WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.510 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.510 --> 00:00:05.080 align:middle line:84% This event, in some ways, is very much about community. 00:00:05.080 --> 00:00:06.870 align:middle line:84% And I feel honored to be in this one, 00:00:06.870 --> 00:00:11.130 align:middle line:84% and to be able to thank Chax Press's cosponsors for helping 00:00:11.130 --> 00:00:13.230 align:middle line:90% to make this event happen-- 00:00:13.230 --> 00:00:17.160 align:middle line:84% POG, University of Arizona Poetry Center, 00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:22.140 align:middle line:84% Pima Community College, the Tucson Pima Arts Council, 00:00:22.140 --> 00:00:26.250 align:middle line:84% Arizona Commission on the Arts, the Southwestern Foundation. 00:00:26.250 --> 00:00:29.250 align:middle line:84% And I can't thank all the individuals who help, 00:00:29.250 --> 00:00:32.700 align:middle line:84% but I do want to specifically thank Frank Parker, 00:00:32.700 --> 00:00:35.790 align:middle line:84% Josh [? Mettling, ?] and [? Kristy ?] Delgado, 00:00:35.790 --> 00:00:39.990 align:middle line:84% Miranda [? Reybach, ?] Cynthia Miller, Gail Brown, 00:00:39.990 --> 00:00:43.320 align:middle line:84% Roberto Bedoya, [? Ruben ?] [? Rokeney, ?] Leanne 00:00:43.320 --> 00:00:46.620 align:middle line:84% Sotomayor, Tenney Nathanson, Sue Carnahan, 00:00:46.620 --> 00:00:49.740 align:middle line:84% David [? Gittin. ?] And I wish I could think of lots more, 00:00:49.740 --> 00:00:53.430 align:middle line:84% they make this place pretty terrific. 00:00:53.430 --> 00:00:55.800 align:middle line:84% Also want to announce that two of those groups, 00:00:55.800 --> 00:00:58.740 align:middle line:84% POG anyway, has an event on February 27 00:00:58.740 --> 00:01:01.800 align:middle line:84% with the poet Kim Lyons and the performance artist 00:01:01.800 --> 00:01:05.400 align:middle line:84% Denise Uyehara at 7:00 PM at the drawing studio. 00:01:05.400 --> 00:01:08.580 align:middle line:84% And the University of Arizona Poetry Center, 00:01:08.580 --> 00:01:15.000 align:middle line:84% February 4 at 8:00 PM, has a poetry reading with Sanoon-- 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:16.830 align:middle line:90% Sinan Antoon, excuse me. 00:01:16.830 --> 00:01:20.110 align:middle line:90% 00:01:20.110 --> 00:01:23.110 align:middle line:84% This work in language, this living in language, 00:01:23.110 --> 00:01:24.610 align:middle line:90% is about community. 00:01:24.610 --> 00:01:28.040 align:middle line:84% I have known Ron Silliman for 25 years, 00:01:28.040 --> 00:01:31.480 align:middle line:84% but I can probably claim him as part of an extended community 00:01:31.480 --> 00:01:34.960 align:middle line:84% in which I have come to know poetry and art for quite 00:01:34.960 --> 00:01:36.850 align:middle line:90% a bit longer than that. 00:01:36.850 --> 00:01:41.500 align:middle line:84% I have known Marilyn Crispell for less than 25 hours, 00:01:41.500 --> 00:01:43.810 align:middle line:84% though I have known her work for 15 years 00:01:43.810 --> 00:01:47.450 align:middle line:84% or so, have hoped to bring her here for about a decade. 00:01:47.450 --> 00:01:50.620 align:middle line:84% And if I wanted to trace connections through community 00:01:50.620 --> 00:01:54.440 align:middle line:84% of listening and thinking about music and art 00:01:54.440 --> 00:01:58.940 align:middle line:84% to her transformative work, that too would add up 00:01:58.940 --> 00:02:01.280 align:middle line:90% to half my life or so. 00:02:01.280 --> 00:02:04.470 align:middle line:84% But I come back to this community this evening. 00:02:04.470 --> 00:02:07.650 align:middle line:90% And again, thank you for coming. 00:02:07.650 --> 00:02:11.330 align:middle line:84% I am torn in my thinking about art, and poetry as language 00:02:11.330 --> 00:02:12.410 align:middle line:90% based art. 00:02:12.410 --> 00:02:14.480 align:middle line:84% I believe, with many, that humans 00:02:14.480 --> 00:02:18.170 align:middle line:84% are distinctive because we are makers of signs and symbols. 00:02:18.170 --> 00:02:23.300 align:middle line:84% That is, we create things that are not strictly utilitarian. 00:02:23.300 --> 00:02:27.440 align:middle line:84% Art in this sense has no use, in a very limited sense. 00:02:27.440 --> 00:02:29.090 align:middle line:84% And to some ways of thinking, that 00:02:29.090 --> 00:02:32.300 align:middle line:84% is its value in a world where we are constantly 00:02:32.300 --> 00:02:34.760 align:middle line:90% pressured to be productive. 00:02:34.760 --> 00:02:36.600 align:middle line:90% Yet signs are essential. 00:02:36.600 --> 00:02:39.950 align:middle line:84% We think in them, through them, and with them. 00:02:39.950 --> 00:02:41.720 align:middle line:90% Too often, we rest in them. 00:02:41.720 --> 00:02:47.270 align:middle line:84% Ideas become chronic frames, fossilized. 00:02:47.270 --> 00:02:49.250 align:middle line:84% Ron Silliman is one of the few artists 00:02:49.250 --> 00:02:52.820 align:middle line:84% I know who has changed the terms of our engagement with signs, 00:02:52.820 --> 00:02:57.680 align:middle line:84% and with the world they indicate, record, and inspire. 00:02:57.680 --> 00:03:01.220 align:middle line:84% His work has at some times been called-- 00:03:01.220 --> 00:03:04.070 align:middle line:84% inaccurately, I think-- non referential, 00:03:04.070 --> 00:03:07.850 align:middle line:84% only because it has often not been referentially received 00:03:07.850 --> 00:03:09.830 align:middle line:90% in long practiced ways. 00:03:09.830 --> 00:03:12.770 align:middle line:84% Ways that Ron might once have argued 00:03:12.770 --> 00:03:16.820 align:middle line:84% are diseased, or at least need to be called into question. 00:03:16.820 --> 00:03:18.410 align:middle line:84% Instead, I actually think his work 00:03:18.410 --> 00:03:22.670 align:middle line:84% is a kind of inspired realism, where the real is less framed, 00:03:22.670 --> 00:03:24.800 align:middle line:90% less packaged for consumption. 00:03:24.800 --> 00:03:28.040 align:middle line:84% Or at least, quite differently framed. 00:03:28.040 --> 00:03:30.920 align:middle line:84% And the means of his seeing, language, 00:03:30.920 --> 00:03:34.160 align:middle line:84% as Barrett Watten has said, was a process 00:03:34.160 --> 00:03:37.700 align:middle line:84% of ideological unmasking, an unlinking 00:03:37.700 --> 00:03:43.220 align:middle line:84% of interests from chronic ideas and reified frames. 00:03:43.220 --> 00:03:45.440 align:middle line:84% Ron Silliman's work is the world, 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:47.420 align:middle line:90% and it is ours, and yours. 00:03:47.420 --> 00:03:49.640 align:middle line:90% All of ours, or no one's. 00:03:49.640 --> 00:03:52.550 align:middle line:90% That is, its own. 00:03:52.550 --> 00:03:58.460 align:middle line:84% All claims are partial, all coherences may just be effects. 00:03:58.460 --> 00:04:01.970 align:middle line:84% Watten also once famously wrote about Silliman's work 00:04:01.970 --> 00:04:05.510 align:middle line:84% that, "a bus ride is better than most art. 00:04:05.510 --> 00:04:08.360 align:middle line:84% To enter the work might be possible anywhere, 00:04:08.360 --> 00:04:10.670 align:middle line:90% as one gets on or off a bus. 00:04:10.670 --> 00:04:15.350 align:middle line:84% It is possible, in fact, to read this book on a bus." 00:04:15.350 --> 00:04:19.040 align:middle line:84% Indicating in part that Silliman's work is coterminous 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:24.500 align:middle line:84% with the world, or, like that world, not terminus at all. 00:04:24.500 --> 00:04:27.080 align:middle line:84% Ron Silliman's thinking about and writing in 00:04:27.080 --> 00:04:29.240 align:middle line:84% and with signs has taught me to see 00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:32.210 align:middle line:84% the world in a way that has opened it up to me, 00:04:32.210 --> 00:04:34.470 align:middle line:90% opened me up to it. 00:04:34.470 --> 00:04:37.940 align:middle line:84% I find and feel that accomplishment 00:04:37.940 --> 00:04:41.630 align:middle line:84% in the work of this poet to be a wonder. 00:04:41.630 --> 00:04:45.350 align:middle line:84% The Alphabet may be la divina commedia 00:04:45.350 --> 00:04:47.510 align:middle line:90% of our time and language. 00:04:47.510 --> 00:04:50.170 align:middle line:84% Please help me welcome Ron Silliman.