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Mad Poet Symposium, Part Three
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Another South Bill Lavender, Editor 277 pp; 2002; Pa and Cloth; The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa and London. www.uapress.ua.edu. $27 and $60.
An American Avant Garde: Second Wave, An Exhibit
An American Avant Garde: First Wave: An Exhibit
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I have to interrupt my memoir of the Ohio State University affair to announce the publication of an anthology called Another South. As any longtime reader of this column would have no trouble guessing, it includes work by me--including the mathemaku I wrote for Jim Leftwich, and mentioned in my last column, in fact. Leftwich has a nice chunk of work here, too, as do others in my crowd such as Jake Berry, David Thomas Roberts and A. di Michael. We four and James Sanders (whose "Poem with Referee," labels illustrations of football referees' signals with such texts as "internally/ pans/ Night./ hissing" with a text that begins "Donkey Kong may/ been kissing you// with a bulletproof vest") are the only ones contributing visual poetry, or anything near it, to the
collection. I have to boast that I am the only one contributing mathematical or cryptographic poetry to it!
The many textual poems (and prose pieces) here--by such as Skip Fox, Ken Harris, Joy Lahey, Mark Prejsnar and Stephanie Williams (34 writers are represented in all)--cover about as much of the textual poetry range as
I'm familiar with. Here's one by Joel Dailey that I quote not only because I like it and deem it representative of the best work here, but because it takes a whack at the Establishment I'm in close sympathy with:
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Poetry fro Dummies |
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(Note: the "fro" may be a typo, but I like it, so suspect it was intentional.) How "southern" Dailey's poem is, I wouldn't know, but Hank Lazer has much of interest to say in his excellent introduction about that aspect of the
poetry in this anthology. There, he refers to what he calls "kudzu textuality." About this, he says, "What I have in mind is the sort of complex, stuttered, overlapping sounds as in these passages from my 'Suite Quintet for
Nathaniel Mackey' (Callaloo 23, no. 2 [2002]: 670-673):
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"Such knowing enters first by faith in sounds, a pathway first governed by a submission to the associations of kindred sounds and thus akin to syntactic or graphic kudzu textuality that I have already been describing." But surely such concentration on sound over sense goes back to the origins of poetry, and flows through such writers as Hopkins, Stein, Joyce . . . Here, too, I would say there is a concentration of imagery over sense, as well. Which is all to the good. (Of course, what I like most in Lazer's poem are the mathematical terms in the second stanza!) In any event, we can see from Lazer's and Dailey's work quoted above (and in the main portion of the collection) the way grammar is currently broken by many of our best poets to get us more effectively "down into
flower." There is much of this in Another South.
There. Now I can return to the catalogue for the Ohio State exhibit. this time to a section of it labeled, "Serials, Books and Manuscripts." It lists small-press--in most cases actually micro-press--journals and publications from 1975 that were on display at the exhibit. As such it serves as a fascinating overview of the almost entirely unknown history of burstnorm poetry and related arts of that time to the present. Just the names of the publications are revealing, and entertaining: Unmuzzled Ox (whose publisher is SPR's own Michael Andre), CLWN WR, Perspektive, Xerolage, Shattered Wig, Koja, Pavement Saw, Remixponse Categoriarray, Poethia: Writing-online, Crayon, Caliban, Juxta, Lost and Found Times, Loose Watch, Generator and many more.
SPR's own Michael Andre was the publisher of the issue of Unmuzzled Ox from 1989 that is on display. CLWN WR (from 1980) was previously called Clown War, according to the text--which includes this charmingly
lyrical/nutto quotation from Lyn Hejinian: "sharing the toy/ and all-some banana."
I've discussed Shattered Wig (to jump around in this lazily here-and-there column) before. The issue of it on display dates from around 1993. One of the texts quoted from it is by Al Ackerman (whom I quote or re-quote as much as possible, so exactly and eloquently does he state the over-riding aesthetics of this column): "Look again, Lurcher," grated Ling. "This thing you've been calling the White Bat--DOESN'T IT REALLY LOOK LIKE A GIANT BURRITO STANDING ON END?"
The exhibit is up-to-date enough to include quite a bit of Internet material--Poethia, for example, which contains this, from Mark Peters: "Police arrived./ Former glory./ Foam rubber./ Talented Chef./ Even potatoes."
Jump-cut poetry with a vengeance, but strangely compelling--for me, at any rate. Similar in technique is the following, from Loose Watch: "make one's blood/ the blood// a law violation// sleep." It is by jwcurry and Mark Laba.
There are several items here that Richard Kostelanetz was responsible for. Among them is his still horrendously under-rated Openings & Closings of 1975, which includes, in its entirety, the following fiction: "In the
beginning, as I said,/ was the end." John Perlman, Jeffrey Little, Ficus strangulensis, Clark Coolidge, Spencer Selby, Peter Ganick, Vincent Ferrini, Crag Hill, Dick Higgins, John Byrum, Jackson Mac Low and Ivan Arguelles are just a few of the other stand-out bustnorm poets with work listed in this section of the catalogue, accompanied by always provocative and instructive quotations from it. It features several vibrant color reproductions, as well. It alone makes the catalogue worth getting for anyone who thinks it important to jump ahead of Vendler with regard to where American poetry has most arrestingly been for the past quarter century, and where it may be headed. But there is much more of value in this catalogue. So, I'll probably discuss it some more next issue.
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