Christian Bök-- chboks.com/content--
everything you wanted to know about Christian Bök but were
afraid to ask.
uber.com/papers.
Poetryfoundation.org/harriet.
Epcbuffalo.edu/a uthors/bok/nickle.
Lumiere.net.nz/reader.
Libraryobabel.blogspot.com
"One-- aesthetic criticism has, of course,
remarked at length upon the role of the nude
in the history of art, describing
the ways in which the body of the woman
has become a cipher for both the idealized values
of formal beauty and the subaltern
values of erotic desire.
The pinups here suggest the extreme degrees
to which a poet might begin to fetishize
the sensual, optical appeals of language itself,
admiring the contours of letter forms
in a manner reminiscent of obsessive libidinal fixations.
The letters in the caption of the usual porno image
have thus begun to displace the nude body, behaving like it
rather than referring to it.
[LAUGHTER]
Two-- such a cartouche is a seed pod of cocoons, ready to burst
open like the front cover of a book,
pollinating us with larval spores
that we, in turn, incubate and transmit.
Three-- innovation in art no longer
differs from the kind of manufactured obsolescence
that has come to justify advertisements
for improved products.
Four-- I do not write anecdotes about my personal life,
largely because I do not think that such storytelling
is going to make much of an epistemological contribution
to our understanding of poetics itself.
Five-- Langpo has pushed poetry as far as poetry can go.
Now poetry must find new avenues of thought beyond poetry
itself, seeking inspiration, for example,
in the work of architects and musicians, scientists
and engineers.
Six-- Lewis Carroll, I believe, has Humpty Dumpty say,
'Take care of the sounds and the sense will take care
of itself.'
[LAUGHTER]
Seven-- I still feel I have a very long way
to go in order to boost the profile of avant garde poetry
among a mainstream readership."
[LAUGHTER]
Please welcome Mr. Bök.
[APPLAUSE]