7:25 PM
> > > Subject: Re: McPoets Unite!
> > >
> > >
> > > > that's not true Maria, you just produced a very lovely first book
> of
> > > > poetry.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Wednesday, November 12, 2003, at 03:14 PM, Maria Damon wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > I guess i'm a mcacademic. all i do all day is sit around
> > brown-nosing.
> > > > >
> > > > > At 5:48 PM -0600 11/12/03, tom bell wrote:
> > > > >> I just realized that I am a McPoet. Maybe I can get a place in
> a
> > > > >> dictionary
> > > > >> that lists McJobs or a I can get a healthy meal at McDonald's
> > > > >>
> > > > >> any other McPoets out there? Quarter-Pounders, maybe? Or
> pavement
> > > > >> pounders?
> > > > >>
> > > > >>
> > > > >> tom bell
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > 24/7 PROTOMEDIA BREEDING GROUND
> > > >
> > > > http://www.joglars.org
> > > > http://www.spidertangle.net
> > > > http://www.xexoxial.org
> > > > http://www.neologisms.us
> > > > http://www.dreamtimevillage.org
> > > >
> > > > "The word is the first stereotype." Isidore Isou, 1947.
> > >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 01:50:36 -0500
> From: Nick Piombino
> Subject: 2 sputtering questions
>
> > Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:11:17 -0500
> > From: Tim Peterson
> > Subject: 2 burning questions
> >
> > Thanks so much for these comments, Nick. It helps...be assured that I
> am
> > not just talking from my head, but also from the part of the everyday
> > experience I have of continually feeling frustrated and uncomfortable
> with
> > people in general who seem enamored with the idea of being cyborgs.
> It's
> > more a
> > response to social conditions I really don't understand and that upset
> me than
> > to academic theory. I know I must be right in some respect, because I
> trust my
> > own reactions to things, and I know that when I spend an hour or two
> online
> > blogging, reading blogs or online journals, etc., I begin to feel ill,
> just
> > physically and mentally ill. I don't have another way to explain it.
> There's
> > something missing there, for me, and I guess I'm trying to find a way
> to name
> > what it is...
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Tim
>
> With all due respect, Tim, I don't understand what you are getting at
> with
> these comments. You have every right to express your feelings of
> sickness
> when you read, and how you are sure that that proves something to your
> satisfaction, but how do you get from "people who seem enamored with the
> idea of being cyborgs" ...and "when I spend an hour or two online
> blogging,
> reading blogs or online journals...I begin to feel ill" to "...there's
> something missing there..." What does blogging have to do with cyborgs?
> Do
> you also get sick when you read books and journals? One medium is
> electronic, the books and magazines are made from trees. Both involve
> people's writing. Very frequently the same people who read and write
> books
> and articles also read and write blogs and pieces in online journals.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Nick
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 01:56:40 -0500
> From: Alan Sondheim
> Subject: ff
>
> i.
>
> http://www.asondheim.org/portal/.nikuko/ ff series
> pda transformations, fast fourier, others
>
> i'm tired of talking and am quite disturbed by my work
>
> the applause of ovid that i have returned in metamorphosis
>
> ii.
>
> socrates and me are like this
>
> iii.
>
> i will do better in the future now that i am nonstandard
>
>
> __
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 21:52:19 -0700
> From: hazel smith
> Subject: Bob Perelman visit to Canberra
>
> The Co-op Bookshop www.coop-bookshop.com.au
> University of Canberra Centre for Writing www.ce.canberra.edu.au/writing
> The School of Creative Communication, University of Canberra
> www.ce.canberra.edu.au/cc
>
>
>
> present
>
>
>
> The Second Marya Glyn-Daniel Lecture
>
>
>
> Professor Bob Perelman
>
>
>
> What Place Is It? Writing and Global Positioning Systems
>
>
>
> Writer and critic Bob Perelman is a leading member of the
> internationally influential American language poetry movement, and
> has published 16 books of poetry. Perelman is also a Professor of
> English at the University of Pennsylvania. His critical books include
> The Trouble With Genius: Reading Pound, Joyce, Stein and Zukofsky,
> University of California Press, 1994, and The Marginalization of
> Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History, Princeton University
> Press, 1996.
>
>
>
> The event will also feature Marya Glyn-Daniel, who will read from her
> prose poem There's a Blackie Mum! Me and Black Australia and from
> Judge a Book.
>
>
>
> Marya lives in Canberra and is the author of The Macau Grand Prix and
> My Part In The Cultural Revolution in China, Ginninderra Press, 1999,
> and a play, Gulf Country, Ginninderra Press, 2000. She is currently
> working on a biography of Canberra personality and publicist Coralie
> Wood.
>
>
>
> 5.30pm, Wednesday 19th November, 2003
>
> The Council Room
>
> Level D, Building 1
>
> University of Canberra
>
>
> Refreshments will be served
>
> RSVP by Friday 14th November
>
> Contact: 6251 2481
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Dr. Hazel Smith
> Senior Research Fellow
> School of Creative Communication
> Deputy Director
> University of Canberra Centre for Writing
> http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/writing
> Editor of Inflect http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/inflect
> University of Canberra
> ACT 2601
> phone 6201 5940
> More about my creative work at
> www.australysis.com
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:14:39 -0500
> From: "Shankar, Ravi (English)"
> Subject: Connecticut Poetry Circuit 2003
>
> CONNECTICUT POETRY CIRCUIT 2003 PRESENTS:=20
>
> CLARE ROSSINI=20
> Tuesday, November 18th
> Central Connecticut State University
> New Britain, CT 06050
> http://www.ccsu.edu=20
> Marcus White Living Room
> 7:00 pm=20
> poetry and refreshments served
> contact: Ravi Shankar shankarr@ccsu.edu or (860) 832-2766 =20
>
> Clare Rossini's first full-length collection, Winter Morning with Crow,
> =
> was selected for the l996 Akron Poetry Prize; the book went on to be =
> finalist for a Small Press Book Award and for PEN's l999 Joyce Osterweil
> =
> Award for Poetry. Rossini's poems have appeared in numerous journals, =
> including The Kenyon Review, The New England Review, and Poetry, as well
> =
> as in textbooks and anthologies, including Poets for the New Century =
> (David Godine: Boston, 2002) An Introduction to Poetry (ed. X.J. Kennedy
> =
> and Dana Gioia, Longman: New York, 2002) and Best American Poetry l997 =
> (ed. James Tate, Scribners: New York, 1997). She has received =
> fellowships from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Minnesota =
> State Arts Board and the Bush Foundation.. Rossini is currently on the =
> faculty of Trinity College in Hartford and the MFA program at Vermont =
> College in Montpelier, VT.
>
> A review in The Nation of Rossini's first book noted that "All forms are
> =
> refreshed in Rossini's incomparable vision...they are given the rare, =
> gold brushstrokes of...the compassion that allows us to re-see the world
> =
> we think we see, as if history might yet find a way to love us."=20
>
>
> ***************
> Ravi Shankar=20
> Poet-in-Residence
> Assistant Professor
> CCSU - English Dept.
> 860-832-2766
> shankarr@ccsu.edu
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 08:56:17 -0500
> From: Vernon Frazer
> Subject: Re: McPoets
>
> Judging by my writing income, I certainly qualify as a McPoet. Since I
> have
> an income, I don't mind too much. But the ketchup and mustard are
> messing up
> my manuscripts, and the pickles and fires are jamming my printer.
>
>
>
> Vernon
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:31:34 -0330
> From: Kevin Hehir
> Subject: young writers workshop final report
>
> On Saturday morning the future giants of St. John's writing met for
> another installment of Kevin Hehir's Exploding Language Writing
> Workshop.
> The 12 participants discussed how the Aristotelian narrative arc no
> longer
> effectively mimes our every day discourse so should be discarded in
> favour
> of the jab and parry that fragmentary storytelling affords writers in
> the
> post-media milieu that surrounds us therefore offering an increased
> level
> of sophistication and book sales. If, as post-structuralist, continental
> thinker Michel Serres tells us, time is akin to pure light as poured
> through a colander. Then, what happens when a weather channel poetics is
> pushed down a playground slide into the waiting jaws of serial
> toboggany?
> Then we talked about Hegel's Bagels as a possible position on an axis of
> names for synthetic breakfast foods. In theory, wholesome but praxis has
> proved that they hurt the molars. [The mandible rhizome that reveals
> itself through the sliding continuum of jaw-molar was not lost on one
> young poet with a fresh nick on his chin from a 23 cent disposable
> razor].
> Then we ate muffins and made fun of our parents.
>
> --
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:49:17 -0500
> From: Vernon Frazer
> Subject: Correction re: McPoets
>
> Judging by my writing income, I certainly qualify as a McPoet. Since I
> have
> an income, I don't mind too much. But the ketchup and mustard are
> messing up
> my manuscripts, and the pickles and fries are jamming my printer.
>
>
>
> Sorry about my earlier typo, although the grease fires don't help
> either.
>
>
>
> McVernon*
>
>
>
> *Use of Mc prefix on my name justified by some Scottish blood in the
> Heinz
> 57 mix.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:29:44 -0500
> From: Tim Peterson
> Subject: McDonald's not lovin' 'McJob' dictionary definition
>
> You forgot to add: suffers like everyone else by going down with the
> ship
> of her/her own ideas when fashions change, seeing his or her time or
> labor
> ultimately come to nothing.
>
> You also forgot to add: they are the inevitable private economy produced
> by
> a society which does not value intellectuals, or thought in general.
>
> You also forgot to add: many of them have good and useful things to say,
> and are probably more well-read and less destructively cynical than you.
>
> (On the other hand, McCreative Writing Professors -- that's a separate
> bag
> of worms...)
>
>
> From: Ana Buigues
> Date: Wed Nov 12, 2003 12:07:48 PM US/Pacific
> To: WRYTING-L@listserv.utoronto.ca
> Subject: Re: McDonald's not lovin' 'McJob' dictionary definition
> Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines"
>
>
> -McAdemic: mek ac`a*dem"ic
>
> .adj. simulacrum of labour. Way of employment whose opportunity for
> advancement requires much mental
> masturbation, intellectual prostitution, self-absorption, and brown
> nosing. Mode of killing one's
> free time usually at educational institutions, within hierarchic
> systems of escalating into high
> positions, similar to those found at corporate industries.
>
> .n. usually Western middle-upper class individuals whose basic needs
> are more than covered, so they
> can employ their time being McAdemics.
>
>
> Synonyms:
> .McScholarly: being unaware of the outside world.
> .McTheoretical: speculative without a practical purpose or intention.
> .McPedantic: characterized by a narrow, often ostentatious concern for
> book learning and formal
> rules.
> .McEnlightened: person in charge of teaching the gentiles, as saving
> them from darkness.
>
>
> -McArtist: not to be confused with McCarthyst
>
> Tim Peterson
> Journals Marketing Coordinator
> The MIT Press
> Five Cambridge Center
> Cambridge, MA 02142-1493
>
> phone: (617) 258-0595
> fax: (617) 258-5028
> http://mitpress.mit.edu/journals
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 09:02:03 -0700
> From: charles alexander
> Subject: Re: McDonald's not lovin' 'McJob' dictionary definition
>
> I had vague memories of a creative writing professor (maybe a McCreative
> Writing Professor?) writing a McPoem (yes, that's the title) about 25
> years
> ago. Not sure of the ethics, copyright & otherwise of posting it here
> without his permission, and he's not someone I know well or am in
> contact
> with. But since I found it this morning on his web site, I thought I'd
> post
> a link to it. I remember hating this poem ages ago; now, if I read it
> with
> a biting irony, as in Charles Bernstein's recent poem, "Thank You for
> Saying Thank You" (although I think the irony in that poem is
> complicated,
> with many of the statements being absolutely straightforward) in his
> chapbook, *Let's Just Say,* I don't dislike it at all. But I don't think
> such irony is intended here.
>
> The
> McPoem --
> you have to scroll down to the penultimate poem on the page to find it.
> It's by Ron Wallace.
>
> Charles
>
>
>
>
> At 10:29 AM 11/13/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >(On the other hand, McCreative Writing Professors -- that's a separate
> bag
> >of worms...)
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:47:54 -0500
> From: Tim Peterson
> Subject: 2 sputtering questions
>
> Nick, in this case I think it's very much an issue of "the medium is the
> message" -- there is something fundamentally different about the
> activity
> of blogging and reading blogs from say, reading a journal or a book.
> Perhaps what I'm talking about here is the conflation of the blog with
> its
> author or writer -- the blog being a kind of virtual extension of the
> self
> that is potentially exciting, potentially worrying. I'm tempted to bring
> up
> Kent Johnson's critiques of authorship, but I will simply gesture at
> those.
> I guess what I'm saying is that, In a way, blogs form an incomplete map
> of
> the social sphere and project this virtual map back onto the real in a
> way
> that I think is fairly new for poetry, at least. The other thing that's
> new
> about it is 1)speed and 2)accessibility. As several frames run in
> succession appear to create the motion of a film, so a series of
> frequent
> blog entries contributes to the creation of a virtual person who is
> fundamentally different from a real person, more mercurial somehow,
> while
> also evoking and limited to all the paradoxes of textuality or textual
> speech. As an easy example: a blog is not a listserv -- the two function
> in
> very different ways, and I would posit that a listserv actually allows
> for
> a more communal, democratic discussion.
>
> Best,
>
> Tim
>
> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:11:17 -0500 > From: Tim Peterson
> > Subject: 2 burning questions > > Thanks so much for
> these comments, Nick. It helps...be assured that I am > not just talking
> from my head, but also from the part of the everyday > experience I have
> of
> continually feeling frustrated and uncomfortable with > people in
> general
> who seem enamored with the idea of being cyborgs. It's > more a >
> response
> to social conditions I really don't understand and that upset me than >
> to
> academic theory. I know I must be right in some respect, because I trust
> my > own reactions to things, and I know that when I spend an hour or
> two
> online > blogging, reading blogs or online journals, etc., I begin to
> feel
> ill, just > physically and mentally ill. I don't have another way to
> explain it. There's > something missing there, for me, and I guess I'm
> trying to find a way to name > what it is... > > Best, > > Tim
> With all due respect, Tim, I don't understand what you are getting at
> with
> these comments. You have every right to express your feelings of
> sickness
> when you read, and how you are sure that that proves something to your
> satisfaction, but how do you get from "people who seem enamored with the
> idea of being cyborgs" ...and "when I spend an hour or two online
> blogging,
> reading blogs or online journals...I begin to feel ill" to "...there's
> something missing there..." What does blogging have to do with cyborgs?
> Do
> you also get sick when you read books and journals? One medium is
> electronic, the books and magazines are made from trees. Both involve
> people's writing. Very frequently the same people who read and write
> books
> and articles also read and write blogs and pieces in online journals.
> Best wishes, Nick
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:12:41 -0700
> From: Tenney Nathanson
> Subject: email address for Manuel Brito?
>
> email for Manuel Brito?
>
> backchannel fine,
>
> thanks,
>
> Tenney
>
> mailto:tenney@dakotacom.net
> mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu
> http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn
>
> POG:
> mailto:pog@gopog.org
> http://www.gopog.org
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:31:04 -0600
> From: Aaron Belz
> Subject: gallaher contact info + open
>
> Hi everyone. I need John Gallaher's contact info -- plz. backchannel.
>
> Plus, I'm putting a lot of open space in this email, so you can use it
> for
> zazen.
>
>
>
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>
>
> + + + + + + +
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 11:33:07 -0600
> From: Aaron Belz
> Subject: larry milkmag, please email me
>
> Hey Larry, my computer died and I lost everything. It was sickening.
> Please
> email me your email address again so I can email you.
>
> -the Bizzelz
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:10:36 -0800
> From: kari edwards
> Subject: on - GENDER AND SPELIG
>
> on-
> GENDER AND SPELIG
> @ http://transdada.blogspot.com/
> w/
> Ellen Redbird
> Mark Wallace
> Eileen Tabios
> Deb (sic)a-Martorana
> Julie Kizershot
> Joanna Fuhrman
> Sina Queyras
>
> you to can submt 2 the discrse on genDer aD splng.. send a note and yor
> NMe.
>
> kari edwards
> terra1@sonic.net
> _________________
> -GENDER RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS-
> _________________
> _________________
> Announcing from O Books: iduna, $12.00
> by kari edwards,
> 2003
> @ Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org/
> ________________________________
> a day in the life of p.
> by kari edwards, $12.00
> From: Subpress Collective /ISBN # 1-930068-18-2
> @ Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org/
> @ amazon.com
>
> _________________________________
> a diary of lies, by kari edwards, Belladonna* Books, 2002
> http://www.durationpress.com/belladonna/catalog.htm
> ________________________________
> Also check out:
> live recording:
> http://www.factoryschool.org/content/sounds/poetry/frontenac.html
>
> interview:
> http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2003spring/ edwards.shtml
> http://www.gendertalk.com/real/350/gt385.shtml
>
> on narrative:
> http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/narrativity/issue_three/edwards.html
>
> prose / fiction
> http://www.emunix.emich.edu/~bhouse/edwards.html
> http://www.chimerareview.com/volumes/2003_4/fic_edwards_1.0.htm
> http://www.muse-apprentice-guild.com/august2002/kariedwards/
> literary_magazine.html
> http://homepages.which.net/~panic.brixtonpoetry/semicolon1.htm
> http://www.shampoopoetry.com/ShampooThirteen/ShampooIssueThirteen.html
> http://www.webdelsol.com/InPosse/edwards10.htm
> http://www.puppyflowers.com/II/flowers.html
> http://www.somalit.com/A_day_in.html
>
> poetry:
> http://www.wordforword.info/vol4/Edwards.htm
> http://www.atomicpetals.com/ke03.htm
> http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/ronhenry/edward10.htm
> http://www.blazevox.org/edwards.htm
> http://www.poeticinhalation.com/v3i3.html#Kari%20Edwards
> http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/poetic%20language.html
> http://www.moriapoetry.com/edwards.html
> http://www.bigbridge.org/miamikedwards.htm
> http://www.xpressed.org/
> http://www.litvert.com/kedwards8.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:21:05 -0800
> From: kari edwards
> Subject: on- GENDER AND SPELInG )corxon(
>
> on-
> GENDER AND SPELIG
> @ http://transdada.blogspot.com/
>
>
> with-
> Ellen Redbird
> Mark Wallace
> Eileen Tabios
> Deb (sic)a-Martorana
> Julie Kizershot
> Joanna Fuhrman
> Sina Queyras
>
> you to can submt 2 the discrse on genDer aD splng.. send a note and yor
> NMe.
>
> kari edwards
> terra1@sonic.net
> _________________
> -GENDER RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS-
> _________________
> _________________
> Announcing from O Books: iduna, $12.00
> by kari edwards,
> 2003
> @ Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org/
> ________________________________
> a day in the life of p.
> by kari edwards, $12.00
> From: Subpress Collective /ISBN # 1-930068-18-2
> @ Small Press Distribution http://www.spdbooks.org/
> @ amazon.com
>
> _________________________________
> a diary of lies, by kari edwards, Belladonna* Books, 2002
> http://www.durationpress.com/belladonna/catalog.htm
> ________________________________
> Also check out:
> live recording:
> http://www.factoryschool.org/content/sounds/poetry/frontenac.html
>
> interview:
> http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2003spring/ edwards.shtml
> http://www.gendertalk.com/real/350/gt385.shtml
>
> on narrative:
> http://www.sfsu.edu/~poetry/narrativity/issue_three/edwards.html
>
> prose / fiction
> http://www.emunix.emich.edu/~bhouse/edwards.html
> http://www.chimerareview.com/volumes/2003_4/fic_edwards_1.0.htm
> http://www.muse-apprentice-guild.com/august2002/kariedwards/
> literary_magazine.html
> http://homepages.which.net/~panic.brixtonpoetry/semicolon1.htm
> http://www.shampoopoetry.com/ShampooThirteen/ShampooIssueThirteen.html
> http://www.webdelsol.com/InPosse/edwards10.htm
> http://www.puppyflowers.com/II/flowers.html
> http://www.somalit.com/A_day_in.html
>
> poetry:
> http://www.wordforword.info/vol4/Edwards.htm
> http://www.atomicpetals.com/ke03.htm
> http://people2.clarityconnect.com/webpages6/ronhenry/edward10.htm
> http://www.blazevox.org/edwards.htm
> http://www.poeticinhalation.com/v3i3.html#Kari%20Edwards
> http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/poetic%20language.html
> http://www.moriapoetry.com/edwards.html
> http://www.bigbridge.org/miamikedwards.htm
> http://www.xpressed.org/
> http://www.litvert.com/kedwards8.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 12:22:41 -0600
> From: mIEKAL aND
> Subject: STREET POET AS STEALTH HUCKSTER FOR NISSAN
>
> (Has anyone experienced this first hand? mIEKAL)
>
> "Nissan Motors is planting actors in movie theaters to perform live
> commercials before the start of showings of 'The Matrix
> Revolutions' in an effort to expose jaded, skeptical consumers to
> advertising by masking it as something else. The brief in-person
> pitches feature actors scattered among the ticket-buying audience
> who stand and deliver lines that evoke the words spoken by poets at
> events known as slams or jams. Their performances are timed to
> accompany a commercial the audience sees on the movie screen, which
> begins without identifying the sponsor but concludes with the
> Nissan Altima logo. The campaign by the Nissan North America
> division of Nissan Motor, intended to pique the curiosity of
> younger consumers about the Nissan Altima sedan, began yesterday in
> theaters operated by the Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation
> in seven large markets and is scheduled to continue through
> tomorrow."
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/business/media/
> 06adco.html?ex=1069559522&ei=1&en=c50fc79789f5a9e7
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:32:57 -0500
> From: Aldon Nielsen
> Subject: Call for Paper
>
> I need one paper on Nathaniel Mackey for a panel on Bay Area African
> American writers, to be presented at the American Literature Association
> in
> San Francisco -- May 27-30 2004
>
> anybody got a good pitch for me?
>
> <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
>
> "Just so - Jesus - raps"
> --Emily Dickinson
>
>
>
> Aldon Lynn Nielsen
> George and Barbara Kelly Professor of American Literature
> Department of English
> The Pennsylvania State University
> 116 Burrowes
> University Park, PA 16802-6200
>
> (814) 865-0091
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 13:50:10 -0500
> From: schwartzgk
> Subject: Re: STREET POET AS STEALTH HUCKSTER FOR NISSAN
>
> Haven't seen it in my market yet... but does sound like a good living
> for
> McPoets... Are they taking applications, I wonder?
>
> Gerald Schwartz
> Only Others Are
> www.geocities.com/legible5roses/schwartz.html
>
>
> > (Has anyone experienced this first hand? mIEKAL)
> >
> > "Nissan Motors is planting actors in movie theaters to perform live
> > commercials before the start of showings of 'The Matrix
> > Revolutions' in an effort to expose jaded, skeptical consumers to
> > advertising by masking it as something else. The brief in-person
> > pitches feature actors scattered among the ticket-buying audience
> > who stand and deliver lines that evoke the words spoken by poets at
> > events known as slams or jams. Their performances are timed to
> > accompany a commercial the audience sees on the movie screen, which
> > begins without identifying the sponsor but concludes with the
> > Nissan Altima logo. The campaign by the Nissan North America
> > division of Nissan Motor, intended to pique the curiosity of
> > younger consumers about the Nissan Altima sedan, began yesterday in
> > theaters operated by the Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation
> > in seven large markets and is scheduled to continue through
> > tomorrow."
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/business/media/
> > 06adco.html?ex=1069559522&ei=1&en=c50fc79789f5a9e7
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:55:32 -0800
> From: Stephen Vincent
> Subject: Re: STREET POET AS STEALTH HUCKSTER FOR NISSAN
>
> I didn't want to say Mc (muck) about anything else, but these specially
> trained actors who splatter poems quo ads to movie audiences are known
> in
> the ad trade as the aforementioned "McSlammers." (A union base pay job,
> $300 a day plus benefits).
>
> Mucky See, Mucky Do,
>
> Oh well, feeling dubiously high minded,
>
> Stephen V
>
>
>
>
>
> on 11/13/03 10:22 AM, mIEKAL aND at dtv@MWT.NET wrote:
>
> > (Has anyone experienced this first hand? mIEKAL)
> >
> > "Nissan Motors is planting actors in movie theaters to perform live
> > commercials before the start of showings of 'The Matrix
> > Revolutions' in an effort to expose jaded, skeptical consumers to
> > advertising by masking it as something else. The brief in-person
> > pitches feature actors scattered among the ticket-buying audience
> > who stand and deliver lines that evoke the words spoken by poets at
> > events known as slams or jams. Their performances are timed to
> > accompany a commercial the audience sees on the movie screen, which
> > begins without identifying the sponsor but concludes with the
> > Nissan Altima logo. The campaign by the Nissan North America
> > division of Nissan Motor, intended to pique the curiosity of
> > younger consumers about the Nissan Altima sedan, began yesterday in
> > theaters operated by the Loews Cineplex Entertainment Corporation
> > in seven large markets and is scheduled to continue through
> > tomorrow."
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/06/business/media/
> > 06adco.html?ex=1069559522&ei=1&en=c50fc79789f5a9e7
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:12:46 -0500
> From: "Shankar, Ravi (English)"
> Subject: Online Poetry Journals Reviewed
>
> Might be of some interest...=20
>
> Chronicle of Higher Education=20
> > From the issue dated 11/7/2003
> >=20
> > Lines Online: Poetry Journals on the Web
> >=20
> > By LISA RUSS SPAAR
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> > It was only about a decade ago that my students and I began
> > talking about the fate of poetry in the electronic age. Would
> > the celerity of information-age technologies so fragment time
> > that we'd lose the reverie and concentration we associated
> > with the "deep reading" of poems? Would it be possible to
> > learn to love the feel of the mouse and the flickering
> > motility of the screen the way we loved books and journals,
> > with their dust mites, their histories, their tangibilities?
> > Could we relinquish existing ideas of authorial possession,
> > especially about our own work? Language itself was our most
> > revolutionary, protean, and crucial human development, far
> > more miraculous than any technology, so why should we worry
> > about its flourishing in a new medium? Yet worry we did.
> > =20
> > By now, most poets probably have a feel for how the Web
> > affects their work and their lives. For my part, I've decided
> > that some of our agonizing was a little overwrought. The Web
> > has increased my appreciation for poetry as an interactive
> > process, making cerebral play, in some cases, a more tangible
> > thing, and it has increased my sense of the poetry world as
> > diverse, global, and lively. But as with most things online,
> > the noise-to-signal ratio of poetry sites can be high, and
> > there are relatively few online poetry pages that draw me. The
> > connections that stir me most remain those to the unfathomably
> > thoughtful, heartfelt word. And the sites that I most relish
> > are those that continue to find that connection more dazzling
> > than the exotic electron displays at their disposal.
> > =20
> > In 1991, the poet and critic Dana Gioia, now head of the
> > National Endowment for the Arts, wrote in The Atlantic Monthly
> > about the enervated "intellectual ghetto" of academic writing
> > programs locking American poetry into a kind of exhausted
> > establishment of stale conventions, and admonished the culture
> > at large to discover fresh ways of writing, experiencing, and
> > presenting poetry to a wider audience. As though in response
> > to his "modest proposals," the past decade has seen a popular
> > resurgence of the genre. Type the word "poetry" into the
> > search engine Google, and references to some 9,320,000 sites
> > appear. As a point of cultural comparison, a recent Google
> > advanced search for "Jennifer Lopez" called up 700,000 sites,
> > "Nascar Racing" some 862,000, with "Sigmund Freud" running a
> > distant 154,000. Grass-roots poetry festivals of
> > near-Woodstock dimensions, like the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry
> > Festival in Stanhope, N.J., proliferate, and it's hard to
> > attend a funeral service or wedding ceremony that doesn't
> > include a reading of a poem by Mary Oliver. The Coordinating
> > Council of Literary Magazines estimates that there are 600
> > active print literary magazines in the United States and
> > suggests that perhaps another 400 to 700 publish irregularly
> > or in small quantities. Ten thousand people a day visit Poetry
> > Daily (http://www.poems.com), which posts poems, as well as
> > news about poetry publications and contests. Even my dentist
> > has heard of the celebrity former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy
> > Collins (she loves his hangover poems), and who hasn't gotten
> > wind of Ruth Lilly's astonishing gift of $100-million dollars
> > to Poetry magazine?
> > =20
> > Surely the burgeoning cosmos of the Internet has contributed
> > in significant measure, for better or worse, to the new wave
> > of poetry consciousness. In particular, online poetry journals
> > are helping to vastly change the ways in which poems are
> > published, disseminated, written, and read. Even those poetry>=20
> > journals most steadfastly committed to remaining in print-only
> > format now have Web sites that announce their philosophies,
> > contests, and submission and subscription guidelines, and
> > often feature work from current and archived hard-copy issues.
> > Other poetry magazines exist solely online, publishing not
> > only poems but poetry reviews, artwork, film, and audio and
> > video clips of showcased writers as well. Still other online
> > journals feature work written expressly for the Web, such as
> > interactive and hypertextual pieces that rely on computer
> > technology and the involvement of the reader. That material
> > challenges traditional notions of what a poem can be and how
> > it can be engaged.
> > =20
> > A decade ago, many of my fellow poets and I were suspicious
> > about publishing anything online. I don't know what we feared,
> > exactly: that these sites were too evanescent, too new, too
> > intangible, too lacking in a track record, a context, and a
> > proven history to count as "real" publications, perhaps. Would
> > our poems merely evaporate if committed to the flux of
> > cyberspace? Worse yet, could these poems be pirated -- as
> > though a poem had that kind of currency -- and appear
> > transformed or attributed to someone else? And what if we gave
> > a poem to a site that within a year or so collapsed? If our
> > ultimate goal was to publish a print book, what did it mean if
> > our publication credits were all online? Would it be possible
> > to preserve the published form of our work when we didn't know
> > if our poems would still be online years from now?
> > =20
> > A quick glance at the current contents page of any of the
> > better-known online journals suggests that both established,
> > prize-winning poets and newcomers are now willing and even
> > eager to publish on the Web. The current online issue of
> > Smartish Pace, for example, features work by and interviews
> > with well-known poets, like Maxine Kumin, Stephen Cushman, and
> > Bin Ramke, as well as poems by emerging writers. In a
> > relatively short time, then, and amid a plethora of
> > cyberdross, more than a handful of Web poetry publications
> > have earned the respect of both traditional and experimental
> > writers, readers, and editors. Even the most avowed lovers of
> > print books and journals among us now spend time at our
> > computer screens, exploring new work on the Net.
> > =20
> > Michael Neff is considered by many to be a visionary in
> > literary Web publishing. His award-winning site, Web del Sol
> > (http://www.webdelsol.com), has served since 1994 as a
> > showcase for contemporary literature in the electronic media.
> > Neff recently told me that he thinks the move to publishing
> > poetry online was inevitable. He cites Doug Lawson, a graduate
> > of our M.F.A. program at the University of Virginia, at The
> > Blue Moon Review (http://www.thebluemoon.com), Frederick
> > Barthelme at Mississippi Review
> > (http://mississippireview.com), and David Hunter Sutherland at
> > Recursive Angel as other pioneers, and he contends that in the
> > decade since its earliest manifestations, Net publishing has
> > already surpassed print in terms of originality and quality.
> > =20
> > Stephen Reichert is the editor of the much admired, relatively
> > new poetry journal Smartish Pace. (I should mention, in the
> > spirit of full disclosure, that my work has been published
> > there, as well as in Drunken Boat, which I discuss below.) The
> > first print version of Smartish Pace appeared in 1999. In
> > charting a course for the magazine, Reichert and fellow staff
> > members felt that establishing a strong tandem presence on the
> > Internet would allow the fledgling magazine not only to
> > survive, but to become a publication people would read out of
> > desire and not just because they knew the editors or because
> > an issue contained one of their published poems, as is often>=20
> > the case with small publications. By the spring of 2000,
> > Reichert and his Web designer had a site
> > (http://www.smartishpace.com), and Reichert firmly believes
> > that the print version of the magazine would not be enjoying
> > its early success without its online incarnation.
> > =20
> > "My guess is that our presence on the Internet has more than
> > tripled the growth speed of the magazine," Reichert says. Not
> > all of the poems that appear in the print magazine are
> > published in the online version, but the Web site does
> > supplement its hard-copy issues, which contain poetry only,
> > with book reviews and interviews with contributing poets. The
> > site is also home to "Poets Q&A," the first of its kind on
> > the Internet. At Poets Q&A, visitors can ask questions of
> > a poet and come back to the site later to read the poet's
> > answers. "I got this idea from the sports site ESPN.com,"
> > Reichert explains, "which hosted a weekly 'chat' with
> > Maryland's basketball coach Gary Williams." So far, the
> > magazine has held interviews with former Poet Laureate Robert
> > Pinsky, as well as Stephen Dunn, Carl Dennis, and Eavan
> > Boland.
> > =20
> > Another intrepid online poetry editor is Ravi Shankar, also a
> > former poetry-writing student from Virginia's creative-writing
> > program, and co-editor of the acclaimed online literary/art
> > journal Drunken Boat (http://www.drunkenboat.com). This
> > kinetic site brings into provocative juxtaposition emerging
> > and established voices, traditional forms of representation
> > and works of art endemic to the Web, and international and
> > domestic artists. The journal is committed to a global mix,
> > bringing together, for example, in recent issues, graffiti
> > artists, the poet laureate of Eritrea, and writers like Yael
> > Kanerek, Mark Rudman, and Alice Fulton. One issue included the
> > provocatively titled "An Apology for Poetry, or Why Bother
> > With Billy Collins?," an essay which generated heated
> > dialogue. For just this sort of dedication to eradicating
> > boundaries between entrenched schools of poetics and their
> > sworn enemies, Drunken Boat has garnered serious attention
> > since its launch in the summer of 2000.
> > =20
> > Shankar agrees with Reichert that access is the Web's chief
> > asset. "Even the most salable print literary journal has
> > perhaps a print run of 5,000," Shankar says. "That's how many
> > hits we sometimes get in a week." It's also a cost-effective
> > medium -- there are no pages to set or bind, no printing
> > costs, no envelopes to address, no mailing expenses, and the
> > relatively inexpensive cost of Internet fees allows editors to
> > save money on overhead that can then be used to enhance their
> > sites and publish a wider range of emerging and established
> > writers. E-mail correspondence among editors, contributors,
> > and readers also allows for an affordable, fluent, and
> > international virtual conversation.
> > =20
> > Apart from the Web's inherent democratization, Shankar cites
> > other clear advantages: "Because it is not print, the Web
> > represents dynamism instead of stasis. ... Instead of merely
> > reading a poem, you can listen to and perhaps even view a
> > video clip of the author reading it as well." The Cortland
> > Review (http://www.cortlandreview.com) was the first online
> > journal to use audio clips of writers reading their work. I
> > recently visited its archived Issue 6 and heard Henry Taylor
> > reading from his own clerihews and explaining how he won
> > Virginia Poet Laureate George Garrett's wristwatch in a wager
> > with the poet David Slavitt, who offered the timepiece if
> > Taylor could write a clerihew for each of the twelve apostles.
> > =20
> > Notions of structure also come into play in Internet
> > publishing: Whole new models of poetry can be realized on the
> > Web -- hypertextual ones, for example, in which the reader>=20
> > need not begin at the first word of the first line and end at
> > the last word, but can enter the text at any point, exit at
> > any time, and thread a unique path through the text each time
> > it is visited. Shankar cites the Electronic Poetry Center at
> > the State University of New York at Buffalo
> > (http://epc.buffalo.edu), Riding the Meridian
> > (http://www.heelstone.com), Click Poetry
> > (http://www.clickpoetry.com), and Poems That Go
> > (http://www.poemsthatgo.com) as particularly exciting sites
> > specializing in poetry written expressly for the Web. Those
> > locations allow contributing poets to append moving images,
> > sounds, photographs, links, and other poems to their own work,
> > creating, as Shankar says, "a new kind of poet, a multimedia
> > bard who splices verse with audio landscapes, with the
> > juxtaposition of visual clips, and with the interaction and
> > full participation of the reader." Readers who visit these
> > experimental and media-poetry sites can look forward to
> > engaging with dynamic work that capitalizes on video,
> > hyperlinks, digital animation, gaming, and even mathematical
> > algorithms.
> > =20
> > These interactive, hypertextual sites might challenge readers
> > accustomed to print formats, or in some cases even make them a
> > little seasick. On recent visits to Click Poetry and Poems
> > That Go, I found an exuberant range of experiential poems,
> > some of which I could appreciate easily and others of which
> > challenged me technologically -- pieces whose dissolving and
> > surfacing texts and images, and whose opening, closing,
> > flashing, and disappearing and reappearing windows and prompts
> > made me wish for a better computer, sexier monitor, faster
> > modem, and less balky mouse. Some of David Knoebel's click
> > poems are pure fun, however, and put me in mind of surrealist
> > games -- an important reminder that notions of chance,
> > coincidence, serendipity, and irrationality are not unique
> > byproducts of interactive, cyberbased poetry, but have always
> > been crucial to the sensibilities of a great many poets such
> > as Breton and Mallarme. Deena Larsen's hypertextual
> > video-poetry piece "Firefly" in a recent issue of Poems That
> > Go is a remarkably luminous, lyrical, and haunting example of
> > ways in which multidimensional uses of reader-interactive text
> > and subtext can create a new kind of poem.
> > =20
> > In contrast, Jon Thompson, editor of the impressive and
> > more-traditional Web poetry journal Free Verse
> > (http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/freeverse), takes a restrained
> > approach to format. "Beyond the design of the home page and
> > the journal's logo," Thompson says, "I prefer not to use too
> > many visuals. For me, a lot of images detract from the power
> > of poetry itself -- its form on the page and its voice. I
> > prefer not to drown that out."
> > =20
> > The space Free Verse creates for each poem is uncluttered and
> > intimate, and though Thompson may choose a cleaner, quieter
> > format for his presentation than do other, busier sites, the
> > work he publishes is daring and strong. The winter 2002 issue,
> > for example, contained a special feature, Exilic Voices: Four
> > Iraqi Poets in Translation, including these lines from the
> > poem "Vacant City" by Mahmud al-Buraykan, translated by Salih
> > J. Altoma:
> > =20
> > On one of my journeys
> > I entered it: a silent city
> > with no trace of inhabitants
> > its doors are closed
> > and its squares are a stage for the winds.
> > But the lights of its windows=20
> > shine all night
> > who turned them on?
> > =20
> > Mahmud al-Buraykan, we learn, was born in 1934 and died in
> > March 2002, apparently killed by thieves who had broken into
> > his house.
> > =20
> > The Web poetry-journal editors I conferred with think of their
> > online pages as a kind of synergistic wager. Certainly there>=20
> > are concerns. "We understand that for many poets, the
> > tangibility of a finished product and the existence of that
> > product in a commercial atmosphere are tantamount to a kind of
> > legitimization," says Shankar. "There seems to be a
> > presupposition that anyone can post poems on the Web, while it
> > takes a real professional to run a publishing house. Also, the
> > newness of online publications means that there has not been
> > enough time to securely establish reputations."
> > =20
> > Web del Sol's Michael Neff says that many people don't realize
> > how much work goes into running an online publication.
> > Excellent Web magazines, like the highly respected Australian
> > Jacket, must take a temporary hiatus, or even fold, he says,
> > "because the creator -- for whatever personal reasons ... can
> > no longer continue, or the task becomes so time-consuming that
> > finances suffer, especially if they receive no grants."
> > Interestingly, most of the online editors with whom I spoke
> > confessed to being what Shankar calls the sort of "fusty,
> > anachronistic reader who would prefer to sit in bed with a
> > dog-eared collection of verse" than to navigate a poem online.
> > "To me," says Thompson, "there's no gainsaying the loss of the
> > physical object. ... But there are many compensations -- not
> > least of which is the possibility of publishing print
> > anthologies of work that initially appears in the online
> > journal."
> > =20
> > Not all editors are sold on the value of an Internet presence.
> > "When I think of all the ways that poetry gets from writers to
> > readers," says the poet R.T. Smith, who edits the prestigious
> > print journal Shenandoah, "print journals are only a small
> > part of it. Collections, anthologies, public readings,
> > audiotapes, and even videotapes also provide access.
> > Considering that, I see the Web magazines as just one in a
> > sequence of forums expanding our access. Web journals don't
> > seem opposed to print journals because it's already a rich
> > mix." While readily appreciating the immediacy of Web
> > technologies (Smith does occasionally publish his own poems in
> > online journals like The Cortland Review), and believing, too,
> > that it's important to know what's out there and to be open to
> > change, he prefers the "substantiality" of the print format
> > for Shenandoah.
> > =20
> > No poetry insulates itself from the age in which it is
> > written, however, and like it or not, even those of us in
> > quiet, pencil-and-paper-based, workshop-centered,
> > manuscript-shuffling creative-writing programs are influenced
> > by the velocity of contemporary culture, the pervasiveness of
> > mass media, and the existence of the Web. (And I should note
> > that several well-respected writing programs -- Brown and SUNY
> > at Buffalo come immediately to mind -- have been strongly
> > committed to integrating new technologies into the
> > creative-writing classroom for some time.) There are those
> > who, like the Borg in Star Trek, suggest that resistance is
> > futile. Neff, for instance, believes that "the electronic
> > world is still the great sleeping dragon -- cliche, but true.
> > Once it harnesses sufficient funds, it will overwhelm print in
> > terms of acquiring prestige and power." But most editors and
> > writers seem to share a hope that the answer lies not in the
> > disappearance of print and the ascendancy of digital
> > technologies, but in a mutually illuminating and valuable
> > counterpoint between the two.
> > =20
> > In his Poets Q&A interview with Smartish Pace, Eavan
> > Boland responded to a question about the impact of the
> > electronic media on Irish poets. "I doubt that [technological
> > change] will have much effect on a poet like myself -- my
> > poetry methods were shaped in the age of the pen and the
> > typewriter," he said. "But the Web will inevitably become a>=20
> > second-nature feature of the environments of poets who are
> > still being formed. I'm fatalistic about that. The struggle of
> > the poet -- to be exact, to be truthful, to convey experience
> > in language -- won't change because the broadcast medium
> > changes."
> > =20
> > At their best, good writing and good reading have always been
> > interactive, virtual, threshold-crossing acts of creativity
> > and translation. Nothing I've encountered in hypertext, for
> > example, can compare with some of the time-imploding, inward-
> > and outward-reaching travel I've done in the thrall of an
> > amazing poem on the page. Electronic communication may alter
> > in some ways the feel of engagements between word and world.
> > But it's the verse epic called language that remains the
> > principal attraction. To that vast work's latest stanzas, the
> > Internet is but an eye-catching epigraph.
> > =20
> > Lisa Russ Spaar is the director of the creative-writing
> > program at the University of Virginia. She is the editor of
> > Acquainted With the Night: Insomnia Poems (Columbia University
> > Press, 1999) and the author of Glass Town: Poems (Red Hen
> > Press, 1999). Her new book of poems, Blue Venus, is due out
> > next year from Persea Books.
> > =20
> > SOME POETRY SITES WORTH EXPLORING
> > =20
> > Any list is arbitrary, but if you're looking for a way into
> > the intimidating world of online poetry, here are a few
> > reliable places you might start:
> > =20
> > Archipelago(http://www.archipelago.org): An international
> > journal of literature, the arts, and opinion.
> > =20
> > Beltway (http://www.washingtonart.com/beltway/beltway.html):
> > Focuses on Washington-area poets, and has an excellent list of
> > writing workshops and conferences around the United States.
> > =20
> > Blackbird (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu): Features a wide
> > spectrum of works, including the formal and complex, and the
> > speculative and wild.
> > =20
> > The Cortland Review (http://www.cortlandreview.com):One of the
> > more prestigious online journals, a pioneer in the use of
> > audio clips, and the first to introduce several prominent
> > poets from the print world to the Internet, including Charles
> > Simic, Mark Jarman, and R.T. Smith.=20
> > =20
> > Drunken Boat (http://www.drunkenboat.com): An aesthetically
> > and culturally diverse site for the literary and visual arts.
> > =20
> > Electronic Poetry Center (http://www.epc.buffalo.edu): Offers
> > invaluable links and the latest information in the field of
> > e-poetry.
> > =20
> > Free Verse (http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/freeverse): A new
> > online journal with a special interest in work in translation.
> > =20
> > Ploughshares (http://www.pshares.org): Features more than
> > 3,000 poems, stories, and articles from current and archived
> > print issues.
> > =20
> > Smartish Pace (http://www.smartishpace.com):Complements the
> > print version with poems by new and established writers, as
> > well as interviews and reviews.
> > =20
> > -- L.R.S.
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> >=20
> ***************
> Ravi Shankar=20
> Poet-in-Residence
> Assistant Professor
> CCSU - English Dept.
> 860-832-2766
> shankarr@ccsu.edu
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:35:17 -0500
> From: Kirby Olson
> Subject: Re: Congo
>
> Jason Christie --
>
> Your post was quite welcome. As we only get two posts a day (a good
> idea, too,
> I think), I wasn't able to respond yesterday. I liked the tone of your
> post,
> and many of the points that you made. What concerns me in academia is
> the
> tendency to off conservatives. This has led to a situation in which
> there are
> only three self-reported conservatives among 450 humanities faculty for
> instance
> at Duke University. This is supposed to make students more amenable to
> leftist
> programming. What it has done however is create conditions in which the
> academic left is increasingly out of touch with the mainstream of
> America as
> they have silenced those voices from ever reaching them. As a result,
> they
> don't know what the right is saying, and they are getting killed in the
> hearts
> and minds of the ordinary citizen as a result.
>
> While I cited the statistics at Duke, I think the conditions are
> universal
> within humanities departments in 99% of American universities and
> community
> colleges. There is probably less than 1% of English departments across
> the
> nation that will vote Republican. And so the dialogue gets increasingly
> unlike
> the mainstream population which is more or less 50-50 in terms of voting
> at this
> point. The result is that those conservative students who do have to
> take
> English classes develop vendettas when they see that they haven't got a
> single
> voice among the English faculty who represent anything anwhere like what
> they
> believe.
>
> What conservatives are saying, especially neo-conservatives, is that
> democracy
> must become a universal condition. They point to misery indexes --
> these are
> supposed to be universal measurements of painful conditions within
> countries,
> and all countries are ranked according to crimes per 100,000, conditions
> of
> hygiene, longevity, and perhaps forty other indices (I'm not sure of
> them all).
> The western European democracies, for instance, have double the
> longevity of
> most sub-Saharan countries. In terms of dental pain, for instance, 90%
> of
> Moroccans report constant dental pain. This level of pain is part of
> the misery
> index. by contrast the number of those experiencing chronic dental pain
> in
> America is less than 1%.
>
> Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist, has argued that democratic
> conditions are an indispensable precondition for a healthy economy, but
> that
> these conditions also pay out in hundreds of different indexes, and that
> in fact
> liberal democratic conditions are the basis for any kind of quality of
> life. He
> argues that freedom of speech is THE MOST important indicator of
> economic
> growth, but also the biggest indicator of the lack of famine, dental
> pain, etc.,
> within any given country.
>
> When I'm speaking about functionality of a country, I too am loosely
> leaning on
> the idea of a universal misery index.
>
> What George Bowering said yesterday in regards to the death penalty for
> juveniles being used by the Congo, Pakistan and the U.S. is actually
> what makes
> the US about twentieth on the misery index. What George didn't say
> however is
> that we do have freedom of speech, quite good longevity, good hygiene,
> good
> dental health (when you compare it to Morocco) etc. Congo and Pakistan
> do not
> share these good things.
>
> Sen argues that it is not equality of income that matters in a given
> country
> that will lead to prosperity, but equality of OPPORTUNITY. Therefore,
> women
> MUST HAVE equal access to opportunity, as must all minorities within a
> country.
> Of course this is a fictional state of affairs -- but it HAS TO BE AIMED
> AT --
> and this is actually one of the keystones of conservative logic for
> intervention
> within the Islamic republics.
>
> a. There are at least a hundred thousand slaves within the southern
> Sudan that
> are being kept by Islamic warlords
>
> b. Throughout the Islamic world there is not equality of opportunity
> for women
> (even jogging has been banned, and women runners in the Olympics have
> had to
> train outside their countries of origins for fear of public execution)
>
> c. Non-Islamic people in many of those countries do not have equal
> opportunities
>
> This is why the conservatives are actually picking up new recruits all
> the time
> and the liberals are losing them. The conservatives are actually
> talking about
> human rights, and they are using this as an absolute standard. This has
> a very
> powerful appeal.
>
> Sen writes that there has never been a democratic country that has EVER
> experienced a famine.
>
> Compare the Soviet Republics.
>
> The neo-conservatives have very good ideas, and I don't see anybody in
> academia
> who has ever even heard of these ideas.
>
> People are busy reading Foucault for ideas, and come on, he knowingly
> gave AIDS
> to young people, and this is in the biographies. He's a non-starter.
> On top of
> that, he suggests that child molestation is no big deal in History of
> Sexuality
> pp. 25-30. This is not going to sail outside of the protected
> environment of
> academia. All the conservatives have the weaknesses of the liberals
> down pat.
> They read their enemies. And somehow the liberals are not reading
> conservatives
> at all, and are getting creamed at the polls.
>
> The best thing that poets can do is to read their enemies.
>
> -- Kirby Olson
>
>
> > That Bush said these countries weren't functioning... by
> > what/whose standards? When was it one countries business to determine
> this?
> >
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:12:28 -0500
> From: George Bowering
> Subject: Re: utility problem
>
> >>What's the difference between US & UK knife & fork handling?
> >
> >
>
> The Brits keep fork in left hand, knife in right. The USAmericans cut
> a piece of steak or whatever, then put down their knife, move their
> fork to their right hand, and poke it in their mouth.
>
> >
> >>I remember the young David Bromige (*no, that is not an oxymoron or
> >>any other kind) as a very struemich sort of fellow, recently freed
> >>from Saskatchewan, unable to eat a hotdog save with a knife and fork,
> >>holding them the correct way as in the British way.
> >>
> >>>"Srueamish" as George employs it means something in the new
> "Spanglish". It
> >>>means "to lick the metaphorical cream off the top". You are
> revealed,ladies.
> >>>Grandfather Bromige, F.R.C.
> >>>-----Original Message-----
> >>>From: George Bowering
> >>>To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
> >>>Date: Saturday, November 08, 2003 2:58 PM
> >>>Subject: Re: utility problem
> >>>
> >>>>Hey, I told Pierre all about the provenance of the meatloaf and he
> >>>>insisted on having it anyway. He was standing there in his Goldberg
> >>>>boxers and carrying a Kirby Doyle book. My heart softened. My head
> >>>>too. I gave him the meatloaf and a bottle of A-1.
> >>>>
> >>>>>George, George, George, such a load of piffle, and when I think of
> the
> >>>>>unspeakable things you and Maria did all night with that poor
> battered
> >>>>>meatloaf. . . . As you well know it never crossed my lips. In fact
> I was
> >>>>>trying to throw it out the hotel window when you offered it to
> Pierre
> >>>>>for lunch. That was unkind of you, and they haven't forgotten at
> the
> >>>>>health department in Winnipeg. I hope all of Pierre's tests were
> >>>>>negative.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Btw someone call the Canadian mounted spelling police. Bowering is
> >>>>>trying to spell "squeamish."
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Ha! I have had many a breakfast with you, Rachel, and I have
> never
> >>>>>> known you to be sqeamish. You did tell me to cover up my chest
> hair
> >>>>>> one time, but as I recall that was the time you were having the
> >>>>>> previouys night's meatloaf for breakfast, with salsa on it.
> Lord! I
> >>>>>> remember the dog was looking at you with imploring eyes. I
> could
> >>>>>> hardly bite into my rye toast.
> >>>>>> GB
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> >Gosh. It seems that while etherised I somehow called up the
> ghosts of
> >>>>>> >Pierre Joris and Gyorgy Bowering. If you guys are going to
> kiss in
> >>>>>> >public (and discuss your "firkin") you really ought to put
> >>>>>> some kind of
> >>>>>> >rating in the subject line. I mean, decent people are eating
> >>>>>> breakfast.
> >>>>>> >
> >>>>>> >> Was that YOU in Missoula? I thought it was James Lee Burke!
> Shows
> >>>>>> >> what a few bottles of Rattlesnake will do to a fellow,
> >>>>>> especially a
> >>>>>> >> visiting Canadian. If that WAS you in Missoula, how do I
> get your
> >>>>>> >> firkin back to you?
> >>>>>> >
> >>>>>> >> >well, I'll be darned, George, so that talk about X.J.
> >>>>>> was just one
> >>>>>> >> >of your come-ons and then, if I remember the sequence
> accurately,
> >>>>>> >> >you tried to prove that a Canadian kiss was as good as a
> French
> >>>>>> >> >kiss, but that burly barman wouldn't have any of it and
> >>>>>> so we drove
> >>>>>> >> >back to either Peekskill or Missoula, whatever... I
> >>>>>> think I'll have
> >>> >>> >> >another Mirabelle just about now... Pierre
> >>> >>> >> >
> >>> >>> >> >
> >>> >>> >> >>>Well, Bowering says he has never been to Peekskill. But
> he
> >>> >>> >> has time to
> >>> >>> >> >>>hang out in Missoula watching Little League games. Go
> >>>>>> figure. If it
> >>>>>> >> >>>weren't so bewildering it would be just plain sad. Maria
> >>>>>> >> and I are going
> >>>>>> >> >>>to have to live with that. We'll sit on our little
> tuffet
> >>>>>> >> of memories,
> >>>>>> >> >>>and occasionally we'll be joined by Pierre Joris.
> >>>>>> >> >>
> >>>>>> >> >>Now wait just one minute! That stuff that went on between
> me and
> >>>>>> >> >>Pierre wads just collegial, only some mutual recognition
> of our
> >>>>>> >> >>devotion to the poetry of X.J. Kennedy. Okay, we may
> >>>>> > have embraced a
> >>>>> > >> >>few times, but he's a European, eh?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>--
> >>>>George Bowering
> >>>>Misses Donald O'Connor
> >>>>
> >>>>303 Fielden Ave.
> >>>>Port Colborne, ON, L3K 4T5
> >>
> >>
> >>--
> >>George Bowering
> >>Friend of Dog Laureate of Canada
> >>
> >>303 Fielden Ave.
> >>Port Colborne. ON,
> >>L3K 4T5
>
>
> --
> George Bowering
> Friend of Dog Laureate of Canada
>
> 303 Fielden Ave.
> Port Colborne. ON,
> L3K 4T5
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:08:55 -0500
> From: Ian VanHeusen
> Subject: Re: email address for Manuel Brito?
>
> Is Manuel Brito a cuban painter? Name rings a bell from an exhibition
> that
> UAlbany had.
>
>
>
> ________________________________________________
> Policies dangerously increase.
>
>
>
>
>
> >From: Tenney Nathanson
> >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group
> >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
> >Subject: email address for Manuel Brito?
> >Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:12:41 -0700
> >
> >email for Manuel Brito?
> >
> >backchannel fine,
> >
> >thanks,
> >
> >Tenney
> >
> >mailto:tenney@dakotacom.net
> >mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu
> >http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn
> >
> >POG:
> >mailto:pog@gopog.org
> >http://www.gopog.org
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Compare high-speed Internet plans, starting at $26.95.
> https://broadband.msn.com (Prices may vary by service area.)
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:41:36 -0700
> From: Tenney Nathanson
> Subject: Re: email address for Manuel Brito?
>
> no he's Mr. Zasterle, in the Canary Islands. but I don't have email.
>
> mailto:tenney@dakotacom.net
> mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu
> http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn
>
> POG:
> mailto:pog@gopog.org
> http://www.gopog.org
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: UB Poetics discussion group
> > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Ian VanHeusen
> > Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 2:09 PM
> > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
> > Subject: Re: email address for Manuel Brito?
> >
> >
> > Is Manuel Brito a cuban painter? Name rings a bell from an exhibition
> that
> > UAlbany had.
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________________________
> > Policies dangerously increase.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > >From: Tenney Nathanson
> > >Reply-To: UB Poetics discussion group
> > >To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
> > >Subject: email address for Manuel Brito?
> > >Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 10:12:41 -0700
> > >
> > >email for Manuel Brito?
> > >
> > >backchannel fine,
> > >
> > >thanks,
> > >
> > >Tenney
> > >
> > >mailto:tenney@dakotacom.net
> > >mailto:nathanso@u.arizona.edu
> > >http://www.u.arizona.edu/~nathanso/tn
> > >
> > >POG:
> > >mailto:pog@gopog.org
> > >http://www.gopog.org
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Compare high-speed Internet plans, starting at $26.95.
> > https://broadband.msn.com (Prices may vary by service area.)
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:46:54 -0500
> From: schwartzgk
> Subject: Poetic (X) Justice
>
> Besides writing:
>
> We've voted in a government that's
> rotting to the core,
> Appointing Godless judges who throw
> reason out the door.
>
> Ex Chief Justice Roy Moore has written lots more. All close readings =
> invited for:
>
>
>
> http://family.org/cforum/citizenmag/webonly/a0021362.cfm=20
>
>
> --Gerald Schwartz
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 14:00:32 -0800
> From: bill marsh
> Subject: Factory School Fall Book Sale
>
> These are truly rock-bottom deals on some great books and chapbooks from
> Factory School, Meow Press, and PaperBrain Press. Many titles are now
> (or soon will be) rare collector=92s items. The entire list represents
> over a decade of publishing activity from these three presses. In many
> cases, only a few copies remain, so take advantage! You won=92t be
> disappointed.=20
>
> Choose from the following package deals:
>
> (prices good through 2003, while supplies last)
> (postage included and quality guaranteed)
>
> Deal #1: Any THREE of the following for $10 (or SIX for $17, or all TEN
> for $25)
>
> Steve Carll, Drugs (PBP) =09
> Robert Creeley, The Dogs of Auckland (Meow) =09
> William Howe, A #=92s Onus (Meow) =09
> Loss Peque=F1o Glazier, The Parts (Meow) =09
> Jennifer Ley, The Birth of Detachment (PBP)=09
> Noemie Maxwell, Thrum (Meow) =09
> Sheila Murphy & Peter Ganick, Numens from Centrality (PBP)=09
> John Olson, Logo Lagoon (PBP) =09
> Gary Sullivan, Dead Man (Meow) =09
> Zazil 1 (Lowther, Featherston, West, Bennett, Mez,
> Fuller, Rodriguez, Stecopoulos, Carll, Messerli, Jarnot,
> Collobert, Downs, Smith, Wallace, Cope) (FS) =09
>
> * * * * * *
>
> Deal #2: Any THREE of the following for $12 (or SIX for $20, or all TEN
> for $30)
>
> Wanda Coleman, et al., Quartet (Meow) =09
> Dan Farrell, (Untitled Epic Poem=85) Grid (Meow) =09
> Benjamin Friedlander, A Knot Is Not a Tangle (Meow)=09
> Benjamin Friedlander, Selected Poems (Meow)=09
> Lisa Jarnot, Two of Everything (Meow) =09
> Kevin Killian, Argento Series (Meow) =09
> Andrew Levy, Elephant Surveillance To Thought (Meow) =09
> Alan Loney, Catalogue (Meow) =09
> Susan Schultz, Addenda (Meow)=09
> Liz Waldner, Call (Meow) =09
>
> * * * * * *
>
> Deal #3: Any THREE of the following for $20 (or FIVE for $30, or all
> SEVEN for $40)
>
> Todd Baron, That Looks at One and Speaks (FS)=09
> Mike Basinski, Heka (FS) =09
> Robert Duncan, Copy Book Entries (Meow) =09
> Bill Marsh & Dana Montlack, Recycler=92s Handbook (PBP)=09
> Bill Marsh & Dana Montlack, The Bagua Book (PBP)=09
> Reina Maria Rodriguez, Detenci=F3n del Tiempo (FS) =09
> Laura Stapleton (ed.), 3rdest World (FS)=09
>
> * * * * * *
>
> Deal #4: Any ONE of the following signed, limited editions for $10 (or
> all THREE for $25)
>
> Todd Baron, That Looks at One and Speaks (FS) =09
> Mike Basinski, Heka (FS) =09
> Reina Maria Rodriguez, Detenci=F3n del Tiempo (FS) =09
>
> * * * * * *
>
> Deal (kicker) #5: Get ALL TWENTY-SEVEN (including signed, limited
> editions) for $100 =96 originally over $200 worth of paper, labor, and
> love.
>
> Please send checks (payable to Bill Marsh) to:=20
>
> 7661 Troy Terrace
> La Mesa, CA 91941
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 16:12:15 -0600
> From: tom bell
> Subject: statehood for Iraq
>
> Is there anything to keep us from granting Iraq statehood? Seems
> preferable
> to colonizing it and they must have a media figure who could govern
> better
> than S can or S can round up a posse to lasso the terrorists.
>
> tom bell
>
>
>
> Some poetry available through geezer.com
>
> Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com
>
> Write for the Health of It course at
> http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
> http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
> not yet a crazy old man
> hard but not yet hardening of the
> art
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 17:14:16 -0500
> From: Poetry Project
> Subject: Events at the Poetry Project 11/17-11/19
>
> A Much Anticipated Week at the Project. We hope to see you all here!
>
>
> *
>
>
> November 17, Monday
> Mark Bibbins & Jenny Boully
> Jenny Boully's book The Body was published in 2003 by Slope Editions.
> Her
> work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2002, Great
> American
> Prose Poems, and The Next American Essay. Mark Bibbins is the author of
> Sky
> Lounge (Graywolf Press, 2003) and a founding editor of LIT magazine. He
> teaches at Purchase College and the New School. [8:00 p.m.]
>
>
> November 19, Wednesday
> Robert Creeley & Jennifer Moxley
> Robert Creeley is a New Englander by birth (1926) and disposition,
> although
> he has spent most of his life in other parts of the world, including
> Guatemala, British Columbia, France, and Spain. In the 1950s he taught
> at
> Black Mountain College and also edited the Black Mountain Review, a
> crucial
> gathering place for alternative senses of writing at that time. Charles
> Olson (then Rector of the college), Robert Duncan and Edward Dorn are
> among
> the company he met there. Subsequently, he taught at the University of
> New
> Mexico and in 1966 went to the State University of New York at Buffalo,
> where he was the first director of the Poetics Program, begun in 1990
> with
> colleagues Charles Bernstein, Susan Howe, Dennis Tedlock, and Raymond
> Federman. In 2003 he joined Brown University=B9s Graduate Program in
> Creative
> Writing as a Distinguished Professor of English. Although most
> identified a=
> s
> a poet (For Love, Pieces, Windows and Selected Poems being a few of his
> man=
> y
> collections), he has written a significant body of prose including a
> novel,
> The Island, and a collection of stories, The Gold Diggers. His critical
> writings are published in The Collected Essays of Robert Creeley and his
> correspondence with Charles Olson is now in ten volumes and counting. He
> is
> also known for the diversity of his collaborations with artists in other
> media, having made records with two decisive jazz composer/musicians,
> the
> bassist Steve Swallow (Home) and the saxophonist Steve Lacy
> (Futurities),
> and collaborated with the alternative mix rock group Mercury Rev (The
> Hum i=
> s
> Coming from Her/So There). He has worked for more than three decades
> with
> visual artists, including Robert Indiana, Jim Dine, R.B. Kitaj,
> Francesco
> Clemente, John Chamberlain, Alex Katz, and Susan Rothenberg.
> Jennifer Moxley is the author of Imagination Verses (Tender Buttons,
> 1996;
> Salt, 2003) and The Sense Record (Edge, 2002; Salt, 2003). The latter
> was
> selected by Small Press Traffic as one of the best poetry books of 2002.
> Sh=
> e
> is the poetry editor at The Baffler and a contributing editor to The
> Poker,
> and works as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of
> Maine.
> [8:00 p.m.]
>
> *
>
> The Poetry Project is located at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery
> 131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue
> New York City 10003
> Trains: 6, F, N, R, and L.
> info@poetryproject.com
> www.poetryproject.com
>
> Admission is $8, $7 for students/seniors and $5 for members (though now
> those who take out a membership at $85 or higher will get in free to all
> regular readings).
>
> We are wheelchair accessible with assistance and advance
> notice. For more info call 212-674-0910.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:20:45 -0800
> From: David Hadbawnik
> Subject: Rodney Koeneke/Mytili Jagannathan at CCA San Francisco, Fri.,
> 11/21
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm writing to invite you to come see me and
> Mytili Jagannathan read
> from our new poetry collections on Friday, Nov.
> 21st as part of Small
> Press Traffic's Fall reading series at CCAC in San
> Francisco. That's
> the Friday before Thanksgiving; it will be the
> debut reading for my
> new
> book, "Rouge State," just out from Pavement Saw
> Press. Mytili is here
> from Philadelphia to unveil her new chapbook ACTS,
> the first
> publication
> from local poet David Hadbawnik's habenicht press.
> Drinks to follow at
> the Connecticut Yankee (just up from Bottom of the
> Hill). I'd love to
> see you there!
>
> Hooray,
> Rodney
>
> [DH amending Rodney's post to note: Mytili's book
> is actually the THIRD title on habenicht press;
> others are Curses and Other Love Poems by Sarah
> Peters and The Ones I Used To Laugh With by Diane
> di Prima. This is MYTILI's first book. and you can
> read more about it at
> www.habenichtpress.com ]
> [Also: this might be the most interestingly named
> double bill of poets you're likely to see this
> year!]
>
> DETAILS:
> RODNEY KOENEKE & MYTILI JAGANNATHAN
> FRIDAY, NOV. 21st, 7:30 p.m.
> Timken Lecture Hall, CCA (formerly California
> College of Arts and
> Crafts)
> 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco (just off the
> intersection of 16th
> and
> Wisconsin)
> $5-$10 sliding scale, free to SPT members
> See www.spttraffic.org for more details
>
> MYTILI JAGANNATHAN was selected for a Pew
> Fellowship in 2002; her work
> has appeared in Xcp: Cross Cultural
> Poetics, Combo, Interlope, and Mirage; and is
> forthcoming in the
> anthology "Cities of Chance: An Anthology of New
> Poetry
> from thw United States and Brazil." She joins us
> from Philadelphia in
> celebration of the publication of her new chapbook
> ACTS by David
> Hadbawnik's habenicht press.
>
> RODNEY KOENEKE was born in Omaha in 1968 and grew
> up in Tucson and Los
> Angeles. He's lived in or about San Francisco
> since 1986. He has
> published a book of history, "Empires of the Mind:
> I.A. Richards and
> Basic English in China, 1929-1979" (Stanford UP,
> 2003); "Rouge State"
> is his first full-length poetry collection.
>
> "In Rouge State, Rodney Koeneke puts the blush
> back on the demotic.
> His
> idiomatic montage is a careening screed dictated
> from a state of alert,
> all puns intended to turn the hose back on a
> culture run literally
> amuck, and whose marquee reads: Raw, Red, Rouge,
> Incarnadine. Welcome
> to these states!"
> --Michael Gizzi
>
> "Cannily an(a)esthet(ic)izing the misogynist and
> orientalist phantasms
> that are projected onto the digital plateaux of
> its own prosodic
> bravado, this is how Naked Lunch might have turned
> out if it had been
> written by Robert Browning having a sex change
> operation. There can be
> but one sordid bordello of this magnitude, and
> Koeneke has erected it
> squarely at the fissure where the simulacrul
> Middle America of Pop
> Warner and bubble top vans collides with a
> paracolonial hallucination
> of
> Eastern inscrutability inhabited by five-dollar
> houris and hack oud
> players. These elegant verses have teeth, and be
> warned: behind each
> incisor lurks a Dunciad."
> --K. Silem Mohammad
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:23:26 -0500
> From: "cartograffiti@mindspring.com"
> Subject: Re: Rodney Koeneke/Mytili Jagannathan at CCA San Francisco,
> Fri., 11/21
>
> This is probably a good time to note that Mytili will be reading the
> following evening at my place, with Del Ray Cross=2E I'll send a full
> announcement soon, but for those making plans this far out, time and
> location follow:
>
> 7:30pm (potluck starts at 6:00 if anyone wants to endure my cooking)
> 134 Greenbank Avenue
> Piedmont, CA 94611
>
> Not transit-accessible, so if that's a concern, get in touch and I'll
> try
> to arrange ride-sharing=2E
>
> Taylor
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: David Hadbawnik rova@ROVA=2EORG
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:20:45 -0800
> To: POETICS@LISTSERV=2EBUFFALO=2EEDU
> Subject: Rodney Koeneke/Mytili Jagannathan at CCA San Francisco, Fri=2E,
> 1=
> 1/21
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm writing to invite you to come see me and
> Mytili Jagannathan read
> from our new poetry collections on Friday, Nov=2E
> 21st as part of Small
> Press Traffic's Fall reading series at CCAC in San
> Francisco=2E That's
> the Friday before Thanksgiving; it will be the
> debut reading for my
> new
> book, "Rouge State," just out from Pavement Saw
> Press=2E Mytili is here
> from Philadelphia to unveil her new chapbook ACTS,
> the first
> publication
> from local poet David Hadbawnik's habenicht press=2E
> Drinks to follow at
> the Connecticut Yankee (just up from Bottom of the
> Hill)=2E I'd love to
> see you there!
>
> Hooray,
> Rodney
>
> [DH amending Rodney's post to note: Mytili's book
> is actually the THIRD title on habenicht press;
> others are Curses and Other Love Poems by Sarah
> Peters and The Ones I Used To Laugh With by Diane
> di Prima=2E This is MYTILI's first book=2E and you can
> read more about it at
> www=2Ehabenichtpress=2Ecom ]
> [Also: this might be the most interestingly named
> double bill of poets you're likely to see this
> year!]
>
> DETAILS:
> RODNEY KOENEKE & MYTILI JAGANNATHAN
> FRIDAY, NOV=2E 21st, 7:30 p=2Em=2E
> Timken Lecture Hall, CCA (formerly California
> College of Arts and
> Crafts)
> 1111 Eighth Street, San Francisco (just off the
> intersection of 16th
> and
> Wisconsin)
> $5-$10 sliding scale, free to SPT members
> See www=2Espttraffic=2Eorg for more details
>
> MYTILI JAGANNATHAN was selected for a Pew
> Fellowship in 2002; her work
> has appeared in Xcp: Cross Cultural
> Poetics, Combo, Interlope, and Mirage; and is
> forthcoming in the
> anthology "Cities of Chance: An Anthology of New
> Poetry
> from thw United States and Brazil=2E" She joins us
> from Philadelphia in
> celebration of the publication of her new chapbook
> ACTS by David
> Hadbawnik's habenicht press=2E
>
> RODNEY KOENEKE was born in Omaha in 1968 and grew
> up in Tucson and Los
> Angeles=2E He's lived in or about San Francisco
> since 1986=2E He has
> published a book of history, "Empires of the Mind:
> I=2EA=2E Richards and
> Basic English in China, 1929-1979" (Stanford UP,
> 2003); "Rouge State"
> is his first full-length poetry collection=2E
>
> "In Rouge State, Rodney Koeneke puts the blush
> back on the demotic=2E
> His
> idiomatic montage is a careening screed dictated
> from a state of alert,
> all puns intended to turn the hose back on a
> culture run literally
> amuck, and whose marquee reads: Raw, Red, Rouge,
> Incarnadine=2E Welcome
> to these states!"
> --Michael Gizzi
>
> "Cannily an(a)esthet(ic)izing the misogynist and
> orientalist phantasms
> that are projected onto the digital plateaux of
> its own prosodic
> bravado, this is how Naked Lunch might have turned
> out if it had been
> written by Robert Browning having a sex change
> operation=2E There can be
> but one sordid bordello of this magnitude, and
> Koeneke has erected it
> squarely at the fissure where the simulacrul
> Middle America of Pop
> Warner and bubble top vans collides with a
> paracolonial hallucination
> of
> Eastern inscrutability inhabited by five-dollar
> houris and hack oud
> players=2E These elegant verses have teeth, and be
> warned: behind each
> incisor lurks a Dunciad=2E"
> --K=2E Silem Mohammad
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> mail2web - Check your email from the web at
> http://mail2web=2Ecom/ =2E
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 15:25:57 -0800
> From: Joel Weishaus
> Subject: Re: statehood for Iraq
>
> > Is there anything to keep us from granting Iraq statehood?...
>
> > tom bell
>
> Yes, the Iraqi People.
>
> -Joel
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:42:54 -0500
> From: Kirby Olson
> Subject: Re: statehood for Iraq
>
> Puerto Rico has been asked, and they said no. Haiti was also asked, and
> they too said no, in spite of all the economic benefits, and all that.
> This was in the later 1800s (in the Haitian scenario) -- but I can't
> remember exactly what date.
>
> Fun idea, but they'd have to have a referendum and agree to form a
> state, or at least that has been the protocol for Caribbean islands.
>
> -- Kirby Olson
>
> Joel Weishaus wrote:
>
> > > Is there anything to keep us from granting Iraq statehood?...
> >
> > > tom bell
> >
> > Yes, the Iraqi People.
> >
> > -Joel
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 07:44:01 +0800
> From: furniture_ press
> Subject: Re: Factory School Fall Book Sale
>
> Attention all:
>
> In a recent tech-dunce my e-mail server (graffiti.net) decided to take
> liberties with my addie list and thoroughly trashed all my contacts. I
> need to send info to all the contributors to ABMIT so I can send them
> copies.
>
> Can anyone please send me the e-mails or addies of the following people.
> Thanks much.
>
> John M Bennet
> Edmund Berrigan
> Catherine Daly
> Thomas Fink
> W B Keckler
> Kyle Schlesinger
> Steve Timm
> Ryan Walker
>
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Graffiti.net free e-mail @ www.graffiti.net
> Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for
> just US$9.95 per year!
>
> Powered by Outblaze
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:44:24 -0400
> From: "David A. Kirschenbaum"
> Subject: ** Boog City Discount Ad Rate is Back**
>
> Hi all,
>
> Boog City's discount ad rate is back.
>
> Our December issue is going to press on Monday, Nov. 24, and we are once
> again offering a 50% discount on our 1/8-page ads, cutting them from $60
> to $30. (The discount rate also applies on larger ads.)
>
> Make reservations as soon as possible.
>
> Ads must be in by Fri., Nov. 21
>
> Issue will be distributed on Tues. Nov. 25.
>
> Backchannel to editor@boogcity.com or call 212-842-BOOG(2664) for more
> information.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>
> P.S. If you're unfamiliar with Boog City, we're an East Village
> Community
> newspaper and an affordable way to reach likeminded New Yorkers who
> would be
> interested in your offerings.
>
> We come out monthly, with a print run of 2,000, and distribute primarily
> in
> the East Village and Williamsburg.
>
> --
> David A. Kirschenbaum, editor and publisher
> Boog City
> 330 W.28th St., Suite 6H
> NY, NY 10001-4754
> For event and publication information:
> http://boogcity.blog-city.com/
> T: (212) 842-BOOG (2664)
> F: (212) 842-2429
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 17:49:06 -0600
> From: tom bell
> Subject: Re: statehood for Iraq
>
> and they would undoubtedly vote democratic?
>
> tom
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Joel Weishaus"
> To:
> Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 5:25 PM
> Subject: Re: statehood for Iraq
>
>
> > > Is there anything to keep us from granting Iraq statehood?...
> >
> > > tom bell
> >
> > Yes, the Iraqi People.
> >
> > -Joel
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 19:06:40 -0400
> From: "David A. Kirschenbaum"
> Subject: Need Some Email Addresses
>
> please backchannel.
>
> Thanks,
> David
>
> pattie mccarthy
> donna cartelli
> dale smith
> wendy kramer
> tom orange
> kent johnson
> alan horvath
> eve grubin
> jen robinson
> mark wallace
> daisy decapite
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 02:57:27 +0100
> From: Karl-Erik Tallmo
> Subject: poetry is still pretty
>
> poetry is real
> poetry is unethical
> poetry is still pretty
>
> poetry is from latin words which are not always true
> poetry is available in every home of this secluded town
>
> poetry is owned and operated by Lisa and Mark Camden of Clackamas,
> Oregon
> poetry is used with as much ethical consideration as possible
> poetry is wonderfully anachronistic in its outlook
> poetry is a favorite destination
> poetry is so large that it should be put to use in airport construction
>
> poetry is opaque when held to the light
> poetry is washed by hand with small soft brushes
> poetry is so lyrical it makes mountains cry
>
> poetry is produced by different methods which results in a wide range
> of textures
> poetry is made of wheat
> poetry is never going to play here
> poetry is the shit
>
> poetry is truly inspiring
> poetry is homosexual
> poetry is considerably higher than other active mediations
> poetry is noted for its thin walls and light weight
> poetry is recreation of a past mate by using another person
>
> poetry is a geographically inert substance
> poetry is spot on
> poetry is lead
> poetry is variety
> poetry is proposition
>
> poetry is a bible verse reference on the bottom of every object
> poetry is cinematic in scope and at times iconic
> poetry is accomplished by a long process of several working days
> poetry is the healing force of a usually very soft yellowish substance
> poetry is very dirty and it may take days or even weeks to clean
> poetry is no longer made in this country
> poetry is all in the head
> poetry is an ancient technology
> poetry is women's work
> poetry is tradition
> poetry is a myth
> poetry is null
>
> poetry is guaranteed to be as described
> poetry is the lifelong love of a Richwood resident
> poetry is beautiful and spontaneous
> poetry is perfectly balanced physically
> poetry is all in the hand
> poetry is usually done in the open
>
>
> /Karl-Erik Tallmo
>
> __________________________________________________________________
>
> KARL-ERIK TALLMO, poet, writer, artist, journalist, living in
> Stockholm, Sweden.
> MAGAZINE: http://art-bin.com
> ARTWORK, WRITINGS etc.: http://www.nisus.se/tallmo/
> __________________________________________________________________
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 09:57:50 +0800
> From: furniture_ press
> Subject: Re: ** Boog City Discount Ad Rate is Back**
>
> Jane, Taylor,
>
> Thanks very much for the e-mail/postal addies. I'm one step closer to
> sanesville.
>
> Also: Ambit-Journal of Poetry & Poetics is finally finally finally
> pressed for proper distribution. If anyone would like a copy send me a
> note about subscriptions. I am very open to magazine trades also. The
> website furniturepress.net will also be up and running by December. I'll
> also have more info about our small presses/disparate poetic communities
> feature on the web, where we'll be building a forum/dialogue through the
> site plus have an on-line zine featuring poets from around the country.
> Details are slim now but imagine the possibilities. Anyone who wishes to
> contribute we are all yours.
>
> Keep all ears to the ground, we're coming.
>
> check out www.towson.edu/~cacasama/furniture/poae while we rebuild our
> home.
>
> e-mail me at: furniture_press@graffiti.net
>
> All my best to everyone,
>
> Christophe
> --
> _______________________________________________
> Graffiti.net free e-mail @ www.graffiti.net
> Check out our value-added Premium features, such as an extra 20MB for
> just US$9.95 per year!
>
> Powered by Outblaze
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 18:01:32 -0800
> From: patrick dunagan
> Subject: Re: 2 sputtering questions
>
> I do side with Tim on the CYBORGS statement and differ with Nick on
> TREES=microchips, to my taste trees are much more 'substational' and
> 'down-to-earth' than those funny-seeming nannos? in which our dialogues
> and poems appear to 'float'.
>
> As far as getting 'ill' from one's reading, I just finished up O'Leary's
> Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetry of Illness and it's a
> hell of a great read that I think might confirm some of what your
> feeling Tim. (I find it unlikely that Duncan would have approved much
> of 'blooggin'
>
> - Patrick Dunagan
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> --------- Original Message ---------
>
> DATE: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 01:50:36
> From: Nick Piombino
> To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
> Cc:
>
> >> Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2003 10:11:17 -0500
> >> From: Tim Peterson
> >> Subject: 2 burning questions
> >>
> >> Thanks so much for these comments, Nick. It helps...be assured that I
> am
> >> not just talking from my head, but also from the part of the everyday
> >> experience I have of continually feeling frustrated and uncomfortable
> with
> >> people in general who seem enamored with the idea of being cyborgs.
> It's
> >> more a
> >> response to social conditions I really don't understand and that
> upset me than
> >> to academic theory. I know I must be right in some respect, because I
> trust my
> >> own reactions to things, and I know that when I spend an hour or two
> online
> >> blogging, reading blogs or online journals, etc., I begin to feel
> ill, just
> >> physically and mentally ill. I don't have another way to explain it.
> There's
> >> something missing there, for me, and I guess I'm trying to find a way
> to name
> >> what it is...
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >> Tim
> >
> >With all due respect, Tim, I don't understand what you are getting at
> with
> >these comments. You have every right to express your feelings of
> sickness
> >when you read, and how you are sure that that proves something to your
> >satisfaction, but how do you get from "people who seem enamored with
> the
> >idea of being cyborgs" ...and "when I spend an hour or two online
> blogging,
> >reading blogs or online journals...I begin to feel ill" to "...there's
> >something missing there..." What does blogging have to do with cyborgs?
> Do
> >you also get sick when you read books and journals? One medium is
> >electronic, the books and magazines are made from trees. Both involve
> >people's writing. Very frequently the same people who read and write
> books
> >and articles also read and write blogs and pieces in online journals.
> >
> >
> >
> >Best wishes,
> >Nick
> >
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________
> Enter now for a chance to win a 42" Plasma Television!
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:07:55 -0500
> From: Alan Sondheim
> Subject: Emerald Bluing
>
> Emerald Bluing
>
> So this is what I've been doing
> Reading about Opals ungluing.
> If this were really the case.
> In which case I'm off base.
> In the world which is the case.
> Closed with a clasp where she breathed her last.
>
> Opal Whiteley Opal Has Whiteley BeenHas Memorial. Whiteley Check
> Memorial.
> for Check Whats Whats NEW NEW with with Opal? Opal? News News Research
> Research onon Whiteley. Whiteley. Cover Cover of of Katherine Katherine
> Becks Becks newnew book about book Opal. about The Opal. was the the
> brightest brightest and and most most beloved beloved Who Who Was Was
> PrincessPrincess Whiteley? 1915 In Opal 1915 was popularOpal teenager At
> in the Oregon! young At age young 22 age Opal 22 teenager Opal, Chloe.
> Chloe. The 1993 to to 2001. 2001. Read Read Memorial Memorial Updates.
> Updates. MeetMeet Founder, Founder, Stephen Stephen Williamson.
> Williamson. E-mail E-mail Explore World World Opal A
>
> GuideMemorial. are to also places links Opal places lived lived her her
> life. life. Fantastic Fantastic Tale Tale oldest oldest five five
> children,children, Irene Whiteley born to Charles Edward Edward
> Whiteleys
> Whiteley. HomeOpal Page. Information
>
> Opal Whiteley Opal Whiteley Has Been
> Opal Whiteley Memorial. Check for Opal
> Whats NEW with Opal? News Research on
> Opal Whiteley. Cover of Katherine Becks new
> book about Opal. The Opal Whiteley
> Opal Whiteley was the brightest and most beloved
> the Opal Whiteley Memorial. Who Was Princess
> Opal Whiteley? In 1915 Opal was the most popular
> teenager in Oregon! At the young age of 22 Opal
> Opal, Chloe. The Opal Whiteley Memorial. 1993 to
> 2001. Read Opal Memorial News Updates. Meet
> Founder, Stephen Williamson. E-mail The Opal Whiteley
> Memorial. Explore the World of Opal Whiteley. A Guide
> are also links to places Opal Whiteley lived and about
> her life. The Fantastic Tale of Opal
> Opal Whiteley. The oldest of five children,
> Opal Irene Whiteley was born to Charles Edward
> Opal Whiteley. Opal Whiteleys Home
> Page. Information about Opal Whiteley
>
> Damn it Opal who are you?
> None of the books tell it true.
> There are a lot of people who might have sued.
> Some say later you were arrogant and rude.
> You might have made it up from leaves that were strewed.
> You used did and do in ways that seemed really screwed.
> Nothing about you seems to make sense except you were unglued.
> Somewhere along the line you were glued and then you grewed.
>
> ___
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 22:59:04 -0600
> From: Haas Bianchi
> Subject: Re: busy
>
> I agree completely Blog is nice but is was fun to intrude in someone
> else's
> conversation on the listserv and start
> conversations Blog is ok I guess but I like free for alls better
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: UB Poetics discussion group
> > [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of Kazim Ali
> > Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 6:48 AM
> > To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
> > Subject: Re: busy
> >
> >
> > i too noticed less of the conversations that happened
> > here: in the public square. where everyone got dirty
> > and in everyone else's face.
> >
> > is it possible that the blogs are the new mall:
> > drawing all the traffic into compartmentalized shops:
> > you have to know where to go to get what you want.
> >
> > no more in your face. too bad. so is "blog" the wave
> > of the future? and not "list" any more? why is that?
> > back to possession i guess: "blog" is our own kingdom
> > where we can say and say. list is, no matter how
> > unmoderated, still someone else's green.
> >
> >
> > --- tom bell wrote:
> > > I have been puxxled by the lack of stimulating
> > > conversations here on the
> > > list but then I realized we were all busy bloggin.
> > >
> > > tom bell
> > >
> > >
> > > Some poetry available through geezer.com
> > >
> > > Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com
> > >
> > > Write for the Health of It course at
> > > http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
> > >
> > http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
> > > not yet a crazy old man
> > > hard but not yet hardening of the
> > > art
> >
> >
> > =====
> > ====
> >
> > WAR IS OVER
> >
> > (if you want it)
> >
> > (e-mail president@whitehouse.gov)
> >
> > __________________________________
> > Do you Yahoo!?
> > Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
> > http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree
> >
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 13 Nov 2003 23:52:32 EST
> From: Joe Brennan
> Subject: Cheney Gang Mulls Interim Iraqi Puppet Like The 'Good Ol' Days
> In Southeast Asia
>
> Click here: The
> Assassinated Press
>
> Cheney Gang Mulls Interim Iraqi Puppet Like The 'Good Ol' Days In
> Southeast
> Asia':
> Rumsfeld In favor Of Returning Saddam Hussein To Power:
> New Toby Keith Song 'It's Too Late To Smell the Roses When Your Mama's
> Puttin' Them On Your Grave' From His New Platinum CD "Laughin' All The
> Way To The
> Bank" Rockets To Number One:
> "If Voting Could Really Change Things, It Would Be Illegal," Says
> Manufacturer Of Computerized Voting Booths:
> Halliburton Denies GIs Are Drinking Their Horse Piss:
> by Jeffey Lube
> The Assassinated Press
>
>
>
> They hang the man and flog the woman
> That steal the goose from off the common,
> But let the greater villain loose
> That steals the common from the goose.
>
> Constant apprehension of war has the same tendency
> to render the head too large for the body. A standing military
> force with an overgrown executive will not long be safe.
> companions to liberty. -- Thomas Jefferson
>
>
> "America is a quarter of a billion people totally misinformed and
> disinformed
> by their government. This is tragic but our media is -- I wouldn't even
> say
> corrupt -- it's just beyond telling us anything that the government
> doesn't
> want us to know."
>
> Gore Vidal
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of POETICS Digest - 12 Nov 2003 to 13 Nov 2003 (#2003-317)
> **************************************************************

2003-11-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

Just think
how many
McCalories

Vernon

-----Original Message-----
From: UB Poetics discussion group [mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU] On
Behalf Of tom bell
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2003 1:16 PM
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: McPoem of the day

McPoem by McPoet for McGrandkid

Mikory, Dikory, Dock.
McMouse ran up the clock.

McKat struck one.
McMouse did flee.

Free McCokes
For you and for me.

tom bell

Some poetry available through geezer.com

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

thank god! This one comes with some pictures
http://199.243.225.113/ClinicalAssistant/diagnostic%20aids/speech/firstpage.
htm

and tutorials and dictionaries: http://www.neuropat.dote.hu/document.htm

************************
Modell "the play of similarity and difference that makes transitory or
partial identification possible is a netaphoric process....cognitive
capacity to empathically know other minds relies on an unimpaired faculty
for metaphoric thought"

he goes back to Jacobson's distinction here between metonym and metaphor.

He also goes on to bring in Bakhtin's dialogical imagination, dance and
mirror neurons. I think it all hangs together but welcome other views. As
he says, "This would be consistent with the idea, central to this book, that
thought can exist apart from language. This would also suggest that the
origin of metaphor and the origin of language are not a coincidence but
represent a coevolution."

tom bell
Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-24T16:13:00.000-07:00

further notes from Modell

"Meaning is achievd through action in the world, and in urn, the self is
altered by that action"

"the limbic system is a heuristically necessary part of the 'conceptual'
nervous system as it allows us to think of emotion as a separate and
distinct function of the mind/brain.....may be related to the organism's
need to monitor its internal states"

2003-06-22T23:28:00.000-07:00

more:

He defines metaphor as "the transfer of meaning between dissimilar
domains,,,,in the case of traumatic memories, a metaphoric process transfers
meanings between the dissimilar domains of past and present time." He goes
on to descrobe the transfer between different sensory modalities which is
what poetry does?

He is also taking about the psychology of things which is not always
translatable into neurophysiology or even neuropsychology.

tom bell

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

I'm wrestling with Modell's _Imagination and the Meaningful Brain (MIT,
2003) and think it quite relevant to recent discussions here so will be
posting bits as I go.

I say 'wrestling with' intentionally rather than 'thinking about' as part of
his argument is that is that metaphor is a way of thinking that can include
the physical and somatic and biological beyond language [p. 33 -"It seems
likely that different domains of the mind operate in accordance with
different rules"]

He draws on Vico rather than Descartes (I remember Vico being included in
comparative literature classes somewhere in the remote past even though it
was never a part of any English curiculum I was exposed to), for example, p.
20, "'Intentionality differs from a "motive," which is the reason and
explanation of the action, and from a "desire," which is the awaeness and
experience stemming from the intent' (Freeman, W. _How brains make up their
minds_, London, 1999). This meaning is in accord with Vico's understanding
that 'meaning is embodied in our total affective interest in the world.'"

Memory is not static or localized but "consists of a process of continual
recategorization, which must involve continued motor activity and repeated
rehersal (Edelman, G. _The remembered present, NY, 1989)

This book is more than an update on Freudian theory - I see it more as
reconceptualizing F in light of modern work on neuropsychology. As I go
along I welcome comment as I'm not sure how clear I am or how clear I am
being and this is something I'm wrestling with not that I've wrestled and
conquered.

tom bell

geezer. com

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-21T23:45:00.000-07:00

2003-06-20T20:33:00.000-07:00

more from Bulatov's forthcoming _Biomediale:Pavel Tishchenko

GENOMICS: NEW SCIENCE IN THE NEW CULTURAL SITUATION

Genomics is a prototype of the coming is on the cutting edge of
"neo-Vesalian" biomedicine and health care of the nearest future. As Victor
McKusik writes: "Specialists in all medical areas will approach the study of
their most puzzling diseases by first mapping the genes responsible for
them. Thus, just as Vesalius's anatomical text of 1543 formed the basis for
the physiology of William Harvey (1628) and the morbid anatomy of Morgagni
(1761), gene mapping is having a widely pervasive influence on medicine."
[1] From this point of view genomics means new imaginative and pragmatic
"localization" of human problems.
Localization constitutes the ground of any human action. In the book The
Normal and The Pathological published in the occupied France in 1943, George
Canguilhem wrote: - "To act, it is necessary at least to localize. For
example, how do we take action against an earthquake or hurricane? The
impetus behind every ontological theory of disease undoubtedly derives from
therapeutic need. When we see in every sick man someone whose being has been
augmented or diminished, we are somewhat reassured, for what a man has lost
can be restored to him, and what has entered him can also leave. We can hope
to conquer disease even if it is the result of a spell, or magic, or
possession; we have only to remember that disease happens to man in order
not to lose all hope. Magic brings to drugs and incantation rites
innumerable resources for generating a profoundly intense desire for cure."
[2]

tom bell

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Health of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist noting here that I am currently on probation for my
misdeeds and misdemeanors [false looks] to a multi-state booming business
called MAXIMUS (and they do emphasize the all-CAPS) and CNN is going on
today making hay by nattering about Granny and Granpaw bandits why don't we
hear about poet bandoleros sticking up _Poetry magazine?

tom bell
Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

"Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) of the brain is still an
experimental technology that permits direct visualisation of the brain
regions that are active in real time, while the subject is performing a
given task.
I have been creating Functional Portraits by imaging the brain function of
the model, while performing a task that characterises herself or himself. I
have been using fMRI equipment more powerful than the ones used for medical
diagnosis in order to achieve better images. Among the first portraits I
have been producing are "Patricia" with her brain activity while playing the
piano, and a self-portrait with my own brain function while drawing.
As a development of Functional Portraits, I am now planning to paint the
brain by manipulating its activity. With the knowledge of the brain regions
that are activated by certain tasks or stimuli, it is possible to design a
number of simultaneous tasks and stimuli that will achieve a complex brain
activity pattern. In other words, by planning a defined set of tasks it is
possible to "paint" a defined pattern of brain activity. Although the
artwork has a short lifespan - as long as the subject is performing the
tasks - it is possible to document it by means of fMRI. It is a case where
it becomes possible to create art by simple thought."- Marta de Menezes from
_BioMediale. Contemporary society and genomic culture (D.Bulatov ed.,
National centre for contemporary art, Kaliningrad, 2003; forthcooming)

tom bell

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/overview/37900
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-17T19:05:00.000-07:00

this could be subtitled confessions of a former Freudian but Arthur Modell's
_Imagination and the Meaningful Brain seems to offer a cognitive lakoffian
way out of the prison of language via Edelman and Lakoff & Co. ~ Polanyi
"meaning is in some unknown fashion potentially present as a latent
property...metaphor is primarily a form of cognition...[grounded in] an
'experiential structure' [as the] selective interpreter of corporeal
experience...[and] different domains of the mind/brain operate in accordance
with dufferent 'rules.'...the construction of meaning requires the use of
emotions and feelings as markers of value....By means of metaphor, feelings
can be imaginatively interpreted, displaced, and transformed...consciousness
of feelings may constitute a 'protoself' or a 'biological self' that
functions as a monitor of homeostasis and consciousness of somatic
boundaries so that self and nonself can be distinguished" and on to some
speculations but recommended for summer reading which reminds me we haven't
yet seen our summer reading lists yet?

tom bell
Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar

not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art
and about to join the geezers

2003-06-16T20:40:00.000-07:00

IsAny

Is any emotion expressed in a poem a "feit"# emotion? Starting from
within language# if something is written down there is a tendency under some
conditions for the act of writing to influence the truth value of what is
said.#

----------------------------------------
footnotes: # As in counter feit without necessarily being counterfactual.
# See discussions of this on the POETICS Listserv during May and June of
2003 http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/poetics.html.
# "Psychology professor Jonathan Schooler of the University of Pittsburgh,
who discovered the effect, defines verbal overshadowing as ''situations in
which one tries to describe difficult-to-describe perceptions, thoughts or
feelings, and as a result of that, loses access to the very information
they're trying to describe.'' - from Goldberg C. "Brain has a way of
distorting memory," The Boston Globe, page C3, 5/13/02/

Section editor for PsyBC www.psychbc.com

Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar

not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-12T18:03:00.000-07:00

*Autopsicografia*

O poeta é um fingidor.
Finge tão completamente
Que chega a fingir que é dor
A dor que deveras sente.

E os que lêem o que escreve
Na dor lida sentem bem
Não as duas que êle teve
Mas só a que êles não têm.

E assim nas calhas de roda
Gira, a entreter a razão
Esse comboio de corda
Que se chama o coração.

*Autopsychography*

The poet fakes it.
He fakes it so completely
He manages to fake what pain is,
The pain he really suffers.

And those who read what he is writing,
In reading about that pain they feel acutely
Not the two pains which he has
But only what they lack.

And meanwhile, around its circuit,
As though to divert the reason, goes
This wind-up mechanical train
Which we call the heart.

2003-06-11T21:32:00.000-07:00

2003-06-09T18:00:00.000-07:00

when you said, "Nope,"
Wih a twinkle in your eye?

Or "C'mon....C'
mon

2003-06-07T23:34:00.000-07:00

Just when did you
go and become

a person
before my eyes

Was it

2003-06-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

Let's Forget
For a moment
Freud and catharsis
Liberal and conservative
And

shooting butterflies in the gut with a shotgun

2003-06-05T17:49:00.000-07:00

Maritain: "Poetry has its source in the preconceptual life of the
intellect."

On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, tom bell wrote:

> Most of what I've posted over the last few weeks is I think related to the
> preconscious. I hate to resort to spatial metaphors as that's what gets
> peoples' thinking confused when they thin of the unconscious as a space but
> I don't see any way around it. The preconscious can be visualized as the
> body of the iceberg with a 'visible' top that is consciousness and maybe a
> base that is the unconscious and eighty percent in between the base and the
> top or tip.
>
> I'm not up to date on my reading but I think Damasio talks about this, as
> does Polyani. This might be what's called the liminal. It can be made
> conscious with work and its effects on thinking and perception can be
> measured.
>
> tom bell
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kirby Olson"
> To: "tom bell"
> Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 1:50 PM
> Subject: Re: neuropoetry
>
>
> > Say more about what the preconscious is. I haven't heard this term.
> Also, is
> > Piaget still considered current? How about Chomsky? I've heard that his
> > linguistic theories have been shot to pieces. I'm not up on it, though.
> >
> > -- Kirby
> >
> >
> >
>

2003-06-04T23:22:00.001-07:00

This discussion seems destine toward an ever-recursive referral to
philosophical theoreticians, so I'll toss in Piaget on children learning
language. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind (thirty years ago on child
development) he describes what Kirby is referring to here:

>Kirby Olson wrote:
> > If I may add something of a little more prosaic nature on the wonderful
> post about mom and daughter, and bird language. My boy Tommy is 2.
> Teaching him to speak I was very aware of what level he could attain.
> For instance, at first it was all objects. And the clearer harder
> consonants were easiest -- cat, dog (he likes to pretend to be these
> animals at this point). There was another level of abstraction from
> reality having to do with colors. This took nearly a month of going
> over before he finally got it -- and now he knows about ten colors.
> Words like freedom, or even abstractions like gadgetry -- they will have
> to wait maybe another year or so. So it seems to me that we are
> starting with real stuff, and moving towards abstractions. I think
> anybody with kids could verify this. But now his longest sentence is,
> "I like to play basketball at Chuck E. Cheese." This sentence really
> excites him and he says it about a half-dozen times a day, and sometimes
> in his sleep. I felt gratified to see that my very postmodern friend
> thought too that reality exists and that language is description in all
> the major postmodern French authors. It is, too, in my kid's language.
>
> -- Kirby Olson

I wouldn't see these as prosaic as it was from observations like this that
Paiget's theories grew. If my recollections serve me at all here, Chomsky's
first claim to fame in the sixties was championing empirical or prosaic
observation of language learning and he came down on Piaget's side contra
Freud on the idea that there is an unconscious. I could supply more names
here but have not seen evidence that anyone here is curious enough to read
on the expansion of the preconscious? [possibly not sexy enough to generate
discussion]

tom bell

2003-06-04T23:22:00.000-07:00

some more research on language development.

tom bell
AScribe Newswire - June 02, 2003

BLOOMINGTON, Ind., June 2 (AScribe Newswire) -- How infants respond to
their mother's touches and smiles influences their development in a
manner much like what young birds experience when learning to sing,
according to a research project involving the Department of Psychology
at Indiana University Bloomington and the Biological Foundations of
Behavior program at Franklin and Marshall College.

An article on the research, titled "Social interaction shapes
babbling: Testing parallels between birdsong and speech," will be
published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences. The Web site for the journal is
http://www.pnas.org/misc/highlights.shtml. The academy's Web site is
http://www4.nationalacademies.org/nas/nashome.nsf.

"The main point of our research is how the reaction of the babies to
their mother's touches and smiles changes how they talk, and this
corresponds to what birds do when learning to sing," said Meredith
West, a professor of psychology and biology at IU. She collaborated on
the article with Andrew King, a senior scientist at IU, and Michael
Goldstein, an assistant professor of psychology at Franklin & Marshall
College in Lancaster, Pa.

"This research takes advantage of infants' sociality to understand
development as it is constructed by interactions with caregivers,"
Goldstein said, "and it shows that social learning is a crucial part
of vocal development."

Goldstein is the principal author of the article, which he researched
as part of his IU doctorate that was supervised by West. King directed
the research on birds that was a model for Goldstein's work.

"This is the first time for research showing that babies change how
they vocalize in response to social responses -- not sounds, but
sights -- by using more mature sounds," West said. "This shows that
parent behavior plays a role very early in the process of babies
learning to talk, a role that goes beyond simply talking to the
infant."

West studies behavior development in animals and humans. She is
particularly interested in the development of communication and social
behavior in the young.

She said the research shows that babies, and birds, pay attention to
the social consequences of sound-making and change their behavior
accordingly. So their sounds have a function beyond simply making
noise.

"By manipulating how mothers behave," West explained, "we demonstrated
that babies can change how they vocalize without copying or imitating
their mother's behavior. The mothers did not change how they talked
but whether they touched or smiled at the baby. That changed the
content of the infant's sounds, as they were more mature or
word-like."

Goldstein added, "This project shows that maternal behavior and infant
sensory capacities interact to generate the development of more
advanced infant behavior. It shows that social learning is a crucial
part of vocal development."

The researchers studied 30 infants with an average age of 8 months and
monitored their interaction with their mothers over two 30-minute play
sessions. This included sessions when the mothers were directed to act
in specific ways while responding to the infants, and audio and visual
testing equipment monitored the results. An analysis of these results
formed the basis of the findings.

"This data provides strong support for a parallel in function between
vocal precursors of songbirds and infants. Because imitation is
usually considered the mechanism for vocal learning in both
situations, the findings introduce social shaping as a general process
underlying the development of speech and song," the researchers wrote
in the abstract of the journal article.

Funding for the research came from the National Institute of Mental
Health, the National Science Foundation and the IU Center for the
Integrative Study of Animal Behavior.

Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar

not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-06-01T12:45:00.000-07:00

From: "Steven Shoemaker"
"To consent to language signifies to act in such a way that, in the
abysmal experience of the taking place of language, in the removal of the
voice, another Voice is disclosed to man, and along with this are also
disclosed the dimension of being and the moral risk of nothingness."
(Giorgio Agamben, Language and Death, cited by Taggart writing on Oppen)

and this just in bc from another list:

Exactly. I don't think any of us has a handle on it yet. But we're all
more than spectators and are participants, though the majority don't
have a clue about that. The odd and frightening thing is that most
treat it as a spectator event. Cheer cheer cheer! Roar of the crowd
as the blade comes down, then quick-cut to one's own head in the basket.
Oh. This was a reality show?

Anyway, those who *are* aware, and are writers, have a different task.
Unfortunately, looking back at how previous writers handled similar
moments in their life and work is of little help this time around.

- Jim [Cervantes]

but what of Pushkin? and the Gendarme of Europe?

to write out of pain it must be accepted?

"Poetry is both the _repetition_ of an ontological moment and the ongoing
_process_ or work of enunciation by which that moment is recursively known
and carried forward....Human beings are unique in th compexity of form and
rang of semantic interpretations of their facial expressions - expressions
hat we have seen, in our mention of Charles Morris's work in semiotics, are
dependent on the rcognition of others, for we cannot see our own faces."
Susan Stewart, _Poetry and the Fate of the Senses_. But what if the
expression determines the emotion and expression

BRAIN HAS A WAY OF DISTORTING MEMORIES

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff, 5/13/2003

Bad news for diary enthusiasts and raconteurs: Accumulating evidence
suggests that when it comes to preserving memories, certain things are
better left unsaid. For example, researchers found that when subjects
watched a videotape of a mock bank robbery, those who were asked to describe
the robber in detail just afterward had a harder time identifying him later
than those who had never tried to put their memories into words.
.............
then if pain is accepted and written about it is false?

on another point gender-recognition programs are not really required when it
comes to posting theory to a listserv,
are they?

tom bell

Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar

not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-29T21:13:00.000-07:00

is the issue not 'whether' but 'how'? As any medically literate (e.g.,
http://www.chcs.org/resource/pdf/hl3.pdf) general practitioner or
gastroenterologist will tell you there does seem to be a 'second brain'
(Gershon) that speaks digestion, etc. intependent of the guy on top and
communicates with the same substances (e.g., serotonin) as the guy on top
does. if we can decipher gut language are we on speaking terms with the
preconsciuos? Or is this just metaphor and not metonym?

tom bell
Write for the Heath of It course at
http://www.suite101.com/course.cfm/17413/seminar

not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
arteries and speaking from the gut today.
or maybe from the hip?

2003-05-25T21:13:00.000-07:00

Tom--Well, I would say, no, language *cannot* convey this experience. And
that's what I find interesting. Language can convey an approximation, a
representation that has to include a difference. For me that kind of
slippage is part of what makes language, especially poetry,
interesting. Now, textual "differences" and slips and gaps are all the
theoretical rage these days, and that discourse is relevant to what I'm
interested in, but again there's a difference. Mostly these slips and
gaps are examined only as textual phenomena, i.e. phenomena that arise out
of the way texts work. But I'm interested in thinking about language
while keeping a (meta)physical sense of things, so that some of the slips
that intrigue me are what you might call primal ones. We do *try* to
convey, we *want* to convey, and this attempt to put across what probably
cannot be communicated is something that moves me in some of the poetry I
like best. steve

2003-05-24T13:18:00.000-07:00

Steve,
It might be useful to turn the question around slightly and ask if
language or other semiotic symbols can grasp and convey to others what is
there prior to language? This is a question that makes sense
neuorologically and psychologically.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
arteries and wondering if his grasping
for words is senility descending?

2003-05-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

----- Original Message -----
From: "David Larsen"
To:
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2003 1:33 PM
Subject: Re: Question

> Ha! Thank you, Eileen, this is great. So "zonga" is the infinitive, & not
> passive participle? Interesting how the passive verb doesn't appear to mean
> "to be twisted" but "to have things twisted/wound around one." Those
> rollercoaster maniacs LRSN
>
> At 02:24 PM 5/22/03 -0400, you wrote:
> >....this online yale dictionary -- at http://www.yale.edu/swahili/ -- sez:
> >
> >-zonga verb, bend about.
> >-zonga verb, coil.
> >-zonga verb, confuse.
> >-zonga verb, embrace.
> >-zonga verb, enclose.
> >-zonga verb, perplex.
> >-zonga verb, surround.
> >-zonga verb, twist.
> >-zonga verb, wind round.
> >-zongamana verb, be coiled up.
> >-zongamana verb, be rolled up.
> >-zongamana verb, be surrounded.
> >-zongamea verb, coil round. (< zonga V).
> >-zongoa verb, uncoil. (< zonga V).
> >-zongoa verb, unroll.
> >-zongoa verb, unwind. (< zonga V).
> >-zongwa verb passive, be enveloped. taa za umeme zimezongwa na nyuzinyuzi
> >[Sul]
> >-zongwa verb passive, be wrapped up.

2003-05-21T13:30:00.000-07:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/05/030513080440.htm

My mom read Frost

and this from another list suggests that there is a poetic reality beyond?

> I think that the work of Amedeo Giorgi, Tom Cloonan, and other
phenomenologists is relevant to what you seek for psychology. We encourage
Saybrook students to do this kind of work.

You write: (quoted from Dave Elkins' email)
"I'm more interested
in the type of truth to be found in the artistic process (for lack of a
better term) that cannot be found in any other way. Paul Tillich pointed to
this when he said that artistic symbols open up dimensions of our inner
lives that cannot be accessed in any other way. Tillich pointed out, for
example, that when one attends a great play, there is a type of revelation
that sometimes occurs that changes one forever. It's what the Greeks called
aleitheia -- a deeper kind of truth. Psychotherapy depends on this same
kind of process that artists who paint, sculpt, write know so well. It's a
type of truth whose process of discovery has better analogues in the
creative process than in the scientific process.

tom bell

2003-05-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

BRAIN HAS A WAY OF DISTORTING MEMORIES

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff, 5/13/2003

Bad news for diary enthusiasts and raconteurs: Accumulating evidence
suggests that when it comes to preserving memories, certain things are
better left unsaid. For example, researchers found that when subjects
watched a videotape of a mock bank robbery, those who were asked to describe
the robber in detail just afterward had a harder time identifying him later
than those who had never tried to put their memories into words.

Another experiment found a similar effect with wine-tasting: Sometimes,
describing a wine's flavor made it harder for certain people to pick out the
wine from among others when they were taste-tested later.

Psychologists call this phenomenon ''verbal overshadowing,'' and they have
been studying it for the last dozen years, intrigued by yet another
indication that, though memories may seem as static as snapshots, they are
in fact fluid and vulnerable to distortion.

Psychology professor Jonathan Schooler of the University of Pittsburgh, who
discovered the effect, defines verbal overshadowing as ''situations in which
one tries to describe difficult-to-describe perceptions, thoughts or
feelings, and as a result of that, loses access to the very information
they're trying to describe.''

Ironic, isn't it? You take the trouble to try to record your most ineffable
moments, and just by trying to put them into words, you distort the very
memory you're trying to preserve.

As another prominent researcher, Christian A. Meissner, a psychology
professor at Florida International University, puts it: Verbal overshadowing
''shows that the way you articulate your experience can alter the way you
remember it in the future.''

In fact, work on verbal overshadowing calls into question what for many is
the greatest joy of writing a diary -- the opportunity to chew over various
life events, more exhaustively than even the dearest of friends could
stomach.

Several overshadowing experiments, Schooler said, found that when people
ruminate over feelings, it can interfere with accurately assessing them.
Subjects did much better when they just went with their gut, he said.

But for diehard intellectualizers, there are some heartening aspects to
verbal overshadowing.

For one thing, the wine-tasting experiment found that people who were expert
not only at tasting wine but at describing it lost nothing by putting the
taste into words.

So keeping a diary or retelling experiences could cause no harm for people
who have plenty of practice at it.

Also, verbal overshadowing does not tend to affect memories of things that
lend themselves easily to words anyway, like simple descriptions of actions
or chains of events.

And, in general, Schooler said, ''There's tons of research in memory that
suggests that recording experiences and rehearsal will help you to remember
certain aspects of that experience.''

But just keep in mind that it's a double-edged sword, he said: ''Certain
kinds of distortion may also occur, and they may be particularly pronounced
when you try to explain why you're having the experiences you are and when
you try to describe really ineffable experiences.''

Diaries aside, work on verbal overshadowing has clear implications for law
enforcement and the handling of witnesses. In particular, Meissner said,
''Our research says that if you're going to ask a witness to make a
subsequent identification, maybe it's best not to push them when it comes to
their description of the perpetrator.''

Schooler and Meissner disagree over the underlying mechanism at work in
verbal overshadowing. Meissner sees it as a ''recording problem,'' that
people distort memories as they lay them down or when they retrieve them.
Schooler sees verbal overshadowing more as a sign of conflict between the
parts of the brain used in verbalizing and the parts used for nonverbal
perception of things like faces or maps.

But both seem to agree on the overall lesson. As Meissner put it: ''We need
to be careful about the way we express our memories, because the manner in
which we express something may distort it in the longer term.''

Carey Goldberg can be reached at goldberg@globe.com.

This story ran on page C3 of the Boston Globe on 5/13/2003. (c) Copyright
2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

2003-05-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

From: "tlrelf"
> Ok..How is this intriguing?

I do admit to some reflexivity [from AskOxford.com: reflexive /r"fleksv/
Grammar adjective 1 (of word or form) referring back to subject (e.g. myself
in I hurt myself) (see panel). 2 (of verb) having reflexive pronoun as
object. noun reflexive word or form]
in my

> > What intrigues about this thread is the way it seemed to coalese
briefly ....

I picture the thread floating like a butterfly while the hurrieder I go as I
try to control it the behinder I get since
"it's not whether you min or lose, it's how you play the game" comes from
"Alumnus Football", one of the early poems penned by a man who's birthplace
is plaqued a block from where I sit.

and now it twitters
as Carl Rakosi said via Hal silence protects us against theorists but also
writing in spite of theorists might do but it won't bring in any bucks from
_Poetry_

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art .

2003-05-12T16:43:00.000-07:00

Ter (and others),

What intrigues about this thread is the way it seemed to coalese briefly
out of THE NEXT END OF THEORY energy and a campaign for recognition of body
process in poetics to glitter briefly on 'language, philosophical
meditations,' as librarians might catalog it, and get swallowed in the time-
worn dichotomies of mind and body; cs. and ucs.; good and evil; etc., etc.
and now as it always has been it is on the verge of skittering off in many
splendored 'tints' of the soul as Michael reminded us Chesterson intimated
as quoted by Borges, not having read Stevens.

***
I get up
I get knocked down
and yet I
just don't get
it, I guess as I
get up.

"the more information you have the less you feel that you have control over
nothing." - nameless sufferer of symptoms of a name-shifting illnes that
might be called civilization discontent but might well do with a snappier or
more pharmaceutically attention catching moniker.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-12T15:40:00.000-07:00

"Man knows that there are in the soul tints more bewildering, more
numberless, and more nameless than the colors of an autumn forest. ...Yet he
seriously believes that these things can every one of them, in all their
tones and semi-tones, in all their blends and unions, be accurately
represented by an arbitrary system of grunts and squeals. He believes that
an ordinary civilized stockbroker can really produce out of his own inside
noises which denote all the mysteries of memory and all the agonies of
desire." --Chesterton, quoted by Borges in: Selected Non-Fictions ed. Eliot
Weinwerger (1999)
posted by Michael Helsom

2003-05-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

A second rule might be to relax control and it is still of interest that no
female has seen fit to contribute to this thread?
"Poetic form made of language relies on rhythm and musical effects that are
known with our entire bodies, carried forward by poets working out of
tradition and carried over by listeners receiving the work. In addition,
poetic form relies on effects of meaning that, in their metaphorical and
imaginative reach, cannot be taken up completely in any single moment of
reception. The semantic dimension of poetry is an open unfolding one,
stemming from both composition and reception. No poetic utterance is
absorbed by its context or completed in it's use; as an enduring form,
transmutable across contexts, the poem is always manifold. Paradoxically, it
is the close of artworks that enables the unending open task of such
reception. What is this task? It is the task of recognition in the light
of the other, for every work of _poiesis anticipates and is completed by
practices of reception." Susan Stewart, _Poetry and the Fate of the Senses

****

Are you aware of our new free e-zine, THE TACTILE MIND WEEKLY? You can
sign up by going to http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/weekly

Tacit Poetry

Tone-deaf as I am told I am and inured to the sorrows and joys to be
sensed*, discovery of the body might come from reading philosophy about it**
or those psychologists who allowed it in*** or literary theories**** or it
might come more directly by moving or listening to my grand-daughter's
"Hello, Hiyah, Hiii..Bye, Buiii, umwagh over the phone (just a plain black
one without a computer or video interface) and wonder if there is a blank
between the "Hi's" and "Bye's" or if in truth everything resides in this
space?
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------

* "The perceptual acuity of all the senses evidently sinks as culture
becomes more refined, whereas its emphasis upon liking and disliking rises.
Indeed , I believe that the heightened sensibility in this direction
generally brings much more suffering and repulsion than joys and attractions
in its wake." Georg Simmel, in Simmel on Culture, Edited by David Frisby
and Mike Featherstone, London, Sage, 1997, p. 118.
** Merleau-Ponty, of course, or maybe Levin, David, The Body's Recollection
of Being, London, Routledge & Keg an Paul, 1985.
*** Start here with Polanyi's tacit knowledge: "The focal and tacit
dimensions are complementary. The tacit knowledge functions as a background
knowledge which assists in accomplishing a task which is in focus. That
which is tacit varies from one situation to another. For instance, when
reading a text, words and linguistic rules function as tacit subsidiary
knowledge while the attention of the reader is focused on the meaning of the
text."
**** Stewart, Susan, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses, Chicago, Univ. of
Chicago, 2002.

2003-05-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

this is a multipart message in mimic format.

neurosci and psychoanal
http://www.neuro-psychoanalysis.org/completebibliography.htm

*** ***

and this just in on the prefrontal cortex so relevant to the continually
ongoing discussions on crazy sensitive poets like me:
NIH/National Institute of Mental Health

Gene enhances prefrontal function at a price

Studies of a gene that affects how efficiently the brain's frontal
lobes process information are revealing some untidy consequences of a
tiny variation in its molecular structure and how it may increase
susceptibility to schizophrenia. People with a common version of the
gene associated with more efficient working memory and frontal lobe
information processing may pay a penalty in adverse responses to
amphetamine, in heightened anxiety and sensitivity to pain. Yet,
another common version may slightly bias the brain toward a pattern
of neurochemical activity associated with psychosis, report
researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Everyone inherits two copies of the catecho-O-methyltransferase
(COMT) gene, one from each parent. It codes for the enzyme that
metabolizes neurotransmitters like dopamine and norepinephrine and
comes in two common versions. One version, met, contains the amino
acid methionine at a point in its chemical sequence where the other
version, val, contains a valine. Depending on the mix of variants
inherited, a person's COMT genes can be typed met/met, val/val, or
val/met.

"Since both versions of the COMT gene are common in the population -
they've been conserved as the human brain evolved -- it makes sense
that each would confer some advantages and disadvantages," explained
Daniel Weinberger, M.D., National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
whose research team, headed by Venkata Mattay, M.D., reports on how
the variants affect the brain's response to amphetamine in the May
13, 2003 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, already
published online.

"Genes don't directly encode for psychopathology, hallucinations,
delusions and panic attacks. Rather, there is a very complicated path
between a gene's influence on the regulation and function of a
protein and such psychiatric phenomena," added Weinberger. "We're
especially interested in the COMT gene variants because they provide
insight into how a gene affects the way the brain processes
information - and perhaps how this might ultimately increase
susceptibility to schizophrenia." A series of brain imaging studies
by the NIMH researchers have shown that frontal lobe information
processing is impaired in schizophrenia.

Two years ago, the NIMH researchers reported that people with the
val/val variant had evidence of reduced prefrontal dopamine activity
and less efficient prefrontal information processing, along with
slightly increased risk for schizophrenia. People with val/met had
more efficient prefrontal function, and people with met/met the most
efficient. The met variant results in 3-4 times weaker enzyme action,
which is thought to allow for more dopamine activity in the
prefrontal cortex, as the neurotransmitter breaks down more slowly.

Since amphetamine boosts dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex,
the researchers predicted that the drug would, in effect, correct a
deficiency in people with val/val - that they would experience more
optimal levels of dopamine and perform better on working memory and
other cognitive tasks known to depend on the prefrontal cortex. They
further predicted that people with met/met on amphetamine would
perform worse and their frontal lobes would function less efficiently
as task difficulty increased.

In what the researchers believe is the "first demonstration in humans
of a genetic explanation for individual differences in the brain
response to amphetamine," they asked 27 normal volunteers - 10
val/val, 11 val/met, and 6 met/met - to perform working memory and
other "executive" (abstract reasoning, planning) tasks while their
brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI). In the double-blind, crossover design, subjects were
given either amphetamine or placebo prior to performing the tasks.
Efficiency, or neuronal signal-to-noise ratio, was gauged by how hard
the brain had to work to maintain a given level of task performance.

As predicted, regardless of how hard the working memory task was,
val/val subjects on amphetamine showed more efficient frontal lobe
function - their brains didn't have to work as hard as they did on
placebo to perform quickly and accurately. By contrast, the
efficiency, accuracy and reaction time of met/met subjects on
amphetamine dropped off precipitously, from placebo levels, when the
task reached the hardest of three levels of difficulty, suggesting
that their information processing was compromised. Another test of
frontal lobe function showed a similar pattern. Val/val subjects on
amphetamine appeared similar to met/met individuals at baseline.
Met/met subjects on amphetamine performed worse than subjects with
val/val at baseline.

These results fit a model in which dopamine activity needs to be
neither too low nor too high for optimal prefrontal functioning. The
brain performs most efficiently when dopamine activity is at a
moderate level corresponding to the top of an upside-down "U" (see
diagram below).

"The combined effects on dopamine levels of amphetamine and high
working memory load push individuals with the met/met genotype beyond
the critical threshold at which compensation can be made," suggest
the researchers. They note evidence from other studies that too much
dopamine activity in the prefrontal cortex may disorganize neural
networks by activating inhibitory mechanisms.

Amphetamines and other drugs that affect prefrontal dopamine systems
are used to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD),
and other psychiatric illnesses, and some people respond better than
others to these medications. Noting that it has been difficult to
predict, in advance, which patients might show adverse responses, the
researchers suggest that, after further research, COMT gene type may
become a relevant factor to consider in managing treatment. About
15-20 percent of individuals in populations of European ancestry have
the met/met COMT gene type.

In other recent studies, researchers supported by the National
Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) have found an
association between met/met and increased anxiety -- and heightened
sensitivity to pain. Yet, the emerging theme from what's being
learned about effects of the COMT gene val/met genetic variation, or
polymorphism, is that it cuts both ways. NIMH's Weinberger says
preliminary evidence suggests that having even one met predicts a
better response on working memory tests in schizophrenia patients
after treatment with an antipsychotic medication. Moreover, there is
new evidence about how the val variant may increase risk for such
psychotic illness.

Mayada Akil, M.D., Joel Kleinman, M.D., and colleagues in the NIMH
Clinical Brain Disorders Branch, examined expression of the gene that
codes for tyrosine hydroxylase, the enzyme that makes dopamine, in
the brains of 23 deceased normal subjects. In the March 15, 2003
Journal of Neuroscience, they report that the gene turns-on more in
neurons projecting to the striatum (an area in the middle of the
brain) in people who inherited two copies of the COMT val variant
than in those with only one copy of the val variant. The higher
expression of the tyrosine hydroxylase gene reflects higher dopamine
synthesis, and presumably, higher activity of dopamine neurons.

Evidence suggests that the val variant likely triggers more dopamine
activity in the striatum indirectly, by dampening prefrontal dopamine
activity. A resulting weak prefrontal signal-to-noise ratio gets
telegraphed to the lower brain areas by other neurons projecting from
the prefrontal cortex, disinhibiting the dopamine neurons projecting
to the striatum, the researchers speculate. Such a seesaw pattern of
decreased dopamine in the prefrontal cortex and increased dopamine in
the striatum has been implicated as a mechanism related to
schizophrenia and psychosis in humans. Animal studies modeling
possible brain mechanisms in schizophrenia have also observed this
pattern.

These val-influenced variations "slightly bias humans toward the
expression of two biological phenomena associated with schizophrenia:
abnormal prefrontal function and up-regulated striatal dopamine
activity," suggest the researchers.

Many mysteries still surround the COMT gene's possible role in
schizophrenia and other psychiatric illness. For example, last Fall a
team of researchers in Israel reported finding strong associations
between other parts of the COMT gene and schizophrenia.

Researchers who participated in the amphetamine study also included:
Drs. Terry Goldberg, Francesco Fera, Ahmad Hariri, Alessandro
Tessitore, Michael Egan, Bhaskar Kolachana, Joseph Callicott, NIMH.
Also participating in the postmortem study were: Drs. Bhaskar
Kolachana, Debora Rothmond, Thomas Hyde, Daniel Weinberger, NIMH.
but a sentence like this:"The higher expression of the tyrosine hydroxylase
gene reflects higher dopamine
synthesis, and presumably, higher activity of dopamine neurons." leaves one
to wonder looking at a photo of this activity just what in the h those
tyrosine hydroxylase genes are saying to their offspring?
*** ***

my concern here is the middle where we live and write poetry and let's leave
the cs. and ucs. to the theorists (who have pronounced themselves dead if
last week's rumor is still au courant)
[one of the rules I have learned for myself here is that my predilection for
wordplay oft leads me astray and this may be one of the reasons why this is
so difficlut to understand: it may be that the linguisitc may be the thin
veneer of civility which at the mo is in danger of sliding off what is].

]it is odd this whole concern should be a male concern?
or
is it that we don't live in our bodies?
or
Can J Gastroenterol 2003 Mar;17(3):191-6

Sex differences of brain serotonin synthesis in patients with irritable
bowel syndrome using a-[11C]methyl-l-tryptophan, positron emission
tomography and statistical parametric mapping.

Nakai A, Kumakura Y, Boivin M, Rosa P, Diksic M, D'Souza D, Kersey K.

Fukui Medical University School of Medicine, Fukui, Japan.

BACKGROUND: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is the most common functional
bowel disorder and has a strong predominance in women. Recent data suggest
that the brain may play an important role in the pathophysiology of IBS in
the brain-gut axis. It is strongly suspected that serotonin (5-HT), a
neurotransmitter found in the brain and gut, may be related to the
pathophysiology of IBS. It is reported that a 5-HT3 antagonist is effective
only in female patients with diarrhea-predominant IBS.

OBJECTIVE: In the present study, 5-HT synthesis was measured using positron
emission tomography, with a-[11C]methyl-l-tryptophan as the tracer, in
patients with IBS. The aim of the present study was to compare 5-HT
synthesis in the IBS patients with that in the controls, and to compare 5-HT
synthesis between male and female IBS patients.

METHODS: Six male and six female nonconstipated IBS patients were scanned.
Age-matched healthy volunteers were scanned as controls. Eighty minute
dynamic scans were performed. Functional 5-HT synthesis images were analyzed
using statistical parametric mapping.
RESULTS: 5-HT synthesis was greater only in the female IBS patients in the
right medial temporal gyrus (multimodal sensory association cortex) compared
with the female controls (P<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: The greater brain 5-HT synthesis in the female IBS patients
than in the controls may be related to the pathological visceral pain
processing of the IBS patients, a larger female predominance of the
disorder, and the sex difference of the efficacy of the 5-HT3 antagonist in
treatment[

***
***
and reverting to my poems on watching the war as real reality TV, this study
suggests that seeing Bush waging war was good for my mental health:

MU STUDY SHOWS REALITY TELEVISION HAS POSITIVE IMPACT ON VIEWERS

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Channel surfers across the country are finding it
increasingly difficult to avoid a reality television program.
According to recent Nielsen ratings, shows such as Survivor, American
Idol, Fear Factor, Big Brother and The Bachelor are attracting more
than 18 million viewers per episode. Many people say these shows
possess no redeeming value and are simply blatant voyeurism. However,
a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered these
shows actually have a positive impact on viewers.

"Entertainment needs are met through reality television because these
shows allow people to make comparisons with media images --
comparisons that ultimately help them feel better about themselves
and their personal circumstances," said Cynthia Frisby, assistant
professor of advertising at the Missouri School of Journalism at MU.

In the study, participants ranging in age from 19 to 29 years old --
similar to the 18 to 34 age group most attracted to reality
television -- completed a survey to measure their moods and thoughts
regarding reality television. The survey indicated 78 percent were
regular viewers of reality shows. They then watched a 40-minute
segment of Joe Millionaire while recording their reactions to the
program. Another survey was taken immediately following the episode.

Frisby found that the participant's exposure to reality television
resulted in a positive increase in mood state, with no difference
between men and women. Interestingly, Frisby said, of all the
gratifications obtained, viewers reported watching reality shows
specifically to make comparisons, the factor that determined
entertainment value.

Frisby believes the results of this research can be used to provide
new insights concerning psychological, cognitive and behavioral
processes that motivate television viewing preferences and program
choice.

"Television and other media provide the thrill of observing danger
without allowing people to suffer consequences," Frisby said.
"Audiences know that when the curtain comes down and the lights come
on in the theater, everything is back to the way it is. That's what
reality television does for the regular viewer. These shows are
distracting from today's tragic events and give viewers an outlet for
watching others overcome hardships, escape danger, live in a
rainforest, learn to survive under the roughest conditions, and yes,
find love."

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-05-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

MU STUDY SHOWS REALITY TELEVISION HAS POSITIVE IMPACT ON VIEWERS

COLUMBIA, Mo. -- Channel surfers across the country are finding it
increasingly difficult to avoid a reality television program.
According to recent Nielsen ratings, shows such as Survivor, American
Idol, Fear Factor, Big Brother and The Bachelor are attracting more
than 18 million viewers per episode. Many people say these shows
possess no redeeming value and are simply blatant voyeurism. However,
a researcher at the University of Missouri-Columbia discovered these
shows actually have a positive impact on viewers.

"Entertainment needs are met through reality television because these
shows allow people to make comparisons with media images --
comparisons that ultimately help them feel better about themselves
and their personal circumstances," said Cynthia Frisby, assistant
professor of advertising at the Missouri School of Journalism at MU.

In the study, participants ranging in age from 19 to 29 years old --
similar to the 18 to 34 age group most attracted to reality
television -- completed a survey to measure their moods and thoughts
regarding reality television. The survey indicated 78 percent were
regular viewers of reality shows. They then watched a 40-minute
segment of Joe Millionaire while recording their reactions to the
program. Another survey was taken immediately following the episode.

Frisby found that the participant's exposure to reality television
resulted in a positive increase in mood state, with no difference
between men and women. Interestingly, Frisby said, of all the
gratifications obtained, viewers reported watching reality shows
specifically to make comparisons, the factor that determined
entertainment value.

Frisby believes the results of this research can be used to provide
new insights concerning psychological, cognitive and behavioral
processes that motivate television viewing preferences and program
choice.

"Television and other media provide the thrill of observing danger
without allowing people to suffer consequences," Frisby said.
"Audiences know that when the curtain comes down and the lights come
on in the theater, everything is back to the way it is. That's what
reality television does for the regular viewer. These shows are
distracting from today's tragic events and give viewers an outlet for
watching others overcome hardships, escape danger, live in a
rainforest, learn to survive under the roughest conditions, and yes,
find love."

--

Try to like something
__
|ry
tO
|
Li
ke
something and the anger
will GO

2003-05-09T23:38:00.000-07:00

----- Original Message -----
From: "tom bell"
To: "UB Poetics discussion group"
Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 12:32 AM
Subject: Fw: A theory of practice and process

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tom bell"
> To: "UB Poetics discussion group"
> Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2003 10:18 PM
> Subject: A theory of practice and process
>
>
> > I do think comments about jazz and sports quite relevant along with
Alfred
> > North (Dewey if I recall correctly fits in here even though he may no
> longer
> > be popular in the restricted reading lists of most universities today -
> jez,
> > I guess I do have a grudge against the academy, don't I? - but also
> Gestalt
> > psychology is another abandoned thread that might fit)
> >
> > I think numerous example could be given of poets that swim in the
> > preconscious waters, not all of them experimental, but I have yet to
come
> > across a poetics of this experience or neuropsychology that accounts for
> the
> > poetic rather than dismissing it.
> >
> > but enough theory for the mo as:
> > [
> > Too powerful and unifying a theory of technique hovering over the
analyst
> > can
> > burden a treatment. An individual's practical technique is in the
details
> > and in
> > the moment. In fact, many of the recent contributions to psychoanalytic
> > technique can be seen as additive rather than substitutive, each in its
> time
> > and
> > place.
> >
> > These are among the core ideas underlying Fred Pine's engaging work,
> > DIVERSITY
> > AND DIRECTION IN PSYCHOANALYTIC TECHNIQUE.]
> >
> > so to poet rather than theopoet for a mo or two:
> > only two colors here but blackwhitething determines both
> > ends from the middlemuddle mud fills the roadsurround
> > riversrising overflood does clearing the river mean get it all out?
> > BLACK white
> > blacK
White
> > Blackwhite Blackwhite
> > bLACKwhite blackWHITE
> > blackwhite BLACKwhite
> > &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
> > whiteBLACKblackWhite
> > white BLACK
> >
> > tom bell
> > not yet a crazy old man
> > hard but not yet hardening of the
> > art
> >
> >
>
>

2003-05-08T11:16:00.000-07:00

Kentucky Fried Kant appeared today out of Yahoo on a relatively quiet day
for the Yahoos swiftly swarming

From: "Joe Amato"

> geez, i don't know about precognition... but just the other day, i
> rec'd an envelope in the mails with a little window, in which i see:
>
> Joe, you are pre-approved for
> a Classic Rock Platinum MasterCard!

Joe if the envelope had come from your gut would it have been a Mac Master
Card? and if you were suffering from starvation for attention like me would
you have succumbed?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

My post intentionally had a large blank space or canvas but apparently it
failed to come across that way. I think that this is the preconscious
which is uncharted and at present I see this as roughly the body which is
not accounted for by logical systems which divide 'what is there' into two
categories. The realm of language is a tenth of the iceberg of 'what is
there' and the realm of the Freudian or Lacanian ucs and Gods and devils is
another tenth on the other end (the spatial is clearly not any more helpful
in thinking about this than language) which leaves 8 tenths unaccounted for?
(I may well be wrong on percentages)

At the very least this 8 tenths mediates between the cs. and the ucs.
and this mediation may involve hormones and involve the immune system, etc.
activating switches which might have gray values as well as black and white.
This realm is only now being uncovered by an example of the way it might
work that is familiar to me is the GI system and I know about it because
mine is messed up. To summarize, there is a theory backed up by some good
scientific evidence that there is more than metaphorically a second brain
located in the GI system that operates independently of the first brain and
when my stomach speaks to me it might discharge gas to the world but also
say "anger" that I speak in language. both the discharge and the saying of
anger are concrete operations mediate perhaps by cartooning levels measured
in the brain and in the colon but it might perhaps be clearer if you pay a
visit to the colossal colon http://www.preventcancer.org/colossalcolon/

I'm not posting on this as an argument as much as to stimulate thinking as
this is pretty much uncharted territory that poets could explore as well as
theoreticians.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

----- Original Message -----
From:
To:
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 7:24 PM
Subject: Re: theory of practice

> In a message dated 5/7/03 1:00:23 AM, trbell@COMCAST.NET writes:
>
> << It is perhaps 'theological' as you dismiss it here but there is too
much
>
> psychological and other evidence to dismiss the prelogical by equating it
>
> with the unconscious or cast it in theological terms. To put it in
>
> flowchart terms like Bob suggested:
>
>
> one tenth of the iceberg of reality conforms to logic >>
>
> What am I missing here? I don't understand your first comment (probably
my
> fault). To mention the theological flavor of certain ideas is
dismissive?!
> Why? What have you got against the theological? All of Romanticism
circles
> the theological.
>
> But I think we're all talking at cross-purposes. Not unlike the story
that
> becomes something other via many tellings. I thought this thread began
with
> a claim that it was possible to observe the pre-cognitive, to write a
poetry
> that accesses the pre-cognitive. The pre-logical was not the issue. My
> point is simply that all ideas, relations, logic, illogic, differences,
> identities, et al are products of language, i.e., of a semiotic system
> however developed, however "advanced." Cognition--the process of knowing,
of
> perception--may begin without language, in the sense of beyond or before
it.
> But these beginnings are not available to man. Once anything means for
man,
> that meaning is produced by, bound by and contingent upon the semiotic
> system. All meaning is. Once an idea obtains--as soon as observation
> becomes meaningful for us, it is semiotic. If it doesn't mean, it is not
> part of our world. It is not "there" for us. In other words, language
> brings such things into existence for us.
>
> I'm fairly certain that many psychologists/psychoanalysts would agree.
Lacan
> certainly believed the unconscious was linguistic. But where is the
> unconscious? Do we occupy it? Can we? If it is somewhere outside of
> language, then it's debatable if a "we" or "I" exists in that "place" to
> observe. Do we not surmise its existence by working backward (as I said
> previously) from the text, in this case from the text of what we interpret
as
> the effects of the unconscious on behavior, or on dreams which themselves
are
> semiotic?
> When you think about it, psychoanalysists spend a lot of time listening to
> patients talk, guiding patients toward the inner talk that will soothe.
>
> I also had a slight problem with some of the examples presented: Pound's
> "presentation," for one. Pound's image, that word or series of words
which
> presents the thing as it is without commentary, without mediation (Pound
uses
> the term "correspondence" a lot), is not a reference to the pre-cognitive.
> If anyone thinks otherwise, I'd love to hear the argument. I'm open to
that,
> most definitely.
>
> Pound, like Eliot, also refers to an intellectual and emotional nexus
that,
> he urges, must be "presented" without excess baggage (like too many
> adjectives). But we must remember that while Pound was writing all this,
a
> revolution was occuring in linguistics, one that actually began quietly in
> the late 19th century, got its legs with Saussure, and didn't really get
to
> walk around until decades later. Pound, despite his brilliance, was still
> attached to ideas that were on their way out. Eliot was actually more in
> tune with what was happening in linguistics and philosophy (not surprising
> since his aborted Ph.D. was to be awarded in the latter discipline).
There
> is plenty of evidence in his dissertation and in Four Quartets that he
> understood the self and its world as linguistic events.
>
> Anyway, just trying to work out my own confusion re: this thread. Best
to
> all, Bill

2003-05-07T16:58:00.000-07:00

You know, I'd like to argue against some of what I said earlier about the
impossibility of asemic knowledge. It seems to me now kind of belligerent
to make such a pronouncement on something like the relationship a believer
might have w/ the divine, and I'd like to retract it.

It it still the case that in every theist faith known to me, the
relationship between god & mortal is carried out through densely
articulated sign-systems, viz. the omen, the teras, the sema, the oth, the
ayah, and the various bird-omens. Like what Daniel Webster said about the
now-fallen Old Man of the Mountain: "But up in the Franconia Mountains God
Almighty has hung out a sign to show that in New England He makes men." I
think this kind of sign is pretty much the template for everything we know.
But I think many religious believers are reluctant to trace their
relationship with the divine to anything so vulgar as an omen, and feel a
genuine intimacy with it that is not mediated by signs. Like the Sufis who
ache for the tickle of God's breath on their face --would you call that
breath a sign? The Qur'an does, when it's blown into Adam's nostrils, but I
bet if you're actually feeling it it's something else entirely.

So if you've had some ecstatic experience with God that was no way a
"vision," or if you enjoy a quietly immanent immanent relationship with him
for which you require no evidence, I'm not going to tell you otherwise. I'm
just going to worship elsewhere LRSN

2003-05-07T16:55:00.000-07:00

a bit defensive but you've demonstrated that poets are able to grapple
directly with these scientific articles in their original form rather than
wait for a theoretician to hand down received wisdom. I feel a little like
David Antin here (pretentiously) encouraging experimentation but there is a
wealth of interesting material in thousands of neuropsych articles on nearby
library shelves or accessible via computer.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-07T16:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.wmbb.com/frontpage/MGB2I6NYCFD.html

is there a rumor
here that
there is a tumor
for poetry?

From: "Geoffrey Gatza"

> > one tenth of the iceberg of reality conforms to logic
>
> then isn't the applied logic incorrect? And how does one bridge that gap?
>
>
>
> Sincerely, Geoffrey

metaphorically we have been
enwraped
enrapt
by Descarte and Freud

but
ENbedded correspondents might mail missives from the dark?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

It is perhaps 'theological' as you dismiss it here but there is too much
psychological and other evidence to dismiss the prelogical by equating it
with the unconscious or cast it in theological terms. To put it in
flowchart terms like Bob suggested:

one tenth of the iceberg of reality conforms to logic

and one tenth resides in the unconscious or theological where devils wrestle
with angels but the liminal is vast and where we live and poetry resides? If
you stare at that vast space above it might flow into something sensible or
maybe I missed it?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-05T21:40:00.000-07:00

It is possibly coincidental that Pound has already been evoked on one of
these threaded discourses that wend across my computer screen. Pound is
referenced by Stewart in her discussion of the transference of emotion
through poetry (Poetry and the Fate of the Senses). She discusses Pound's
"I" as it becomes "ye" in "On His Own Face in the Glass" and "Coda" where,
as she says, we are shown "the self turning away from its own image in the
desire to recover what is truly its own and what it truly has lost - its own
dead, its own beloved faces in the faces of others."

before this gets swallowed by theory and side-issue-squabbles let me say
that Stewart does a worthy job of tracing the philosophical antecedents to
her conclusion that poetry is privileged in making something of nothing in
its participation both in the "generalizations of inherited systems of
meaning and the particularities of expression...."concrete universals"...the
fate of pain, the fate of sense impression, the fate of emotional outpouring
are the finality of aesthetic form; but, even given this finality, aesthetic
form constantly is put under pressure to change and renew itself in order to
accommodate what time and experience have brought to it." (327 - 328)

Am I laughing because I'm laughing? [P. Ekman. Facial expression of emotion.
American
Psychologist, 1993,
48, 384-392]

Or because you are? ["The main implication is, the way we
understand the emotions of
other people is by
simulating in our brain the same activity we have
when we experience those
emotions," Iacoboni says. - from the
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences]

Or is there a joke in the poem on the table before me or am I writing a
humorous poem or reading a poem that is a joke?

do I laugh at you
or with ye
or do we 'write' a poem we see on the page or feel
in our guts

Or
does the pain disappear if I have no words for her or is she only
experienced
by my dopple
or gawky other?

Sontag wraps and dismisses them since "we don't get it"!

And yet I'm not sure that the assertions here [her assertions, other
assertions] are accurate poeticognitiveneuropsychoimmunologically speaking
as it were where there is still two ways of reading the data and pictures
there, the pretty ones of the brain sprawled naked before us with the reds
and blues scanned onto disc onto the net and read by my software eidetically
spanning the gap: it can be read as static or as process.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
arteries i GUESS or like Pound am I
bound to become bound
UP in the I
or is it ye?

2003-05-05T21:39:00.000-07:00

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2001/hollan03.htm URL for Holland
article Tom Bell has pointed out.
"And further, the brain talks to the body by means of hormones, and the body
talks back to the brain using both hormones and neurotransmitters." I'd
like to have a talk with both of these, tell them the hormones they're
sending are the wrong kind and I'm getting a lot of spam, too.
"We hominids--our branch of the primate order, pongid family--have been
around for some five million years. But our particular species, homo sapiens
sapiens, has only been around for about a hundred thousand years." Wow,
hard to believe we've only been around for such a short time. Hope we
decide to stay a little longer.
"Indeed, Baldwinian evolution proceeds without any genetic mechanisms, only
a cultural differentiation in number of surviving carriers of one's genes."
Yes, poets need to learn how to compete economically.
"Baldwinian evolution may have something to say about literature. Is it
possible that people who are skilled at certain cultural activities like
dance or story-telling gain a favored position in the gene pool? Is it
possible that we have poetry and drama because the genes that give rise to
poets and actors and, indeed, appreciative audiences are specially selected
for in the world of homo sapiens sapiens? Ellen Dissanayake suggests that
the arts develop our ability to make something special, to single one thing
out from the stream of experience, and that this ability gives the arts
evolutionary value." A lot to chew on here: (1)Is James Mark Baldwin joking
with that second sentence... (2)I love the third sentence/question, though,
especially the part about "appreciative audiences [that] are specially
selected." This implies (to me) that it's not just the art production; it's
much broader than that; it's the whole kit-n-kaboodle. It's the whole
mindset that appreciates art, a mindset that requires an entire community of
contributers to pitch in. It is "a mindset," a set (and I hope innate)
disposition to "create the art community," a community which includes
, without which the artforms lack proper mirrors that validate
the art or supply feedback to keep them dynamic and continually adapting.
(3)I would be more inclined to believe that the "ability to make something
special" is MORE an ability to solve social and psychosocial threats ("to
the core or essence of being" Rollo May). I'm thinking of the theory that
"youngest siblings, for example, are statistically more inclined to be "the
creative types, artists" (and rebels) in the family." They "must do
something creative in order to get the attention they need; eldest siblings
have already gotten their due (or been forced early into conformity) and
been handed "responsibility" and the value of conforming to the family value
system, the only one they get from the get-go, along with greater pressure
internally and externally to adhere to it, for their "identity" is
inextricably bound to that limited range of identification they've been
introduced to and nurtured by and had reflected back to them, and on which
they've learned family survival is based; middle-siblings are more social,
as they've learned to accommodate elder and younger siblings, as well as
parents, who've had to teach them to get along with more others.
Extrapolating, albeit in my usual simple-minded way, artists (perhaps
genetically predisposed) carry greater antennae for the social malaise of
their societies, including philistinism that invokes the need for newer and
more vibrant forms of art, the available forms being seen as lacking. Or,
to solve those social problems, they are moved (perhaps genetically more
inclined to "be moved") to come up with solutions that require
"imagination." It is this, imagination, that they are perhaps most
seriously endowed with; at the very least, it is what they most depend on.
If they had different skills, then they would use those other, different
skills (the math-minded would become a doctor to cure the disease that
killed his family, the action-type would become an athlete (20th century) or
soldier (19th and 21st), etcetera). But it is "imagination" (which could
also be the "over-initializing" or "over-activation" of brain functioning
resulting having other skills required to solve their problems,
especially when the problems are not really solvable, given certain
sociopolitical conditions that are out-of-control); again, it is
"imagination" that they "rely on," their one and only, or their one most
reliable, or the one the external forces they are trying to change, react
to, control, survive, fight, modify can control/counteract; it is
imagination that they employ to "fight to survive" (anachronistic
terminology, incidentally, and not to blame Darwin, whose language options
were limited to it, though I would suggest that terms like "survival of the
fittest" be replaced with less "warrior mentality" jargon so that the
signified these terms point to can also evolve and then better adapt to the
changing social and political needs society must address -- I'm sure this is
not a new thought, and everyone here knows that the social Darwinists were
particularly onerous and their heirs to arrogance persist today, mucking up
the human/species/planet's potential). I almost think/believe, Tom, that it
is "imagination" Holland and others should get a hold on.
Back to "artistic imagination," though...
"This is the basis for Chomsky's claim that we have something like eighty
switches in our brains for language, which are set this way or that by the
language environment in which we grow up. We inherit a set of linguistic
tendencies or 'principles' and a specific language experience sets the
'parameters.'" Wow, eighty switches (and counting?)! Really cool! Now, I
wonder. Is one of these 80 for metonyms and one for metaphor? And how did
Watten and others trip the one for metonymic preferences, if so? Moreover,
do certain socio-psychological-political-historical-aesthetic conditions
trip the prevalence (or need?) for these literary preferences? ( I know,
that's a little bit grandiose, but I'm limited...) Or so "conditions"
merely cause the need to create "something new," so any form that hasn't
been around for awhile will do the trick (No, I don't believe things are
"cyclical"). How can one trip the switches and check out some new ones?
Holland again, reponding to Pinker: "What, if anything, does all this have
to do with literature? It suggests that the kind of play with language that
we experience in poetry or 'musical' prose involves the brain in a different
kind of processing from the logical, step-by-step sequential processing of
language that neurology traditionally associates with the language centers
like Broca's area, Wernicke's area, and the arcuate fasciculus. This
special, 'poetic' language must jump around in our brains in unusual ways,
like a kind of exercise." Ummm, or maybe the brain is already jumping
around, so its processing of language is different. Or it takes greater
pleasure in the jumping around, so when it does process, and would otherwise
experience boredom (which is the opposite of pleasure, in my opinion, ummm,
my most fervent opinion), it "plays." It creates, what, melopoeia, if
musically inclined, or the one with a lot of punning and wit and maybe
conceptual twists, or the visual one. Those who've gotten their Pound know
better. Here, now, I'm not sure socio-political "threats," ANXIETY, is
necessarily a precursor at all. The play is simply for pleasure, amusement,
escape from boredom, sometimes leading to monetary award (court poets,
agrarians, rap music, et al) and/or sustenance/livelihoods.
Holland on Lakoff: "Another group of linguists has developed yet another
claim to linguistic universal: metaphor. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
(1980) have described metaphor as a process by which we use ideas about a
source, something that we understand pretty well, to understand a target,
something that we understand less well. The example they give (and the one
everyone uses who expounds this theory) is the metaphorical mapping, LOVE IS
A JOURNEY. From this mapping, we can generate metaphorical sentences like:
We're not getting anywhere in this relationship. This relationship is on the
rocks We've lost our way We've come to a dead end We're spinning our wheels
We're getting on swimmingly We're headed for the altar. Or that
country-and-western song, 'We're driving in the fast lane on the freeway of
love.' All of these enable us to talk about something complicated, love, in
terms of something physical and visible and well understood, getting from
here to there." He forgot "I was born in the backseat of a rambler" and
"going all the way." Well of course Love is a journey! Where can I get my
drivers license renewed?
This was interesting, too: "Within this general framework of
source-to-target mapping, one can distinguish "primary" and "secondary"
metaphors. Secondary metaphors use sources from a particular culture like
our fast lanes and freeways. Primary metaphors stem from universal human
experiences, usually physical experiences, like up-down, fast-slow,
hot-cold, near-far, balance-imbalance, and so on. Primary metaphors can and
do occur in, apparently, all cultures."
And this, "If all cultures use this mapping, then this kind of metaphorical
reasoning from source to target must be wired into our brains. Neurologist
Antonio Damasio (1999, p. 347n4) has suggested that this concept of metaphor
matches his insistence on an 'embodied mind.' That is, he argues, our core
sense of self and, indeed, all our higher mental activities are based on the
representation of the body in the brain. Hence, at a deep, physiological
level, our most abstract thinking is grounded in bodily experience. In
effect, our bodies are source domains for the various target domains of our
cognitive processes. And Damasio can point to pathways in the brain that
could be the basis for this kind of hard-wired metaphorical thinking. Very
tentatively, Lakoff and his group have developed neural network simulations
that mimic the metaphorical system of traveling from here to there along a
path." At first it sounds kind of hokey, but then I think of the baby in a
womb, and the brain is getting so much input from Day One (ummm, or maybe a
few weeks later, actually) from the body and what the spinal cord takes in
and such. So as the brain develops, it just morphs that body sensing
straight over to the way it will later learn to process language. Do
artists, obviously then, "make things/life/theworld so much more "palpable"
and thus "relate" to the "appreciative" others that much more viscerally
(Read: intimately, at far more powerful levels of the human psyche because
tied closer to the most basically imprinted consciousness centers, or
whatever)?
All for now... More later, maybe...
(OT: Some argue that a lot of avant garde writing is very "abstract."
Others, including the avant garde writers better readers, I think, argue
that "the abstract" is made more accessible by the better avant-garde
writers... could be a little bit of both, too, and the real issue is how
much fuss is made about it.)

Steve Tills

2003-05-05T21:38:00.000-07:00

Steve Tills wrote

>Is language "mediation" between "point-of-view" and >"world" or (should be
and/or) does it become "world"
> itself?

I suspct this might well lead to psychosis as defined by lack of reality
contact but is also implied in the time I spent engrossed in the war via TV
I participated in recently (due out from poethia soon).

I think the need for some explanation of how 'reality' and 'fantasy' might
be connected if not through writing and the visual cogito ergo sum also
poses a dilemma for the new connectionist neutorscience being developed by
Lakoff and others (e.g., see
http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/IPRO/Summary/97abstracts/abstracts.JF.html

and
http://www.clas.ufl.edu/ipsa/journal/2001/hollan03.htm

for example
"Embedded media
Terminalized
Frag news crawls along at camel's pace under the TV picture
of....
Akbar

TV has
Crawling once more under the screen
Along the banks of the Tibris
Clouds billow over Baghdad
Phones on the cutting edge disconnect

Regarding the Pain of Others"

could be read in a 'connectionist' manner by adding up the connections there
on the screen happening to those people or it could be we in pain on the
banks of the Tibris awaiting doom?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-05T13:57:00.000-07:00

The title is:

Transference: Love, Journeys, and Psychoanalysis

And here is the URL for the essay:

.

And here is the abstract:

Transference, itself a metaphorical concept, operates through metaphor.
Given the well-known transference motif of the patient's being "in love"
with the analyst, our conventional metaphors for love inevitably underlie
much psychoanalytic discourse about the patient-analyst relationship. This
article analyzes several such metaphors-e.g, LOVE IS MAGIC, LOVE IS A
COLLABORATIVE WORK OF ART-and examines how they may function within a
psychoanalysis. The article also proposes a particularly detailed analysis
of LOVE IS A JOURNEY and its psychoanalytic derivative THERAPY IS A
JOURNEY, deeply entrenched metaphors which allow us to reason about love
and therapy on the basis of what we already know about journeys.
Metaphorical references to journeying commonly occur in both the dreams and
discourse of analytic patients. Dreams of journeys are produced and
analyzed through the same metaphorical conceptual system of both the
patient and the analyst.

2003-05-04T18:10:00.000-07:00

2003-05-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

Tom,

Are we not here, in the terms used by Burgand, i.e., cast in the language of semiotics and, broadly, cognitive psychology, speaking of that covered in Classic Psychoanalysis under the term “preconscious”, and which term has been exhaustively employed as it applies centrally, i.e., has been adapted to, the creative processes? Freud’s own rudimentary work on creativity led to later adaptations of “preconscious” to the study, in their own right, of the creative processes. This “stretch” of the term “preconscious” from Psychoanalysis to Creativity – inspired by him -- went well beyond what Freud’s model could account for: while still being useful as a differentiation – third but relating (even microgenetically linking) dimension between “unconscious” and “conscious”: Much like what I hear you saying about the poetic – discursive-meaning dynamic.

What do you think?

I am not suggesting that there isn’t an heuristic advantage to using different terms for what might be phenomena viewed differently according to and consistent with any given model or theory. Certainly, as I say, “preconscious” has been heuristically stretched from the psychoanalytic to the creativity (in its own right) model. Burgand’s terms, per se. e.g., “transitoire observable” wouldn’t fit well in the psychoanalytic model: as they are already cast in a ‘postmodern’ frame of text/context. But, to me, they “sniff of” what is called “preconscious” in both the original and stretched models of Freud and Creativity.

Indeed, even Postivist philosophers and psychologists, notably following Auguste Comte, established an historical “hierarchy” that is not coincidently mindful of Freud’s “unconscious”, “preconscious” and “conscious”. In Comtes evolutionary-historical stages, the “animistic” represents much of what Freud would use, individually, as examples of “unconscious”: The artistic poetic (for him, as with Freud, is an advance over the former), historically, joins myth and fantasy to realty and becomes, for Comte “pre-science”, or heuristic inspiration for science…in psychoanalytic terms this would be comparable to the “preconscious”. And Science, of course, for Comte, is the ultimate reality orientation: this would represent in Freud, “consciousness” – as it joins and induces the reality principle. I say this familiarity between the dynamics of Comte and Freud is not coincidental, because Freud was strongly influenced by the philosophical Zeitgeist generated by Comte and Positivism in his day and place.

While there is a heuristic advantage to suiting terms to their different models (Comte is not Freud is not Creativity is not Semiotics) conversely, the cross-over (cross checking, for instance) of models using different terms can also be an heuristic advantage. Which is what I’m up to here in prodding the issue.

Mike Arons

-----Original Message-----
From: Division 32 [mailto:DIV32@LISTS.APA.ORG] On Behalf Of Thomas Bell, Psy.D
Sent: Saturday, May 03, 2003 9:21 PM
To: DIV32@LISTS.APA.ORG
Subject: [DIV32] Psychoanalysis and humanistic approaches and the aesthetics of therapy

Mark and Gen:

I got this from another list but it does seem relevant to your discussion of the process of therapy

Patrick Burgand wrote:

"The Transitoire Observable is a transient hypermedia event that the reader
reads on screen and created by the computer while executing. It is what is
watched (observed) before applying cognitive attention. The cognition will
transform the perceived element into "text-of-visualisation". It means that
a "Transitoire Observable" does not belong yet to the text. Alexandre found
the concept useful because it is clear that the text, or any other semiotic
event on screen, is relative, transient and created by a physical process.
It is not a permanent and timeless object, as, for instance, a printed text.
The term gives its place to both program and physical processes acting in
textual construction. We insist on the link existing between the object,
which is our senses perceive, and the underlying level, which is the code at
work. He refers as well to the autonomy of processes which is more of a
global description than a textual concept, because it is operating in other
digital mediums. "

as part of a desciption of the "tansitore observable". To me this is a good
definition of what I and others are doing or seeking in poetry as process
rather than just a text in print?

tom bell

2003-05-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

2003-05-04T11:44:00.000-07:00

Bill wrote:
>| The idea that we can approach something
>| before it enters the semiotic field, that we can
>| 'know' it in any way, is interesting but no doubt
>| misguided. All we can do is to work . . . .

/insights from my Buddhist + Spinoza readings:/

If you do nothing at all (the absence of work) and produce no effort at
all, then things *are* what they are (no additions).

You do not need to look at things in any 'way,' since they *are* that
way.

You do not have to try to be aware, because you already *are* aware (in
a double-aspect theory kind-of way). These things (object + subject) are
the same (one).

>| [Noumena] is utterly Other -- unknowable,
>| unobservable, irreconcilable

/insights from my Buddhist + Romantic readings:/

If you do not possess the above 'idea of unknowable,' 'idea of Other'

- avoiding the *is* of identity
- avoiding conceptualized ideas, names, categories

then the spontaneity of 'what is' springs out naturally. You can achieve
an awareness which is very precise and comprehensive (all-encompassing)
since it avoids 'promiscuous authorship' (Coleridge) in favor of
*disavowal* whose chief property is potential to openness.

_______________________________
"In an age of corrupt eloquence, awareness is both food and antidote."

2003-05-04T11:42:00.000-07:00

From: wrote:
> Good to see that Kant, or some facsimile, lives on. Not to forget
> impressionism. The problem, of course, is that as soon as anything enters
> the field of "observability," it is textualized. The idea that we can
> approach something before it enters the semiotic field, that we can "know"
it
> in any way, is interesting but no doubt misguided. All we can do is to
work
> backwards from the text to what we claim is noumena. I ain't noumena.
> Whatever is without the text is utterly Other--unknowable, unobservable,
> irreconcilable. Nice idea, though. Best, Bill
>

As Susan Stewart (_Poetry and the Fate of the Senses)
points out (along with many others)
the visual is not the only sense?

Do I sense disaster in the course Bush is pursuing before I see it enacted
on my TV screen? Does "I think I do" come only after I see it in print or
is the stench wafting over Baghdad being carried in the onslaught of viruses
filling my in box?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-05-04T11:09:00.000-07:00

In a message dated 5/3/03 8:34:02 PM, trbell@COMCAST.NET writes:

<< Patrick Burgand wrote:

"The Transitoire Observable is a transient hypermedia event that the reader

reads on screen and created by the computer while executing. It is what is

watched (observed) before applying cognitive attention. The cognition will

transform the perceived element into "text-of-visualisation". It means that

a "Transitoire Observable" does not belong yet to the text. Alexandre found

the concept useful because it is clear that the text, or any other semiotic

event on screen, is relative, transient and created by a physical process.

It is not a permanent and timeless object, as, for instance, a printed text.

The term gives its place to both program and physical processes acting in

textual construction. We insist on the link existing between the object,

which is our senses perceive, and the underlying level, which is the code at

work. He refers as well to the autonomy of processes which is more of a

global description than a textual concept, because it is operating in other

digital mediums. "

as part of a desciption of the "tansitore observable". To me this is a good

definition of what I and others are doing or seeking in poetry as process

rather than just a text in print?

tom bell

not yet a crazy old man

hard but not yet hardening of the

art >>

Good to see that Kant, or some facsimile, lives on. Not to forget
impressionism. The problem, of course, is that as soon as anything enters
the field of "observability," it is textualized. The idea that we can
approach something before it enters the semiotic field, that we can "know" it
in any way, is interesting but no doubt misguided. All we can do is to work
backwards from the text to what we claim is noumena. I ain't noumena.
Whatever is without the text is utterly Other--unknowable, unobservable,
irreconcilable. Nice idea, though. Best, Bill

KojaPress.com
Amazon.com
bn.com

2003-04-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

Despite their bashing here and elsewhere President and mrs. Bush have
probably made more specific contributions to poetry in the last few months
(via annoying poets) than all of the heralded THEORISTS. that might be the
basis for the disgruntlement at the meeting?

I'm not sure what Sontag would say about all these brain scans, but just as
"photographs of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses. A call for
peace. A cry for revenge" (p. 13, _Regarding the Pain of Others_) I wonder
what the responses would b to a picture of the amygdala in motion of someone
committing an atrocity and how it would play on the evening news and would
the consulting neuroscientists Ravi mentions be sponsoring the news? Or
would the Univ. of Phoenix be billed for the time?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-04-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

Mark and Joe and...

There seem to be arguments here for a new journal, maybe called _ACADEMIC
JARGON (a trifle more incisive than the NYTimes) online and in print but not
paid for by a university publisher. I can see hundreds from the list
contributing and none buying.

ACADemic jarGON
ENDemic JAR
LATEST THE MATTER of fact
LATEST MATTERs
honesty, HONESTLY?
HARDENING OF THE THEORISTS' ARTERIES

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art
ERIES

2003-04-19T16:55:00.000-07:00

Patrick,

I'm having difficulty here distinguishing your position here from the
approach Dourish takes in his _Where the Action Is (My review to appear soon
in Reviews in Cyberculture) which he admits is basically a rehash of ideas
current in psychology 50 years ago - my hardening might be showing here.
This trend in psychology has obviously not been included in the psychology
studied in academia which people on the list studied. This leads in a whole
new direction but also segues into a couple of things mentioned in THE
LATEST.... thread:

1. There is a clear difference between the poetics that comes from the
academy and he NYTimes which does seem not to have been in contact with
people out here in the heartland taking it's departure from things Goodman
and Olson, for example, said that were included in graduate courses while at
the same time neglecting their roots. (There is another story in the
NYTimes of the same date that realizes in amazement that "Cogito, ergo sum"
is not the whole story while I remember a psychology professor letting me in
on the same secret 50 years ago)

2. The central argument of the NYTimes piece also seems to suffer from the
same kind of obsession with in thinking where the best and the brightest
manage to neglect the roots or body of thinkng.

I suspect I'm getting lost here again and railing so will end,

but do need to ask Steve what happened - I had a bc note returned
'connection refused' which reminds me of how disability referred to me the
other day as 'misplaced person' which I think returns me to the subject
line?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-04-16T16:41:00.000-07:00

The note I posted the other day calling for discussion here and a psychology
list generated an interesting discussion there and the suggestion to start a
discussion list, with a recommendation on appropriate form that I found of
interest:

"My thoughts: Hopefully, no one would leave the Div. 32 site with its
stimulating discussions, but the new site would be focussed on a different
WAY or FORM of communicating -- one that is purposefully more personal,
poetic..." - David Elkins

anyone with an interest in joining this 'poetic website' can send me a bc.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-04-16T16:30:00.000-07:00

"I'm not exactly suggesting that everyone just drop what they're doing and
take a couple years hiatus from the cause of "protecting" and "preserving"
poetry. I do wonder if it is not in fact wise at this time to bring
considerable language skills to bear" - Steve Tills

As debate develops on the shape of the future it is likely to become
religious and economc if the past has any lessons for us. In both these
arenas of discourse there is a tendency to split - "if you're not for us
you're agin!". ->polarization

They also both have their own poetics of rhetoric and the political
rhetorics that go along with them have their own rhetorics - Saddam's seems
to have been more poetic and Bush's is developing into humble newspeak.->ego
inflation

The difficulty I've had forever has to do with the realities these rhetorics
obscure which goes to many posts here and refers back to Steve's comment
(even though I think he's referring to langpo) and the question of whether
written language reveals or obscures reality.

I (and you, dear reader) am the utimate judge of that when it comes to my
rhetoric (I think, therefore I am?). How does one get someone else to
recognize the possible distortions in their rhetoric? Do you criticize or
confront? Or do you teach them better poetry?

rambling here again, I am
tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-04-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

First? and last? writings spectatored via emails today

"The New York Times reports the destruction of the museum
is likely to be reckoned as one of the greatest cultural
disasters in recent Middle Eastern history. The National
Museum recorded a history of civilizations that began to
flourish in the fertile plains of Mesopotamia more than 7,000
years ago. Among the treasures lost or destroyed:
the world's first written words. After surviving for more than
5,000 years, distinctive clay tablets from the royal tombs of
Ur are gone. The tablets have cuneiform writing and are
recognized as the root of all mankind's written communication."

Bush's wife is promoting literacy? What's wrong with this glyph?

-Joel W.

and

Meanwhile back at
home, the Baseball Hall of Fame has
canceled a tribute
to the baseball film Bull Durham
because of Tim
Robbins' anti-war views. The
Canadian production
company Alliance Atlantis has fired
one of their
veteran executives for remarks he made in a
TV Guide interview
about an upcoming movie about Hitler
where he compared
the mood in Germany circa 1939 to
the one in the U.S.
now.

This is frightening
stuff and chilling for free speech.
Mangling a Japanese
aphorism I'm sure, it doesn't take
much to see that if
the dandelion that
rises above the
other dandelions gets its blossom whacked
off you're going to
have a field of some pretty compliant
and submissive
flowers.

IRW

but a poem is spoken from the heart-
lands,
from Middle Eastern fields,
from oil riggers fitting to tango,
from the 101st,
art-
iculated,
ex-
perimenting with potentials.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-04-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

Very thoughtful response, Steve. With your permission I'd like to pass this
to the psychology listserv where it arose?

I think Michal Helsem's note is relevant:
"in the article, he wonders why contemporary poetry sounds
so bland... if you've ever been to a poetry workshop,
you'll have had the experience of getting every departure
from TV-announcer-speak queried, with troubled frowns; &
unless you resist the pressure of consensus, all the good
stuff will be thrown out".

as is CAConrad on Herschel and "themselves in the
reparations of labor and land if they can really GLIMPSE the daily
battlefield our consumption creates. this is a country of AMAZING
people, millions and millions of amazing people who are good, and
want to do good by the world, but maybe they don't always get to
see how certain things they do in their lives affect the world."

//Discourse Switch//

MA
ture tough
NESS
sinews through
a day or two or?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man
hard but not yet hardening of the
art

2003-04-14T15:55:00.000-07:00

Re: Tom Bell's post on the Subject of "Zimbardo on War and Peace," some of
which I copied in below:
"From Zimbardo's (former president of the APA) recent speech which in part
addresses the Surgeon General's recommendations on national stress: "War is
one of the intense stressors we are dealing with as a nation. The mature,
tough solution is not to look away from the cause but to deal with the
stressor at its origin. To me, that means to look longer and deeper at this
war machine, this prime time, death-dealing video war game, contrived by the
current administration in the name of 'national security.'
One of the things that caught my interest here was that in this analysis
which is based in part on contemporary psychological research on
emotion-focused and solution-focused coping strategies he felt the need to
pair 'tough' with 'mature'. As background here consider that loosely and
stereotypically speaking these strategies can be equated with sex roles.
Also as background consider that while in general more productive of
solutions, solution-focused coping strategies can lead to exacerbation of
stress when no solution is in fact possible."
I am reminded of undergraduate school class (25+ years go, and I recall
studying Zimbardo, too--Phillip?), "Group Process," for which Prof Borkk had
the class elect "a process" leader (to facilitate, and/or attend to,
emotional processes) and "a project" leader (to facilitate task
organization). No, he wasn't trying to show us how splitting up leadership
into those two roles would make each work better, i.e., you can get more
done if you cut off the emotions?
I am reminded of undergraduate classes (also years ago) in Humanistic
Psychology with Prof November and many times getting the difference between
"doing" and "being" (Perls' Gestalt drew on Heidegger and we got plenty of
both in November classes). I frequently understood that those into "doing"
(including my "over-achiever" self(serf?) at the time) were often cutting
off "the being" parts of themselves, parts that are considerably more
"reflective," "patient," "meditative," "still," in tune with greater depth
(and ambivalence and ambiguity) of emotions and range of emotion.
I am reminded of the distinctions between mental health and mental
not-health: the former observes and nourishes through life an increasing
capacity for experiencing "tolerance of ambivalence"; the latter shuns and
avoids ambivalence and remains rigidly resistant to this mind/body state
inside. Hey, both of these are all of us, in varying degrees, on numerous
levels.
I am reminded of poets here in the Experimental venues and elsewhere in
Mainstream venues, all cherishing and revering "ambiguity," indeed generally
equating it with the term poetry altogether.
Back to Zimbardo, and Tom Bell's take: I have a strong hunch that "mature
and tough" refers to approaching problem solving with the immense and adult
courage it takes to look inside, maturely take responsibility for one's own
emotions (like, for example, I'm sure that Bush never looked deeply inside
and thought to himself, Geez, Clinton got that great economy and stuff
through his 8 years, and here I am in Robert Reich's aftermath, I'll bet
they planned it this way, the economy crapping out and balancing itself and
then I got this 9/11 thing, too, why have they been so damn hard on my Pappy
and me, why can't they just let me have a really cool presidency,
too--ooops, that's the C-student in me spoiled by Pappy's riches and
thinking I deserve everything without ever having to really work for it;
I'll show them, I'll start some wars, How dare they make me take a hard look
at my inadequacies and my father's imperfect fathering!). The
neoconservatives and facists in general come from an entirely difference
emotional/psychological orientation. They want to kill off "being" and
perfect "doing." For them, "hard work" is never a matter of facing inner
demons, ambivalence, and ambiguity inside in order to better "understand"
what it means "to be," much less respecting "others"'conception of same.
For them, "hard work" is strictly external "action" that achieves goals,
especially political goals, that statistically perfect an apparently static
and entirely preplanned world, a product idealized in their minds and
American Enterprise Institute programs, etc.
I wonder, of course, if a lot of us must also exercise our so-called
advantage for accepting/understanding being, and for living with
ambiguity--but in ways we are not considering. Are we being too intolerant
of our own more "forceful" abilities, not, smile, throwing maletov cocktails
at the Whitehouse, but, ummm, well, who knows what our greater ingenuity
could come up with. (Personally, I'd love to be able to organize Buffett
(who says there will be a special place reserved in hell for Gary Winnick of
Global Crossing), George Soros (staunchly opposed to the war and Bush
actions), and Bill Gates, and a few others; together, a few of these parties
could bring Bush-egonomics down to its knees in a week or two via focused
and pinpointed "shorting" of the defense industries and the investment banks
that have stolen so much from retail investors. I'm sure there is a fair
amount of money in Hollywood that would agree to collectively castrate the
neoconservatives' money machines as well.)
I don't know. Just some thoughts here.

Steve Tkills, Tills :)

2003-04-14T11:31:00.000-07:00

War and peace

From Zimbardo's (former president of the APA) recent speech which in part
addresses the Surgeon General's recommendations on national stress:
"War is one of the intense stressors we are
dealing with as a nation. The mature, tough solution is not to look away
from the cause but to deal with the stressor at its origin. To me, that
means to look longer and deeper at this war machine, this prime time,
death-dealing video war game, contrived by the current administration in
the name of "national security."

One of the things that caught my interest here was that in this analysis
which is based in part on contemporary psychological research on
emotion-focused and solution-focused coping strategies
he felt the need to pair 'tough' with 'mature'. As background here consider
that loosely and stereotypically speaking these strategies can be equated
with sex roles. Also as background consider that while in general more
productive of solutions, solution-focused coping strategies can lead to
exacerbation of stress when no solution is in fact possible.

//Discourse Switch//

'hurrieder I go,
the
behinder I get' rearward ACTIONS on the BIG screen

rear-UPs

gut feelings

GAME plans for the upcoming playoffs and how to handle the recent influx of
stars from Eastern Europe with those strange names with some comments on
that female golfer wanting to play with the Big Boys

//Discourse Switch//

Susan Sontag on "In Memory of Their Feelings":
"Repeating as a means of varying. Accepting as a qat of discriminating.
Indifference as a form of emotiona; vitality"

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-04-06T13:51:00.000-07:00

O'Leary, Peter, The Gnostic Contagion: Robert Duncan and the Poetryof Illness, Middletown, CT, 2002, p. 2: "We might also call them, following the use of one of Duncan's favorite designations of the activity of the poet, psychotic, as in 'of a psychosis,' meaning, literally, 'the soul in process,' from the Greek psyche, for soul, and the suffix -osis, for process. The suffix -osis also designates disease, or the process of disease, or the process of disease, as in neurosis and psychosis, which Freud intriguingly differentiates in the following way: "neurosis is the result of a conflict between the ego and its id, whereas psychosis is the analagous outcome of a similar distrubance in the relations between the ego and the external world.' (Sigmund Freud, "Neurosis and Psychosis," of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works, vol. 19, London, Hogarth Press, 1977, p. 149)

Zimbardo's discontinuity theory http://www.zimbardo.com/articles/disthry1.pdf Cognitive and Social Searches for Rationality and Normality May Lead to Madness

2003-04-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

and then David Blume dies of a pulmonary embolism reporting

2003-04-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

Nowhere?

The Journalists' WAR

Posturing and backfilling loooking over eachothers' shoulders to be the
first with the juciest to get a major share of the market to jockey the
words the admin puts out to get to the top of the poll paid for by?

Where is Harry? Bill? Ernie? Patton well 'represented' by an offsping's
offspring with a book to sell and well he does. HOTSPOTS of language

There may well be no answer to Susan's question, but we are

WAITing for

[kids to mount an attack
[AD]

AWESURPRISETECHNOLOGY]
HOTSPOTS of tactics and technologies
can't turn it off
AAA hideous and operating out of old science
attrited
shoulder-fire missiles
we had to stay postured

pregnant woman and atrocities HOTSPOTS of horrors

ricin, HOTSPOTS of chemistry
/remicade\ virus antivirus
botuyinim, mustard gas, cyanide agents, weapon of mass destruction, anthrax

There are three directions these hotspots could link on the internet

but in the end none of the HOTSPOTS lead out of the

tom bell
may be a crazy old man

2003-04-04T17:36:00.000-08:00

In this war- as in all wars - language is the first casualty

April 4, 2003

Gwynne Dyer

The first casualty of war is not truth, which generally dies well
before hostilities begin. It is language. Consider how Iraqi
resistance fighters belonging to the Fedayeen organization and the
Baath Party militia have been renamed in only a week.

At first American spokespersons referred to them using neutral words
like "irregulars" and "guerrillas," for even if they are not wearing
uniforms their actions are legal so long as they are clearly armed
and not pretending to be civilians. But after the first suicide bomb
attack the Pentagon started calling Iraqi militiamen "terrorists,"
even if they are fighting in the open against American and British
soldiers - and U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began to talk
about "death squads."

This change of terms helps to buttress the fiction, now believed by
55 per cent of Americans, that Saddam has links with the Islamist
terrorists of al-Qaida. Indeed, 42 per cent of Americans have been
tricked into believing that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the
terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 thanks to the
relentless juxtaposition of the two in President George W. Bush's
speeches (though he never lies outright by actually saying so). But
this cynical manipulation of language pales by comparison with
Saddam's latest change of skin.

Saddam Hussein joined the Arab Socialist Baath (Rebirth) Party as a
teenager, and has shared its secular and even anti-religious views
all of his life. But last Monday, he wrote this in an appeal to the
Iraqis and the broader Arab and Muslim worlds: "The aggression ...
against the stronghold of faith is an aggression on religion and on
the land of Islam. Jihad is a duty. Whoever dies will be rewarded by
heaven."

Iraq the stronghold of faith? Jihad as a duty? Give us a break.

Iraq's Baath Party is modelled on the Eastern European Communist
parties of the 1950s (including party militias, torture chambers and
hostility to religion). Saddam's hero is Joseph Stalin, not Osama bin
Laden. But just as Stalin enlisted the Russian Orthodox Church in his
struggle against the German invasion in 1941, Saddam is willing to
ally himself with popular Islamic sentiment in his moment of supreme
crisis.

He's actually done it before, praying in the great Shia mosque in
Kerbala (though he himself is of Sunni stock) at the height of the
war against Iran in 1985. As a highly politicized and radical
interpretation of Islam gained ground across the Arab world during
the 1990s, Saddam tried to pre-empt it with public displays of
devotion and a lavish program of mosque-building. But Islamist
enthusiasm continued to be a career-killer in Baathist circles, and
Iraq remained the most secular of Arab states.

Now the Iraqi regime faces its gravest crisis, and suddenly it's all
about jihad and the "land of Islam." And the Islamists of the Arab
world, every bit as cynical as Saddam, are willing to let bygones be
bygones.

Iraqi military spokesman Hazim al-Rawi declared on Sunday that
"martyrdom [suicide] operations will continue not only by Iraqis but
by thousands of Arabs who are coming to Iraq," and sure enough the
Palestinian rejectionist group Islamic Jihad promptly announced "the
arrival of its first martyrdom attackers in Baghdad ... to fulfil the
holy duty of defending Arab and Muslim land." They still privately
despise Saddam, but as anger builds across the Arab world,
Palestinian extremists are not going to miss out in a chance to
associate their cause with Iraq's.

Everybody in this conflict is sailing under false colours - and that
certainly includes the "coalition forces." The U.S. and Britain
always use this phrase because it links their enterprise, at least
verbally, to the legitimate, UN-backed coalition that drove Iraqi
troops out of Kuwait in the 1991 Gulf War. That was a genuine
coalition of 28 countries, 13 of them Arab, most of them with
significant numbers of troops on the ground.

Bush's "coalition" has no UN authority because the overwhelming
majority of UN members, including a large majority of Security
Council members, saw an invasion of Iraq before the arms inspectors
had time to finish their work as a wanton act of aggression. It
includes no Arab or Muslim countries except Kuwait. Indeed, not one
of the non-Western countries that did enlist in this coalition of the
bullied and the bribed has actually sent combat troops.

Several of the European countries that the White House claimed as
members of the "coalition" turned out not to be. Slovenia strenuously
protested against its inclusion (the State Department confused it
with Slovakia), Croatia denied that opening its airspace to U.S.
planes made it a member, and the Czech Republic still denies that it
supports the war even though former president Vaclav Havel sent some
Czech chemical warfare specialists to Kuwait. The right-wing
governments of Italy and Spain publicly back the U.S., but faced with
90 percent-plus popular disapproval for the war, they can make no
concrete gesture of support.

Poland, Romania and Bulgaria sent a couple of hundred troops each,
but dare not commit them to combat because their own voters so
strongly opposed. The Antiguas, Angolas and the Marshall Islands in
the "coalition" stay bought, but do nothing. The reality of the
"coalition" this time is two and a bit English-speaking armies -
American, British, and around 2,000 Australians - attacking an Arab
country all on their own.

The independent Arabic-language television network al-Jazeera started
out calling the US and British troops by their own preferred title,
"coalition forces," but now it just refers to them as the "invaders"
or "occupiers." Its viewers got fed up with the hypocrisy.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based Canadian independent journalist whose
articles are published in 45 countries. He is a member of The Royal
Military College of Canada's board of governors.
--
Gord

2003-04-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

progress that has been made
progress that is to be made

outbound
inbound firing

Ernie Pyle
_Men at War_

_rumor of war_

crying children crying one military mother talked about talking to her
children about their father's absence'

'and we have more video to show you but right now we have the military
minute and then more n Camp Lejeune...'

At what point do we need a bigger screen? Does the war need to be speeded
up to end before March madness?

The lights are out in Baghdad

crying chidren crying last night a child with her child sought shelter under
a the wing of a journalist-doctor

crying children crying she may have been tortured or may have shot a few.
crying children crying

daughter's crying child crying but not malnourished crying children crying
the young gunners asked to share their first experience of firefighting
crying children crying

The obvious solution is abstraction, removal, panning away, commercial break
DOW down today along woth the NASDAQ and a bizarre mention of Nikes last
night

As we end here we end here but how
and what are we ending. There might be error and rumors scattered here - I
did make an interesting error in my allusiions while reading Sontag I
thought of her as Lerner and her thesis on form but also there is a letter I
could write to Margaret who wrote to us or to Margaret the mother of my
mother but Margaret is a better muse as I heard her read once on Center
Street where she visited as she visited per Radcliff and Harvard but her
visit to Center Street was without awareness of it's glory days strode by
Golda and it's pits strode by Oprah before the tanks moved in and now mixed
with they, those immigrants while we visited and listened. There is no
simple answer to Atwood save that we can change as we have but what is the
simple ending here as a Sontag tableau or Iwo Jima or storming Baghdad or
the Four Horsemen of Grantland's days or the Stone River Greys reenacted
yearly or next month's Jazz Fest about jazz with none?

"Your exclusive insiders' view of thinking like a Republican/Democrat as the
stock-market bubble rhetorically bursts and the bursts at little
resistance...."

[Will they last?]

In the end there is no form to make sense of this?
networks and soundbites John Wayne James was not fazed by 9/11 and the land
has not noticed the war looks like

they are still safely they, Margaret?

tom bell
a crazy old man?

2003-04-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

"It doesn't get any more realistic than this, wow, WOW, WOWIE" "We are really embedded."

"Good shot to the head!" "The Captain just killed him in the foyer." "We'd be anxious with these bad guys here, but these guys are gung-ho."
"Let's continue listening in. He's describing this so well." [I don't think the correct term for a gyro is a 'grunt']

The "He said, 'We're Marines, we took Iwo Jima, this is S=H=I=and I'll let you put in the other letter.'" story has aired at least once in every 15 min. sound byte shown today.

"It seems this has been disconnected. This is the most dramatice realistic reality TV.".

"We're in the thick of it." as if we can't see and hear we are in the thick of it? "This is like 'Apocalypse Now'...I've seen War movies..." "We saw his head exPLOODe in front of us." "This is like the Alamo, we see a charge coming in...

Al Kut on the Tigris, and you probably heard and saw this sound byte numerous times in the days to come?

I had a patient see me this morning who does have some problems with rumination (among tohewr things). She used to spend her free time watching her collection of war movies. One of her goals in therapy is to be able to watch more comedies.

This afternoon I will spend some time wih PTSDed vets

And just so I don't get my credentials yanked let me say I did my time and received a letter of commendation from both the USArmy and the SDS.

2003-04-02T21:19:00.000-08:00

Rev up the Rhet

[realized that the language has thrown me back on myself and not attending
for the past few days: have been referring to Sontag, Susan as Lerner,
Judith and the only skeleton in my Freudian closet to save academics the
trouble would be a male Jay Lerner about the Time I knew a Marty who found
happiness later as Mary]
[no relevance I can see to the poetry here]

Black Hawk Down Once Again

reply fro Reiner:
I prefer to think not in national categories.
Bloody reality of politique throws all back.

No - it is not as easy.

US out of balance - turns the world out of balance (in a martial act).
The american left wing mute for a too long time (after 0911) - made the
right wing louder (more and more dominant).

Ah - still a democracy.
Voices form public - influence governments.

Get back to communication (>comprehension).
From a dualistic (evil<>good) scheme (middle ages) to a open, complex world
view.

R.

Not yet totally 'worn out' ;)

reply to reply:
good>
Nietsche is alive?

Jessica Lynch has been rescued. "That's great!"
Do we have to inhabit Bush's mind?
I"m depressed. What does that mean when my granddaughter wants to play?

would suspect play may be the solution and Sontag does in fact reference the
grotesque but she may not be aware. The other confusion here is that the
polls in Germany are not terribly positive at this point and they don't
think the USCentric role is a good role model for them. I may concur on
this but money from the Ukraine and former Russian (I presume what they mean
is men from what was Russia) influence in Iragi strategy is tossed in to the
pot

But the background music today drums in an upbeat way

Dow UP

NASDAQ up

and Heraldo called the parody of a parody and someone is only speaking out
in controlled environments

Jessica from Palestine {does NOT rhyme with rhyme or wine!!! they say] is
debriefed
something debunked and spin of the HARDball by the HARDballers flexing
muscle on the screen as the Tall Texan of the Grand Old Opry patriotically
excoriates the Dixie Chick who slipped but the stand up guys [in my
experience stand-UP guys don't or at least those that talk about it] are not
the same Grantland Rice knew in his childhood here or those Akbar wanted to
be or those that were mown down at the Battle of Stones River which is the
name of the mall nearby filled with SUVs and cell phones. rabbit ears
c'mon, let's hear some chatter in the dugout trenches there, rev up the
rhet.

"Is there a hidden reference
there?"

play?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-04-02T17:51:00.000-08:00

David Antin as experimenter or this is an experiment to find out who's attending
http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/antin/index.html

2003-04-01T22:10:00.000-08:00

from another list:

FEDERAL POETRY SUBSIDIES PROPOSED

Washington, D. C. (CNS) -

In a surprise move, the Bush Administration has announced that it will
propose legislation in Congress to subsidize the production of verse by
American poets.

The program, which will be modeled on the longstanding federal agricultural
price support program, will be designed to ensure a market at a basic price
support level for the nation's poetry output.

According to administration spokeswoman April Narr, a goal of the subsidies
will be to ensure the continuing production of particular types of verse for
which the market is currently weak. "For instance," she said at a news
conference this morning, "not too many people write sonnets or heroic
couplets any more, so those types of verse would be eligible for special
price supports."

Narr also said in response to questions that although the details have yet
to be worked out, subject matter may also be taken into account to determine
the price support levels of different types of poems. "There are plenty
poems being written about having an affair or traveling in Europe or
watching your child grow up," she said, "so that sort of poetry probably
needs less subsidy. But poems about junk yards or shaving cream or peeling
an orange are more rare and may be deserving of more price support."

When questioned as to whether the public will accept a government program
which channels taxpayers' dollars to poets, Narr replied, "It's really not
such an unusual idea when you think of it. After all, if the federal
government can pay farmers to produce soybeans, why can't it pay poets to
produce sonnets?"

2.
19-yr. old from Palestine rescued in Nasiriyah
I was that age when I did my tour.
My daughter is that age
My grabddaughter will be,
I hope.

"The more remote or exotic the place, the more likely
we are to have full frontal views of the dead and dying.
Thus postcolonial Africa exists in the consciousness of
the general public in the rich world - besides through its
sexy music - mainly as a succession of unforgettable pho-
tographs of large-eyed victims,....These sights carry a
double message. they show a suffering that is outra-
geous, unjust, and should be repaired. They confirm that
this is the sort of thing which happens in the place. The
ubiquity of those photographs, and those horrors, cannot
help but nourish belief in the inevitability of tragedy in
the benighted or backward - that is, poor - parts of the
world." - Langer

across my screen today from Reiner Strasser from another list:
'In my sight "we want peace" is great - but not enough!
(To get the shifting from oppose to create/form/construct'

and from Ron's blog:
'Like Lyndon Johnson & Richard Nixon before him, George W. Bush has provided
just the sort of primary shared point of agreement that has been lacking for
so long. To some degree, the response to date has been predictable, although
dramatically accelerated. The real issue, it seems to me, will come after
the war, when the U.S. and the ever-faithful United Kingdom are bungling the
reconstruction of all that they have laid waste. That is the point in this
process that the left of my own generation never successfully negotiated. To
date, I do not see it being addressed, but it's too soon & I would dearly
love to be wrong in my skepticism on this point.'

I think you are right that we failed but perhaps that failure is worth
examining? I know I washed out when things moved toward violent and there
is that potential here. I think Reiner may be on to something but he is
'worn out' by his earlier cooperative international poetry work and he
suggests the UN (irrelevant as it is to Bushites). I also think Langer
rightly points out that viewing, picturing, or writing about 'them' "cannot
help but nourish belief in the inevitability of tragedy"

Langer ends sadly with affirming that we "Can't understand; can't
imagine....And they are right" and I don't have a solution, either, but
think these things worth thinking on?

.tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-03-31T22:25:00.000-08:00

grrbld stuff today

this is sad as they would be the sheepish generation or sheeplike? i may be
ancient but dimly recall reading porn under wooden high school desks and one
classmate is in prison, another inbedded reporting to USAcentre, another had
SEXchanged, many got A's parroting and did well, and who is at peace?
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Sheila Massni" Smassoni@AOL.COM
> > sure thing tom my students will read whatever i tell them to (just like
> > Dennis o'neill would eat anything his wife cooked or at least that's
what
> his
> > wife told her mother in law Anastasia keating oneill in Belleville NJ
> circa
> > late 1880 ies) as they do want their A's veni vidi vici i came i paid my
> > tuition i get my a or one hand does not wash the other at evaluation
> time....
>
2) I seem stuck in the mulipurpose response mode again so:
>
> let them hold a Super Bowl IIIV. saDAMites and BUSHies
> let theM SIDDown
>
> ----- Original Mess
> From: "Gary Sullivan"
> Sent: Sunday, February 02, 2003 1:12 AM
> Subject: How Mainstream Is It?
>
> excerpted here
> > HOW MAINSTREAM IS IT?
> >
> > It's not enough that we should succeed: Everyone else must fail.
> > We want ads EVERYWHERE: It's not enough that
> > Linford Christie once wore the Puma logo on his
> > Contact lenses. Or that "we" served in Vietnam, the Gulf War
> > Neither is it "enough" that we're the most environmentally
> > Contaminated place in the Western Hemisphere, nor that
> > We pick apart everything Tiger Woods does on the Golf Course.
> > It's just not enough to go around weepy and confused.
> > > And they have to PAY FOR the writing, the EU haircuts
> > Otherwise, people simply turn away from us & we are
> > Neither too good nor too bad & are simply recycled--
> > Pardon? What do you mean, "Is that not enough"?
> > You might as well ask, "Is it enough that the shower heads in
> > The women's locker room are at chin-height, that
> > Our poems are endlessly overacted, tirelessly over-emotive
> > & pedantically ... melodramatically... morbidly contrived?"
> >
> > If everyone's going to be like that, the stadium must be named after
> > Some stupid product: "The Ban on Meat-based Feeds,"
> > "After September 11," "Grandstanding & Witless Protest Signs."
> > It's not enough that they invite us into their homes, to "live in
> > Texas" with them. The key word here is "constantly."
> > Must we constantly start over? Are we any closer to God?
> > Why must we constantly prove ourselves? Must we constantly
> > Be on guard against those "experts" who seem to think we are
> > Totally inept and idiotic by virtue of being sheepish?
> .....
> > Can't we learn to enjoy the simple pleasures of helicopter noise?
> > Must we constantly compare our helicopters to
> > Other helicopters? Why must we constantly theorize about helicopters?
> > Are they an appropriate code for living? Are they even
> > "Realistic"?
> >
> > We talk as if thought was precise and emotion was vague
> > As if thought were a function of understanding
> > As if there were no hand there to guide the scalpel's cutting
> > As if thought were something "plunged into a sea of words
> > & come up dripping." Do thoughts even work? Thought ought
> > To be the most democratic of arenas, but has become
> > Just another obscure professional specialty, the corpse wheeled away,
> > The kidneys, the glands, the bruised heart--all tossed into a saucepan.
> >
>
3) I've always heard this as gobbledegook, but I also think we are
> experiencing a whole dictionary of press gobblledegookification of
> ABCCNNFOXNBC USAcentric ANIMATIONS writhe there in the sand under purple
> depeopled plains wafted above palaced Baghdad Sodomandgomorrah Babble or
> Babel
> Original Mess
> From: "Harry Nudel"
> To:
> Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2003 11:29 AM
> Subject: globbleglook said
>
>
> > i can understand some pos might find
> > pentagonese too much..Iraqui Freedom etc.,
> > tho i myself am partial to such as Triple A Fire..
> > for anti-aircraft fire...
> >
> > but posting Edward Said's globbleglook is
> > insufferable..do you acturally READ this stuff,
> > is this the language of Williams Whitman & Lincoln..
> > this is brainwashing by cant and rote that the pentagon can only
> imagine..garbage language...and an insulting except to Academics whose use
> of lang. is no better...
> >
> > isn't this at least in part about poetry and language..how do
> > you stomach this papp...drn...
>
> tom bell
> not yet a crazy old man but sure crazied these days
>
>
>

4). thanks for the article, Ron. One line in this interests me: "poetry is
always political" which is a far cry from polemical? This relates to poetry
as spoken and experiment vs. the written and enshrined stuff of the
USAcentric courses and malls. As an experiment (psychological with a tinge
of admitted masochism) I've been sending out poems to local outlets. They
were of course ignored by USAcentric places like the public library and the
library of the local state U campus and the big city and little city dailies
either beccause of politics, nonadherence to 'established' form, or because
they are just bad, but they have been picked up by a weekly Spanish-language
paper?

5) will a free press and tenure survive the Bush regime?

6) "Not much middle ground in this argument about patriotism" the press'
role
is not waving the flag or a video game or branding but it is different to
say
it on state-rum television and become what is being reported.

Operation "James" to start anon, alas,
and
loose lips still sink ships
and those pilots are still poppng pills and the music continues to drone
under
as news crawls under

"the first
war photographer , having been sent to the Crimea in early
1855 by the British government at the instigation of Prince
Albert [in the can?]. Acknowledging the need to counteract the alarm-
ing printed accounts of the unanticipated risks and priva-
tions endured by the British soldiers dispatched there...." - Langer

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man but crazied

2003-03-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

and this found poem just in:

"The real thing may not be fearsome enough, and
therefore needs to be enhanced; or reenacted more con-
vincingly. Thus. the first newsreel ever made of a battle --
a much-publicized incident in Cuba during the Spanisj-
American War of 1898 known as the Battle of San Juan
Hill -- in fact shows a charge staged shortly afterward by
Colonel Theodore Roosevel and his volunteer cavalry
unit, the Rough Riders, for the Vitagraph cameramen,
the actual charge up the hill, after it was filmed, having
been judged insufficiently dramatic." - S. Langer.

2003-03-30T16:04:00.000-08:00

Showdown on IRAQ

Drones of
Doom with a view on
Booming
THUNderously
THREATENing
[you can check out our interactive videos
and slide shows at............ ]

Langer - "Yet the Times [October, 1862] reporter
cannot resist the melodrama that mere words supply (the
'dripping bodies' ready for 'the gaping trenches'), while
reprehending the intolerable realism of the image."

and who will get that knock at the door?
and WHO will get that knock at the door?
and who will get that KNOCK at the door?
and who will GET that knock at the door?

ourbraveist@wsmv.com 'and include with the picture a short note on why you think they are our
bravest'

Baroque to rococo grotesque Tar-
get Iraq

Drones of
Doom with a view on
Booming
THUNderously
THREATENing

AND who?

2003-03-30T03:12:00.000-08:00

Underscore the Brutality of
the Regime

On the talkshow circuit is somebofy to blame

"Perhaps the only people with
the right to look at images of suffering of this extreme or-
der are those who could do something to alleviate it....."

WHAT IS BEING ASKED OF ME?

"...The
rest of us are voyeurs, whether or not we meant to be......

The ghoulish cruelties in _The isasters of War_ are meant
to awakenm shockm wound the viewer. Goya's art, like
Dostoyevsky's, seem a turnin poit in the history of
moral feelings and of sorrow - as deep, as original, as de-
manding. With Goya, a new standard for responsiveness
to sufferingm enters art....
While
the image, like every image, is an invitation to look, the
caption, more often than not, insists on the difficulty of
doing just that. A voice badgers the viewer: can you bear
to look at this?. _Esto es malo_. _Esto es peor_. Why?
_Por que_?" - Langer

[Assan Akbar smiles from under a blue commencement mortar]

music upbeats and strenghtens under the news inexorably crawls
across under all save the ads which are underscored by their
800 or e.com banners ?underbanners?

Baghdad enjoys the most ferocious bombing yet as OPERATION
IRAQI FREEDOM marches on

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-03-30T03:11:00.000-08:00

At the Front Updated 2003 as Bill Maudlin Twists in
His Grave

"the war pho-
tograph was surrounded by words(the article it illustrated
and other articles), while in a magazine, it was more likely
to be adjacent to a competing image that was peddling
something...." MSNBC****Animation HOMEshoppingnetwork gameshow network
LIVE?IRAQ NBCnews with 3rdInfantry on the phone Suicide bomb
ers
ReMaX Eloan.com Salut
ing
the HEROS
"Imagine this!"

"Picture that."
sendphotoswithanythingspecialyouwanttoadd
"in his own words" DELPHI Medical Sensing Devices
"Even stephen Spielberg couldn't have done this!"
"No one could replicate the patriotism."

Ultra short-term devices 1-888-FOR-STROng
anOTHER CRed
it card BANKone.com
"Donald Rumsfeld is to blame!" per _The Post_ Metabolite without
ephredra "is that fair criticism?"
ON-Line banking 1-800-Pet-MEDS
more than 100 reporters
more than 675 Tomahawks
oneaday aspirin trustitwithallyourheart
two posthumous
medals award
ed instantaneously to suicide bombers

"Burrows was the first
important photo-
grapher to do a whole war in color -- another gain in verisimilitude...The
photographer's intentions do not determine the meaning of the photograph,
which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the
di
verse communities that have use for it."
-Langer

Or do the snaps make their own futures chomping at the bit getting used to
the rigors of life on the front?
Some-
body is to BLAME for this.

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-03-29T18:14:00.000-08:00

Brian Kim Stefans posted to Circulars a piece I presented, titled "War =
Language," at a "Day of Reflection on the War in Iraq" at Wayne State on
March 26. The link is:

www.arras.net/circulars/archives/000417.html

and a pdf version can be found on my website:

www.english.wayne.edu/~watten

Barrett

2003-03-29T17:56:00.000-08:00

"War has colored all of our lives for a very long time."

Is casualty notification at all casual?

Instanteous haplessness =+= with new technology comes earsback pinning anxiety = you pine.

Generic enbed, embed, in bed those angels dancing on the head of a pin
winning the battle we are

"They [we] have been monitoring listening posts and flooding the internet". polling advertisees

"terminalizing" BaghdadaDada

I hate that it happened to him,
he who "indoctrinated" us into the Marines way

our media mediated immediated knowledge of war

headlines creep under, crawl along inexorably relaying the underlying messages quick [or better, as quickly]

2003-03-29T16:45:00.000-08:00

I'd like to use some or all of this on my blog as 'experimental' is one of
my interests and I am woefully short on history?

tom bell
----- Original Message -----
From:
To: ; "Bob Grumman"
Sent: Wednesday, March 19, 2003 9:49 PM
Subject: Re: [New-Poetry] Re: experimental writing

> I do, too--which is why the adjective, "experimental," is no longer useful
> > for describing any art.
> >
> > --Bob G.
> >
>
> Bob, I wouldn't go that far. It seems to me useful in at least a couple
> different ways. 1) the simplest, to identify poets by group
identification
> (which may have its drawbacks but after all, poets often influence each
other
> to great effect through their social-poetic circles, Williams's "Others
Crowd"
> being one example. 2) in U.S. poetry it has a fairly specific and I think
> important history, coming out of the aesthetics of the American
pragmatists
> from Emerson ("I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no past at my
back")
> to James, to Dewey who wrote the following:
>
> "A philosophy animated, be it consciously or unconsciously, by the
strivings of
> men to achieve democracy will construe liberty as meaning a universe in
which
> there is real uncertainty and contingency, a world which is not all in,
and
> never will be, a world which in some respect is incomplete and in the
making,
> and in these respects may be made this way or that according as men judge,
> prize, love and labor...a genuine field of novelty, of real and
unpredictable
> increments to existence, a field for experimentation and invention."
>
> As Dewey's ART AS EXPERIENCE makes clear this notion of a "field for
> experimentation and invention" was relevant to poetry as well and it leads
> directly to the poetics of the Black Mountain School (as it was in sync
with
> the Objectivists in its own day). If one takes Language Writing as an
> aesthetic tradition haing roots in the so-called "New American Poetry" and
> remember that language writers often refer to themselves as "experimental
> writers" then what you have here is an identifiable term which is actually
> fairly specific in its meaning and import and most certainly does not
apply (in
> this particular meaning) to all contemporary poetry.
>
> As for Anthony's initial question, it depends on when you're beginning,
right?
> Is it 20th c? How much time do you have? If it were my 20th century
class
> I'd start by having them read TENDER BUTTONS alongside sections of William
> James's THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY (the sections on "stream of
> consciousness"). I'd do alot on the Others crowd - Williams, Stevens,
Moore,
> Loy w/ visuals from Duchamp, Picabia, Man Ray. Objectivists. Black
Mountain &
> NY School (I don't personally consider the Beats terribly "experimental").
ONe
> plug -- do the really difficult O'Hara stuff, it can be great to teach -
"Ode
> to Mike Goldberg's Birth (and Other Births)," "In Memory of My Feelings,"
a
> couple favorites. If you're looking for very teachable "language
writing"?
> I've had luck with Perelman's VIRTUAL REALITY, Hejinian's MY LIFE,
Harryman's
> MEMORY PLAY (Harryman is wonderful!). And then Mullen's MUSE & DRUDGE one
of
> my musts.
>
> Okay, I know none of this is very surprising, it's late, the bombing's
begun,
> to bed. -m.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> New-Poetry mailing list
> New-Poetry@wiz.cath.vt.edu
> http://wiz.cath.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/new-poetry

2003-03-28T21:42:00.001-08:00

Masha,

My recent post appears to have been misunderstood as many of mine seem
destined to be. To clarify somewhat: It was a 3-part message because of
the limits on the listserv. I think the lines you attribute to me are
actually lines from my translation into a USAcentric poem of a reply sent to
me by Clemente Padin from Uruguay but apparently this medium doesn't lend
itself readily to poetry being seen as poetry rather than polemic?

The "paranoia" in the subject heading refers to another part of the three
part message which is relevant to the Russian context from my limited
understanding of the history there of dissenting writings in the satiric
mode. No Russian (e.g., Gogol. Akhmatova, Prigov, etc.) would have been
able to call a sitting leader something like this directly. I may be
speaking too soon here but it does look like we need to resort to samizdat
publication?

I hope I have cleared this up at least to some extent: My post was intended
as a call for poetry not a demand for a response.

--------------------------

That said, I'd like to move on to this:
quote:
>"But this here in america is a majoritarian kind of
democracy and most people want to watch TV, shop in a mall and go to church
on Sundays. So if one resists on a daily basis is it enough not to feel
guilty? "Success is a by-product of practice' (Kierkegaard?) Sorry for
question-marks. I've been through two repressive structures - those of the
Soviet Union and patriarchal marriage -and my internal censoring organ
(whatever it is called) had to counter-repress so much that little has been
left in my memory"<.-Masha Zavialova

I must admit I am not fully understanding what I have touched here and would
appreciate further information here on the list or back channel if you care
to send it. My response in the context of list discussions of the issue and
my current reading of Langer's recent book is to not let the pictures we get
smolder as freeze-frame photographs in my memory but to let them flow out
through the process of poetry. I'd invite you to take a look through some
of Jim Pennebaker's books and research on this
http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/pennebaker/Pennebaker.html
Granted mine is a male action-oriented response but it is not majoritarian
and I hope that the bits I have posted over the last few weeks have been
taken as satirical or at least caricaturial?

tom bell
not yet a crazy old man

2003-03-28T21:42:00.000-08:00

2003-03-28T21:37:00.000-08:00

from tom bell's post:

the

"Every people has the government it deserves" (?). "Another quote "Only
those deserve life and freedom who are fighting for it on a day-to-day basis
' (Goethe?) Why do I have to legitimize my words by these outdated quotes
where it is not quite clear what the author means when he says 'freedom',
'life, 'people', 'fight'. Actually Goethe's saying can be used by both sides
of the present conflict to speak about themselves. But basically what these
two quotes mean is that in order to have a decent government you have to
resist on a daily basis. But this here in america is a majoritarian kind of
democracy and most people want to watch TV, shop in a mall and go to church
on Sundays. So if one resists on a daily basis is it enough not to feel
guilty? "Success is a by-product of practice' (Kierkegaard?) Sorry for
question-marks. I've been through two repressive structures - those of the
Soviet Union and patriarchal marriage -and my internal censoring organ
(whatever it is called) had to counter-repress so much that little has been
left in my memory.

-----Original Message-----
From: UB Poetics discussion group
[mailto:POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU]On Behalf Of tombell
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 6:59 PM
To: POETICS@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU
Subject: what poets can do and Uruguay and ?paranoia?