As promised, but later than anticipated, I wanted to submit a few thoughts - almost a review - of Brian Kim Stefans’ Fashionable Noise. I say almost because I am not so interested in covering the last three sections, “Proverbs of Hell (Dos and Donts [sic]),”Whan Lilacs Laist in the Duir: notes on new poetrie,” and “A Poem of Attitudes.” It’s not that I don’t find these sections interesting, but that I wanted to say a few things about his theoretical position towards new media poetry/ poetics. Brian is a sharp and brilliant writer/ web worker. We are all familiar with his “Dreamlife of Letters” - and may have even been amused by his NYT detournements (I gave a paper on these at the Collage Conference here at UIowa last March, but lost interest in these pieces as I was writing the paper) - and may just know him as a web presence. My criticism of Brian’s work it hasn’t yet hit a ‘groove,’ so to speak - it hasn’t become something he has been able to run with. I recall him saying or writing at some point that he thought the NYT pieces were the best or most successful (which one?) of his works. While they were good at the time, they are, only two to three years later, interesting historical documents. Situationist work is not designed to last or be catalogued. It could be kept, I suppose; one could claim it as ‘situationist influenced’ and regard the irony as something valuable in the work itself. Now, had the situationist-style actions continued and developed into some other form of ‘culture jamming,’ then there would be less room for my little criticism. In a general sense, the shortcomings of Fashionable Noise are a reflection of a collection of works not-quite-followed-through. The initial conversation with Darren Wershler-Henry is entertaining and touches on themes and issues that the contemporary poetics tend to skate around. For example, being architecturally inclined, I was most interested in their conversation on architectural poetics (I will come back to this). The conversation ends up, however, being somewhat of a gloss over much and insight into little. And then even ‘Stops and Rebels’ - with its brilliant twist on Eliot etc. by featuring footnotes as both the main and most ‘useful’ part of the main text - usefully critiques the HTML optimism of the mid-90’s and the continuing optimism in what are trivial feats (e.g. personalized webpages etc) - but ends up with a fuzzy notion of ‘cyberpoet’ and ‘cyberpoetry’ and mechanical production of texts. Now, I want to qualify what I’ve just said. Fashionable Noise does present a number of interesting and important ideas/ arguments for anyone concerned about technology and its relationship to poetry/writing. (stop here for today)

Contrary to popular belief, Stockhausen did not call the WTC attacks a great work of art in the way that the NYT and the other 4 media outlets reported. He mentions the actual quote in this interview. However, his recollection does not quite fit mine. Just after the NYT mis-quoted Stockhausen, the Stockhausen Verlag had a stream up of the actual interview. I recall him saying something along the lines of, "the greatest work of art of the devil." I was sure he had used 'Teufel' not 'Luzifer.' If you can't be bothered to read the interview, he says:

"The journalists did not report what I said. When I was asked after the attacks in America of Sept. 11th 2001 if the protagonists MICHAEL, EVA, LUZIFER of my 7 operas were mythological figures, I answered "No, they exist now, for example LUCIFER in New York, he performed the greatest work of art of destruction." Until now the intellectuals worldwide deny the existence of LUCIFER."

Just thought I'd clear that up even though I find Stockhausen's religionism troubling.

Might want to have a look at Silliman's blog. Some miserly fellow called Franz Wright has been poo-pooing the comments box. Of course, one should take Silliman with a pinch of salt, but that's not to say he's not valuable. I find myself irritated only 60% of the time at his blog - less so since the wellbutrin kicked in. - Hi Ron. Coming up in the next week: critique and praise of Brian Kim Stefans' Fashionable Noise. Then a review of Factorial 4. Plus other stuff. Finally, my birthday today! Had Indian buffet for lunch (ok for Iowa City standards, but prefer to cook my own), then a very heavy bitter dark chocolate cake with dark roast Columbian coffee (organic/fair trade=tastes much better than starbucks crap) at home after dinner. - Also got to watch a good deal of the Colts/ Seahawks game... I hate this time of the season, no one is really trying anymore. Presents: Collected Poems of Frank O'hara Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (Benedict Anderson's latest book) Species of Spaces and other Pieces - Perec Fox and His Friends - Fassbinder (DVD - Fantastic movie, btw) Stay tuned.

Jessica Smith's prognosis: L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry is dead. Though with all the hoopla about its death over the last few years, you'd think it's really just living a second life. Though in all honesty, if you watched Fox News often enough, you might think it consequential. Same if you read Ron Silliman's blog... same if you read luminations. snore -

so I lived outside of the US for seventeen years. from afar, it looked like an intolerant fascistic state, but friends insisted that was the view from the outside. “once you go back, you’ll see that the foreign media doesn’t understand the relationship between us domestic and foreign policy..” etc. i signed petitions against helms-burton (organized by the communist party of great britain), protested several wars, etc. anyway, despite assurances it wasn’t that bad. i was the american. i did detention for being american. i was bullied because i was american. i lost grades for being the american. even though the connection between me and american was ... questionable ... semaphoric me didn’t mind so much this imaginary american occasionally causing some trouble. as a teenager, i was hardly a superpower. so america is not such an intolerant fascistic state, it’s just that it hosts two fascistic intolerant political parties. host and parasite. as if there is some agency there. unconscionable that a parasite would drain the only host’s resources. so anyway it’s not. but don’t be ungodly even if it means science. {more}

White men who save brown women from brown men

Perhaps my title today is a little obscure. It is from Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” and relates specifically to her critique of the colonial outlawing of sati (self-immolation) and the nationalist reclamation of the practice. To spare the intricacies of Spivak’s critical thinking, I am reminded of the phrase because of what appears to be a phenomenal female presence at the WTO protests in Hong Kong and the continuing tendency of the media and politicians in the US to use ‘the freedom of women’ as a marker of success in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, those making the claims for the 'brown women' are white men, such as Bill O’Reilly (who isn’t a good example of a human being by any means) who used the ‘freedom of women in Afghanistan’ argument yesterday in an interview with George Galloway (admittedly, it's because of the Galloway interview that the old curmudgeon entered my mind at all). But of some concern in my opinion is also the claiming of women as a symbol for some peasant collectivities. In this regard, I found the Guernica -like image below especially revealing. In the first instance, the USAmerican foot-soldiers for the WTO taking aim at women and children is especially evocative of the effects of globalization on women . That while policies are deeply effecting peasant communities generally in liberalizing countries, the effects of liberalization further marginalize women (regardless of their voting status) and put them at risk. However, the absence of men is unusual in a poster trying, apparently, to draw attention to the plight of farmers (in Korea, in this case). Is this a case again of women being used to signify/define a whole community? Nationality of the soldiers aside, the image here is of aggressive men taking aim at passive women and that by destroying women, they are, in effect, destroying all peasants. I am troubled a bit by this use of women as collective signifiers. Though the motives are different, one as a form of activism, the other as a form of national braggadocio, the representation of women in this poster and the O’Reilly Factor is disturbingly similar. Both are the objects of men and symbols of the nation. For O’Reilly, having female candidates and allowing women to vote in Afghanistan is both a sign of the strength of the American nation and the ‘blossoming’ Afghani nation (will American Imperialists create better nations than British colonials?). In this poster, women are also the symbol of a collectivity (or, in the loosest sense, a nation), though this time a nation in danger, and as child-bearers. I am not noting anything new in seeing the discrepancy here between the women as symbols of a nation and the violence involved in the act of representing them as child bearers. It bodes not well for a nation. But while in the poster women are the bearers of the nation, for O’Reilly, Afghan women again are the symbol of the nation or, more specifically, of the ‘freedom’ granted to the nation of Afghanistan by the USAmericans - USAmerican ‘heroes’ rescuing brown women from brown Taliban men... I know I’m not connecting the dots clearly here, but hopefully my logic is visible enough. While I think that the protests are apt and prudent, I am suspicious still of the nationalist fervor with which arguments are made. "Our’ country should... " for me, words that merit suspicion... This poster (below) is much more the line to be taken. Of the other images I’ve found, mainly through the indymedia reporting, I was most surprised and impressed to see that a group of dalit women had come all the way to Hong Kong to protest the WTO. Also, sex workers have made their presence felt these protests. I’m not sure what their agenda is.

As you can see, I am currently redesigning Luminations. If you would like your blog or website linked from here, send me an email.

It’s been over a year since I regularly contributed to this blog. A year since I left my job in Tokyo, not to mention friends that I still sorely miss, to move to Iowa City to work on a Ph.D. out of the English department (is it really a degree in Eng Lit?) at the University of Iowa. A year since my last real (big?) paycheck. etc. Moving is always a fairly traumatic experience - even those of us who like moving, don’t always enjoy the process - but moving overseas from a massive metropolis to a backwater midwestern town (the “city” in Iowa City is just aspiration after the fact) is murder. I have found myself alone in loving overcrowded trains, noisy intersections, random encounters with all sorts of strangers, all night restauranting in the bar below your apartment, and all the other trappings of city life. Anyhow, I miss that. By 10 pm here, you can run red lights and no one is going to notice. Personally, I’m startled whenever I leave the house after dark. At least I don’t hear cows and chickens. On the plus side, the University does attract some fabulous people, students and faculty alike, and has given me all sorts of interesting jobs. I had the pleasure of meeting, among others, Brian Kim Stefans last October, the day before the Presidential elections. Also, gave a paper on Stefans and Goldsmith just recently at the Collage as Cultural Practice conference here - at which I also met mIEKAL aND and his incredibly intelligent wife Camille Bacos (and his son whose name, I’m embarrassed, to say, I forgot) and Doug Kahn, Craig Baldwin, and bunch of other people (as one does, I’m informed, at conferences). etc etc. Anyway, this is a round-about way to explain why I have not been blogging. Since my name is off of most blogs now (I suppose Luminations was just too inactive), it’s likely no one is reading this right now. Still, it’s a psychological barrier I need to surpass in order to resume blogging proper. It’s also a way of buying time while I work out what I’ve missed. Universities are good for many things, but keeping abreast of current (meaning right now, not ‘in the last few years’ - the latter being a phrase denoting something one found out during the summer break) poetry, art, etc they are not.

Hurrah. I'll admit that the last few posts have been somewhat of an Eagles approach (that is sending out my third stringers to rest my starting team), but the fact is the last year has left me so beleaguered that I really did need a rest. Nevertheless, I'm done, the quizzes are over I mean, and Luminations will become ??? Well, I'll start by fixing my links to the left! - Ben

2) What is a thematic house? Define this with reference to Charles Jencks. And what kind of design, inner and outer, would you give, if you were the architect, to a multi-million dollar commission for a House of Poetry? Would you spend all the money on the building itself? Being not-so-familiar with Jencks, all I remember is his concern with semiology and “reading” architecture. Of course, there is reading to be done, but reading is also not all... Briefly, I suppose then a Thematic House would be merely a corbusier – a house in which the house was its theme. That is where every possible ‘reading’ refers back to the house’s houseness. Were I to make a House of Poetry, with a title like that it would have to be even more gaudy than the Santa House of Coralville. Perhaps the outside would be in austere concrete with friezes made up of tacky poetic scenes: Joyce at a desk, Shakespeare with right arm dramatically raised and the left gripping his chest, etc etc. I would also ensure a bland garden.The walls of all rooms on the inside would have hallmark-style greetings stenciled in red. And no windows. 3) What is the security alarm system that is likely to keep a poet like the Australian desert dweller John O'Brien from being published in a magazine like Jacket (if, indeed, he gets around to sending his work there)? In other words, think of Jacket as a sort of Bauhaus house. Would having O'Brien's decidedly naïf Red Rose poem there mess up the interior design? Would its appearance there embarrass the guests at the cocktail party, like, what... say a velvet portrait of Elvis next to the Julian Schnabels and Sally Manns? This question is about axiology and the way its messy wiring is cosmeticized by facadical architectures and floor plans. In other words, would O'Brien be rejected because his poem is ugly, or would he be rejected because the poem doesn't fit into the Total Design (a concept whose ideological vectors remain virtually uninvestigated within the institution of avant-garde poetry)? This is a very important question. Answer it at length. Absolutely because the poems don’t fit into the total design. There is no such thing as an ugly or bad poem, unless we are prepared to talk in relative terms. I do think Billy Collins is awful, I despise Wordsworth, I agree with Pound re. Whitman (what happened to those twenty or thirty pages?), and think Williams is a bore but that is not the way to talk about poetry. Good and bad is for Bush. The question should always be ontological (why is something there) rather than a matter of valuation (is something good). Total Design, in this context, is merely a way to talk about editing. An editor has no use for good poems that don’t fit the design. It’s no secret or surprise. We may find what we consider to be bad poems in good magazines, however, my point is that it is not a question of good or bad but how to situate such poetry. O’Brien’s poems are naive, but rather than dismissing him or them, we may want to look into how perhaps they come to be in this way. If they are published, in what context (thematic, or otherwise) are they published etc. 4) How high can a poem be built? Can it have elevators? Can the cable on the elevator in a high-rise poem snap so that the elevator drops for hours, crashes through the ground floor, and keeps going all the way down to Hell? What do you think the architecture is like in Hell? No. No. No. Hell is a presupposition of heaven etc, so from this atheist, no. Quiz #11 This final quiz contains only one long question. Your answer will need to be at least equally as long... It would be easy to rewrite each of the architectural interpolations in the quote below to describe the current ideological Other of the poetic field. (In fact, we will place poetry in parentheses, in nominal or adjectival form, where appropriate.) So: Is such social/economic magma poetry's repressed but elemental ground? If not, why not? What would be needed to move beyond its big suck so as to loose poetic production into a truly autonomous and liberatory field? Here is the quote. Five extra points if you can identify its source: “The institution of architecture [poetry] is clearly more than buildings [poems] and the practices by which they are produced... The building [poem] itself is no more than a specific mechanism of representation. In fact, there is no such thing as a building [poem] outside of a large number of overlapping mechanisms of representation: schools of architecture [poetry], professional codes of ethics, critical practices, historiographical methodologies, academic protocols, pedagogical techniques, curriculum structures, the strategic role of the author's signature and project credits, legalization of the word architect [poet], designated safety factors in structural [prosodic] calculations, standardized drawing [writing] techniques and conventions, building [attributional undergirding] codes, aesthetic codes, zoning codes, clothing codes, school admission standards, faculty classifications, fee structures, hiring and firing practices, rhetorical conventions, examination structures, model-making techniques, various forms of etiquette, legal contracts, copyright law, the structure of the slide lecture, strategic control and dissemination of ideas through conferences and publications, ritualized master worship, theoretical and graphic commonplaces, copy-editing protocols, interview and presentation formats, photographic techniques, the institution of the architectural [poetry contest] jury, portfolio construction and circulation rituals, competition formats, official and unofficial club membership control. Funding patterns, the structure of the architectural [poetic] monograph, the biography and so on, to name only some of the most obvious ones. All of them are mechanical systems of reproduction whose ritualistic, if not fetishistic, repetition constantly affirms the presence of architecture [poetry] rather than analyzes it. Indeed, the very intensity of their repetition seems to mark a nagging but suppressed doubt about that presence. They are the real mechanics of architecture [poetry]. The building [poem] is literally constructed by these mechanisms of representation. I’m putting my money on Mark Wigley’s book, The Architecture of Deconstruction? At any rate, this could merit a long response, but essentially this is asking about context. And, yes, as stated briefly above, poems need to be contextualized not into good/bad or long short, successful/ unsuccessful. These are the type of silly valuations that produce the bickering over Alan Sondheim’s work on the poetics list for example. The question is not whether Alan’s work is gibberish or spam or even good. In fact there are questions. What allows him to produce as he produces? From where does the work arise (not just in Brooklyn, but precedents)? etc etc. Those questions make the work tell (or talk if you prefer). [end]

3) If architectural theory has any utility for innovative poets today (careful: this is still an open question! [see, for example, Peter Riley's book, Architectural Analogies in Poetry: Comparing Apples and Oranges in Elysium]), then what happens when Steve McCaffery, for example, writes a poem under the influence of Vitruvius and Alberti, both of whom insist that the ordering and structure of their respective theoretical treatises perfectly match that which they prescribe for building (theory as art work)? Does the poem then take shape *around* the ideological Poet-space from which it is secreted, or does the poem instantiate itself as a kind of discrete space or chamber, like an hexagonal cell in a honeycomb, built by a bee who is, for all intents and purposes, blissfully blind to his Queen? Answer, please, in 300 words, via the technique of Automatic Writing. automatic, as proscribed Which distinctions is the Johnson fellow making at any rate? if vitruvius wrote under the influence of mccaffery, what then? think de koonig i’m no Which distinctions is the Johnson fellow making at any rate? if vitruvius wrote under the influence of mccaffery, what then? think de koonig i’m not influenced by history, i influence it. the question is about the quantities of self in restrained by the strictures of architectural theory. impossible not to be influenced by poet-space, even mac low knew this. the poem may look like a chamber and certain other poets may talk it into a chamber, but it is not a chamber. i am now confronted with the problem of fulfilling many more words it is not automatic to talk to oneself, but one does. what is perhaps of more interest is the poetic pre-fab. those metrical-types have been pre-fabbing for years to the extent that an improvisation in an accent or stress is made to be an innovation. they upset me these pre-fabbists. walking around a metrical poem is akin to the mall – no viciousness intended mike, but my sensibilities have been offended by a certain crassness in this ‘debate’ between the versists and the whitmanists, this is an argument like gay marriage and in the end we must ask who gives a fuck (i choose my words carefully, ‘damn’ is not it). not even the mall, the mall where no shopping is essential and all space is designed for one to end up in. lets not end up for a while. malls are extreme durandian places, and the house is the place the versists start from (I don’t do pun disclaimers). this wall goes here and has gone here and always will go here. the master contractor will make the better wall, but the structure is the same walls, different nails, glue, etc... I’m amazed how ranting I can get doing automatic. Sorry. sanbyaku. 1) Go back to Quiz #6 and review the outline given there of Total Design as insistent concern in 20th century architecture, in both its implosive and explosive traditions. Now consider the following dictum/ars poetica of Barrett Watten, an experimental poet and theorist who has been as interested in issues of architecture and social space as any American poet since the Vietnam war: that poetry is, in its essence, the manifestation of a mind in control of its language. What is the relationship between the connotations of such a terrifying pronouncement and the overall look of Architectural Digest magazine? Illustrate your answer with photographed interiors of three corporate conference rooms in the magazine. Not having access, nor entirely desiring it, to Architectural Digest, what one can surmise is that the Watten pronouncement, upon which I hope in the name of all equitableness he has reneged, is as much about the illusion of control and transparency as the contents of AD. A ‘mind’ or a thinking body is never ‘in control’ it only hopes that it is. hyper-awareness is not ‘control.’ Poetry’s relationship to language comes down to, in some way, an intense awareness of language being used. Poets are not especially sensitive. In fact, we are downright clumsy. One need only scan any poetry discussion group as a demonstration of how even the ‘best’ are really children fumbling with footballs. [May extend this answer]

Quiz #9 1) If architecture is merely sculpture that bodies can enter, then is poetry merely prose into which certain tunnelings and orifices have been chiseled? If this definition is valid, would you qualify it as an effective materialist definition of poetry? Write your answer in block letters. architecture is not merely “sculpture that bodies can enter.,” in fact we’ve been going this whole quiz without ever talking about what architecture is. perhaps we can say that some architecture is merely this type of functional candy, some is not. in poetry i would say that certain types of poetry – say much of billy collins, much ‘confessional’ “lyric,” etc – are merely chiseled prose, if even chiseled. but to return to the question, “what is architecture?”, is not really an answerable question. there are simply too many threads and unless one has an agenda, an architectural cause one intends to further, then the argument for a definition is superfluous. this is non-committal, I know, but i’ve tired of dialectics in favor of amorphous networks of ideas. that architecture should be changing, that architecture produces personal spaces, that architecture occupies relational space, forms place, and is able to reverse and deny all preceding is architecture. there is a parallel here with poetry and materialism. there is nothing to the above definition. 2) Assuming that there is something to the above definiton, consider the following: Recent research into Egyptian pyramids has found that the famous and heretofore puzzling secret passageways that rise from the burial chambers toward openings at the outer walls are in fact precisely pointed (when the movement of the heavens through reversed time is factored into astronomical calculations) at key constellations, especially Orion. What seems clear is that these tunnels were intended as a sort of launching ramp through which to shoot the mummy-spirit to the stars. Without losing the materialist definiton we have set forth above, would you say that poetry has a like purpose, in any way? If not, would you say that there are particular objective historical forces (beginning with 17th century English copyright laws) that have progressively accreted to seal over the launch-openings with a kind of viscous substance? Reflect, please, avoiding vagueness. I believe there are fertility rites connected with this theory of the secret passageways, no? Don’t they believe that the shafts were representational of the penis shaft and that the ascent to the stars was somehow related to ejaculation? (Please reread question and draw from this whatever conclusions, I, out of modesty, shan’t say) So what this question is asking is, essentially, does poetry have a purpose as did the pyramids. I shouldn’t need to invoke the ‘bardic’ tradition in order to speak of purposes, but it is probably true that today that poetry has no ongoing purpose. For people who do not read poetry often, the purpose seems to be merely an expression of or sympathy for emotion. This is the GWB reading of poetry. But purpose, no. When asked about the purpose of poetry, I think of the scene in Trainspotting when the group of Glasgow junkies discovered their baby dead in the crib. One of the characters says to the protagonist, “say something” (or probably “fucking say something”), meaning, in the context, he needs some combination of words to mollify the horror in front of them. Without intending to get pretentious, Ewan McGreagor’s silence is more the poetry I have come to prefer – that is the poetry that refuses to mollify or provide us with an escape from the horror. Does this admit to a purpose? I should hope not, unless of course poetry can be purposeful without being proscriptive...

4) Please consider Lenin. In 1920, in the midst of raging civil war, and shortly after a Social Revolutionary wounded him in an assassination attempt, he spoke before a Moscow conference of revolutionary architects, poets, and Constructivist artists, including Mayakovsky, Rodchenko, and Tatlin. It is dangerous, comrades, he said, to believe that Soviet art and architecture in the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat can outstrip the present and model the future. It is rumored that many of the petit-bourgeois intellectuals in the audience snickered at the ironic obviousness of such a remark. Mayakovsky, drunk, opened his trousers and produced his flaccid penis, saying, with a dead-pan matter-of-factness, Look, it is a cloud. Christian Rakovsky, later to become a leader in Trotsky's Left Opposition, laughed, and so did Brik and Mandelstam and Lunarcharsky (the latter who, in democratic spirit, had chosen to sit among the artists). Stalin, sitting across the aisle, two rows back, inhaled, blew smoke, and took note. It is said that Lenin was unusually lethargic and hesitant in this speech, perhaps due to his recent gun wounds. Taking the above scenario as starting point, make up a relevant question relating to Poetic Architecture, and then answer it. Could the erect cloud have fashioned a future? If so, which aphrodisiacs should have the Constructivists offered flip-floppy Lenin? ) Derrida has said, in speaking of deconstructive architecture (Tschumi, Eiseman, Johnson, Steven Holl, COOP Himelblau, and others): First of all, they do not only destroy, they construct, effectively, and they construct by putting this architecture into a relation with other spaces of writing: cinematographic, narrative (the most sophisticated forms of literary narration), finally experimentations with formal combinations... all of this is something other than a restoration of architectural purity, even though it is also a thinking of architecture as such, that is, architecture not simply in the service of an extrinsic end. So, I am now increasingly tempted to consider this architectural experience to be the most impressive deconstructive audacity and effectivity. Also the most difficult because it is not enough to talk about this architecture; one has to negotiate the writing in stone or metal with the hardest and most resistant political, cultural, or economic powers... It is these architects who come up against the resistances, which are the most solid ones in some way, of the culture, the philosophy, the politics in which we live. Doesn't this quote suggest to you that as soon as Derrida leaves the ethereal sky of Continental philosophy and enters into discussion about matters concerning everyday technology, that he comes across as a banal blabbermouth? In any case, consider, because he has a point: As long as innovative poets do not bring the imagination solidly up against the category of Authorship, that hardest and most resistant of ideological powers in the cultural field, will they ever succeed in constructing a truly new poetic architecture? Answer and speculate, in Piranesian fashion, what a revolutionary Archi-texture might be.

On the Magnificence of Dead Authors

I’m hardly in the position to take an argumentative or supportive stance for or against the Kent Johnson who wrote this (he being far more knowledgeable about Authorship than I). However, since I’ve been away so long and would hardly want to give the impression I’m skimping, I’ll offer my desultory thoughts.. First, one’d have to have ones head up/in the proverbial hole (not so you’d be visiting George dubya Bush, but far, anyway.. say Kerry distance) not to concede that Kent Johnson’s effort re: Authorship is worthwhile (he’s not chasing phantoms). And that some didn’t laugh at the Yasusada episode, is one too many flaccids for a single blog post… My difficulty is that there is a moral problem from the point of view of criticism to speak of Barthesian ‘dead authors.’ Although the case can be made without reference to Wagner that Parcifal is racially purist, the case to the opposite can also be made all too easily. Moreover, in my universe of historical punishments (I’ve literally just created this universe since really I’m a moral relativist), I’d hate for Wagner to get away scot free. But there is more to Kent’s argument than this. The Yasusada episode exposed deep ‘other cultural’ baggage that American readers can bring to a text and it is deeply important that such notions are erased from the cultural consciousness (what is that?) - not just in America. Out of curiosity, how do you (reader), read these translations from Sawako Nakayasu?. But I think there is even more to Kent’s argument than a purging of cultural assumptions, and I hope more to it than tackling aging language poets. If I understand him correctly this ‘bringing the imagination up against the category of authorship’ is rather like the Duchampian example of removing self from the work (we know this by now to be impossible). If this is so, it is curious that the point should be made. I mean haven’t writers/poets like Burroughs, MacLow, McCaffery, etc. already done this? I suppose the ‘problem,’ should one read it that way, is that such experimentation has effectively died and what passes for experiment is little but lang po imitation or ‘weirdness for wierdness’ sake.’ Lang Po is not authorless… Lang Po’s have gone to the extreme of questioning linguistic mediatedness, surely?, but they have not investigated ALL by which we are mediated.. Authorship being one issue.. But for the top prize, if we ‘imagine up against Authorship’, will we clear the path for new poetic architecture ? I’d say no. It’s an interesting and, as Kent’s projects have shown, exciting path but there is much more than culture (authorship, if it’s not clear, I identify as part of that) alone.. there is mediation in physical bodies, in environments, architecture etc etc. I’d ask if poetry can imagine itself up against those areas too…

Please pre-order Sawako Nakayasu's new book So We Have Been Given Time or Winner of the this year's Verse Prize - like we didn't already know her writing was, like, way cool!

1) Consider this thought experiment: You are a Poet, and although you cannot imagine it, you are always in a diorama. The diorama is inside a museum. The museum is located in a city. The city is in a 21st century country. The diorama changes according to the scheduling of exhibits: Savannah plains, Arctic ice, Rainforest verdure, Academic conference... Unaware of your placement, (for your reality has always been *here*) the limits of your Poetic world are obviously the limits of your diorama. Assuming this scenario, what is the spatial relationship of cutting-edge Theories of Space to your spatial predicament? Now close your eyes. Explain. Remote. 2) Please think of professional wrestling: Are the sounds the wrestlers make (the grunts and yells and body-against-canvass sounds) to the hoaxed fight as theory is to poetry? If so, is architectural theory, when quoted by poets, a kind of theatrical scream of pain? If not, why not? Think hard. Depends on the poet, but usually yes. We have a vocabulary for describing the structure of a poem, any poem. The borrowing of vocabularies to replace existing ones to no purpose is simply exoticism. 3) Let's assume that Western accentual-syllabic prosodies are a kind of white stucco wall: a paradigm of a will to order, a thin layer of periodically bumped plaster that hides the real materiality of the wall so as to produce a simulacrum of ideality and cleanliness uncontaminated by the foul fullness of history. The conceit drawn here is full of holes. Deconstruct it. OK here’s the information. White stucco walls are accentual-syllabic prosodies (both?). They are also paradigms of the 'will to order' that hides the ‘real’ materiality of the wall (otherwise known as plasterboard or siding). Ermm. Stucco walls “produce a simulacrum of ideality and cleanliness uncontaminated by the foul fullness of history”. Stucco never had it so good.. and it sounds like it could belong to either of the two main American political parties, when in fact both parties have made sure to impress a bloody history on stucco. Now those Anglo-Saxons did a lot of things, but building stucco walls was not one of them (or was it?). And in fact, if my copy of The Ruin is to be trusted, the Anglo’s weren’t averse to exposing “the materiality” of walls either. {more later}

4) The architects who talk about chaos, absence, fragmentation, and indeterminacy usually work hard to assure that you know that a design is theirs by using signature shapes and colors. Arguments about the impossibility of 'the total image' are employed in fact to produce precisely such an image-- a signed image that fosters brand loyalty. Clearly, the dream of the total work of art did not fade in modernism's wake. On the contrary, all of the issues raised by architects and theorists of recent generations that seem, at first, to signal the end of the idea of the total work of art turn out to be, on closer look, red herrings that thinly disguise the traditional totalizing ambitions of the architect. Relate this quote (5 extra points if you can identify its source) to Michael Palmer, Susan Howe, Jorie Graham, and J.H. Prynne. After doing so, briefly discuss the meaning of the Signature and its role as limen within Poetry's institutional architecture. I will go further than identify Mr. Wigley as the source for the quotation, I will link readers to the article: click here. The totalizing ambitions of the architect are characteristic of the explosive and implosive school, though perhaps more ‘total’ in the explosive school because of their worldly scheme of things… I fail on the next part of the quiz because I have only ever read Prynne of the poets listed, and was rather underwhelmed – and now can’t remember a thing about him. Nevertheless, it should be said that of course, the dream of a total work of art hasn’t faded, but one rarely finds the dream in the type of poetry espoused by the above poets. A total work of art, to my understanding, would be multi-disciplinary and the arts’ structure would operate at a ‘local’ and ‘global’ level. The message of some writing certainly inspires, incites, or changes the ways in which readers view or interact in the ‘world’. However, this is not a avant-garde idea! A total work of art in poetry leaves the page, denies reading, moves, as I feel like I keep saying, into the realm of perception itself. Poetry is at an advantage to other arts, including architecture, because it has always been so close to NOT communicating a concept. If the question is inviting me to comment on the cult of certain personalities, I’d ask who? I have but a handful of poet’s signatures, and even the cover on Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Works – the inside sleeve of which contains his signatory flowers etc – is beginning to crumble.

3) Is the Anglo-American Modernist long poem explosive or implosive in its architectures? Or is its largesse, rather, impelled by a dialectical tension between these two poles? If the latter, what does it mean that such a synthesis has resulted in the canonical ossification of the genre? And is this ossification analogous to the sacralization of those classical ruins to which millions of tourists every year make pilgrimage? Use The Cantos, The Wasteland, Patterson, Briggflatts, Cornish Heroic Song for Valda Trevlen, and The Anathemata as examples in your answer. This is a very complicated question, so don't leap to the obvious (i.e. Of course the Modernist long poem is 'explosive'!). You should think so hard that your very head catches fire. Impelled to the difficult answer that the long poem is a combination of the explosive and implosive (these terms understood in the context of the questions, not my own view of architectural writing), I’m wont to decide where to take this. The first point must be to call the possible logical fallacy of the dialectic. If the aforementioned tension is dialectical, then we should assume that the synthesis has not yet occurred. As I understand it, there is no initial tension in the synthesis until the next antithesis has arisen. I’m amused by the suggestion that a synthesis would imply ossification, however, as this is a classic critique of Hegelian and Marxist dialectics – i.e. that the State in Hegel and the communist utopia in Marx mark an end in the dialectic process, which is, of course, illogical (why should the process end?). Is it being suggested that the Anglo-American Modernist long poem is the end of some sort of dialectical process? If so, we might ask how this relates to “sacralization”. Still, the “thing” about the Modernist long poems is that when reading them, one does feel like a tourist. Wasn’t it Zukofski who made the analogy between the Cantos and rough mountain terrain (or was that what Pound told Zukofski, I forget)? One can’t help being awed by the analogies in the Pisan Cantos between Taishan and the mountains in view of the DTC camp, for example. But the shifting images and associations, lets call them part of the internal space, in MAA long poems often sit uneasily with the overall sprawl or reach of the structure as a whole. In other words, while we might follow one image to another there is a point at which the links break apart and we have no obvious recourse to a larger design.. but what this has to do with architecture, I don’t know.

Attempt 2: Are the secret desires for fame and/or notoriety of innovative writers, actually driving them to propose crazy theories about hybrid art work, especially poetry? Reflection: Surely not! All the innovative writers I know are upright honest people (and love to be called innovative) {make note of sarcasm}. Could this possibly be the implication of this elusive question? Response: There is no b/w answer to this question. I suspect something of the sort with Karen McCormack, whose intermittent findings in the field of architectural poetics are, or seem to be, absent from her actual writing – which I would unfairly classify, if pushed, in the post-language school. Although I’ve heard that she made a (successful?) recommendation to MG about adding a ‘missing’ section to The Mechanism of Meaning, I’m yet to see where she sees architecture working in her poetry. Perhaps because it is my view that “poetry” – the stuff made of lines and verses and a (closed/open) meaning - cannot be architectural in any meaningful sense, I can’t see the direction of her architectural poetics. Madeline Gins, however, has already produced architectural writing in Hellen Keller/or Arakawaand has inserted what I would call architectural writing/poetry (no scare quotes) in Architectural Body. In fact, she’s the most explicitly architectural writer I know of. Lamont Young is also a very architectural poet (sic). 2) As partly evidenced by the November, 2000 Language/Poetry/Performance Conference in New Dehli, contemporary innovative poets have become influenced by recent architectural theory's critique of Total Design, a concept that has two meanings: a) the implosive, in which design takes over all interior space (Sullivan, Wright, Taut, the Vienna Secession, etc.) and b) the explosive, where architecture is destined and authorized to move outward beyond discrete structure to encompass all scales (the Harvard School of Design via Gropius, the English Designs and Industries Association, etc.). The former resists (in petit-bourgeois/aristocratic fashion) industrialization and mass culture; the latter (in futuristic/avant fashion) seeks to become its very spirit. The former is most famously embodied by the Weimar School of the Arts and Crafts, under the leadership of van der Velde; the latter by the Bauhaus, under the inspiration of Gropius. Now, one could see the implosive school as analogous with the circumscribed ontology of mainstream, workshop verse, including recent conservative expressions of formalism: the Architect-Poet is the Hero of Interior Design. But one can also see, as Mark Wigley, head of Princeton's School of Architecture points out, that the explosive school is founded on an ...explosion of the designer. Not only are objects designed, mass-produced, and disseminated; the designer himself or herself is designed as a product, to be manufactured and distributed. The Bauhaus produced designers and exported them around the world. The vast glass walls of the Dessau building which, in Gropius's words 'dematerialize' the line between inside and outside, suggest this immanent launching outward of both students and their designs. Even the teaching within the studio was a product. Gropius said that he only felt free to resign in 1928 because the success of the Bauhaus was finally established through the appointments of its graduates to teaching posts in foreign countries and through the adoption of its curriculum internationally. Write an answer of at least 300 words drawing parallels between the Bauhaus as described by Wigley and Language poetry, with particular attention to the latter's accelerating absorption by the academic institution. Be rigorous in your answer and avoid servile timidity. My answer won’t be 300 words, and is undeniably glib. (North) Americans fuss over language poetry. Lang Po and Bauhaus are fundamentally different in that the former is primarily a national and parochial movement, whereas the latter is international, though I’m not convinced it was necessarily explosive. Certainly, Lang Po is much more interesting than most workshop poetry. Nevertheless, these two forms of writing have more in common than they would perhaps like to admit. Both still subscribe to a fairly ‘representational’ view of poetry. Both are convinced of the absolute power of language. The absorption of Lang Po has more to do with the changing face of academia than it does with any sort of Lang Po supplication.

Quiz #6 1) Is it possible that the recent desire amongst innovative writers to build analogic skywalks into a discipline of power and social utility such as architecture may be impelled from below by a hidden structure of ideological tensions and undergirdings that parasitizes and eats from within, thus shaping, as it consumes, the very social space of avant-garde aesthetic practice? Answer yes or no, and then rewrite this question into a syntax that is less onerous. Erring on the side of caution, I’ll say ‘no’ until I’ve rewritten this. I’m going to attempt a couple of interpretations as an additional hedge. Attempt 1: Are innovative writers appropriating topics such as architecture in order to add utilitarian (or pragmatic) purpose to avant-garde aesthetic practice? Reflection: The onerous version of the question suggests that the writers are driven by an “ideological conflict”, meaning, possibly, the conflict between something ostensibly pragmatic like architecture (or science) and the superfluous avant-garde writing. Response to Attempt and Reflection: It is possible, but current trends would indicate the opposite. Take almost any of Kenneth Goldsmith’s books, which are totally useless and, in terms of content, have nothing of intellectual value to tell us (aside from a little bit of gossip). The statement of uselessness, however, is paradoxically powerful for reasons that have little to do with architecture (ask me another time). Even Madeline Gins, who has said that she is always pragmatic, and whose books do offer ‘content’, doesn’t seem to have aspirations to make writing more purposeful – in fact, she appears to believe writing serves a very important utility. That said, she also doesn’t appropriate or “build analogic skywalks into” architecture, she lives in it (don’t we all?). {more attempts later, time providing}

3) The following question is two questions, really, so points are double (tripled if the two answers are seamlessly melded into one): a) What is a flutter echo? Provide one example from the current English Poet Laureate and another from one of Jack Spicer's translations of Federico Garcia Lorca. b) Was Kurt Schwitter's Merzbau a visionary and mystical poetic text or a meaningless shrine to garbage, insanely imploding into an ever-more claustrophobic post modern space? Justify, being careful to note the possible irony in the question. For the literal answer to ‘a’ click here. This is a question about surfaces and parallels. You see, Mr. Motion is our flat surface. With his poems being on one side and his paymaster on the other, both are, to all extents and purposes, dull (unless you read the celeb pages) to the extent of unintelligibility. That is, so intelligible I can’t believe what I’m reading. Now enter the flutter, Jack Spicer (with his others) whose sense bounces off a Lorca we barely recognize were it not for the letters. Even still, through this absent dialogue between Jack and Federico in which Jack echoes Lorca and echoes Jack echoing Lorca and echoes Jack being Lorca through the transparent façade of translation there is a surface intelligibility that belies the unintelligibility of layer upon layer of voices. In like manner, the Merzbow is a layered unfinished construct of garbage, urine, feces, and all sorts of (stolen) ‘stuff’. However, Merzbow is not a flutter echo. There are layers that form a kind of narrative that belies the chaos of its own construction. Its space is mystical in the way that Henry Vaughn is (for me) mystical. That is, in its perpetually unfinished state one is release from the burden of completion (tautological?). In fact, in the Merzbow is really the “mysticism” of an anarchic, Bakhuninian, impulse in which we are granted the freedom of our own willed construction through the destruction and manipulation of acceptability. In other words, the Merzbow allows one to do whatever one wants to do with the accumulation of shit – literal and figurative – from everyday life, memory, friendships (Schwitters became notorious for stealing friend’s belongings for his Merzbow), etc. There is irony in the question as in the answer. 4) What is more relevant to avant-garde poetry's possible coextensiveness with architecture: The Brooklyn Bridge or the ruins of a university after a riot? Explain. “Coextensiveness” reveals a certain agenda relating to poetry and architecture – and this is a point I’ve been trying to tease out. What would be the value of running parallels between poetry and architecture (e.g. a frieze is to architecture what Pre-Raphaelites are to poetry) other than a kind of flattery to one or the other practices? I’d suggest that co-extensiveness is less important than the actual correspondences between language and architecture. One interesting example of this is Matt Siber’s work. An example here: Perhaps if I attempt a direct answer to the question I can make myself clearer. The Brooklyn Bridge is certainly more important to poetry’s co-extensiveness with architecture. When I think of Whitman or even Sandburg, the Bridge figures prominently. I would say that the figure of the Bridge contributed to their New York as it did/does in architectural terms. And for certain strands/ strains of avant-garde poetry, the Bridge suspends continuity (sorry for being facetious) of a more representational mode of expression. Now, the ruins of a university I would say are actually co-extensive with the Brooklyn Bridge as I framed it. Thinking of the ruins of the University, I recall The Futurist Manifesto (“We will destroy museums, libraries, and fight against moralism, feminism, and all utilitarian cowardice”) and the early C20th idealist cult of youth (i.e. before Nintendo, Snoop Shaggy Dogg ??, etc). I recently argued that in Futurism one can find the seeds of the non-representational in art (C.f. my John Cage quote about perceptual art) in, especially, Russolo. However, my reading is based on an interpretation of Futurism less commonly found in literature and more often argued about by such luminaries as John Cage – and I think even Henry Flynt may have talked about them recently on Anal Magic. For literaries, futurist destruction links too nicely to making it new and has no architectural overtones. Thus, the destruction of the university is as much of an albatross to avant-garde writing as the Brooklyn Bridge. It is highly likely I am lost in my own ruminating logic. But I should add that for Situationists up to recent “Black Bloc” anarchists the destruction and reclamation of space does have a linguistic angle, space being what participates in the codification of interactions that will always be complicit in an exploitative (capitalist) system. Navigating through Paris with a map of London, rebuilding office space into aesthetic space etc.