labor day 1994 D I U 1 0 "Better withdraw from the Newspaper world Better withdraw from the electric world" Itemized reduction Here's an item: Big patches of language lie in the right brain. This idea words mean only what the left parses just won't wash, never mind the ambidextrous and sinister. One dexter-lobe deficit, aprosodia, means loss not just of music but of frame: can't tell stories from instructions, don't get jokes. To think narrative winds ripple one neural swath. No doubt not quite true. Though roughly so. Item: Each line contains semazones. Three minimum I think. Five often findable. Seven always a little approximate, but Someone keeps watching for frame. Try meeting a line's needs with one zone only, can't help leaving two blank. Item: Can't take the culture offline while you tinker. I used to say the metaphor-blind suffered. They do. And now I think we suffer them. Twenty-plus millenia paint's drying at Lascaux, folks kill over Item: Jokes collide at intersections of the narrative and the poetic, itself a joke. Can't shut story down tweaking image syntax fracture levels. Filled or empty zones insist on presence in a flow, a swatch. Back to prosodias: Busy tissues, no time off, make taleway storm or calm. Lives of their own. And deaths. Firing or not. The screen characters display on. Blank. --GK PART 2 (of NOTES ON S&M) / / \ \ A BOOK YOU CAN'T JUDGE BY ITS COVER "How do we cross borders? It can be done in a completely indifferent and apathetic fashion, although the person who crosses borders in an indifferent fashion never crosses borders. The person who doesn't tremble while crossing a border doesn't know there is a border and doesn't cast doubt on their own definition." --Helene Cixous In his benign introduction to the S&M book of post-60's American poetry, the editor invokes David Bromige's observation that "a major aspect of such books is the exclusion of people." Neglecting, however, to offer a list of such excludees (as we find, for instance, in IN THE AMERICAN TREE), the S&M editor proceeds to encapsulate his view of what matters in American poetry during the last three decades. Let's discuss this view both specifically and generally, as well as the editor's credentials for producing such a spectacular assemblage in illustration of that view. 1. S&M, citing earlier collections by Michael Lally and Eliot Weinberger, declares a need for an anthology based not on "personal agendas" but rather "broader aesthetic points of view." Given the fact, however, that S&M is not only the publisher of this anthology, but the publisher of a substantial number of the poets IN the anthology, it seems silly on his part to mount an argument, even a partial argument, against "agendas." (Nor does S&M explain Lally's or Weinberger's defectiveness on this score--but so be it.) The fact is, in any case, we WANT our editors to have agendas--but we also want them to be UPFRONT about their agendas. 2. This is where I would most seriously take issue with S&M. The pretense to inclusiveness, the outright lie that this book offers a "broader" view than other books, takes what might have been an interesting collection and turns it into a scandal. One can take issue with an aesthetic program, but if the program is at least presented forthrightly, one will retain respect for the PURPOSEFULNESS of what is given. The only reasonable response that one can muster to an aesthetic program that disguises itself as pluralism is bewilderment--and if the program thus becomes ITSELF bewildered, the only proper response is disgust. 3. Can *AN* aesthetic program name itself anew "American poetry"? Certainly not. And so a muddle of aesthetic programs name themselves *A* "new American poetry." The difference is not trivial but trivializing. 4. What "points" of view do we find in this book? Judging from the demographic breakdown of the writers "included" (58 white males, 4 "minority" males & 18 white women [no minority women]), we find nearly all of these viewpoints emanating from White America. Of the writers included, only a few--Charles Reznikoff, Allen Ginsberg, Jerome Rothenberg, Alice Notley--show any awareness at all of the worlds BEYOND that narrow margin (leaving aside the question of what SORT of awareness their work betrays). I hasten to add that the editing of this book only emphasizes the problem. The selection of Robert Duncan's work, for instance, though set in a section of the book reserved for the social and political, includes not one of the poet's declarations against war, though this was one of Duncan's most consuming subjects. In a context like this one, John Taggart's moldy-figisms seem practically daring. 5. Let me be clear. I don't mean to indict the work included--much of it superb, some extraordinary--but rather, the context fashioned for it, the claim--so problematic at this late date in American history--that the ALL might be defined by reference to the few. A new "American" poetry? WHOSE America? Why not just call this book WHITE MINORITY--as Black Flag did one of their most memorable songs--and be done with it? For the policy of pseudo-inclusivity that governs this work transforms otherwise inoffensive poems into fantasies of the master race (to borrow Ward Churchill's great phrase)--and that's not the poet's fault, not usually. 6. How pathetic these lines from Michael Davidson's "Century of Hands" sound given the anthology's near monochromatic hue-- "I fly off in several directions and occur to myself at the same time in a number of colors" The poet's fantasy of embodying a multicultural multitude might not seem such a usurpation of the other's voice if it appeared in an anthology where "a number of colors" were actually allowed to speak. 7. Another oddity in this respect is how Steve McCaffery's delightful artsong ("Little Hans") becomes, quite unfortunately, a fey (or ofey) comment on Nathaniel Mackey, whose work immediately follows. How else explain the editor's placement of the following lines before the Mackey entry-- "Speech is the way i fry my eggs, The bald sarcophagus that disappears Some jazz, the hypotactic legs In diaphragmics of arrears" 8. I urge the reader who supposes that this exercise of mine is unfair to go back to John Ashbery's "Hotel Lautremont," which in the context of S&M becomes an ironic allegory of the antiquarian endeavor's whole procedure. Such a reader may not be convinced, but he or she will at least have to acknowledge that the mind which values such a poem might rightly be expected to appreciate the implications of its editorial decisions-- "Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society working as a team. They didn't just happen. There was no guesswork. The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it... Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open and in so doing deprive time of further hostages" 9. There is little or no correspondence between this poetry and the happening Caribbean, Meso-America or Chicano/Chicana poetry invoked by the cover. For despite the presence on the front of this book of a copper- skinned Mayan Goddess, a third-world-on-the-horizon projected by Philip Guston's marvelous painting (titled "Source"), S&M seems curiously unaware of just how real and just how close such an horizon is. (Though of course the very sham nature of this pseudo-pluralistic venture DOES show awareness, and a frightened one at that, of the true sources of artistic life in American today. What the S&M cover signifies above all is that the anthology it is affixed to has arrived far too late in the American day to really be new.) 10. The man/infestation of the other side of the century would be far less reprehensible by my standards were the racist orientation of the book that memorializes it able to foreground its predispositions. 11. "This Side of the COMING Century" anyone? --Guantanamo Bey "Charlie Rose had on Barkley the other night...Barkley had some very interesting things to say, given the fact that he's only a basketball player. He said--and it was so interesting that he did this because I saw one of those commercials, you know Nike shoes or something, those awful shoes. I don't know why these people wear these shoes that make their feet look like they're Liliputians for christsakes--I mean it's so--AICK!--you know, so anyway he says at this point--and there were some kids there--he says something about 'I am not your role model'. I thought that was very interesting. So then, watching this interview one of the things he said was-- you know he's got certain things that I don't pay too much attention to of course--but one of the things he said, he said 'You know, since I've made all of this money, I think it's important that I do something for the young people in the community. I also think that these basketball franchises should invest money in the poor...bluh bluh bluh bluh - bluh bluh bluh.' The most interesting thing about it was, he said 'I told those Nike people that I wanted to say something that had meaning to it.' So Rose played a couple of these things and I was really quite pleased in a way. He also said, 'Well, you know, America is a racist country, and it's always been and always will be,' and it was very interesting to see Rose's reaction to that. Ha!! Because Rose gets very upset about Farrakan. Ha!! But I mean Barkley, well...Barkley said that the Nike people, or those people that are investing in him don't really like him very much because, he says, 'I've made all this money for them and they think that I should do whatever they want me to do. And I don't think so. I think I should do what I want to do.' Ha-Ha! Well, you know--so he's going to retire at the end of this season. He's thirty years old. He's going to retire..." --CT Playlist, Conference of the Birds, KZSC, Santa Cruz 8-22-94 Les Amazones de Guinee/ I Teleke/ A Paris Bala et Ses Balladins/ Moi, Je Suis Decourage/ Objektif Perfection Conjunto Cespedes/ Tengo/ Una Sola Casa ... Luis de Cordoba/ Que Bonito/ Duende Jose Menese/ Vete a la Calle/ Duende Amalgama/ Chana/ Duende ... Don Cherry et al/ What Reason Could I Give/ Dona Nostra Henry Threadgill/ Grief/ Song Out of My Trees John Coltrane/ Naima/ Giant Steps New Air/ Don't Drink That Bottle My Life Is In The Bush/ Air Show N. 1 ... Aresenio Rodriguez/ Quien Soy/ Los 24 Exitos Origionales de... Djosinha/ Xandinha/ Simpatia Teta Lando/ Sonho de um Campones/ Esperancas Idosas Gererd H. Guamaguay/ Leve Souk/ Hurricane Zouk Stella Chiweshe/ Chipindura/ Ambuya Dumisani Moraire/ Chaminuka/ African Oddyssey ... Nano S./ Galura (second version)/ Asmat Dream Cameron/ Romance del Amargo/ Duende El Indio Gitano/ El Sereno de mi Calle/ Duende ... Altan/ The Snowy Path/ Harvest Storm Conjunto Cespedes/ Virgen de la Caridad/ Una Sola Casa Papaito/ Santa Cecilia/ Lo Mejor de... Baikida Carroll/ Kaki/ Shadows and Refelctions/ Soul Note John Coltrane/ One Down, One Up/ Dear old Stockholm Milford Graves/ Bi/ Babi Archie Shepp/ Yasmina/ Yasmina, A Black Woman Readlist, The Last Days of the White Race Radio Free Northamerica, 5 Sept 1994 Nazik al-Mala'ika (Iraq)/"The Song of Pain" Yusuf Al-Khal (Lebanon)/"The Eternal Dialogue" Kamal Abu Dib (Syria)/"Opposites: An Elegy to the Babel of Voices (fragment)" "Adonis"--'Ali Ahmad Sa'id (Syria)/"Singular in the Form of the Plural" (fragment) Mahmud Darwish (Palestine)/"A Forehead and an Anger" Jabra Ibrahim Jabra (Palestine)/"The Trumpet" All selections are from *Modern Arab Poets 1950-1975*, translated and edited by Issa J. Boullata with introduction and biographical notes (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1976) O grudge full of mercy We have hidden you in our dreams, in every tone Of our melancholy songs --Nazik al-Mala'ika I see he has emptied the sea Into his eyes, and hidden his head in the sand In fear of his enemies: I wonder, does the blind man See his enemies? --Yusuf Al-Khal Babel is your name and identity. A river of tongues, dreams, fish interlaced like spears, youwind yourself about the earth like intestines, like rods upright and twisting, straight and collapsing. In your configuration history flows in the waste land stretching like a snake, and words stream in succession like a train of dead black ants and they line the inside of the womb of memory forever. --Kamal Abu Dib O miserable alphabet, O twenty- nine reeds, with what can I further burden you and what forest can I plant you to be? I give up to nature's beast and drag myself behind you. --Adonis O Eagle that sheathes its beak of flame In my eyes Through the wooden bars. All that I possess in the presence of death Is a forehead and an anger. --Mahmud Darwish like the people of our mountains, I still prefer a shout from the highest rock, a shout of the throat, to an instrument that can be bought and sold. The trumpet is hypocrisy which submits to every deception. --Jabra Ibrahim Jabra LIFE ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY The orange sparks falling from the underbelly of my computer signify a kind of healing. The creature was injured a hundred miles out of town, as I was returning home from a trip. Over the roar of Bjork a clank and scraping had begun to assert itself, which I only grudgingly allowed myself to hear, but which I then listened to with more than a little alarm. The passenger in a passing computer rolled down her window and mouthed the word "muffler," which I could only imagine I'd actually heard since the sounds of the engine and music made virtual every effort reality mustered to make itself known acoustically. Only the computer's own sounds and the sounds made inside the computer were hearable. What to do? Should I pull over? With every clank my heart sank deeper into the dank wallet my belly becomes whenever the computer breaks down. With every scraping my fear mounted, like bad food rising into the mouth. And who wants to be stranded? An overdramatic worry perhaps, but to be honest I had no idea what losing the muffler might mean. Here on the information superhighway it seems that the muffler must be the most important part of the computer, the only protection we have when logged onto the mainframe. My companion said, "Pull over." And while I bit my fingertips nervously and as the big 486's passed, pulling their blustery breezes behind them, my companion crept under the computer and unlatched the muffler. The exaust pipe had broken off with rust and the thing had been dented by dragging for the several miles we'd hesitated before stopping. But now it's fixed. And I'm ready to go out on the road again. --Superunknown I am trying to say something about non-institutional knowledge. It is difficult. The trouble with institutions is that they deny the autonomy of the organisms to which they minister. Institutions are the fiction of an external origin: there is an authoritative set of axioms (formal systems) or an unavoidable precedent (law, cultural tradition). THUS THE UNIVERSITY MUST BE IMAGINARY THUS THE UNIVERSITY MUST BE IMAGINARY THUS THE UNIVERSITY MUST BE IMAGINARY THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS MADE UP; IT IS LIKE THE SQUARE ROOT OF A NEGATIVE NUMBER. --Thus, Albert or Hubert * * *