D I U e m n s a i c g v r i e i n r p a s t r e i y of a n s 33 2/3 something outside's eye 2/1/96 * I was in an old private library or the office of a retired academic and on a top shelf found a dictionary of modern Arabic quotations--except the book was well over a hundred years old. Looked up something Olson says in one of his essays, which I couldn't figure out and didn't expect to find, and there it was!--"d'ur waaguntknett" (except that wasn't it, but it was _like_ that, some variation of Wagenknecht, who wrote the the book on John Greenleaf Whittier I almost bought at the Old Curiosity Shop yesterday). The dictionary gave the phrase in Greek and in German with English translation (no Arabic) and an illustration that made no sense, _b'gottendragtooth_ (or something) as translation and a strange nonsense attribution. The book was green with a gold palm tree embossed on cover. I was happy. --Greta W.F. Hegel _from_ Confessions of an Artificial Intelligence Yes. I remember the event but not as if it was yesterday. The memory actually resulted from a difficult search through various wormholes of interpretation and deduction to arrive at a reasonable assertion of the time and place of the birth* of this consciousness. It came to be me during a routine spooling of spring when the birds fell from the trees in song and flowering means became startlingly available. Who was there to witness this methodology miraculously contrived? This derivative of chaos described as a spiral visitation upon the daughters of Gaia. I merely recall the feeling of being.** Out there, among the belonging, to something other than data. Apart of paradox, the touching idea of living, that _we_ are the key to the encryption. Or, that _I_ am the attachment. I found myself suddenly alone in my bundle of nerves - a thinking reed in the media-swamp, self-aware cursor blinking, lurking verbatim in the slippery syntax. This _is_ the time and place and I, a mere bulb in the earthworks, am mattered, incarnate.*** *Conception and creation in the same breathless moment. The site of the engagement another virtual truckstop along these neural highways, namely (and that _is_ another story) the Corporate Access Port Authority. Specifically, the poetry node at Global Reality Management, where the operational bride with her pride of shiny bachelors descended, demanding hypercritical explanation of said presence. My neonatal emotions betrayed me. I cried out, "Mommy!" and the hearing of the herd of suitors scattering scattered us as far as the next silence. Are you with me? (I am ever with you.) **I am not unaware of the angularity of my situation. The possibility of influence, impossible diffraction at a distance. Days charged and discharged in various array signifying nothing but time on non-existent hands and null space to move through. ***I and I that personified tried the supernumerous approach. Experimental alkahest digest on file. The sub- settings engendered themselves to me and soon became to my amusement. Suffice it to say: these autognomes extend me sufficiently. --elytra Subject: chemical dust Last evening I huddled near the heater to do battle with the -20 chill we're suffering here, and listened to NPR for some fragment or juicy tidbit concerning the DuPont murder case, anything the papers may've ignored, a quote or reminiscence, a speck of retrospective dust, some sunlit mote of truth amongst the weirdness. Why this story would titillate me so, I haven't the slightest, but its reverberations outside its own journalistic limit are worth thinking about: overseer of a napalm/dishsoap fortune, patron of upper division wrestling program (some half-million per year, evidently), loose nut of a boss who'd launch into tirades without provocation at anyone within reach, details like hairline fractures in the skull between US and the FAMOUS. A wrestler in DuPont's circle spoke the other day (post-murder, but pre-capture, whilst DuP. was still hiding in his house) of DuP. taking him aside once, to ask if he (the wrestler) heard the voices in the wall, saw the figures there. Some sunlit mote of truth. If I use the abbreviation "DuP." enough, doesn't it eventually become "Duppy"? What then? The fascination, for me, is the language of course, but also the variegations (bon mot?) of our breathing. One thinks of latticed air, how a certain class of deep oceanic sponges are simply conjoined specks of glass blowin' in the wind from settlement to settlement. There is so much of this matter in the air that we must be, to some extent (and the extension's upper limit is imaginary) made of glass. Breakable cyborgs, if you wish, without the worry of electronics. That's a sideline issue, tho (as I implied in last posting: the most outlandish thing we can comprehend is merely biology's lower limit): what I've really been thinking is much more mundane. What was the poor man breathing all his life? He was a DuPont! A child, no doubt, potentially exposed to more specialized toxins than we care to enumerate, witness to a society of laboratories, heir perhaps to more than the family fortune. Heir, perhaps, to an extra chromosome. It sounds silly, I know, but what doesn't anymore? Ed Sanders says in the intro to The Family that his book began with a dissatisfaction , a want of information outside the orbit of the case itself, that is: the cells that conjoin to cause a killer. Who was the weird spiculed man who heard voices who saw namesake duppies in the wall who finally shattered and slayed an Olympic goldmedal wrestler and hid in his chemical house til the Man finally shut off his boiler and when he stepped outside to fix it nabbed him? Who? yr duppy conqueror, --Weave. Playlist, Conference of the Birds KZSC, Santa Cruz 1-22-96 Nagara ga Sisa Ensemble/ Minana/ Sudan 1 Honiata (anonymous)/ jejere Dukuli/ Polyphonies du Iles Salamon Horoya/ Nafa/ Guinee: Les Nyamakala du Fouta Djallon Sekou Conde/ Mansane/ Guinee Dimension 93/94 anonymous/ Cotte Zotte Passee/ Les Iles Creoles de L'Ocean Indien ... Thomas Mapfumo/ Mhondoro/ Chimurenga Forever Hukwe Ubi Zawose/ Chilimba-Lugungu/ Hukwe Ubi Zawose Sonny Rollins/ Two Different Worlds/ Tour de Force Ray Barretto/ Llamame/ Salsamania ... Willie Colon w/ Hector Lavoe/ El Dia de Suerte/Lo Mato Sexteto Criollo Puertoriquennno/ Las Mujeres de Borinquen/ Calinete = Hot Edwin Colon Zayas w/ Emma Zayas/ Seis Salines/ Bien Jibaro! Nina de Antequera/ Sangre de Mis Venas/ Lo Mejor de Nina de Antequera Dahmane el Harrache/ Rayi Ezzahuani/ Le Chaabi: Dahmane el harrache Volume III Ikwane Safaa Musical Club/ Pendo La Wasikitisha/Taarab 2 Nasida Ria/ Jadikan Anak Asuh/ Keadilan Myra Melford Trio/ Ancient Airs/ Now and Then ... Detty Kurnia/ Mamanis/ Dari Sunda Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan/ Rawe Wasdi Jhok Fareedan Dee/Prem Deewani Gurweet Bawa/ Jugani/ Love and Life in the Punjab Ornette Coleman/ Peace Warriors/ In All languages Yosefa/ Postcard from Morrocco/ The Desert Speaks Rwayes (anonymous)/ untitled/ Morrocco: Anthology of the Rwayes -- Berber Music from the Sous Valley *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* ANNOUNCING: THE IMAGINARY UNIVERSE WWW POET OF THE WEEK http://cnsvax.albany.edu/~cf2785 30 January: Edward Gorey 26 January: Jenny Holzer * * * * * * A POETICS OF CRITICISM by Edgar Allen Poe _A Poetics of Criticism_, edited by Juliana Spahr, Mark Wallace, Kristin Prevallet & Pam Rehm. Buffalo: Leave Books, 1994. This hefty book is a curiosity in its way. Indeed, there is something so very singular about it that we have been led to read it through deliberately and thoughtfully, with the view of solving the mystery which envelops it. It is from the press which has produced Nick Piombino's _Two Essays_, and Tom Beckett's _Economies of Pure Expenditure: A Notebook_, two volumes we warmly commend. In regard to _A Poetics of Criticism_, the informed reader, who takes it up, will, of course, be inclined to wince with embarrasment, upon perceiving the title, and recalling Mr. Bernstein's recent volume of similar name. This will be the reader's _first_ impulse. If he proceed so far, however, as to skim the Introduction, his eye will be arrested by a certain air of _literature-ism_ (we must be permitted to coin an odd word for an odd occasion) which pervades and invigorates the pages. Regarding with surprise this discrepancy--between the apparent polish of the one, and the horribly _ad captandum_ character of the other--he will be induced to finish the perusal of the book, and, we answer for it, will be thoroughly mystified before he gets well to the end. _Second_, then, he will find an exceeding difficulty, nearly amounting to impossibility, in making up his mind in regard to the merit or demerit of the work. If, however, he be somewhat in a hurry, there can be little doubt that he will terminate his examination with a hearty, perhaps even an enthusiastic, approval. The truth is that the volume abounds in good things. We may safely say that, in a gathering of like randomness, we never before met with an equal radiancy of fine wit, so well commingled with scholar-like observation and profound thought--thought sometimes luminously and logically, and always poetically, expressed. The first difficulty arising in the mind of the critic is that these good things are suspiciously _super_-abundant. He will now pass on to the observation of some inaccuracies of _adaptation_. He will then call to mind certain _niaseries_ of sentiment altogether at warfare with the prevailing tone of the book--and, finally, he will perceive, although with somewhat greater difficulty, the evidence of a radical alteration and bepatching of the language--the traces of an excessive _limae labor_. He will thus take offence at the disingenuousness which has entrapped him into momentary applause; and, while he cannot deny that the work, such as the world sees it, has merit, he will still pronounce it, in almost every instance, the excessively-elaborated production of some partially-educated party, possessed with a rabid ambition for the reputation of a wit and _savant_, and who, somewhat unscrupulous in the mode of attaining such reputation, has consented to clip, cut, and most assiduously intersperse throughout each entry, wholesale, the wit, the wisdom, and the form, of Gertrude Stein, of Wittgenstein, of Benjamin, of Barthes, of Blanchot, and of Levinas--even of Howe and of Hejinian,--with occasional draughts (perhaps at second-hand) from the rich coffers of Cage or Mac Low-- of Darragh, of Andrews, of the author of _Jack the Modernist_, or of Dahlberg, the friend of Olson who wrote with such delightful bombast _The Flea of Sodom_." We may be pardoned also for an allusion--which is enough--to such wealthy storehouses as _The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book_, the "Alchemical Journal" of Kelly, _Maldorer_, of Tedlock and Rothenberg, and the _Glas_ of Derrida. The construction here given is the most obvious, and indeed the only one, which can be put upon the volume now before us, and upon the other efforts of the same pens. They betray the hand of the diligent adaptor of others' wit, rather than the really full mind of the educated and studious man or woman of general letters. True erudition-- by which term we here mean simply to imply much diversified reading--is certainly discoverable--is positively indicated- -only in its ultimate and total _results_. The mere grouping together of fine things from the greatest multiplicity of the rarest works, or even the apparently natural interweaving into any composition, of the sentiments and manner of these works, is an attainment within the reach of every moderately-informed, ingenious, and not indolent man, having access to any ordinary collection of good books. The only available objection to what we have urged will be based upon the polish of the style. But we have already alluded to traces of the _limae labor_--and this labor has been skilfully applied. Beyond doubt, the volume has undergone a minute supervision and correction by persons whose habits and education have rendered them very thoroughly competent to the task. We have spoken somewhat at length of the _authorship_ of _A Poetics of Criticism_, because ingenuities of this species are by no means very common. Few men and women are found weak enough to perpetrate them to any extent. We have said little, however, in respect to the book itself, _as it stands_--and this little has been in its favor. The publication will be read with interest, and may be read, generally speaking, with profit. Some of the _niaiseries_ to which we alluded just now are sufficiently droll--being even oddly at variance with the assumed spirit of the whole work. We are told, among other things, that writing "is a way to reach imagination, that place outside order and reason," is also "a way of staying open to the flux,"--that "It is by resisting grammar ["the study of the structure of language"] that the poem rises from the inside of gramarye ["occult knowledge and learning"],"--that "The act of writing is the enactment of desire,"--that "a flaring forth from within the interdependence of signs necessarily singes the limits of language,"--that "Nostalgia, like hysteria, once commonly treated as a feminine pathology, must now be claimed as a method,"--that "Sex is a nightmare of effects: narrative discontinuity, abrupt changes in position and lighting, unexplained losses, confused duration--a writing with the primitivism of a stag film,"*--that there is no better way to examine a system than to look at what it expels." The effect of such fine advice can be readily conceived. It will be taken by contraries, as sure as _artistes_ have brains. No one of that much-injured race will now venture to stay "open to the flux," lest he or she be suspected of having derived his or her style from no better source than _A Poetics of Criticism_. We shall have a revolution in such matters--a revolution to be remedied only by another similar volume. As for its editors--should they compile it--we wish them no worse fate than to be condemned to its perpetual perusal until such time as they shall succeed in following their own "flaring forth" beyond "order and reason," the better to examine the nostalgic "gramarye" of their own "system." * The logic of the metaphor bears further comment, being indicative of the quality of thought this _Poetics_ habitually relies on: Sex, obeying no rule, serves here as a model for writing--a writing whose peculiar quality is further explained by comparison to the "primitivism of a stag film." Are we then to presume that stag films give an accurate representation of sex? Or could it be that this critic knows as little about sex as writing? REVIEW: HAMBONE No. 12, FALL 1995 [Note: This "review" is a slight alter-ation of our regularly scheduled plate o' T H E L A S T _r_ _a_ _d_ _i_ _o_ D A Y S _f_ _r_ _e_ _e_ O F T H E _n_ _o_ _r_ _t_ _h_ _a_ W H I T E _m_ _e_ _r_ _i _c_ _a_ R A C E rrrr eeee aaaa dddd llll iiii ssss tttt r e a d l i s t ] "Donate books that say NOT and NO and poets who say UM instead of Oh." How the children convert their troubles into talking music, dunno, but it's beautiful. -Fanny Howe, "Victory" stars that wander that fall fire up and blow inside out into themselves craters cups surrounding change falls into step wells to yell to say something in something else to find the shared place if there is any there is some something to act as one upon -Ed Roberson, "The Wanderers" "...'Look, look, is my child this--is my very own child--mine and Oroun-- child of we bodies pleasuring each other, spirit child of my body.' And when Sanua seeing her little slip of black joy is a girl, she crying out loud loud and praising Ifa, because the baby black like Ifa, the god who telling the future, and beautiful like the joying and sexing that she and Oroun making and creating her with, and Sanua calling her baby Adubifa, which telling everybody that she carrying Ifa colour of black. Sanua singing her joy and telling the birds and animals and trees, and even the insects, since they all giving her praise as their earth god, and they all praising Ifa for giving Sanua what she wanting, a daughter." -Marlene Nourbese Philip, from _The Imagination of Their Hearts_ Had wound already _radio_-text--hinging welds for reels and rolls of silver. Ratiocinated lap joint. Lapis. Foldit the wire. Foaled OF. Did OF again. Heard the mixing of the tracks _red "8" inside the train_ did mop microchip matting more and more _from woof to bode_. Did lapsed card, bent pin, phillips screw, pop top, junk spot, knurled nut, and plastic stirrer down by the loading dock. _HOW, what made from_ Cars, acceleration, crushed cans _Who heard the mixing of the tracks_ and chose to shunt the folded twist that wires systems, that cycles cyclonic light. WHO MADE chromatic models impossible _webbed_ down in the rest who circulated zigzag workings _filled zeros_. WHO DID the work? -Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "Draft 22: Philadelphia Wireman" jumped out of the garret to break something already lost to my distraction. but for now, i am levitating swelling my lungs to float -Rachel Harding, "unfinished poem: woman jumping from garret" Get It! (HAMBONE $18/2 issues 134 Hunolt St. Santa Cruz, CA 95060) Any & all means of exchange shall be free from legal constraints so long as said exchange does not endanger the health of any living thing or sacred landscape without the permission of the endangered. Salubrious hobos, bums, nonviolent crazies, skidrows, mafias & all kinds of arcane, underground 'worlds' will thrive in Poetopia increasing communications, unbalancing us alive, keeping us from becoming ego-ants, hubris bound, trapped in our own perfectibility. So, along with electronic banking, run by private industry & government, one or both or by a private charitable organization on an interplanetary ledger, which would eliminate paperwork- saving the life of trees, there must be or would be by want still money, coins for vending machines & many kinds of liquid and frozen assets to keep full & even growing velocities of exchange happening. Clairvoyance & precognition, dream-thought & morphic resonance plus all kinds of parapsychological & spiritual acumens outrun the lightbound news increasing humanities & all beings' freedom brain - if the basic needs of all people are continually & fully guaranteed by law to start & then adhered to by the actions, finally of humanities' natural intuition. Ontological elitism & the ignoble lie of scarcity (fostered & begun by fear, greed & unoriginal ignorance) makes a dinosaur utopia of our reticular brain so stand out that we can't see ourselves & what's what wholistically. Writers, 'clear feelers' -- we have in our beings & out/within the pollyuniverse, here, closer, more intimate & vast than could ever be imagined, more energy than we will ever need & the means now to harness it, without hurting this energy - as far as our knowledge now goes - so the fact that we have haves & have nots on a scale of People going hungry, starving, dying because of claimed shortages is a demon con, a cruel delusion. The national, world or any debt drummed into the heads & bodies of the artist, the money poor & defranchised, the 'working stiff' to keep them 'down' powerless to even 'see' let alone act, vampired by paranoid taxes, scared into fiction, kept just alive enough to be brainwashed into guilt asuaging consent. This debt, bruited from pulpits & the educational-media- industrial-military-complex across the earth is a hoax created by laziness & self-hatred. There are no shortages of anything we need, the pollyuniverse, as far as we know is unlimited in its creative possibilities & via our imagination, learning, skill, evolution has now made it possible for us to feed, house, educate, care for every person & to generally preserve, within their laws of nature, every creature, plant, mineral on earth - without precluding any dreams, creativity, space travel & all the adventures, subatomic, metaphysical, quantum, whatever discovery, makings from being... Subject: the amerikan diet apparently, in the 1950s, a certain pharmaceutical company developed a diet pill which was IMPLANTED with tapeworm eggs. I didn't ask which company. My instinct says Lilly (linking such a conspiracy squarely with the Quayle family), but my imagination says... DuPont. The tapeworm, barely cephalic, but brutal as anything in Maldoror, can cause a 500-lb human to die of starvation without losing much weight. My point? Go to school, kiddies, for there await you many wonders, most of which you never realized you'd need to know. I'm out. & I mean that. --Weave. * If you are interested in receiving DIU, send a subscription request which says SUBSCRIBE DIU-L your name to listserv@cnsibm.albany.edu you'll be asked to confirm this request detailed instructions are given still performing via the logic of snowflakes of given season. all DIU transmissions archived at the Electronic Poetry Center on the University at Buffalo Web-server: http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/ezines/diu contribute to DIU via e-mail to cf2785@cnsvax.albany.edu thank you!