Poetica Critique of Ko Un, Himalaya Poems

by Joel Weinhaus

POSTCARD POETS

SPD's APRIL POETRY BEST-SELLERS

1. Heath Course Pak by Tan Lin (Counterpath Press)
2. I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say by Anthony Madrid (Canarium Books)
3. My Lorenzo by Sébastien Smirou (translated by Andrew Zawacki) (Burning Deck)
4. Meat Heart by Melissa Broder (Publishing Genius Press)
5. Fjords Vol.1 by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)
6. My Love Is a Dead Arctic Explorer by Paige Ackerson-Kiely (Ahsahta Press)
7. Western Practice by Stephen Motika (Alice James Books)
8. Alpha Donut by Matvei Yankelevich (United Artists Books)
9. The Hartford Book by Samuel Amadon (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)
10. Conversities by Srikanth Reddy and Dan Beachy-Quick (1913 Press)
11. Beauty Was the Case that They Gave Me by Mark Leidner (Factory Hollow Press)
12. Blue Orange by Robert Grunst (Ashland Poetry Press)
13. The Malady of the Century by Jon Leon (Futurepoem Books)
14. Diego Luna's Insider Tips by Renato Rosaldo (Many Mountains Moving Press)
15. For the Living and the Dead by Tomas Tranströmer (translated by John F. Deane) (Tavern Books)
16. Baltics by Tomas Tranströmer (translated by Samuel Charters) (Tavern Books)
17. Uselysses by Noel Black (Ugly Duckling Presse)
18. Repeat the Flesh in Numbers by Kris Bigalk (NYQ Books)
19. I Take Back the Sponge Cake: A Lyrical Choose-Your-Own-Adventure by Loren Erdrich and Sierra Nelson (Rose Metal Press)
20. Transit by Geoffrey Movius (Pressed Wafer)

kate schapira at rhode island historical society 4/25/12

How We Saved the City

Wednesday, April 25th

6:30-8:00 pm

Rhode Island Historical Society Library

121 Hope St., Providence

 

Kate Schapira  will  read  from  her  book  of poems, How We Saved the City, which asks: Who decides what  a city and  its  people need? Who  creates its  history, and  how?

Come learn more about gentrification, ghosts, and  concurrent  and  successive  cities  in Schapira's  chosen  home  of  Providence.

Kate Schapira is the author of three full-length books and six chapbooks of poetry.  She co-organizes the Publicly Complex Reading Series at Ada Books and  teaches writing  at Brown University. 

This event is free and open to the public.

RSVP:  libprograms@rihs.org

(401) 273-8107, ext. 12

 www.RIHS.org

The Last Poetry Show tonight 4.6.12, Tap Room, 8.30pm

Granoff Spring Festival

I am a member of the Student Creative Arts Council and we are currently looking for submissions for the Spring Arts Festival that will take place in the Granoff Center on April 27th and 28th. After seeing your work on display at the Granoff, I thought you might be interested.
The Student Creative Arts Council is looking for submissions of 2D, 3D, music, video, and/or performance pieces to be performed, shown or created at the annual Spring Arts Festival
The Spring Arts Festival is a celebration of the enormous creative efforts and capabilities of the Brown University Community. The two-day event will feature installations, performances, screenings, and lectures, and aims to promote the diverse forms of art generated and inspired here on campus.
The deadline for submissions is March 13th, 2012.

To submit, please send an e-mail to studentcreativearts@gmail.com with the following information:

1. Name/Year:

2. Project Description:

3. Medium:

4. Dimensions:

5. Facility/Tech/Installation needs:

6. Photos/Videos of the project (if possible)

Best,

Elizabeth Woodward

Keats' + his referents

William Shakespeare, April 26, 1564-April 23, 1616

John Milton, December 9, 1608-November 8, 1674 

Robert Burns, January 25, 1759-July 21, 1796

William Wordsworth, April 7, 1770-April 23,  1850

William Hazlitt, April 10, 1778-September 18, 1830

Gordon, Lord Byron, January 22, 1788-April 19, 1824

Percy Bysshe Shelley, August 4, 1792-July 8, 1822

John Keats, October 31, 1795-February 23, 1921

The Middle East and Freedom of Expression

Brown Literary Arts Event

Mysteries of the Vernacular

http://www.mysteriesofvernacular.com/

Not strictly poetry, but click on the link if you are someone who loves words and etymology!

Jessica Orek is usually a documentary filmmaker, but she decided to take a break and create a series of short animations (26, one for each English letter) that explore the history and mystery of the vernacular. There's only one episode so far, but it's really great so keep an eye out for updates to the project!

from A Book of Hours

   Beside a stream a man is reading.  He sits against a tree, one knee drawn up as support

for his book.  Next to him a long slender pole is propped; a line dangles into the water.

   The open pages of the book show an illustrated, gilded scene: a tiny figure by a stream, fields giving onto a town beyond.  In the fields, men and women bend over curved bundles of wheat.  Their scythes make dark punctuations of the harvest.

   The man smiles, as if pleased with what he sees.  Then he yawns and looks over at

the pole.  He shifts his gaze a bit and considers the prospect of the town in the distance:

the familiar spires and gables.  He surveys the fields, before returning to the book.

   A shadowiness comes over the surrounding landscape, as if a cloud were passing in front of the sun.  It is the man’s hand, about to turn the page.

Barry Yourgrau

cross wise writing

Anne Warren Weston, Boston Public Library, look here too

First Page of Endymion

In My Craft or Sullen Art

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Dylan Thomas, 1957

30 top poetry books 2011

(according to coldfront)

PROJECTION

photograph documentations of a projected poetry installation i have been working on.
two projectors on opposite sides of the room projecting onto a translucent screen.
one projecting white light, the other projecting white text.
the viewer can only read the text  in their silhouette (when standing in front of the white light), or on their body (standing in front of the projector with text).

the whole text can never be all read at once and with no interaction it appears a blank screen.

sobakasukasu

Hey y'all,

Unlike my last publishing attempt (----> http://www.inviewoutoffocus.blogspot.com, if you're interested), you can actually read my poems (new 'n old) now.


sobakasukasu


'sobakasu' means freckles
'kasu' means crumbs

Freckles

*Disclaimer: I think freckles are lovely and I certainly love mine!

If freckles were lovely

If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn't a lie,
Life would be delight,--
But things couldn't go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn't be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I'd be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn't be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,--
Yet they'd all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn't be we.

- e.e. cummings

my favorite punctuation video

victor borge's phonetic pronunciation

Proposal for the New Humans

1

Do not

anthropomorphize

animals

nor

objects

2

Always

question

your raison d'être

do you really

need to

exist?

3

Keep emptying

to full-fill

your emptiness

4

Decountralize

in order to

destroy

our ready-made

196 countries

frontiers

militaries

wars

conflicts

tensions

...

even the great wall

of China cannot divide

the continents

as we

are all under the

same sky

5

Get rid

of the word

peace,

in order to

get rid

of the word

war

as

if there are no questions

then

there are no answers

6

Terminate your

social security numbers

official paper documents

and all the encoded

numbers

embedded in your body

7

Screw powerful utilities,

large corporations,

and all those lunatics

never stop

fighting

against their

authoritarian

tendencies

8

The infinity

that we've been

taught

only comes

from the brain

of the mathematicians

and physicians

∴

the infinity

that we know of

is a false

9

Stop following

the set of rules

the authoritarians

have assigned for us

and

start making

your own

0

Beware

the return

of the repressed

- - -

This was my new poem for today.

Let's have fun tomorrow.

!

A Statement of Poetics

I often collect words and place them in my handbag

Later, I organize my lip balms and hand lotions

Later, after I have put my lip balms and hand lotions in good order, I organize my words

I put them in an order that seems most poetical to me

I line them up and if I am very lucky they will tell me a poem

If they are feeling ill and have gone out smoking the night before, their voices will be scratchy

For the most part I do not appreciate their scratchy voices and ask them to refrain from smoking

On occasion, I will smoke as well, and then I do not so much mind the scratchiness of their voices

On occasion, I enjoy this scratchiness so much that I will ask a word to repeat itself

Sometimes, flattery is not a good idea for a word

Sometimes he will become arrogant and condescending and puff out his chest as though he has just won a horse-race

I detest horse-races

I am not sure that I detest anything else quite so much as horse-races

I am sure, however, that I do not enjoy insincerity

On occasion, a word will lie to me

I am a gentle person and react quite reasonably

I swear and curse and rage and threaten to throw it out on the streets

But, owing to my gentle nature, I will never throw it out on the streets

Instead I will inspect my handbag for crevasses and pockets

Crevasses and pockets are good places to store things you don’t want to see

If it so happens that my handbag is lacking in crevasses, I will sit on it until it is sufficiently wrinkled

If it so happens that my handbag does not have pockets, I will get a new one

Part of the process of getting a new handbag is emptying out the old one

This is a process I very much dread

There is nothing quite so bad as facing someone you have hidden away for a long period of time

They are often prone to bitterness and anger

As a gentle person, these are emotions that make me anxious

For this reason, I take much care in selecting my new handbag in the hopes that the promise of grand accommodations will somewhat reduce the bitterness and anger hidden away in my old handbag

Very often, this is exactly the case

Very often, I will find that time in solitude has made my words receptive to change and compassion

Very often, I will find that I have no need for pockets in my handbag

All the same, it is pleasant to have a new handbag after you have crushed your old one with your rear end

FOREST OF FROST.

watch FOREST OF FROST

by Rose Dickson, 4. 26. 11

THE FOUNDING AND MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM (excerpt)    

FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI, 1909

We had stayed up all night, my friends and I, under hanging mosque lamps with domes of filigreed brass, domes starred like our spirits, shining like them with the prisoned radiance of electric hearts. For hours we had trampled our atavistic ennui into rich oriental rugs, arguing up to the last confines of logic and blackening many reams of paper with our frenzied scribbling.

An immense pride was buoying us up, because we felt ourselves alone at that hour, alone, awake, and on our feet, like proud beacons or forward sentries against an army of hostile stars glaring down at us from their celestial encampments. Alone with stokers feeding the hellish fires of great ships, alone with the black spectres who grope in the red-hot bellies of locomotives launched on their crazy courses, alone with drunkards reeling like wounded birds along the city walls.

Suddenly we jumped, hearing the mighty noise of the huge double-decker trams that rumbled by outside, ablaze with colored lights, like villages on holiday suddenly struck and uprooted by the flooding Po and dragged over falls and through gourges to the sea. Then the silence deepened. But, as we listened to the old canal muttering its feeble prayers and the creaking bones of sickly palaces above their damp green beards, under the windows we suddenly heard the famished roar of automobiles.

‘Let’s go!’ I said. ‘Friends, away! Let’s go! Mythology and the Mystic Ideal are defeated at last. We’re about to see the Centaur’s birth and, soon after, the first flight of Angels!… We must shake at the gates of life, test the bolts and hinges. Let’s go! Look there, on the earth, the very first dawn!

THE CREATIVE ACT

MARCEL DUCHAMP, 1957

Let us consider two important factors, the two poles of the creation of art: the artist on the one hand, and on the other the spectator who later becomes the posterity.

To all appearances, the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the esthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All his decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out. T.S. Eliot, in his essay on "Tradition and Individual Talent", writes: "The more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material."

Millions of artists create; only a few thousands are discussed or accepted by the spectator and many less again are consecrated by posterity. In the last analysis, the artist may shout from all the rooftops that he is a genius: he will have to wait for the verdict of the spectator in order that his declarations take a social value and that, finally, posterity includes him in the primers of Artist History.

I know that this statement will not meet with the approval of many artists who refuse this mediumistic role and insist on the validity of their awareness in the creative act – yet, art history has consistently decided upon the virtues of a work of art through considerations completely divorced from the rationalized explanations of the artist.

If the artist, as a human being, full of the best intentions toward himself and the whole world, plays no role at all in the judgment of his own work, how can one describe the phenomenon which prompts the spectator to react critically to the work of art? In other words, how does this reaction come about?

This phenomenon is comparable to a transference from the artist to the spectator in the form of an esthetic osmosis taking place through the inert matter, such as pigment, piano or marble. But before we go further, I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' - to be sure, without any attempt at a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in the raw state – à l'état brut – bad, good or indifferent. In the creative act, the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions.

His struggle toward the realization is a series of efforts, pains, satisfaction, refusals, decisions, which also cannot and must not be fully self-conscious, at least on the esthetic plane. The result of this struggle is a difference between the intention and its realization, a difference which the artist is not aware of. Consequently, in the chain of reactions accompanying the creative act, a link is missing.

be marginal

Hélio Oiticica, Brazil 1968

couscous@121 tonight tues april 26 8-10pm

a bedtime story

ADVPOetry Performance Poster

As far as I'm aware, Khoon and I made the posters for the event.

(These are mine btw)

We'll start putting them up tonight.

If anyone of you want the files to print,

please feel free to email us.

click to see more variations

20110424-134320

32 x 32 screen shot

of my focal monitor

while I was working

(on other stuffs)

the act of framing

creates a certain narrative

due to our natural

tendencies to construct

formal/informal relationships

with the words & images

inside the frame

of the frame

text rain

1999

Yi Sang

Yi Sang (August 20, 1910 - April 17, 1937) is considered one of the most innovative writers in modern Korean literature. Crossing and blurring the boundaries between poetry, fiction and essay, his experiments in literary form and language, as well the psychological complexity of his inquiry into passion, eroticism and the indeterminate nature of self were unprecedented in Korean literary practices of his time. (From Wikipedia)

I tried to find the best English-translated version of his poems, but with much respect, I couldn't. Therefore, I decided to post one of his less-language-oriented poem.

오감도 시제4호

환자의 용태에 관한 문제.

ㆍ０９８７６５４３２１

０ㆍ９８７６５４３２１

０９ㆍ８７６５４３２１

０９８ㆍ７６５４３２１

０９８７ㆍ６５４３２１

０９８７６ㆍ５４３２１

０９８７６５ㆍ４３２１

０９８７６５４ㆍ３２１

０９８７６５４３ㆍ２１

０９８７６５４３２ㆍ１

０９８７６５４３２１ㆍ

진단 0 : 1

26.10.1931

이상 책임의사 이 상

(Korean Version)

Crow's-Eye View: Poem No.4

On The Issue of a Patience's Case

ㆍ０９８７６５４３２１

０ㆍ９８７６５４３２１

０９ㆍ８７６５４３２１

０９８ㆍ７６５４３２１

０９８７ㆍ６５４３２１

０９８７６ㆍ５４３２１

０９８７６５ㆍ４３２１

０９８７６５４ㆍ３２１

０９８７６５４３ㆍ２１

０９８７６５４３２ㆍ１

０９８７６５４３２１ㆍ

Diagnosis 0 : 1

26.10.1931

Overall Responsible Physician Yi Sang

(Imperfect Englsih Version)