D I U 9 29 august 94 "The bloody iron curtain of American Military Power Is a mirror image of Russia's red Babel-Tower" NOTES ON S&M I have heard many criticisms of this book on ideological grounds, and on account of its inclusions and exclusions, but no one has yet registered the most obvious criticism--that the new S&M anthology of post-'60s poetry is haphazardly edited. Several consequences follow from this fact. 1. Some of the selections show greater familiarity with the poet's work than do others, or show a greater APPRECIATION, a greater sense of what makes the work important, or memorable, not only to the poet's most intimate readers, but to those informed outsiders by whose consent reputations are often made. This divergence of attention indicates to some extent those poets for whom the book was conceived, and those who appear almost as second guesses. It's the clutter of so many second guesses that makes reading this anthology difficult. 2. Compare, for instance, the Clark Coolidge entry (spanning the length of Coolidge's career and sampling work from eight books) with Ronald Johnson's (focussed solely on ARK), or Ted Berrigan's (all from THE SONNETS), or bpNichol's (all from one late volume of THE MARTYROLOGY). Compare the thoughtful overview of Charles Bernstein's career, and Barbara Guest's, with the seemingly random visitations of Robert Kelly and Kenneth Irby. The point, to my mind, is this: There are some poets for whom the S&M anthology serves as an excellent introduction, but there are others--too many, and better excluded altogether--whose achievements the book only distorts. 3. S&M offers almost no ancillary information--even the dates and titles supplied at the end of each entry tend to obscure rather than clarify matters. In the Donald Allen anthology, for instance, which S&M explicitly takes as his model, the dates appended to the poems mark the date of COMPOSITION. The years given by S&M signify instead the date of BOOK PUBLICATION. Thus, where Allen identifies Larry Eigner's "ENVIRON S" as having come from 1953, S&M--who also includes the poem, inexplicably given his book's parameters--cites **1983**. 4. Allen's dates allow us to follow the development of what he called--for better or worse--the New American Poetry. The range of dates he cites covers a relatively brief period: ten years, a decade spreading from 1949 (Olson's "The Kingfishers," Brother Antoninus's "Advent," Ginsberg's "The Shrouded Stranger") to 1959 (Ginsberg's "Kaddish," Corso's "Marriage," Schuyler's "Freely Espousing" [dated 1969 by S&M], LeRoi Jones's "Ostriches & Grandmothers!" and many other pieces). Since Allen's anthology included only younger poets, the development of their work was a matter of real interest-- and the fact the best of it was recentest became a cause for celebration. What exactly is it that S&M is showing, especially with his dates? Given the major shifts occurring from 1960 until now, not only poetically, but also socially, in our consciousness of ourselves and of the world we live in, SOME sort of cue would have been helpful, SOME sense of development. Even an historical overview delivered in a serious introduction might be enough. Without such an introduction, the mix of generations and distortions of careers robs the book of any chance at all to tell us something about the era in which we find ourselves. 5. Again a comparison to the Allen anthology: Where Allen supplies us with statements of poetics, biographies (real biographies, not simply curricula vitae), with a bibliography and list of publishers' addresses, S&M includes only the bibliography and address list--emphasizing the anthology's value as a book catalogue over and above its educational function. And how learn about these poets if not from the anthology itself? Curious readers will be hard pressed to discover WHO these poets are and WHAT these poets believe unless they have access to especially good bookstores or to research institutions. (The editor's suggestion that "true readers" must enter on their own "the dark forests of libraries,...the barren plains of literary bookstore shelves" seems an especially shameful excuse for his own cowardice.) Indeed, teachers who use this book in the classroom will no doubt find their best source of contextual information in OTHER anthologies-- in Paul Carroll's THE YOUNG AMERICAN POETS, Ron Silliman's IN THE AMERICAN TREE, Anne Waldman's OUT OF THIS WORLD. No wonder the response to this book has been mixed. In a funny way, being qualified to use S&M in the classroom defines one as BETTER qualified than the editor to have produced the thing in the first place. With all this said, however, we are still left with the book's ideological problems. And these problems are in many ways the most worthy of discussion. [To be continued in D I U 10 Part 2/A BOOK YOU CAN'T JUDGE BY ITS COVER] --Guantanamo Bey Let's suppose fundamental change has occurred. Some threshold has been crossed: the old concepts are without value; the very concept of controlling conceptuality is without value. One can endlessly study languages (signs, formal systems, logics, mathematics, grammars). Despite good theoretical reasons to doubt it, one might discover a science of language. One would, however, know about language, not about the world. The mind now proposes to connect not with a conceptual habitat (Eden) but with itself. Of course, the mind is transcendent to itself, but as its own object it is closer to home. It shares a medium with itself. It must only comprehend a paradoxical reality, not discipline itself to unreality. This will be easier than what we tried as Modernists. To be sure, attention requires immense exertion. It is however a possible discipline, not an impossible one. It is okay to scream, but listen to the sounds you make. --Thus, Albert or Hubert Prose Combat wrpi 91.5 fm troy ny 25 august 94 0830-1220 Cesaria Evora--"Mar Azul"/Mar Azul Cecil Taylor--"It is in the brewing luminous"/It is in the brewing luminous Metallica--"The Unforgiven"/Metallica - Sonny Sharrock--"Many Mansion"/Ask the Ages Ben Friedlander--"Riding the Star" Charles Mingus--"Eat That Chicken"/O Yeah BF--"The Morsel" Albert Ayler--"New Ghosts"/Reevaluations: The Impulse Years BF--"A Visitation" Sheila Jordon--"Tribute (Quasimodo)"/That Old Time Feeling BF--"The Poe Effect" Laibach--"One After 909"/Let It Be BF--"Eastern Standard" The Insect Trust--"Glade Song"/Hoboken Saturday Night BF--"The Unwritten" Joe Simon--"Drowning in the Sea of Love"/Drowning in the Sea of Love BF--"Downtown" Johnny Dyani--"Magzawa"/Witchdoctor's Son Hot Chocolate--"You Sexy Thing"/10 Greatest Hits BF--"Mnemosyne" Rahsaan Roland Kirk--"Volunteer Slavery"/Volunteer Slavery - The Descendants--"Parents"/Mile Goes to College Insect Trust--"Declaration of Independence"/The Insect Trust BF--"Bunker Mentality" PJ Harvey--"Dry"/Rid of Me Allen Ginsberg/Clash--"Capitol Air"/Holy Soul Jelly Roll James Blood Ulmer--"Swing & Things"/Odyssey BF--"Called Sisyphus" Betty Carter--"I Can't Help It"/What a Little Moonlight Can Do BF--"Render Unto Caesar" Michael Hurley--"I Think I'll Move"/Snockgrass BF--"The Checkbook" Slade--"Gudby T'Jane"/Slayed David Murray Quartet--"New Life"/New Life BF--"Why" Eric Dolphy--"Jitterbug Waltz"/The Eric Dolphy Memorial Album BF--"U.S.P.S" Serge Chaloff--"All the Things You Are"/Blue Serge BF--"Where The Sun Don't Shine" Leibach--"Across The Universe"/Let It Be Van Morrison--"Linden Arden Stole the Highlights"/Veedon Fleece Cecil Taylor--"For The Rabbit"/For Olim Horace Tapscott--"The Dark Tree"/The Giant Has Awakened Cassandra Wilson--"I Can't Stand the Rain"/BLue Light til Dawn Sidney Poitier--"The Debt" (Paul Lawrence Dunbar)/Classics of Black Literature Readlist, The Last Days of the White Race Radio Free Northamerica, 29 Aug 94 Ray Durem, "Problem in Social Geometry--The Inverted Square!" / *The Poetry of Black America* Clark Coolidge, "Brownness" / *The Book of During* Amus Mor, "The Coming of John" / *Moment's Notice* W E B DuBois, "The Song of the Smoke" / *The Poetry of Black America Miguel Pinero, "The Book of Genesis According to St Miguelito" / *Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe* Rosario Murillo, "Para la Sobrevivencia" ("For Survival") / *Angel in the Deluge* I have seen the smallest minds of my generation assume the world ends at Ellis Island, that its capital is North Beach, and Fillmore is a nighttown street for weary intellectuals --RD Brown minions fleshly grown to a normal if medicine challenge. Could you show us the lips of a second bright light? --CC the konateski girl sits there frozen shes followed her lifelong scent of judea from the rich north shore township all the way into the crown propellar lounge into a blessed tenors bell --AM I am carving God in night, I am painting hell in white --WEBD On the fourth day God was riding around Harlem in a gypsy cab when he created the people and he created these beings in ethnic proportion but he saw the people lonely & hungry and from his eminent rectum he created a companion for these people and he called this companion capitalism --MP Cuando los seres grandes e importantes, duermen yo nazco (When the big shots go and important ones sleep I'm born) --RM please correspond D escriptions of an I maginary U niversity (thelogic ofsnowflakes) cf2785@albnyvms.bitnet