WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.980 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.980 --> 00:00:04.728 align:middle line:84% Welcome to the first of the roundtables. 00:00:04.728 --> 00:00:06.270 align:middle line:84% And I want to say something about how 00:00:06.270 --> 00:00:08.220 align:middle line:90% these came into being. 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:11.770 align:middle line:84% When Frances and Gail organized this, 00:00:11.770 --> 00:00:14.473 align:middle line:84% they decided to have two roundtables. 00:00:14.473 --> 00:00:16.140 align:middle line:84% And I thought that was a very good idea. 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:19.470 align:middle line:84% And we were absolutely thrilled at the response. 00:00:19.470 --> 00:00:21.570 align:middle line:84% This, to me, is the highlight of the whole thing. 00:00:21.570 --> 00:00:23.820 align:middle line:84% Because when we invited people to apply 00:00:23.820 --> 00:00:25.500 align:middle line:84% to be on the roundtables, we only 00:00:25.500 --> 00:00:27.600 align:middle line:84% got some of the most stellar people, all of whom 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:29.735 align:middle line:84% could just as well have been among the original. 00:00:29.735 --> 00:00:31.110 align:middle line:84% The ones who are poets could have 00:00:31.110 --> 00:00:33.600 align:middle line:84% been among the original poets-- that 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:35.800 align:middle line:84% is the poets on the other panels, and so on. 00:00:35.800 --> 00:00:37.470 align:middle line:84% I'm not going to introduce and I'm not 00:00:37.470 --> 00:00:39.262 align:middle line:84% going to give you the squibs on all of them 00:00:39.262 --> 00:00:40.597 align:middle line:90% because they are in the program. 00:00:40.597 --> 00:00:42.180 align:middle line:84% But I just want to say, we have people 00:00:42.180 --> 00:00:45.360 align:middle line:84% from as far as New Zealand this afternoon, Wystan Curnow, 00:00:45.360 --> 00:00:49.470 align:middle line:84% and Graca Capinha from Portugal, and people from all 00:00:49.470 --> 00:00:55.080 align:middle line:84% over the country on this panel and distinguished writers. 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:57.780 align:middle line:84% All these people have books, plenty of books, 00:00:57.780 --> 00:00:58.980 align:middle line:90% and are very distinguished. 00:00:58.980 --> 00:01:03.210 align:middle line:84% And so the idea that you can speaks really for the center 00:01:03.210 --> 00:01:05.010 align:middle line:84% and the whole program that we have 00:01:05.010 --> 00:01:11.130 align:middle line:84% these that you have a chance to meet these absolutely stars 00:01:11.130 --> 00:01:11.710 align:middle line:90% of their own. 00:01:11.710 --> 00:01:13.050 align:middle line:90% So this will be very exciting. 00:01:13.050 --> 00:01:17.430 align:middle line:84% Now the way we're going to do it is we're going to go from-- 00:01:17.430 --> 00:01:20.160 align:middle line:84% we're going to follow the order that's printed in the program 00:01:20.160 --> 00:01:23.790 align:middle line:84% except Vanessa wanted to go last. 00:01:23.790 --> 00:01:28.530 align:middle line:84% And so we have Jesper Olsson, Marie Smart, Linda Reinfeld, 00:01:28.530 --> 00:01:31.907 align:middle line:84% Charles Alexander, Brian Reed, and Vanessa Place. 00:01:31.907 --> 00:01:33.240 align:middle line:90% We're going to go in that order. 00:01:33.240 --> 00:01:36.180 align:middle line:84% Everybody's going to have up to eight minutes to make 00:01:36.180 --> 00:01:37.167 align:middle line:90% their own statement. 00:01:37.167 --> 00:01:39.000 align:middle line:84% I'm going to cut you off after eight minutes 00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:41.640 align:middle line:84% because we want to have a real discussion so 00:01:41.640 --> 00:01:44.523 align:middle line:84% that we talk to each other and bring everybody in. 00:01:44.523 --> 00:01:47.190 align:middle line:84% And then once you have talked to each other, when there's time-- 00:01:47.190 --> 00:01:48.565 align:middle line:84% and I hope they will be-- then we 00:01:48.565 --> 00:01:49.840 align:middle line:90% will open it up to the floor. 00:01:49.840 --> 00:01:50.340 align:middle line:90% OK? 00:01:50.340 --> 00:01:51.540 align:middle line:90% So stand by. 00:01:51.540 --> 00:01:53.590 align:middle line:90% And we will start with Jesper. 00:01:53.590 --> 00:01:54.090 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:01:54.090 --> 00:01:55.750 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Marjorie. 00:01:55.750 --> 00:01:57.270 align:middle line:90% Is this mic, or? 00:01:57.270 --> 00:01:57.870 align:middle line:90% No. 00:01:57.870 --> 00:01:58.920 align:middle line:90% I need that one. 00:01:58.920 --> 00:02:00.600 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:02:00.600 --> 00:02:02.280 align:middle line:84% And you really have to talk into it. 00:02:02.280 --> 00:02:04.030 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:02:04.030 --> 00:02:04.530 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:02:04.530 --> 00:02:06.113 align:middle line:84% First of all, I want to thank everyone 00:02:06.113 --> 00:02:07.620 align:middle line:90% for the talks and readings. 00:02:07.620 --> 00:02:09.990 align:middle line:84% After I've been immersed in it during the last two days 00:02:09.990 --> 00:02:14.760 align:middle line:84% it's been fascinating and funny and inspiring, 00:02:14.760 --> 00:02:16.900 align:middle line:84% to use that word here, which was actually 00:02:16.900 --> 00:02:21.540 align:middle line:84% the only deliberate constraint I set up for my response. 00:02:21.540 --> 00:02:23.580 align:middle line:84% Yesterday afternoon, I wrote down some comments 00:02:23.580 --> 00:02:26.280 align:middle line:84% and questions that I plan to bring up today, 00:02:26.280 --> 00:02:29.010 align:middle line:84% some of them emerging from the academic's inclination 00:02:29.010 --> 00:02:32.940 align:middle line:84% for taxonomy and institutional distinctions. 00:02:32.940 --> 00:02:34.350 align:middle line:84% Of course, not with the intention 00:02:34.350 --> 00:02:35.820 align:middle line:84% of safeguarding borderlines through 00:02:35.820 --> 00:02:38.400 align:middle line:84% to force out a set of criteria for that something 00:02:38.400 --> 00:02:42.570 align:middle line:84% called a poem should be called a conceptual poem. 00:02:42.570 --> 00:02:44.310 align:middle line:84% But mainly, since such identity issues 00:02:44.310 --> 00:02:46.680 align:middle line:84% have been touched upon briefly already 00:02:46.680 --> 00:02:48.960 align:middle line:84% and are touched upon in the introduction 00:02:48.960 --> 00:02:54.360 align:middle line:84% to the UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing. 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:57.420 align:middle line:84% For example, what distinguishes conceptual poetics or poetry 00:02:57.420 --> 00:02:59.250 align:middle line:84% from the writings and conceptual art? 00:02:59.250 --> 00:03:03.090 align:middle line:84% Is there a certain negotiation between conceptual framing 00:03:03.090 --> 00:03:05.400 align:middle line:84% and materiality in the former that sets it off 00:03:05.400 --> 00:03:07.110 align:middle line:90% from the latter? 00:03:07.110 --> 00:03:08.730 align:middle line:84% Could this kind of negotiation be 00:03:08.730 --> 00:03:11.910 align:middle line:84% considered an act of poiesis, the making of progress, 00:03:11.910 --> 00:03:14.490 align:middle line:90% the shaping of language? 00:03:14.490 --> 00:03:16.680 align:middle line:84% Is it such an operation, even if deferred 00:03:16.680 --> 00:03:20.610 align:middle line:84% to the activity of selecting and moving linguistic data, that 00:03:20.610 --> 00:03:22.650 align:middle line:84% makes up for specific materiality 00:03:22.650 --> 00:03:25.060 align:middle line:84% or even a specific essential quality in the language 00:03:25.060 --> 00:03:29.580 align:middle line:84% and, for example, can its transcriptions? 00:03:29.580 --> 00:03:34.050 align:middle line:84% And if so, won't all conceptions or definitions of poetry such 00:03:34.050 --> 00:03:37.260 align:middle line:84% as, for example Roman Jakobson's, make themselves 00:03:37.260 --> 00:03:40.320 align:middle line:84% heard again in this context, and what would that imply? 00:03:40.320 --> 00:03:43.810 align:middle line:90% And so on and so forth. 00:03:43.810 --> 00:03:45.870 align:middle line:84% But then I went to the poetry reading last night 00:03:45.870 --> 00:03:49.260 align:middle line:84% and came back and decided to begin again. 00:03:49.260 --> 00:03:52.890 align:middle line:84% And I don't want to address the concept of conceptual poetics 00:03:52.890 --> 00:03:57.000 align:middle line:84% as much as some of these writing strategies and methods that 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:58.980 align:middle line:84% have been manifested here at the Poetry Center, 00:03:58.980 --> 00:04:02.070 align:middle line:84% but also elsewhere of course during the last 5 to 10 years 00:04:02.070 --> 00:04:03.150 align:middle line:90% or so. 00:04:03.150 --> 00:04:06.150 align:middle line:90% But also earlier certainly. 00:04:06.150 --> 00:04:09.150 align:middle line:84% Because one of the most exciting consequences of the use 00:04:09.150 --> 00:04:12.630 align:middle line:84% today of appropriation transcript and strategies, 00:04:12.630 --> 00:04:15.862 align:middle line:84% transposition between different contexts or media. 00:04:15.862 --> 00:04:20.220 align:middle line:84% Le tout le monde cut up montage remediation-- redescription, 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:23.220 align:middle line:84% to use a term that I bumped into recently in a new book 00:04:23.220 --> 00:04:26.460 align:middle line:84% by the French critic Franck Leibovici, 00:04:26.460 --> 00:04:28.740 align:middle line:84% where he uses it to trace the contours of what 00:04:28.740 --> 00:04:32.310 align:middle line:90% he calls a poetic document. 00:04:32.310 --> 00:04:35.310 align:middle line:84% One of the most exciting consequences of such strategies 00:04:35.310 --> 00:04:38.460 align:middle line:84% is without doubt the way they open up 00:04:38.460 --> 00:04:42.180 align:middle line:84% new vistas for literary history and criticism. 00:04:42.180 --> 00:04:43.950 align:middle line:84% Marjorie Perloff's brilliant rereading 00:04:43.950 --> 00:04:48.000 align:middle line:84% of Benjamin's Arcades Project as conceptual poem the other night 00:04:48.000 --> 00:04:49.800 align:middle line:90% illustrates this. 00:04:49.800 --> 00:04:53.920 align:middle line:84% And for example, in France during the last 10 years, 00:04:53.920 --> 00:04:57.750 align:middle line:84% these forms of writing, which have been deployed by numerous 00:04:57.750 --> 00:05:01.600 align:middle line:84% poets, have paved the way for a new approach to Lautréamont 00:05:01.600 --> 00:05:06.700 align:middle line:84% or rather Isidore Ducasse's strange second work, Poésies. 00:05:06.700 --> 00:05:09.570 align:middle line:84% However, apart from being a gift to the literary historian 00:05:09.570 --> 00:05:12.610 align:middle line:84% critic who can construct a framework for reconceptualizing 00:05:12.610 --> 00:05:17.350 align:middle line:84% earlier works the literature and reconsider traits in them that 00:05:17.350 --> 00:05:20.260 align:middle line:84% had before had to be seen as failures or oddities, 00:05:20.260 --> 00:05:22.600 align:middle line:84% these methods do of course also raise questions 00:05:22.600 --> 00:05:25.750 align:middle line:84% about the writing and reading here now. 00:05:25.750 --> 00:05:28.870 align:middle line:84% And with yesterday's poetry still sounding-- or roaring-- 00:05:28.870 --> 00:05:33.130 align:middle line:84% in my head, I would like to propose three such questions 00:05:33.130 --> 00:05:36.040 align:middle line:90% or comments or whatever. 00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:39.100 align:middle line:84% The first takes as a starting point Caroline Bergvall's 00:05:39.100 --> 00:05:42.280 align:middle line:84% wonderful moves from modulations between different languages 00:05:42.280 --> 00:05:45.362 align:middle line:84% last night, an issue that she also addressed in her talk 00:05:45.362 --> 00:05:47.320 align:middle line:84% during the morning and which was also discussed 00:05:47.320 --> 00:05:49.390 align:middle line:90% by Marjorie in her lecture. 00:05:49.390 --> 00:05:53.380 align:middle line:84% For example, in relation to Finnish poet Leevi Lehto, 00:05:53.380 --> 00:05:57.400 align:middle line:84% who also has come up with a thought-provoking idea 00:05:57.400 --> 00:06:00.610 align:middle line:84% of a broken or failed English as the potential lingua 00:06:00.610 --> 00:06:05.680 align:middle line:84% franca for a global poet to come, not the least on the web. 00:06:05.680 --> 00:06:07.690 align:middle line:84% And in regard to this, I was wondering-- 00:06:07.690 --> 00:06:10.240 align:middle line:84% and this is a somewhat vague question, 00:06:10.240 --> 00:06:12.640 align:middle line:84% come to think-- if the concept of translation 00:06:12.640 --> 00:06:17.290 align:middle line:84% could be and/or should be expanded and approached 00:06:17.290 --> 00:06:20.860 align:middle line:84% as a kind of a key concept to describe 00:06:20.860 --> 00:06:23.230 align:middle line:84% the poetics, the wrapping methods deployed and discussed 00:06:23.230 --> 00:06:24.850 align:middle line:90% here. 00:06:24.850 --> 00:06:27.610 align:middle line:84% And also, I'm curious about how you look upon a suggestion such 00:06:27.610 --> 00:06:30.760 align:middle line:84% as [INAUDIBLE]---- from an Anglo-American point of view, 00:06:30.760 --> 00:06:31.330 align:middle line:90% that is. 00:06:31.330 --> 00:06:34.970 align:middle line:90% 00:06:34.970 --> 00:06:37.310 align:middle line:84% The second question or comment I want to make 00:06:37.310 --> 00:06:40.670 align:middle line:84% was it's linked to Christian's stunning performance 00:06:40.670 --> 00:06:42.620 align:middle line:84% as well as to a piece of advice he 00:06:42.620 --> 00:06:44.600 align:middle line:84% gave during yesterday's panel, I think 00:06:44.600 --> 00:06:49.910 align:middle line:84% it was, about where one should look for poetry today-- 00:06:49.910 --> 00:06:52.880 align:middle line:84% not in literature but in science, in comics, 00:06:52.880 --> 00:06:54.435 align:middle line:90% in the mass media, and so on. 00:06:54.435 --> 00:06:56.810 align:middle line:84% And in relation to this, he also mentioned the importance 00:06:56.810 --> 00:07:00.980 align:middle line:84% of producing an epistemological contribution or addition 00:07:00.980 --> 00:07:04.880 align:middle line:84% or something or effect through through this processing 00:07:04.880 --> 00:07:09.290 align:middle line:84% in poetry of existing material found elsewhere. 00:07:09.290 --> 00:07:10.880 align:middle line:84% In France, some contemporary poets 00:07:10.880 --> 00:07:12.740 align:middle line:84% have tried to articulate this manipulation 00:07:12.740 --> 00:07:16.670 align:middle line:84% as a kind of epistemo-critical tactics, 00:07:16.670 --> 00:07:21.410 align:middle line:84% to use the word by Olivier Cantin, based 00:07:21.410 --> 00:07:23.180 align:middle line:84% on the reconstruction and distortion 00:07:23.180 --> 00:07:27.620 align:middle line:84% of cognitive patterns, to put it bluntly or very roughly, 00:07:27.620 --> 00:07:30.980 align:middle line:84% that tries to go deeper in its analysis of current culture 00:07:30.980 --> 00:07:33.098 align:middle line:90% than mere de tournament. 00:07:33.098 --> 00:07:35.390 align:middle line:84% And of course in France we have to distinguish yourself 00:07:35.390 --> 00:07:39.620 align:middle line:84% from the earlier methods of the situation is, for example. 00:07:39.620 --> 00:07:42.770 align:middle line:84% So what I want to ask is perhaps how 00:07:42.770 --> 00:07:46.070 align:middle line:84% one should count for this production of new knowledge 00:07:46.070 --> 00:07:51.080 align:middle line:84% through these methods and also how 00:07:51.080 --> 00:07:53.420 align:middle line:84% one should account for potential political critique 00:07:53.420 --> 00:07:56.090 align:middle line:90% in this project. 00:07:56.090 --> 00:08:00.500 align:middle line:84% I could want, for example, re-use here 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:05.160 align:middle line:84% in this context an old concept such as defamiliarization 00:08:05.160 --> 00:08:09.090 align:middle line:84% could still be used in a productive way. 00:08:09.090 --> 00:08:11.960 align:middle line:84% And I guess there's a number of possible accounts or answers 00:08:11.960 --> 00:08:15.650 align:middle line:90% to come up with here. 00:08:15.650 --> 00:08:19.730 align:middle line:84% My third comment and/or question connects 00:08:19.730 --> 00:08:22.700 align:middle line:84% to the issue of rereading earlier works 00:08:22.700 --> 00:08:24.260 align:middle line:84% through the same conceptual poetics. 00:08:24.260 --> 00:08:26.990 align:middle line:90% 00:08:26.990 --> 00:08:30.560 align:middle line:84% A couple of years ago, we at the magazine 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:34.190 align:middle line:84% OEI that I co-edited in Sweden suggested the term archival 00:08:34.190 --> 00:08:37.940 align:middle line:84% activism to describe part of what we've been up to since we 00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:42.530 align:middle line:84% started in 1999, which is a kind of recontextualization 00:08:42.530 --> 00:08:45.290 align:middle line:84% of a static and non-static material. 00:08:45.290 --> 00:08:49.910 align:middle line:84% Or we juxtapose poetry with technical diagrams and manuals 00:08:49.910 --> 00:08:53.870 align:middle line:84% and primers or tracks on alternative orthography 00:08:53.870 --> 00:08:55.346 align:middle line:90% and so on. 00:08:55.346 --> 00:08:58.580 align:middle line:84% And this is, even if it's mostly material from the 20th century, 00:08:58.580 --> 00:09:01.930 align:middle line:84% it's also older material from early centuries. 00:09:01.930 --> 00:09:03.540 align:middle line:84% And in the last issue that we did 00:09:03.540 --> 00:09:07.340 align:middle line:84% that we put out just a couple of weeks ago, 00:09:07.340 --> 00:09:12.470 align:middle line:84% within the past some of these editorial ideas by devoting 00:09:12.470 --> 00:09:18.530 align:middle line:84% the issue as such to editorial aesthetics or editorial 00:09:18.530 --> 00:09:20.300 align:middle line:90% poetics. 00:09:20.300 --> 00:09:21.890 align:middle line:84% Which brings me to the question then-- 00:09:21.890 --> 00:09:23.930 align:middle line:84% and the editing is, of course, another concept 00:09:23.930 --> 00:09:27.470 align:middle line:84% that could be addressed here, and has been addressed here, 00:09:27.470 --> 00:09:32.480 align:middle line:84% I think, both in relation to traditional editorial practice 00:09:32.480 --> 00:09:37.400 align:middle line:90% and to the writing program. 00:09:37.400 --> 00:09:39.740 align:middle line:84% Anyway, this brings them to the question, 00:09:39.740 --> 00:09:42.230 align:middle line:84% in view of the collaborative strategies that 00:09:42.230 --> 00:09:44.690 align:middle line:84% are being developed in the poetry discussed here-- 00:09:44.690 --> 00:09:46.640 align:middle line:84% I'm thinking, for example, Christian's 00:09:46.640 --> 00:09:51.400 align:middle line:84% recent genetics project, The Xenotext-- 00:09:51.400 --> 00:09:55.610 align:middle line:84% how much is really the idea of poetry as a solitary activity 00:09:55.610 --> 00:09:57.830 align:middle line:90% affected by this? 00:09:57.830 --> 00:10:00.890 align:middle line:84% Could one or should one, for example, 00:10:00.890 --> 00:10:07.370 align:middle line:84% include editorial collectives and editing in this field? 00:10:07.370 --> 00:10:09.350 align:middle line:84% I have no idea really what that would imply, 00:10:09.350 --> 00:10:13.460 align:middle line:84% except for that Kenneth's most suggestive conceptual poems 00:10:13.460 --> 00:10:15.320 align:middle line:84% so far-- in that case perhaps wouldn't 00:10:15.320 --> 00:10:19.070 align:middle line:84% be Soliloquy or Day or the still unfinished Day 00:10:19.070 --> 00:10:23.940 align:middle line:84% but the continuously expanding archive of UbuWeb. 00:10:23.940 --> 00:10:24.440 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 00:10:24.440 --> 00:10:25.898 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:10:25.898 --> 00:10:31.086 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:10:31.086 --> 00:10:31.487 align:middle line:90% 00:10:31.487 --> 00:10:32.070 align:middle line:90% Should I just? 00:10:32.070 --> 00:10:33.240 align:middle line:90% Yes. 00:10:33.240 --> 00:10:36.990 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to continue what you were talking about in terms 00:10:36.990 --> 00:10:39.690 align:middle line:84% of the material that's already there because that's 00:10:39.690 --> 00:10:41.400 align:middle line:84% a concept that I'm very interested in 00:10:41.400 --> 00:10:43.110 align:middle line:84% and going back to some of the questions 00:10:43.110 --> 00:10:46.230 align:middle line:84% that Tenney Nathanson posed yesterday. 00:10:46.230 --> 00:10:48.690 align:middle line:84% I'm going to start by briefly talking about Beckett 00:10:48.690 --> 00:10:50.790 align:middle line:84% because one of Beckett's radio plays 00:10:50.790 --> 00:10:53.760 align:middle line:84% is going to help me frame my comments here. 00:10:53.760 --> 00:10:55.690 align:middle line:84% And I'm going to talk about Cascando. 00:10:55.690 --> 00:10:57.870 align:middle line:84% And for those of you who maybe haven't 00:10:57.870 --> 00:11:00.780 align:middle line:84% looked at Cascando for a while, the premise of Cascando 00:11:00.780 --> 00:11:02.760 align:middle line:90% is fairly simple. 00:11:02.760 --> 00:11:03.840 align:middle line:90% There's an opener. 00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:05.370 align:middle line:90% And there's a voice. 00:11:05.370 --> 00:11:06.660 align:middle line:90% And the voice is in a box. 00:11:06.660 --> 00:11:08.702 align:middle line:84% And then there's music, which is also in the box. 00:11:08.702 --> 00:11:11.580 align:middle line:84% And the opener, what the opener does is open the two boxes. 00:11:11.580 --> 00:11:14.790 align:middle line:84% And in this radio play, what the voice says 00:11:14.790 --> 00:11:18.150 align:middle line:84% is fascinating because, well, what the BBC commentary will 00:11:18.150 --> 00:11:20.040 align:middle line:84% tell you is that this is a radio play 00:11:20.040 --> 00:11:22.560 align:middle line:84% about the creative process, which is a little bit too 00:11:22.560 --> 00:11:24.120 align:middle line:90% simplistic of an explanation. 00:11:24.120 --> 00:11:28.210 align:middle line:84% But what the voice says in Cascando is, this one, 00:11:28.210 --> 00:11:29.430 align:middle line:90% this one is the right one. 00:11:29.430 --> 00:11:31.200 align:middle line:90% No more stories. 00:11:31.200 --> 00:11:32.580 align:middle line:90% Nearly there. 00:11:32.580 --> 00:11:33.810 align:middle line:90% Almost there. 00:11:33.810 --> 00:11:35.520 align:middle line:84% I'll sleep after I finish this story. 00:11:35.520 --> 00:11:37.770 align:middle line:84% And he's trying to tell the story of a character named 00:11:37.770 --> 00:11:38.610 align:middle line:90% Woburn. 00:11:38.610 --> 00:11:41.310 align:middle line:84% And he's always nearly finished, nearly there, this one, 00:11:41.310 --> 00:11:42.900 align:middle line:90% this one is the right one. 00:11:42.900 --> 00:11:46.470 align:middle line:84% And what fascinates me is that yesterday, when 00:11:46.470 --> 00:11:49.540 align:middle line:84% Tenney Nathanson was talking, he posed a question. 00:11:49.540 --> 00:11:50.670 align:middle line:90% And the question was this. 00:11:50.670 --> 00:11:51.960 align:middle line:90% Was it worth doing? 00:11:51.960 --> 00:11:55.480 align:middle line:84% Was this one more worth doing than that one? 00:11:55.480 --> 00:11:58.380 align:middle line:84% So this question of 'this one, nearly there, 00:11:58.380 --> 00:12:03.250 align:middle line:84% almost finished,' how does that apply to conceptual poetry? 00:12:03.250 --> 00:12:06.990 align:middle line:84% So in thinking about this notion of being nearly finished-- 00:12:06.990 --> 00:12:09.180 align:middle line:84% and we've been talking a lot about Duchamp-- 00:12:09.180 --> 00:12:10.740 align:middle line:84% and when you think about it, it's 00:12:10.740 --> 00:12:12.930 align:middle line:84% almost an irrelevant dialogue, when 00:12:12.930 --> 00:12:15.090 align:middle line:84% you think about the creative process involved 00:12:15.090 --> 00:12:16.650 align:middle line:90% with conceptual poetry. 00:12:16.650 --> 00:12:18.630 align:middle line:84% Conceptual poetry is never nearly finished. 00:12:18.630 --> 00:12:20.610 align:middle line:90% It's ready made-- a lot of it. 00:12:20.610 --> 00:12:22.510 align:middle line:84% It's material that's already there. 00:12:22.510 --> 00:12:27.070 align:middle line:84% So that's a concept that really fascinates me. 00:12:27.070 --> 00:12:30.640 align:middle line:84% So moving on to that is, of course 00:12:30.640 --> 00:12:32.580 align:middle line:84% that goes back to Craig's question, 00:12:32.580 --> 00:12:34.995 align:middle line:90% the new test of poetry. 00:12:34.995 --> 00:12:37.020 align:middle line:84% Not whether it's better, but whether it 00:12:37.020 --> 00:12:38.760 align:middle line:90% could have been done otherwise. 00:12:38.760 --> 00:12:41.170 align:middle line:84% So is this one, is it the right one? 00:12:41.170 --> 00:12:42.990 align:middle line:84% And what's interesting in conceptual poetry 00:12:42.990 --> 00:12:46.020 align:middle line:84% is that, I'm not saying that it's an uncreative process. 00:12:46.020 --> 00:12:48.210 align:middle line:90% I think certainly not. 00:12:48.210 --> 00:12:50.550 align:middle line:84% But the interesting thing is that the creative dialogue 00:12:50.550 --> 00:12:52.260 align:middle line:90% has been reversed somewhat. 00:12:52.260 --> 00:12:55.430 align:middle line:84% Because in Cascando, what you have is representation 00:12:55.430 --> 00:12:56.430 align:middle line:90% of the creative process. 00:12:56.430 --> 00:12:58.330 align:middle line:90% Will this one be the right one? 00:12:58.330 --> 00:12:59.190 align:middle line:90% Is it the right one? 00:12:59.190 --> 00:13:00.780 align:middle line:84% I can't come up with the right one. 00:13:00.780 --> 00:13:03.090 align:middle line:84% Whereas in conceptual poetry, it's all already there. 00:13:03.090 --> 00:13:05.440 align:middle line:90% Was this the right one? 00:13:05.440 --> 00:13:09.180 align:middle line:84% So that play on the creative process, 00:13:09.180 --> 00:13:11.520 align:middle line:84% I do think it's a reversal of the creative process 00:13:11.520 --> 00:13:16.330 align:middle line:84% rather than a negation of it is what I'm trying to say. 00:13:16.330 --> 00:13:18.570 align:middle line:84% So the other thing I want to talk about 00:13:18.570 --> 00:13:22.620 align:middle line:84% was Kenneth Goldsmith's talk yesterday. 00:13:22.620 --> 00:13:26.370 align:middle line:84% It seems like it was a while ago, but it was yesterday. 00:13:26.370 --> 00:13:31.065 align:middle line:84% Because to me, when he was talking about the fact 00:13:31.065 --> 00:13:32.580 align:middle line:84% that I don't need to say anything, 00:13:32.580 --> 00:13:34.590 align:middle line:90% it's all already there. 00:13:34.590 --> 00:13:37.230 align:middle line:84% I just need to decide what to write down. 00:13:37.230 --> 00:13:39.390 align:middle line:84% And I don't want to simplify this too much, 00:13:39.390 --> 00:13:41.700 align:middle line:84% but he's not the voice in Cascando. 00:13:41.700 --> 00:13:42.690 align:middle line:90% He's the opener. 00:13:42.690 --> 00:13:45.030 align:middle line:84% In Cascando, what the opener says 00:13:45.030 --> 00:13:49.170 align:middle line:84% is that, I don't say anything, I open, I close. 00:13:49.170 --> 00:13:51.660 align:middle line:84% Kenneth Goldsmith to me is saying somewhat 00:13:51.660 --> 00:13:52.780 align:middle line:90% at the same thing-- 00:13:52.780 --> 00:13:55.840 align:middle line:84% I start the recorder, I stop the recorder. 00:13:55.840 --> 00:13:56.340 align:middle line:90% It's sound. 00:13:56.340 --> 00:13:56.910 align:middle line:90% I open. 00:13:56.910 --> 00:13:57.930 align:middle line:90% I close. 00:13:57.930 --> 00:14:00.120 align:middle line:84% So I'm not trying to simplify the relationships here 00:14:00.120 --> 00:14:01.920 align:middle line:84% because it's not all that simple. 00:14:01.920 --> 00:14:05.100 align:middle line:84% Because in Cascando, the opener does much more than open. 00:14:05.100 --> 00:14:06.880 align:middle line:90% The opener talks a lot. 00:14:06.880 --> 00:14:07.410 align:middle line:90% So. 00:14:07.410 --> 00:14:08.520 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:14:08.520 --> 00:14:10.080 align:middle line:90% The opener is a voice as well. 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:12.120 align:middle line:84% The opener talks a whole lot in this play. 00:14:12.120 --> 00:14:15.630 align:middle line:90% So he's not just an opener. 00:14:15.630 --> 00:14:19.950 align:middle line:84% But the search for le mot juste, this search for the right one-- 00:14:19.950 --> 00:14:22.870 align:middle line:84% is this the right one, can I come up with the right word-- 00:14:22.870 --> 00:14:26.880 align:middle line:84% it's almost irrelevant because the words are all already 00:14:26.880 --> 00:14:27.480 align:middle line:90% there. 00:14:27.480 --> 00:14:29.790 align:middle line:84% Kenneth Goldsmith in writing Day, 00:14:29.790 --> 00:14:31.290 align:middle line:90% the words are all already there. 00:14:31.290 --> 00:14:35.083 align:middle line:84% There's no anxiety what word comes next. 00:14:35.083 --> 00:14:36.750 align:middle line:84% So the question, the relevant question-- 00:14:36.750 --> 00:14:39.330 align:middle line:84% that's why I want to go back to Tenney Nathanson's question-- 00:14:39.330 --> 00:14:41.760 align:middle line:90% is, was it worth doing? 00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:42.990 align:middle line:90% Was this the right one? 00:14:42.990 --> 00:14:45.030 align:middle line:84% And how do you tell that it was the right one, 00:14:45.030 --> 00:14:49.330 align:middle line:84% rather than what will be the right one? 00:14:49.330 --> 00:14:51.240 align:middle line:84% And I had some other points to make. 00:14:51.240 --> 00:14:54.210 align:middle line:84% But I mean, that's pretty much what 00:14:54.210 --> 00:14:56.910 align:middle line:90% I wanted to say in a nutshell. 00:14:56.910 --> 00:14:59.640 align:middle line:84% I don't think I've gone on quite long enough. 00:14:59.640 --> 00:15:02.795 align:middle line:90% But I mean, yeah. 00:15:02.795 --> 00:15:03.420 align:middle line:90% You must go on. 00:15:03.420 --> 00:15:04.285 align:middle line:90% I have more time? 00:15:04.285 --> 00:15:04.785 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:15:04.785 --> 00:15:06.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:15:06.040 --> 00:15:06.540 align:middle line:90% All right. 00:15:06.540 --> 00:15:08.640 align:middle line:84% So I had a few more things I want to talk about. 00:15:08.640 --> 00:15:09.265 align:middle line:90% I can continue. 00:15:09.265 --> 00:15:10.020 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:15:10.020 --> 00:15:11.895 align:middle line:84% Because one thing we haven't talked about yet 00:15:11.895 --> 00:15:13.260 align:middle line:90% is chance and chance operations. 00:15:13.260 --> 00:15:16.480 align:middle line:84% I mean, the word chance almost hasn't come up yet 00:15:16.480 --> 00:15:18.562 align:middle line:90% in the discussions. 00:15:18.562 --> 00:15:20.520 align:middle line:84% And we've talked about Duchamp, the readymades, 00:15:20.520 --> 00:15:21.187 align:middle line:90% and all of this. 00:15:21.187 --> 00:15:22.587 align:middle line:84% But chance is also also something 00:15:22.587 --> 00:15:23.670 align:middle line:90% very important to Duchamp. 00:15:23.670 --> 00:15:26.895 align:middle line:84% And I'm thinking specifically of the 3 Standard Stoppages, 00:15:26.895 --> 00:15:29.640 align:middle line:84% this notion of falling, a chant Cascando, 00:15:29.640 --> 00:15:35.150 align:middle line:84% and the falling of the three strings that he dropped. 00:15:35.150 --> 00:15:36.860 align:middle line:84% And the notion of chance is interesting 00:15:36.860 --> 00:15:43.340 align:middle line:84% because what conceptual poetry tries to do from way back when 00:15:43.340 --> 00:15:46.370 align:middle line:84% it was language poetry, I guess, is supposedly, 00:15:46.370 --> 00:15:48.200 align:middle line:84% it's trying to cut out subjectivity. 00:15:48.200 --> 00:15:50.810 align:middle line:84% And what I'm saying is that subjectivity is being equated 00:15:50.810 --> 00:15:52.980 align:middle line:90% with chance in a lot of ways. 00:15:52.980 --> 00:15:55.010 align:middle line:84% And when you think about the way that Duchamp 00:15:55.010 --> 00:15:57.010 align:middle line:84% talked about chance, he called it canned chance. 00:15:57.010 --> 00:15:59.302 align:middle line:84% When he was playing roulette, that's what he called it. 00:15:59.302 --> 00:16:00.600 align:middle line:90% He called it canned chance. 00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:02.780 align:middle line:84% So a lot of conceptual poetry, what I'm seeing 00:16:02.780 --> 00:16:05.810 align:middle line:84% is that a lot of it is canned subjectivity. 00:16:05.810 --> 00:16:08.510 align:middle line:84% I guess because to me, chance a lot of times 00:16:08.510 --> 00:16:10.280 align:middle line:84% is the same as subjectivity, or that's 00:16:10.280 --> 00:16:13.940 align:middle line:84% the way that conceptual poetry sees it a lot of times. 00:16:13.940 --> 00:16:18.650 align:middle line:84% And I guess what I mean by that is that it's never objective. 00:16:18.650 --> 00:16:20.180 align:middle line:90% The choices are never objective. 00:16:20.180 --> 00:16:22.067 align:middle line:84% It's always, if there's chance, there 00:16:22.067 --> 00:16:23.150 align:middle line:90% is always a canned chance. 00:16:23.150 --> 00:16:24.525 align:middle line:84% And no, it can't be just anything 00:16:24.525 --> 00:16:25.910 align:middle line:90% because decisions were made. 00:16:25.910 --> 00:16:29.115 align:middle line:90% 00:16:29.115 --> 00:16:31.490 align:middle line:84% There are two books that I want to mention in particular. 00:16:31.490 --> 00:16:34.310 align:middle line:84% Well, actually I want to mention three things. 00:16:34.310 --> 00:16:38.960 align:middle line:84% Crystallography, in terms of a canned subjectivity, 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:41.480 align:middle line:84% I mean, it's a brilliant book but among many things 00:16:41.480 --> 00:16:44.900 align:middle line:84% that it is, it's a book about Christian's father. 00:16:44.900 --> 00:16:47.540 align:middle line:84% And Susan Howe is not here, but The Midnight, it's 00:16:47.540 --> 00:16:48.950 align:middle line:90% a book about her mother. 00:16:48.950 --> 00:16:52.790 align:middle line:84% And that this is a very personal poetry in addition 00:16:52.790 --> 00:16:55.210 align:middle line:84% to the-- it's not just a machine language, 00:16:55.210 --> 00:16:56.960 align:middle line:84% as I think a lot of poets would say it is. 00:16:56.960 --> 00:16:58.407 align:middle line:90% It's really not. 00:16:58.407 --> 00:16:59.240 align:middle line:90% [INTERPOSING VOICES] 00:16:59.240 --> 00:17:02.970 align:middle line:84% There's absolutely no personal biography at all in that book. 00:17:02.970 --> 00:17:04.430 align:middle line:90% There's none whatsoever. 00:17:04.430 --> 00:17:06.045 align:middle line:84% It's not about my dad that at all. 00:17:06.045 --> 00:17:07.670 align:middle line:84% There's nothing in there but my father. 00:17:07.670 --> 00:17:09.410 align:middle line:84% Your father was not a gem cutter? 00:17:09.410 --> 00:17:10.422 align:middle line:90% No, of course not. 00:17:10.422 --> 00:17:11.366 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:11.366 --> 00:17:12.869 align:middle line:90% He's an alcoholic plumber. 00:17:12.869 --> 00:17:13.369 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:13.369 --> 00:17:15.819 align:middle line:90% Now you don't get to talk. 00:17:15.819 --> 00:17:17.810 align:middle line:84% You don't get to talk, Christian. 00:17:17.810 --> 00:17:18.890 align:middle line:90% You don't get to talk. 00:17:18.890 --> 00:17:21.230 align:middle line:90% The subject just be silent. 00:17:21.230 --> 00:17:25.130 align:middle line:84% About what one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. 00:17:25.130 --> 00:17:29.680 align:middle line:84% We can set historical facticity aside, right? 00:17:29.680 --> 00:17:30.823 align:middle line:90% Right? 00:17:30.823 --> 00:17:31.490 align:middle line:90% I think that's-- 00:17:31.490 --> 00:17:33.590 align:middle line:90% [INTERPOSING VOICES] 00:17:33.590 --> 00:17:35.493 align:middle line:84% Marjorie says I'm right, Christian. 00:17:35.493 --> 00:17:37.960 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:37.960 --> 00:17:41.584 align:middle line:84% She's right to be allowed to say-- 00:17:41.584 --> 00:17:43.560 align:middle line:90% Enough said. 00:17:43.560 --> 00:17:45.000 align:middle line:90% It is a book about your father. 00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:47.440 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:47.440 --> 00:17:52.255 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:17:52.255 --> 00:17:54.130 align:middle line:84% It's different from what Susan Howe is doing. 00:17:54.130 --> 00:17:57.100 align:middle line:90% But you're not a robot. 00:17:57.100 --> 00:17:57.976 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:17:57.976 --> 00:17:59.680 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:03.820 align:middle line:90% So moving on. 00:18:03.820 --> 00:18:08.200 align:middle line:84% But a fascinating phrase that Kenneth talked about yesterday 00:18:08.200 --> 00:18:10.090 align:middle line:90% was unboring boring. 00:18:10.090 --> 00:18:13.480 align:middle line:84% And is there an unsubjective subjectivity 00:18:13.480 --> 00:18:16.330 align:middle line:84% is what I'm trying to say, because a lot of times 00:18:16.330 --> 00:18:19.270 align:middle line:84% poets will take subjectivity and they'll turn it into chance. 00:18:19.270 --> 00:18:20.330 align:middle line:90% It's not subjective. 00:18:20.330 --> 00:18:20.830 align:middle line:90% It's chance. 00:18:20.830 --> 00:18:21.730 align:middle line:90% It's intervention. 00:18:21.730 --> 00:18:26.290 align:middle line:84% It's all these other words other than personal, emotional. 00:18:26.290 --> 00:18:27.700 align:middle line:90% It becomes chance. 00:18:27.700 --> 00:18:29.170 align:middle line:90% Operations becomes chance. 00:18:29.170 --> 00:18:30.623 align:middle line:90% And we talked about John Cage. 00:18:30.623 --> 00:18:33.040 align:middle line:84% I think Marjorie mentioned John Cage, the fact that no, he 00:18:33.040 --> 00:18:34.480 align:middle line:84% didn't let any noise in because he 00:18:34.480 --> 00:18:39.615 align:middle line:84% had very personal feelings about what sounds are and music is. 00:18:39.615 --> 00:18:41.740 align:middle line:84% But for John Cage, it was always chance operations, 00:18:41.740 --> 00:18:45.640 align:middle line:84% not personal operations or emotional operations. 00:18:45.640 --> 00:18:48.370 align:middle line:90% 00:18:48.370 --> 00:18:50.110 align:middle line:84% And I guess to end with that, I'll 00:18:50.110 --> 00:18:53.380 align:middle line:84% end with a quotation from Charles Bernstein. 00:18:53.380 --> 00:18:57.220 align:middle line:84% Because Charles Bernstein has this piece. 00:18:57.220 --> 00:18:58.450 align:middle line:90% It's a digital piece. 00:18:58.450 --> 00:19:00.160 align:middle line:90% It's not his father. 00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:01.357 align:middle line:90% No, it's not his father. 00:19:01.357 --> 00:19:02.440 align:middle line:90% It's not about his father. 00:19:02.440 --> 00:19:06.490 align:middle line:90% 00:19:06.490 --> 00:19:07.600 align:middle line:90% It's about humanity. 00:19:07.600 --> 00:19:10.360 align:middle line:90% 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:12.700 align:middle line:84% There's a piece that he calls "Politics." 00:19:12.700 --> 00:19:14.590 align:middle line:90% And it's a digital piece. 00:19:14.590 --> 00:19:16.250 align:middle line:90% And the letters of color-coded. 00:19:16.250 --> 00:19:18.500 align:middle line:84% I wish there was an image of it that I could show you. 00:19:18.500 --> 00:19:20.980 align:middle line:84% But what this piece says is this, 00:19:20.980 --> 00:19:24.400 align:middle line:84% "For all the utopian promise of technological optimists, 00:19:24.400 --> 00:19:28.280 align:middle line:84% the answer is not in our machines, but in our politics." 00:19:28.280 --> 00:19:31.450 align:middle line:84% So I think that's what I had to say. 00:19:31.450 --> 00:19:32.486 align:middle line:90% Thank you, Marie. 00:19:32.486 --> 00:19:38.550 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:19:38.550 --> 00:19:39.210 align:middle line:90% Hi. 00:19:39.210 --> 00:19:40.870 align:middle line:90% Thank you for being here. 00:19:40.870 --> 00:19:45.120 align:middle line:84% I would love to pick up your images of paternity-- 00:19:45.120 --> 00:19:47.850 align:middle line:84% and to my mind more interesting, maternity. 00:19:47.850 --> 00:19:49.870 align:middle line:84% And I promise to get back to that. 00:19:49.870 --> 00:19:53.340 align:middle line:84% But I wanted to start by saying that when I first 00:19:53.340 --> 00:19:55.860 align:middle line:84% saw the conference announced, I was 00:19:55.860 --> 00:19:59.310 align:middle line:84% intrigued by the title, which is Conceptual Poetry & Its Others. 00:19:59.310 --> 00:20:01.860 align:middle line:84% And the part that intrigued me was the "others" 00:20:01.860 --> 00:20:05.160 align:middle line:84% part because the "conceptual poetry" part was pretty well 00:20:05.160 --> 00:20:06.210 align:middle line:90% out there on the web. 00:20:06.210 --> 00:20:09.070 align:middle line:84% Lots of people had definitions and ideas about it. 00:20:09.070 --> 00:20:10.448 align:middle line:90% And that's all great. 00:20:10.448 --> 00:20:12.240 align:middle line:84% But the "others" part, I wasn't so sure of. 00:20:12.240 --> 00:20:14.250 align:middle line:84% So I was really happy when I heard 00:20:14.250 --> 00:20:17.220 align:middle line:84% how the others came to this conference 00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:20.460 align:middle line:84% through a collaboration between Marjorie and Charles. 00:20:20.460 --> 00:20:22.770 align:middle line:84% And there was some thought, I guess, 00:20:22.770 --> 00:20:25.230 align:middle line:84% of John Ashbery's "The Other Tradition." 00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:29.040 align:middle line:84% And I thought, well, that's the other tradition. 00:20:29.040 --> 00:20:31.810 align:middle line:84% But I was interested in the "others" tradition. 00:20:31.810 --> 00:20:34.440 align:middle line:84% And so I was thinking of that magazine 00:20:34.440 --> 00:20:38.700 align:middle line:90% that had run from 1915 to 1919. 00:20:38.700 --> 00:20:40.770 align:middle line:84% And that set itself up in opposition 00:20:40.770 --> 00:20:44.400 align:middle line:84% to Harriet Monroe's poetry magazine, the mainstream 00:20:44.400 --> 00:20:45.450 align:middle line:90% magazine at the time. 00:20:45.450 --> 00:20:47.490 align:middle line:84% And that magazine was called Others. 00:20:47.490 --> 00:20:53.580 align:middle line:84% And Others had a famous motto, "The old expressions are always 00:20:53.580 --> 00:20:57.430 align:middle line:84% with us, and there are always others." 00:20:57.430 --> 00:21:03.210 align:middle line:84% And so here we are among the others which are the others. 00:21:03.210 --> 00:21:06.210 align:middle line:84% Now I had a chance to look through those magazines 00:21:06.210 --> 00:21:08.790 align:middle line:90% at the UB poetry collection. 00:21:08.790 --> 00:21:12.450 align:middle line:84% And what caught my eye was not only that famous one, 00:21:12.450 --> 00:21:17.280 align:middle line:84% the Spectric issue, which makes fun of all the images posed. 00:21:17.280 --> 00:21:20.700 align:middle line:84% And I would say, the tradition of making fun of poetry 00:21:20.700 --> 00:21:22.950 align:middle line:84% that one doesn't respect, the tradition 00:21:22.950 --> 00:21:24.480 align:middle line:90% that's alive and well here. 00:21:24.480 --> 00:21:34.290 align:middle line:84% But also the next issue, which has as its motto on others, 00:21:34.290 --> 00:21:39.090 align:middle line:84% it says, Poetry for the mind's eye alone." 00:21:39.090 --> 00:21:41.880 align:middle line:90% Poetry for the mind's eye alone. 00:21:41.880 --> 00:21:43.770 align:middle line:84% And then-- and this is a little embarrassing, 00:21:43.770 --> 00:21:47.170 align:middle line:84% we have to work on this a little bit-- not to be read aloud. 00:21:47.170 --> 00:21:49.590 align:middle line:84% Now I'm going to say that this is the tradition-- 00:21:49.590 --> 00:21:51.840 align:middle line:84% from which lots of what's happening here-- 00:21:51.840 --> 00:21:52.830 align:middle line:90% is happening. 00:21:52.830 --> 00:21:55.860 align:middle line:84% Because I don't see anything being read aloud, 00:21:55.860 --> 00:22:00.450 align:middle line:84% in the sense that you sit and you got a piece of paper, 00:22:00.450 --> 00:22:03.390 align:middle line:84% and you read the words on the piece of paper 00:22:03.390 --> 00:22:06.760 align:middle line:84% in as dull and regular voice as you possibly can-- 00:22:06.760 --> 00:22:09.120 align:middle line:84% which is a lot of what I hear at the poetry readings 00:22:09.120 --> 00:22:12.310 align:middle line:84% that I have to go to because of my job, and not this one 00:22:12.310 --> 00:22:15.150 align:middle line:84% that I go to because it's a lot of fun. 00:22:15.150 --> 00:22:18.190 align:middle line:84% I have heard every other kind of reading here, not just reading 00:22:18.190 --> 00:22:18.690 align:middle line:90% aloud. 00:22:18.690 --> 00:22:22.320 align:middle line:84% I've heard performing, deforming, reforming, 00:22:22.320 --> 00:22:25.450 align:middle line:90% incanting, decanting, recanting. 00:22:25.450 --> 00:22:25.950 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:22:25.950 --> 00:22:29.070 align:middle line:90% We've heard lots of things. 00:22:29.070 --> 00:22:30.690 align:middle line:90% We've had lots to hear. 00:22:30.690 --> 00:22:34.380 align:middle line:84% But we have not heard, quote, "poetry to be read aloud". 00:22:34.380 --> 00:22:36.780 align:middle line:84% Yeah, I had to take elocution lessons. 00:22:36.780 --> 00:22:40.080 align:middle line:84% I think most people in this room don't know what that is. 00:22:40.080 --> 00:22:42.810 align:middle line:84% Marjorie might have a mother who could tell her 00:22:42.810 --> 00:22:45.180 align:middle line:84% what your mother was in a different place. 00:22:45.180 --> 00:22:49.500 align:middle line:84% But little girls especially used to have to memorize poems. 00:22:49.500 --> 00:22:50.520 align:middle line:90% I didn't mind that. 00:22:50.520 --> 00:22:53.640 align:middle line:84% And then you would stand up in front of an audience 00:22:53.640 --> 00:22:55.530 align:middle line:90% and recite them. 00:22:55.530 --> 00:22:57.870 align:middle line:84% And it was important what you wore, 00:22:57.870 --> 00:23:00.540 align:middle line:84% and you were to hold your hands, sort of like this. 00:23:00.540 --> 00:23:01.630 align:middle line:90% And it was a whole thing. 00:23:01.630 --> 00:23:02.130 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:23:02.130 --> 00:23:03.960 align:middle line:84% This is not what's happening here. 00:23:03.960 --> 00:23:06.000 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:09.900 align:middle line:84% But I see in Others, we've looked a lot 00:23:09.900 --> 00:23:14.970 align:middle line:84% at European ancestors paternities, maternities, 00:23:14.970 --> 00:23:15.750 align:middle line:90% things like that. 00:23:15.750 --> 00:23:19.140 align:middle line:84% Very conceptual poetry I think we have it 00:23:19.140 --> 00:23:20.400 align:middle line:90% on the American side. 00:23:20.400 --> 00:23:25.650 align:middle line:84% Now just as a footnote here-- and I'm not 00:23:25.650 --> 00:23:28.380 align:middle line:84% going to follow this up here, although I might somewhere 00:23:28.380 --> 00:23:31.470 align:middle line:84% else-- in that issue of Others magazine 00:23:31.470 --> 00:23:35.400 align:middle line:84% is Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways 00:23:35.400 --> 00:23:36.990 align:middle line:90% of Looking at a Blackbird." 00:23:36.990 --> 00:23:38.490 align:middle line:90% First publication of that. 00:23:38.490 --> 00:23:42.240 align:middle line:84% Now that's a number for the mind's eye alone-- 00:23:42.240 --> 00:23:43.440 align:middle line:90% not to be read aloud. 00:23:43.440 --> 00:23:44.280 align:middle line:90% No joke. 00:23:44.280 --> 00:23:45.540 align:middle line:90% So quite wonderful. 00:23:45.540 --> 00:23:48.060 align:middle line:84% So how do these others manifesting 00:23:48.060 --> 00:23:52.740 align:middle line:84% itself has this tradition of others manifesting itself 00:23:52.740 --> 00:23:56.700 align:middle line:90% in the poetry we've got here? 00:23:56.700 --> 00:23:58.170 align:middle line:84% Well, I'm not going to get involved 00:23:58.170 --> 00:24:00.900 align:middle line:84% in the major discussion of definitions. 00:24:00.900 --> 00:24:05.280 align:middle line:84% But I would like to play with one of the definitions that 00:24:05.280 --> 00:24:07.050 align:middle line:84% intrigued me and see how it might 00:24:07.050 --> 00:24:11.370 align:middle line:84% apply to a range of the poetry we've been hearing. 00:24:11.370 --> 00:24:15.420 align:middle line:84% And one is, I think it's Charles Bernstein who 00:24:15.420 --> 00:24:19.920 align:middle line:84% sees it as conceptual poetry as language pregnant with meaning. 00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:22.620 align:middle line:84% Or Charles, is it poetry pregnant with meaning? 00:24:22.620 --> 00:24:23.580 align:middle line:90% Thought. 00:24:23.580 --> 00:24:24.330 align:middle line:90% I beg your pardon? 00:24:24.330 --> 00:24:24.830 align:middle line:90% Thought. 00:24:24.830 --> 00:24:26.760 align:middle line:90% Poetry pregnant with thought. 00:24:26.760 --> 00:24:28.450 align:middle line:90% Poetry pregnant with thought. 00:24:28.450 --> 00:24:28.950 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:24:28.950 --> 00:24:29.550 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:24:29.550 --> 00:24:32.550 align:middle line:90% So poetry pregnant with thought. 00:24:32.550 --> 00:24:39.350 align:middle line:84% And this image of pregnancy, OK, and this since I 00:24:39.350 --> 00:24:41.570 align:middle line:90% felt first very intrigued by it. 00:24:41.570 --> 00:24:44.420 align:middle line:84% But if it's poetry pregnant with thought, 00:24:44.420 --> 00:24:48.740 align:middle line:84% and if poetry is news that stays news, 00:24:48.740 --> 00:24:50.840 align:middle line:84% then it might be staying pregnant. 00:24:50.840 --> 00:24:52.770 align:middle line:84% And I was like really, really uncomfortable. 00:24:52.770 --> 00:24:53.816 align:middle line:90% So I thought-- 00:24:53.816 --> 00:24:56.050 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:24:56.050 --> 00:24:59.050 align:middle line:90% --we should expand a little bit. 00:24:59.050 --> 00:25:01.470 align:middle line:84% And I said, he couldn't have meant that. 00:25:01.470 --> 00:25:02.680 align:middle line:90% He couldn't have meant that. 00:25:02.680 --> 00:25:04.670 align:middle line:90% That's too gross. 00:25:04.670 --> 00:25:09.400 align:middle line:84% So maybe he's thinking, it's poetry. 00:25:09.400 --> 00:25:11.680 align:middle line:84% You know, when you're pregnant, it's a good thing. 00:25:11.680 --> 00:25:13.060 align:middle line:84% Because it depends how you get pregnant. 00:25:13.060 --> 00:25:14.602 align:middle line:84% That would be a whole other question. 00:25:14.602 --> 00:25:15.830 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:25:15.830 --> 00:25:20.510 align:middle line:84% I mean, it's because I speak-- but, OK, I won't go there. 00:25:20.510 --> 00:25:24.500 align:middle line:84% But at the moment, I quite seriously 00:25:24.500 --> 00:25:31.370 align:middle line:84% think that if it comes to the idea of this conceptual poetry, 00:25:31.370 --> 00:25:35.300 align:middle line:84% this poetry we've been hearing of is more than most poetry. 00:25:35.300 --> 00:25:39.410 align:middle line:84% I get some sense of it being inhabited by something other. 00:25:39.410 --> 00:25:42.830 align:middle line:84% Now I wouldn't say that this is the only poetry that from which 00:25:42.830 --> 00:25:44.930 align:middle line:90% one ever gets that feeling. 00:25:44.930 --> 00:25:47.060 align:middle line:84% And I mean, I'm not just saying that this 00:25:47.060 --> 00:25:48.380 align:middle line:90% is appropriated stuff. 00:25:48.380 --> 00:25:50.690 align:middle line:84% But let's take something like Kenny Goldsmith, 00:25:50.690 --> 00:25:53.450 align:middle line:90% where it's just clearly-- 00:25:53.450 --> 00:25:56.990 align:middle line:84% and I asked Kenny, so I can tell you-- it doesn't mean anything. 00:25:56.990 --> 00:25:57.980 align:middle line:90% It's right there. 00:25:57.980 --> 00:25:59.090 align:middle line:90% It's flat out. 00:25:59.090 --> 00:26:01.020 align:middle line:90% Day is just that newspaper. 00:26:01.020 --> 00:26:01.520 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:26:01.520 --> 00:26:02.020 align:middle line:90% Good. 00:26:02.020 --> 00:26:05.510 align:middle line:90% And always have that sense. 00:26:05.510 --> 00:26:09.140 align:middle line:84% Always have that sense of something other is in it. 00:26:09.140 --> 00:26:11.210 align:middle line:84% There's something uncanny about it, if only 00:26:11.210 --> 00:26:13.250 align:middle line:90% because of the doubling feeling. 00:26:13.250 --> 00:26:17.360 align:middle line:84% And actually, I'm with Marjorie here. 00:26:17.360 --> 00:26:21.200 align:middle line:84% If you read it carefully, it is quite amazing of what 00:26:21.200 --> 00:26:24.210 align:middle line:90% kinds of things emerge. 00:26:24.210 --> 00:26:27.290 align:middle line:84% And so this being inhabited by some of the other. 00:26:27.290 --> 00:26:31.100 align:middle line:84% And then I thought, well, does this work for other things? 00:26:31.100 --> 00:26:34.640 align:middle line:84% Well, just this morning I was thinking about Tracie. 00:26:34.640 --> 00:26:39.020 align:middle line:84% Tracie Morris talked very early in the conference. 00:26:39.020 --> 00:26:41.600 align:middle line:84% None of the poetry she writes isn't about slavery. 00:26:41.600 --> 00:26:43.050 align:middle line:90% Did I somehow went to that? 00:26:43.050 --> 00:26:43.550 align:middle line:90% Slavery? 00:26:43.550 --> 00:26:46.460 align:middle line:84% And this morning, I was just intrigued. 00:26:46.460 --> 00:26:50.620 align:middle line:84% Embellishment hiding in the music, to say something else. 00:26:50.620 --> 00:26:52.830 align:middle line:84% Always embellishment hiding in the music 00:26:52.830 --> 00:26:53.900 align:middle line:90% to say something else. 00:26:53.900 --> 00:26:55.700 align:middle line:84% And I wouldn't be surprised if we 00:26:55.700 --> 00:26:59.030 align:middle line:84% were to look at, say, Christian's book 00:26:59.030 --> 00:27:00.560 align:middle line:90% and hear that as well. 00:27:00.560 --> 00:27:03.211 align:middle line:90% If we were to find-- 00:27:03.211 --> 00:27:04.110 align:middle line:90% am I OK with time? 00:27:04.110 --> 00:27:04.610 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:27:04.610 --> 00:27:05.540 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:27:05.540 --> 00:27:12.252 align:middle line:84% And so I was thinking, again with the pregnancy, 00:27:12.252 --> 00:27:13.460 align:middle line:90% which just keeps coming back. 00:27:13.460 --> 00:27:16.790 align:middle line:84% And now that I think of Kenney Goldsmith's last reading 00:27:16.790 --> 00:27:19.370 align:middle line:84% with the letters-- which made me even more uncomfortable 00:27:19.370 --> 00:27:20.870 align:middle line:84% with the notion of being permanently 00:27:20.870 --> 00:27:29.180 align:middle line:84% pregnant-- the giving birth to five babies at once. 00:27:29.180 --> 00:27:32.690 align:middle line:84% It was very interesting to me how these things happened. 00:27:32.690 --> 00:27:37.190 align:middle line:84% Then I thought, well, Caroline Bergvall and her language, 00:27:37.190 --> 00:27:42.800 align:middle line:84% which is so inhabited by other languages and the amazing fact 00:27:42.800 --> 00:27:47.210 align:middle line:84% of her being able to publish in English an English poem 00:27:47.210 --> 00:27:50.690 align:middle line:84% and in a journal that publishes only Norwegian. 00:27:50.690 --> 00:27:53.930 align:middle line:84% I mean, we saw that so these language inhabit each other 00:27:53.930 --> 00:27:57.150 align:middle line:84% and in each manifestation of the language, 00:27:57.150 --> 00:27:58.790 align:middle line:90% there's another language going. 00:27:58.790 --> 00:27:59.810 align:middle line:90% As the occult-- 00:27:59.810 --> 00:28:03.360 align:middle line:90% Swensen, and I was immediately-- 00:28:03.360 --> 00:28:05.360 align:middle line:84% I mean, I have been looking for ghosts frankly-- 00:28:05.360 --> 00:28:08.720 align:middle line:84% and I was so happy to find the ghost in the garden, 00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:10.100 align:middle line:90% to find the notes. 00:28:10.100 --> 00:28:11.570 align:middle line:90% Let me see. 00:28:11.570 --> 00:28:17.090 align:middle line:84% These ghosts, manifestations of unacknowledged but communally 00:28:17.090 --> 00:28:18.500 align:middle line:90% produced grief. 00:28:18.500 --> 00:28:23.180 align:middle line:84% And that I think gets a little closer to the kinds of-- 00:28:23.180 --> 00:28:25.340 align:middle line:84% it's not just a joke about this language 00:28:25.340 --> 00:28:27.110 align:middle line:84% being inhabited by something else, 00:28:27.110 --> 00:28:33.770 align:middle line:84% but that this is a meaningful kind of thing. 00:28:33.770 --> 00:28:37.220 align:middle line:84% For Christian Bök, I mean there's hardly a place where 00:28:37.220 --> 00:28:38.800 align:middle line:90% you don't feel the other. 00:28:38.800 --> 00:28:41.900 align:middle line:84% But I was thinking of the viruses taking over. 00:28:41.900 --> 00:28:45.350 align:middle line:84% I mean, that's very much a part of the thing. 00:28:45.350 --> 00:28:49.790 align:middle line:90% And one could go on. 00:28:49.790 --> 00:28:52.070 align:middle line:84% I was talking with other people at the conference, 00:28:52.070 --> 00:28:55.490 align:middle line:84% and they were very struck with how Craig Dworkin managed 00:28:55.490 --> 00:28:58.010 align:middle line:90% to get self-portraits in there. 00:28:58.010 --> 00:29:01.250 align:middle line:84% So each of these things is inhabited 00:29:01.250 --> 00:29:05.460 align:middle line:90% by some other kind of thing. 00:29:05.460 --> 00:29:08.420 align:middle line:84% And this is a little thread that I 00:29:08.420 --> 00:29:11.270 align:middle line:84% would be interested in tracing as I continue to think 00:29:11.270 --> 00:29:12.480 align:middle line:90% about conceptual poetry. 00:29:12.480 --> 00:29:13.387 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:29:13.387 --> 00:29:20.842 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:29:20.842 --> 00:29:22.830 align:middle line:90% 00:29:22.830 --> 00:29:27.360 align:middle line:84% Just as I start, I'm going to hand out rectangles. 00:29:27.360 --> 00:29:30.820 align:middle line:84% I'm going to hand a rectangle out to everyone. 00:29:30.820 --> 00:29:31.320 align:middle line:90% Here. 00:29:31.320 --> 00:29:33.630 align:middle line:84% If someone will take these and find a way 00:29:33.630 --> 00:29:34.905 align:middle line:90% to start them going around. 00:29:34.905 --> 00:29:41.580 align:middle line:84% And I'll make it maybe less than clear later why I did that. 00:29:41.580 --> 00:29:43.590 align:middle line:84% What a tangled web we weave, when first 00:29:43.590 --> 00:29:45.330 align:middle line:90% we practice to conceive. 00:29:45.330 --> 00:29:48.660 align:middle line:84% It's interesting, just hearing paternity, maternity, 00:29:48.660 --> 00:29:50.760 align:middle line:90% and pregnancy-- 00:29:50.760 --> 00:29:52.620 align:middle line:84% of course, we also use "conceived" 00:29:52.620 --> 00:29:55.890 align:middle line:84% to talk about what we do when we make babies and children. 00:29:55.890 --> 00:29:58.970 align:middle line:84% But I wonder why we don't then call the ensuing product 00:29:58.970 --> 00:30:01.322 align:middle line:90% conceptual humans. 00:30:01.322 --> 00:30:05.520 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:05.520 --> 00:30:09.510 align:middle line:84% It's absolutely great that this is here, and for some of us 00:30:09.510 --> 00:30:10.640 align:middle line:90% have been here-- 00:30:10.640 --> 00:30:13.770 align:middle line:90% in my case, 24 years-- 00:30:13.770 --> 00:30:15.780 align:middle line:84% helping to cultivate a home for the work 00:30:15.780 --> 00:30:19.020 align:middle line:84% that is related to Conceptual Poetry & Its Others. 00:30:19.020 --> 00:30:21.810 align:middle line:84% And for the Poetry Center to embrace this and do something 00:30:21.810 --> 00:30:26.100 align:middle line:90% so big, it's magnificent. 00:30:26.100 --> 00:30:29.530 align:middle line:84% For me specifically, when I came here 24 years ago, 00:30:29.530 --> 00:30:33.210 align:middle line:84% I brought one project in progress, 00:30:33.210 --> 00:30:38.760 align:middle line:84% which was a book by Jackson Mac Low titled French Sonnets. 00:30:38.760 --> 00:30:41.790 align:middle line:84% And it had a lot to do with both French and English 00:30:41.790 --> 00:30:42.780 align:middle line:90% dictionaries. 00:30:42.780 --> 00:30:47.640 align:middle line:84% And I had an odd dream about that time in which 00:30:47.640 --> 00:30:51.720 align:middle line:84% the main characters in the dream were Shakespeare and Samuel 00:30:51.720 --> 00:30:54.570 align:middle line:84% Johnson working on his dictionary. 00:30:54.570 --> 00:30:56.580 align:middle line:84% Last night, oddly enough-- don't often 00:30:56.580 --> 00:30:58.510 align:middle line:84% have dreams with literary people in them. 00:30:58.510 --> 00:30:59.340 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:59.340 --> 00:31:00.760 align:middle line:90% But last night, I had one. 00:31:00.760 --> 00:31:04.110 align:middle line:84% And I was walking along the Seine in Paris, 00:31:04.110 --> 00:31:06.450 align:middle line:90% and there was Craig Dworkin. 00:31:06.450 --> 00:31:07.740 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:07.740 --> 00:31:12.630 align:middle line:84% And sitting at a chair, at a table, only oddly enough, 00:31:12.630 --> 00:31:20.280 align:middle line:84% he was entirely encased in either of vinyl or leather bag. 00:31:20.280 --> 00:31:23.760 align:middle line:84% And yet somehow within that, he was breathing and functioning 00:31:23.760 --> 00:31:25.520 align:middle line:90% and speaking normally. 00:31:25.520 --> 00:31:29.010 align:middle line:84% And that's my distance in 24 years, 00:31:29.010 --> 00:31:32.820 align:middle line:84% from Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson to Craig Dworkin. 00:31:32.820 --> 00:31:34.386 align:middle line:90% Very pleasant dream, right? 00:31:34.386 --> 00:31:39.340 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:31:39.340 --> 00:31:39.840 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:31:39.840 --> 00:31:43.950 align:middle line:84% One of the things I wanted to maybe later return to, 00:31:43.950 --> 00:31:45.450 align:middle line:84% if this panel is to talk about it, 00:31:45.450 --> 00:31:47.980 align:middle line:84% is a question that actually Craig brought up 00:31:47.980 --> 00:31:52.440 align:middle line:84% which is, is there social and political import 00:31:52.440 --> 00:31:54.130 align:middle line:90% outside of this work? 00:31:54.130 --> 00:31:55.260 align:middle line:90% Where does it point to? 00:31:55.260 --> 00:31:57.450 align:middle line:90% Or does it incite to activism? 00:31:57.450 --> 00:32:00.810 align:middle line:84% And I remember, when he said that in his talk, 00:32:00.810 --> 00:32:06.330 align:middle line:84% there was a, pretty soon after, a question from Kenny-- 00:32:06.330 --> 00:32:08.250 align:middle line:84% or a comment from Kenny-- about wanting 00:32:08.250 --> 00:32:12.810 align:middle line:84% to preserve the sacred space of the poem for misbehavior 00:32:12.810 --> 00:32:16.200 align:middle line:84% for theft and transformation and faking 00:32:16.200 --> 00:32:19.260 align:middle line:84% and various things, which you could not 00:32:19.260 --> 00:32:21.510 align:middle line:84% do in the real world with impunity. 00:32:21.510 --> 00:32:23.110 align:middle line:84% But we need to have a place for that. 00:32:23.110 --> 00:32:27.790 align:middle line:84% And I guess I'm wondering, can we reserve the space for that 00:32:27.790 --> 00:32:29.970 align:middle line:84% but also take it out into the world 00:32:29.970 --> 00:32:31.860 align:middle line:84% with political and social import? 00:32:31.860 --> 00:32:35.030 align:middle line:84% Or is that a kind of conundrum we work at? 00:32:35.030 --> 00:32:37.080 align:middle line:84% And I think there's been a lot of commentary-- 00:32:37.080 --> 00:32:40.410 align:middle line:84% Brian Reed and various people-- that we do 00:32:40.410 --> 00:32:42.030 align:middle line:90% take it out into the world. 00:32:42.030 --> 00:32:47.460 align:middle line:84% And we do read, for example, Rob Fitterman's Metropolis, 00:32:47.460 --> 00:32:48.900 align:middle line:90% 16 in the list in it. 00:32:48.900 --> 00:32:52.800 align:middle line:84% And we think about those corporations and corporate acts 00:32:52.800 --> 00:32:55.770 align:middle line:84% and what they mean and how we are part of it. 00:32:55.770 --> 00:32:59.400 align:middle line:84% But I think that's probably open for more conversation. 00:32:59.400 --> 00:33:01.260 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:33:01.260 --> 00:33:04.560 align:middle line:84% Those are a few of the random notes I have. 00:33:04.560 --> 00:33:06.960 align:middle line:84% Or not necessarily random, but different things I 00:33:06.960 --> 00:33:08.640 align:middle line:90% want to address. 00:33:08.640 --> 00:33:12.180 align:middle line:84% Another one I want to talk about is 00:33:12.180 --> 00:33:16.140 align:middle line:84% how great it's been that much of the work here-- 00:33:16.140 --> 00:33:18.090 align:middle line:84% certainly Christian's performance, 00:33:18.090 --> 00:33:23.910 align:middle line:84% much that Tracie has talked about, Charles's recantation-- 00:33:23.910 --> 00:33:28.200 align:middle line:84% has to do with, for me, it has to do 00:33:28.200 --> 00:33:29.820 align:middle line:90% with the physical pleasure. 00:33:29.820 --> 00:33:32.040 align:middle line:84% A physical pleasure in poetry. and 00:33:32.040 --> 00:33:33.620 align:middle line:90% an absolute physical pleasure. 00:33:33.620 --> 00:33:35.740 align:middle line:84% And I'll read something about that in a moment. 00:33:35.740 --> 00:33:40.410 align:middle line:84% And I think even in Cole's talk, mentioning 00:33:40.410 --> 00:33:43.590 align:middle line:84% when subject matters dominant in poetry, 00:33:43.590 --> 00:33:46.800 align:middle line:84% the surface and the texture tends to fade away. 00:33:46.800 --> 00:33:48.720 align:middle line:90% And we don't address it so much. 00:33:48.720 --> 00:33:51.420 align:middle line:84% And this bringing out the surface and the texture 00:33:51.420 --> 00:33:52.830 align:middle line:90% is part of a physical pleasure. 00:33:52.830 --> 00:33:54.690 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to read the first two 00:33:54.690 --> 00:33:58.410 align:middle line:84% paragraphs of the main piece of a book I've been working 00:33:58.410 --> 00:34:01.140 align:middle line:84% on in a while that addresses that, and also brings it 00:34:01.140 --> 00:34:05.760 align:middle line:84% back to something not at but maybe near the origins 00:34:05.760 --> 00:34:09.120 align:middle line:90% of poetry and English. 00:34:09.120 --> 00:34:12.150 align:middle line:84% "To Louis Zukofsky's definition of the value of poetry 00:34:12.150 --> 00:34:15.010 align:middle line:84% as the experience of pleasure through sight, sound, 00:34:15.010 --> 00:34:17.370 align:middle line:84% and intellection, I would add another quality-- 00:34:17.370 --> 00:34:21.120 align:middle line:84% that of tactile physical pleasure, related to sound, 00:34:21.120 --> 00:34:24.600 align:middle line:84% but located in the pleasure of producing sound rather than 00:34:24.600 --> 00:34:25.949 align:middle line:90% hearing it. 00:34:25.949 --> 00:34:28.020 align:middle line:84% The addition of physicality leads 00:34:28.020 --> 00:34:31.110 align:middle line:84% us to start somewhere near the beginning, at least of poetry 00:34:31.110 --> 00:34:31.980 align:middle line:90% in English. 00:34:31.980 --> 00:34:34.139 align:middle line:84% "And though I might venture with little cat feet 00:34:34.139 --> 00:34:37.889 align:middle line:84% into Chinese, French, Italian Greek, Roman, Russian, Spanish, 00:34:37.889 --> 00:34:41.190 align:middle line:84% and other poetries, I will remain primarily with English 00:34:41.190 --> 00:34:43.389 align:middle line:84% simply because it is what I know best. 00:34:43.389 --> 00:34:45.540 align:middle line:84% Though I carry no illusion that its poetry 00:34:45.540 --> 00:34:47.580 align:middle line:84% is even one iamb better than that 00:34:47.580 --> 00:34:49.679 align:middle line:90% written in any other language. 00:34:49.679 --> 00:34:53.550 align:middle line:84% To the beginning we go and to physical pleasure. 00:34:53.550 --> 00:34:54.389 align:middle line:90% "'Hwaet. 00:34:54.389 --> 00:35:01.260 align:middle line:84% We Gardena' from the first line of Beowulf, circa 680 to 800. 00:35:01.260 --> 00:35:03.330 align:middle line:84% You don't have to know what that means, 00:35:03.330 --> 00:35:06.570 align:middle line:84% although it helps to know it is a kind of boastful greeting 00:35:06.570 --> 00:35:08.190 align:middle line:90% said with gusto. 00:35:08.190 --> 00:35:10.380 align:middle line:84% That the "ah" of 'Hwaet' should be 00:35:10.380 --> 00:35:14.070 align:middle line:84% pronounced like this short "ah" of draft or gnat. 00:35:14.070 --> 00:35:17.040 align:middle line:84% That the "hwuh" could literally be 00:35:17.040 --> 00:35:19.530 align:middle line:84% sounded like a wind blowing until it 00:35:19.530 --> 00:35:21.915 align:middle line:90% closes in that W sound. 00:35:21.915 --> 00:35:24.270 align:middle line:84% And that the word 'We' is pronounced 00:35:24.270 --> 00:35:29.850 align:middle line:84% more like the contemporary W-A-I than like W-E, as in us. 00:35:29.850 --> 00:35:33.510 align:middle line:84% "That the R in 'Gardena' should be slightly rolled 00:35:33.510 --> 00:35:35.640 align:middle line:84% and the first syllable of 'Gardena' 00:35:35.640 --> 00:35:39.480 align:middle line:84% should be noticeably longer than any other in that word. 00:35:39.480 --> 00:35:43.080 align:middle line:84% The "dei" in 'Gardena' should be spoken like "day" 00:35:43.080 --> 00:35:46.470 align:middle line:84% but cut off just a bit short, and the final "nah" 00:35:46.470 --> 00:35:49.560 align:middle line:84% should sound like the final "na" in banana. 00:35:49.560 --> 00:35:52.050 align:middle line:90% Now say it all, first slowly. 00:35:52.050 --> 00:35:55.230 align:middle line:90% Hwaet We Gardena. 00:35:55.230 --> 00:35:57.940 align:middle line:84% Then again and again, each time a bit faster, 00:35:57.940 --> 00:36:01.290 align:middle line:84% but more with confidence than we speed until you 00:36:01.290 --> 00:36:04.110 align:middle line:84% say it as if you are greeting a friend who 00:36:04.110 --> 00:36:07.170 align:middle line:84% has come into the very friendly pub in which you would 00:36:07.170 --> 00:36:09.210 align:middle line:84% like to down a pint now and then, 00:36:09.210 --> 00:36:11.220 align:middle line:90% and have a very good time-- 00:36:11.220 --> 00:36:16.440 align:middle line:84% or what Tracey called fun, a recreational creative act 00:36:16.440 --> 00:36:18.090 align:middle line:90% or something like that. 00:36:18.090 --> 00:36:20.190 align:middle line:84% Feel what your lips do at the beginning 00:36:20.190 --> 00:36:24.150 align:middle line:84% to both produce and cut off that wind, how the tongue slaps 00:36:24.150 --> 00:36:27.270 align:middle line:84% inside the mouth on that first T, how you 00:36:27.270 --> 00:36:30.930 align:middle line:84% go to the back of the mouth at the beginning of 'Gardena' 00:36:30.930 --> 00:36:34.140 align:middle line:84% but then come up toward the front to roll that R. 00:36:34.140 --> 00:36:37.740 align:middle line:84% And then just stop, neither too suddenly nor with too much 00:36:37.740 --> 00:36:42.210 align:middle line:84% lingering as you let out that short exhalation of "nah." 00:36:42.210 --> 00:36:44.100 align:middle line:84% If it doesn't feel good to say, you're 00:36:44.100 --> 00:36:46.830 align:middle line:84% either not doing it right or you haven't considered 00:36:46.830 --> 00:36:49.740 align:middle line:84% that speech is a physical pleasure related 00:36:49.740 --> 00:36:52.290 align:middle line:84% to kissing, breathing in cool air, 00:36:52.290 --> 00:36:56.850 align:middle line:84% cooing, whistling, oral sex, licking a popsicle, 00:36:56.850 --> 00:37:01.800 align:middle line:84% and other great things you can do with your mouth. 00:37:01.800 --> 00:37:04.530 align:middle line:84% And then I'm going off on a different tangent 00:37:04.530 --> 00:37:10.050 align:middle line:84% with my final comment, to take this back to the visual art 00:37:10.050 --> 00:37:11.640 align:middle line:90% world but a different culture. 00:37:11.640 --> 00:37:14.940 align:middle line:84% And that is that I wanted to note some works 00:37:14.940 --> 00:37:18.810 align:middle line:84% by contemporary Chinese artists that I 00:37:18.810 --> 00:37:21.180 align:middle line:84% had the pleasure of seeing recently. 00:37:21.180 --> 00:37:24.390 align:middle line:84% And these were in an exhibition called 00:37:24.390 --> 00:37:28.050 align:middle line:84% Shu: The Reinvention of the Book in Contemporary Chinese 00:37:28.050 --> 00:37:30.270 align:middle line:84% Art, which was in New York and then 00:37:30.270 --> 00:37:34.140 align:middle line:84% in the Seattle Asian Art Museum, and two artists 00:37:34.140 --> 00:37:39.180 align:middle line:84% in particular, one Xu Bing, the other Song Dong, 00:37:39.180 --> 00:37:41.490 align:middle line:84% work that I think relates but gives 00:37:41.490 --> 00:37:44.640 align:middle line:84% a different context to some of the things we've talked about. 00:37:44.640 --> 00:37:47.460 align:middle line:84% In Xu Bing's Book of the Sky takes 00:37:47.460 --> 00:37:51.540 align:middle line:84% place in about a room that's about 50 feet long by 30 feet 00:37:51.540 --> 00:37:52.170 align:middle line:90% wide. 00:37:52.170 --> 00:37:58.350 align:middle line:84% And in that room, on the floor are literally hundreds of books 00:37:58.350 --> 00:38:02.850 align:middle line:84% all open to the center, printed with Chinese characters. 00:38:02.850 --> 00:38:05.610 align:middle line:84% Along the walls are pages from these books, 00:38:05.610 --> 00:38:09.360 align:middle line:84% totally covering the walls as wallpaper. 00:38:09.360 --> 00:38:11.550 align:middle line:84% At the ends of the books on the floor 00:38:11.550 --> 00:38:14.010 align:middle line:90% are wooden little platforms. 00:38:14.010 --> 00:38:16.080 align:middle line:84% It looks like altars you would go to. 00:38:16.080 --> 00:38:23.490 align:middle line:84% And hanging from the ceiling are about a 12-foot wide scroll, 00:38:23.490 --> 00:38:26.040 align:middle line:84% the length of the room that comes almost to the floor 00:38:26.040 --> 00:38:30.450 align:middle line:84% and then back up lit from above, looking like an altar 00:38:30.450 --> 00:38:32.100 align:middle line:90% to the book and learning. 00:38:32.100 --> 00:38:37.080 align:middle line:84% But in fact, all of the 40,000 characters carved by Xu Bing 00:38:37.080 --> 00:38:40.950 align:middle line:84% and printed are not Chinese characters. 00:38:40.950 --> 00:38:43.860 align:middle line:84% They look like them, but they are absolutely unreadable. 00:38:43.860 --> 00:38:47.230 align:middle line:84% There's some kind of comment on that going on. 00:38:47.230 --> 00:38:50.940 align:middle line:84% And then the Song Dong, I'll shorten this 00:38:50.940 --> 00:38:53.790 align:middle line:84% by just referring to two works which are 00:38:53.790 --> 00:38:55.560 align:middle line:90% about things that aren't there. 00:38:55.560 --> 00:39:00.660 align:middle line:84% And one is so-called Book Without Words, 00:39:00.660 --> 00:39:03.960 align:middle line:84% in which he has a book, and every page has a rectangle, 00:39:03.960 --> 00:39:05.250 align:middle line:90% like the one you have. 00:39:05.250 --> 00:39:07.560 align:middle line:84% He says it's his most important work he's done. 00:39:07.560 --> 00:39:09.480 align:middle line:90% He's never shown to anyone. 00:39:09.480 --> 00:39:11.280 align:middle line:90% He reads it every day. 00:39:11.280 --> 00:39:13.980 align:middle line:84% And he notes at the beginning of the reading 00:39:13.980 --> 00:39:16.140 align:middle line:84% in the left margin outside the rectangle 00:39:16.140 --> 00:39:20.070 align:middle line:84% and the end of the reading on the right side of the margin. 00:39:20.070 --> 00:39:24.750 align:middle line:84% And he reads anywhere from a few minutes to a half an hour. 00:39:24.750 --> 00:39:26.850 align:middle line:84% He's been reading it for 11 years. 00:39:26.850 --> 00:39:29.280 align:middle line:90% And he's not finished yet. 00:39:29.280 --> 00:39:31.930 align:middle line:84% And he's never going to show it to his wife. 00:39:31.930 --> 00:39:35.070 align:middle line:84% He hides it And he calls it his most important work. 00:39:35.070 --> 00:39:37.470 align:middle line:84% And then another work that he did, 00:39:37.470 --> 00:39:40.080 align:middle line:90% Song Dong, called Water Diary-- 00:39:40.080 --> 00:39:41.700 align:middle line:90% It's an ongoing work-- 00:39:41.700 --> 00:39:45.630 align:middle line:84% where he keeps a regular diary, but he writes it 00:39:45.630 --> 00:39:50.940 align:middle line:84% in a calligraphy brush dipped in water on stone. 00:39:50.940 --> 00:39:54.000 align:middle line:84% So it evaporates almost immediately. 00:39:54.000 --> 00:39:58.920 align:middle line:84% And I oddly find both of those works by him 00:39:58.920 --> 00:40:03.480 align:middle line:84% to be, in my mind, highly expressivist, and even 00:40:03.480 --> 00:40:05.110 align:middle line:90% spiritual, in a sense. 00:40:05.110 --> 00:40:11.730 align:middle line:84% And so I would probably dispute this gap between expressivist 00:40:11.730 --> 00:40:12.930 align:middle line:90% and conceptual. 00:40:12.930 --> 00:40:16.230 align:middle line:84% Although as I have understood many people talking 00:40:16.230 --> 00:40:19.410 align:middle line:84% in this room-- and I think Craig might even agree-- 00:40:19.410 --> 00:40:23.910 align:middle line:84% it's really not meant to be an impermeable gap. 00:40:23.910 --> 00:40:26.110 align:middle line:84% There's a lot of conversation between that. 00:40:26.110 --> 00:40:26.610 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:40:26.610 --> 00:40:27.750 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:40:27.750 --> 00:40:33.972 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:40:33.972 --> 00:40:34.970 align:middle line:90% 00:40:34.970 --> 00:40:39.350 align:middle line:84% Well, first off, I want to thank Frances and everyone affiliated 00:40:39.350 --> 00:40:41.360 align:middle line:84% with the Poetry Center and people 00:40:41.360 --> 00:40:43.940 align:middle line:84% from the University of Arizona, who have made this fantastic 00:40:43.940 --> 00:40:45.270 align:middle line:90% event possible. 00:40:45.270 --> 00:40:48.080 align:middle line:84% It's really been an extraordinary few days for me. 00:40:48.080 --> 00:40:51.020 align:middle line:90% I'm a poetry critic, not a poet. 00:40:51.020 --> 00:40:54.590 align:middle line:84% And it's an extremely rare opportunity for someone like me 00:40:54.590 --> 00:40:58.070 align:middle line:84% to come, be a hanger on, and witness so many first class 00:40:58.070 --> 00:41:01.820 align:middle line:84% writers reading their work, talking about it, 00:41:01.820 --> 00:41:04.550 align:middle line:84% discussing the ins and outs, theory and practice 00:41:04.550 --> 00:41:06.740 align:middle line:84% of composition, talking about the nature 00:41:06.740 --> 00:41:07.970 align:middle line:90% and future of the art form. 00:41:07.970 --> 00:41:09.510 align:middle line:90% And I'm really inspired. 00:41:09.510 --> 00:41:13.050 align:middle line:84% I want to rush back to my cubicle, my computer, 00:41:13.050 --> 00:41:15.980 align:middle line:84% and my cat, and get back to writing. 00:41:15.980 --> 00:41:17.690 align:middle line:84% And I'm at work on a book project 00:41:17.690 --> 00:41:21.260 align:middle line:84% about visual, verbal relations in contemporary poetry. 00:41:21.260 --> 00:41:23.390 align:middle line:84% And I do want to apologize in advance 00:41:23.390 --> 00:41:25.970 align:middle line:84% if any of your words or ideas find 00:41:25.970 --> 00:41:27.410 align:middle line:90% their way into that manuscript. 00:41:27.410 --> 00:41:28.700 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:28.700 --> 00:41:30.830 align:middle line:90% I mean it only in praise. 00:41:30.830 --> 00:41:34.040 align:middle line:84% And I promise that I will adhere to the letter of the US Digital 00:41:34.040 --> 00:41:38.750 align:middle line:84% Millennium Copyright Act so that your substantial income 00:41:38.750 --> 00:41:41.197 align:middle line:84% from permission fees is not interrupted. 00:41:41.197 --> 00:41:42.508 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:41:42.508 --> 00:41:43.820 align:middle line:90% 00:41:43.820 --> 00:41:46.460 align:middle line:84% As trying to figure out what to talk about today as a critic-- 00:41:46.460 --> 00:41:51.650 align:middle line:84% not somebody following after the sorts of creative 00:41:51.650 --> 00:41:54.320 align:middle line:84% or non-creative work that's been going on here-- 00:41:54.320 --> 00:41:58.670 align:middle line:84% I decided that I wanted to start with a moment in Marjorie's 00:41:58.670 --> 00:42:01.580 align:middle line:84% keynote address where she brought up 00:42:01.580 --> 00:42:05.330 align:middle line:84% the Russian foremost critic Yury Tynyanov 00:42:05.330 --> 00:42:07.880 align:middle line:84% and his ideas about how literary history works. 00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:10.980 align:middle line:84% And in a quotation that Marjorie read, 00:42:10.980 --> 00:42:13.860 align:middle line:84% Tynyanov talks about the evolution of genre. 00:42:13.860 --> 00:42:17.000 align:middle line:84% But it turns out that's actually a very bad translation 00:42:17.000 --> 00:42:18.590 align:middle line:90% of the Russian. 00:42:18.590 --> 00:42:20.127 align:middle line:90% The word is not "evolution." 00:42:20.127 --> 00:42:21.710 align:middle line:84% Evolution makes one think that there's 00:42:21.710 --> 00:42:24.950 align:middle line:84% something homologous between biological and literary 00:42:24.950 --> 00:42:27.710 align:middle line:84% systems, that one can talk about poems in relation 00:42:27.710 --> 00:42:30.770 align:middle line:84% to the survival of the fittest, that this 00:42:30.770 --> 00:42:34.340 align:middle line:84% is the poem that is best suited to now and it will win. 00:42:34.340 --> 00:42:37.640 align:middle line:84% The word in Russian is not of evolution-- "эволюция." 00:42:37.640 --> 00:42:41.210 align:middle line:84% It's "смущение," which comes from "смущать'" which means 00:42:41.210 --> 00:42:46.710 align:middle line:84% to confuse or to confound or to mix up. 00:42:46.710 --> 00:42:50.540 align:middle line:84% And so if you think about it, that is an interesting idea-- 00:42:50.540 --> 00:42:55.370 align:middle line:84% that genres become confused over time. 00:42:55.370 --> 00:42:57.680 align:middle line:84% It's not that they evolve in any one direction. 00:42:57.680 --> 00:43:00.380 align:middle line:90% They just get more confusing. 00:43:00.380 --> 00:43:02.090 align:middle line:84% And that's helped me as I've grappled 00:43:02.090 --> 00:43:04.760 align:middle line:84% with an academic parlor game played ever 00:43:04.760 --> 00:43:07.640 align:middle line:84% since I arrived in graduate school, which is "What 00:43:07.640 --> 00:43:10.880 align:middle line:90% is the state of poetry today?" 00:43:10.880 --> 00:43:13.790 align:middle line:84% And you see this debate going on endlessly. 00:43:13.790 --> 00:43:15.500 align:middle line:90% Is postmodernism over? 00:43:15.500 --> 00:43:17.570 align:middle line:84% If so, what is post postmodernism? 00:43:17.570 --> 00:43:19.550 align:middle line:90% Are we post-language poetry? 00:43:19.550 --> 00:43:22.130 align:middle line:84% What would it mean for language poetry to be over? 00:43:22.130 --> 00:43:23.695 align:middle line:90% Are we post avant-garde? 00:43:23.695 --> 00:43:25.070 align:middle line:84% Can the avant-garde ever be over? 00:43:25.070 --> 00:43:26.810 align:middle line:84% I mean, these questions go on and on. 00:43:26.810 --> 00:43:28.190 align:middle line:90% Where are we today? 00:43:28.190 --> 00:43:32.630 align:middle line:84% It's a question that I find both ridiculous and endlessly 00:43:32.630 --> 00:43:33.230 align:middle line:90% fascinating. 00:43:33.230 --> 00:43:35.300 align:middle line:84% I mean, are we into the period of new lyricism? 00:43:35.300 --> 00:43:37.400 align:middle line:90% New riddle-ism? 00:43:37.400 --> 00:43:38.300 align:middle line:90% New narrative? 00:43:38.300 --> 00:43:39.620 align:middle line:90% Are we in an eclectic moment? 00:43:39.620 --> 00:43:40.460 align:middle line:90% Are we elliptical? 00:43:40.460 --> 00:43:41.780 align:middle line:90% Are we rhomboidal? 00:43:41.780 --> 00:43:44.150 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:43:44.150 --> 00:43:47.090 align:middle line:84% These questions are silly, and yet they 00:43:47.090 --> 00:43:50.750 align:middle line:84% do speak to this desire on the part of commentators 00:43:50.750 --> 00:43:54.500 align:middle line:84% to try to encapsulate or describe things that they 00:43:54.500 --> 00:43:56.360 align:middle line:90% see going on out there. 00:43:56.360 --> 00:43:58.280 align:middle line:84% And in the spirit of this, I'm about to engage 00:43:58.280 --> 00:44:01.100 align:middle line:84% in some absolutely wild unsustainable generalizations. 00:44:01.100 --> 00:44:02.780 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:44:02.780 --> 00:44:06.092 align:middle line:84% And it comes partly from the kinds of work 00:44:06.092 --> 00:44:07.550 align:middle line:84% that we're seeing here this weekend 00:44:07.550 --> 00:44:09.650 align:middle line:84% but from also my reading of a lot of other poets 00:44:09.650 --> 00:44:11.750 align:middle line:84% and trying to figure out how to talk about them. 00:44:11.750 --> 00:44:13.790 align:middle line:84% People like say, it's different, it's 00:44:13.790 --> 00:44:19.250 align:middle line:84% Sawako Nakayasu, and Kevin Young, Lisa Robertson, 00:44:19.250 --> 00:44:21.890 align:middle line:84% Harryette Mullen,-- a range of different kinds of writers 00:44:21.890 --> 00:44:23.900 align:middle line:84% and in thinking about how one could ever 00:44:23.900 --> 00:44:27.800 align:middle line:84% lump all these people together in a meaningful way. 00:44:27.800 --> 00:44:30.750 align:middle line:84% Some possible starting points for conversation. 00:44:30.750 --> 00:44:32.510 align:middle line:84% One is that a lot of today's writers 00:44:32.510 --> 00:44:37.100 align:middle line:84% seem to be very aware of poetry as a multimedia or mixed media 00:44:37.100 --> 00:44:38.990 align:middle line:90% art form. 00:44:38.990 --> 00:44:42.650 align:middle line:84% That there is a sense and the awareness 00:44:42.650 --> 00:44:45.020 align:middle line:84% that the word is not just on the page, 00:44:45.020 --> 00:44:50.600 align:middle line:84% but it can be performed orally, kinesthetically, animated 00:44:50.600 --> 00:44:52.010 align:middle line:90% on screens. 00:44:52.010 --> 00:44:56.480 align:middle line:84% That the word can be seen, and that in order 00:44:56.480 --> 00:44:59.000 align:middle line:84% to explore the full dimensions of poetry, 00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:01.580 align:middle line:84% one often resorts to working in different media 00:45:01.580 --> 00:45:04.490 align:middle line:84% or learning from other media, or that the same poem can be 00:45:04.490 --> 00:45:06.740 align:middle line:90% practiced in different media. 00:45:06.740 --> 00:45:11.090 align:middle line:84% And that this awareness, that it's not simply 00:45:11.090 --> 00:45:13.670 align:middle line:84% that language is verbal, vocal, visual, but bound up 00:45:13.670 --> 00:45:16.670 align:middle line:84% in questions of mediation, it has led a lot of writers, 00:45:16.670 --> 00:45:18.560 align:middle line:84% it seems to me, to begin questioning 00:45:18.560 --> 00:45:20.390 align:middle line:90% what materiality is. 00:45:20.390 --> 00:45:23.210 align:middle line:84% It's not just that language is something obdurate, 00:45:23.210 --> 00:45:25.610 align:middle line:84% that you can pronounce it and savor 00:45:25.610 --> 00:45:27.230 align:middle line:90% the sounds of its sensual. 00:45:27.230 --> 00:45:30.380 align:middle line:84% But that language is all about and bound up in questions of, 00:45:30.380 --> 00:45:31.370 align:middle line:90% what is information? 00:45:31.370 --> 00:45:32.390 align:middle line:90% What is embodiment? 00:45:32.390 --> 00:45:36.410 align:middle line:84% What happens as one moves from one arena 00:45:36.410 --> 00:45:39.680 align:middle line:90% to another site specificity? 00:45:39.680 --> 00:45:46.520 align:middle line:84% And so that questions ranging from ekphrasis to silence 00:45:46.520 --> 00:45:49.550 align:middle line:84% come to the fore in new and intriguing ways. 00:45:49.550 --> 00:45:55.190 align:middle line:84% And it does so in, and often I would add, two corollaries. 00:45:55.190 --> 00:45:58.610 align:middle line:84% One is that this way of thinking about language and writing 00:45:58.610 --> 00:45:59.630 align:middle line:90% is what Kristeva-- 00:45:59.630 --> 00:46:02.480 align:middle line:84% Julia Kristeva, the theorist-- would call post-semiotic. 00:46:02.480 --> 00:46:05.540 align:middle line:84% That language is always seen as having 00:46:05.540 --> 00:46:10.070 align:middle line:84% cultural, social, and historical specificity sedimented in it. 00:46:10.070 --> 00:46:13.640 align:middle line:84% This is different from, say, the Russian futurist ideal 00:46:13.640 --> 00:46:17.390 align:middle line:84% that one could attain a pure transrational language that 00:46:17.390 --> 00:46:21.200 align:middle line:84% would be international, not in any way 00:46:21.200 --> 00:46:27.060 align:middle line:84% specifiable by identity, by nationality, and so forth. 00:46:27.060 --> 00:46:30.260 align:middle line:84% But we're in a post-semiotic approach to language. 00:46:30.260 --> 00:46:34.220 align:middle line:84% And also the sense that language is subject to and 00:46:34.220 --> 00:46:35.750 align:middle line:90% ought to be archived. 00:46:35.750 --> 00:46:39.470 align:middle line:84% That one looks around and finds traces 00:46:39.470 --> 00:46:41.360 align:middle line:84% of languages in the past in order 00:46:41.360 --> 00:46:44.690 align:middle line:84% to understand present language use. 00:46:44.690 --> 00:46:47.570 align:middle line:84% And that in creating an archive, one 00:46:47.570 --> 00:46:52.640 align:middle line:84% is contributing to the ongoing processual investigation 00:46:52.640 --> 00:46:55.620 align:middle line:84% of what is language and what is poetry. 00:46:55.620 --> 00:46:58.760 align:middle line:84% I'd finally say, in this kind of a typology, 00:46:58.760 --> 00:47:00.980 align:middle line:84% that a lot of these kinds of writers 00:47:00.980 --> 00:47:03.530 align:middle line:84% are interested in project-based writing. 00:47:03.530 --> 00:47:07.520 align:middle line:84% That instead of the lyric being the unit that 00:47:07.520 --> 00:47:10.430 align:middle line:84% is given the greatest weight, what we've begun to see 00:47:10.430 --> 00:47:14.210 align:middle line:84% are books that are unified around a particular area 00:47:14.210 --> 00:47:17.330 align:middle line:84% of inquiry, a problem that is to be solved, 00:47:17.330 --> 00:47:21.230 align:middle line:84% or an intuition that is explored variously. 00:47:21.230 --> 00:47:23.660 align:middle line:84% And it's not even the book is necessarily the unit, 00:47:23.660 --> 00:47:27.980 align:middle line:84% that there are ways in which one can watch the writers that 00:47:27.980 --> 00:47:29.510 align:middle line:84% have been here, exploring "what is 00:47:29.510 --> 00:47:32.810 align:middle line:84% an anagram" in a variety of different kinds of conditions 00:47:32.810 --> 00:47:36.630 align:middle line:84% and places so that it's project-based work. 00:47:36.630 --> 00:47:38.480 align:middle line:84% And at that point, one begins to try 00:47:38.480 --> 00:47:42.770 align:middle line:84% to figure out what are the bounds of the poem. 00:47:42.770 --> 00:47:44.810 align:middle line:84% And it begins to become a question of "where 00:47:44.810 --> 00:47:49.220 align:middle line:84% is a poem," so that something like Caroline Bergvall's 00:47:49.220 --> 00:47:51.560 align:middle line:90% shorter or short Chaucer tales-- 00:47:51.560 --> 00:47:52.370 align:middle line:90% where are they? 00:47:52.370 --> 00:47:53.570 align:middle line:90% They're downloadable. 00:47:53.570 --> 00:47:56.630 align:middle line:90% You can see them in performance. 00:47:56.630 --> 00:47:59.210 align:middle line:84% There are different kinds of recordings of them. 00:47:59.210 --> 00:48:00.320 align:middle line:90% Are those different poems? 00:48:00.320 --> 00:48:02.080 align:middle line:90% Are they part of the same poem? 00:48:02.080 --> 00:48:05.330 align:middle line:84% Do one have to gather a variorum of all possible recordings 00:48:05.330 --> 00:48:07.340 align:middle line:90% in order to talk about them? 00:48:07.340 --> 00:48:08.990 align:middle line:84% So that these questions of boundaries 00:48:08.990 --> 00:48:11.990 align:middle line:84% are exploded and newly interesting. 00:48:11.990 --> 00:48:14.885 align:middle line:84% I think I will wrap up after those generalizations 00:48:14.885 --> 00:48:18.920 align:middle line:84% that everyone should feel free to attack by announcing 00:48:18.920 --> 00:48:20.630 align:middle line:84% a label for this kind of aesthetic 00:48:20.630 --> 00:48:23.930 align:middle line:84% that in the spirit of Frank O'Hara, we can say, 00:48:23.930 --> 00:48:25.507 align:middle line:90% I just invented it-- 00:48:25.507 --> 00:48:27.590 align:middle line:84% but I just plagiarize-- but I've just invented it, 00:48:27.590 --> 00:48:30.290 align:middle line:90% and it will be widely known. 00:48:30.290 --> 00:48:35.870 align:middle line:84% From Nicolas Bourriaud, his book Postproduction, French museum 00:48:35.870 --> 00:48:39.290 align:middle line:84% curator and thinker, who argues that we should begin 00:48:39.290 --> 00:48:41.450 align:middle line:84% trying to find a vocabulary to describe 00:48:41.450 --> 00:48:43.880 align:middle line:84% the art of the '90s and the present decade. 00:48:43.880 --> 00:48:47.930 align:middle line:84% That this is coming out of the political and social conditions 00:48:47.930 --> 00:48:49.370 align:middle line:90% of the 1960s. 00:48:49.370 --> 00:48:51.320 align:middle line:84% That times have changed, we need a new kind 00:48:51.320 --> 00:48:52.610 align:middle line:90% of analytic rhetoric. 00:48:52.610 --> 00:48:54.110 align:middle line:84% And one of the things he suggests 00:48:54.110 --> 00:48:56.450 align:middle line:84% is that we should look at the sorts of languages 00:48:56.450 --> 00:48:59.390 align:middle line:84% to come out of DJ culture or other kinds 00:48:59.390 --> 00:49:01.130 align:middle line:90% of contemporary performance. 00:49:01.130 --> 00:49:03.620 align:middle line:90% And he is very big on the DIY-- 00:49:03.620 --> 00:49:05.160 align:middle line:90% do it yourself. 00:49:05.160 --> 00:49:07.887 align:middle line:84% And the idea is that today's writers 00:49:07.887 --> 00:49:09.470 align:middle line:84% have so many tools available to them-- 00:49:09.470 --> 00:49:13.550 align:middle line:84% from Pro Tools, where you can manipulate sound on a Mac 00:49:13.550 --> 00:49:18.050 align:middle line:84% laptop, or video tools, that you can put your cell phone 00:49:18.050 --> 00:49:21.680 align:middle line:84% and record speakers and then manipulate that later. 00:49:21.680 --> 00:49:23.960 align:middle line:84% That with all these tools available, 00:49:23.960 --> 00:49:27.230 align:middle line:84% one becomes a kind of post-production studio, 00:49:27.230 --> 00:49:30.080 align:middle line:84% working with the word in as many different kinds of venues 00:49:30.080 --> 00:49:31.940 align:middle line:90% as one wishes. 00:49:31.940 --> 00:49:35.480 align:middle line:84% That it opens out beyond poetry-- 00:49:35.480 --> 00:49:40.010 align:middle line:84% to be simultaneously filmmaker, choreographer, and so forth-- 00:49:40.010 --> 00:49:41.750 align:middle line:90% in very exciting ways. 00:49:41.750 --> 00:49:44.480 align:middle line:84% I want to end by mentioning a couple of things 00:49:44.480 --> 00:49:47.023 align:middle line:84% I've heard from some of the younger people 00:49:47.023 --> 00:49:48.440 align:middle line:84% here who haven't asked questions-- 00:49:48.440 --> 00:49:49.670 align:middle line:90% I would urge you to-- 00:49:49.670 --> 00:49:51.650 align:middle line:84% that, for instance, collaboration 00:49:51.650 --> 00:49:54.470 align:middle line:84% is very much at the forefront of what younger artists are up 00:49:54.470 --> 00:49:55.610 align:middle line:90% to these days. 00:49:55.610 --> 00:49:58.280 align:middle line:84% When one is talking about mixed and multimedia art forms, 00:49:58.280 --> 00:50:00.915 align:middle line:84% it's hard to be an expert in all of them. 00:50:00.915 --> 00:50:02.540 align:middle line:84% So that it would be interesting to hear 00:50:02.540 --> 00:50:05.450 align:middle line:84% some of the people who've been reading here to talk about what 00:50:05.450 --> 00:50:09.500 align:middle line:84% it's like to collaborate and be involved with distributed 00:50:09.500 --> 00:50:11.570 align:middle line:90% agency, as it's been called. 00:50:11.570 --> 00:50:14.070 align:middle line:84% And also the kinds of questions about lineage 00:50:14.070 --> 00:50:15.770 align:middle line:84% and where in places oneself in regards 00:50:15.770 --> 00:50:19.220 align:middle line:84% to the present industry once one is working in a mixed media 00:50:19.220 --> 00:50:20.720 align:middle line:90% fashion. 00:50:20.720 --> 00:50:23.960 align:middle line:84% Can one talk about only poets as part of one's background? 00:50:23.960 --> 00:50:25.605 align:middle line:90% Does that make any sense? 00:50:25.605 --> 00:50:27.350 align:middle line:84% So anyway, that's where I'll end. 00:50:27.350 --> 00:50:28.666 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:50:28.666 --> 00:50:35.836 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:50:35.836 --> 00:50:37.760 align:middle line:90% 00:50:37.760 --> 00:50:41.720 align:middle line:84% Most of us will try to use a tampon at some time. 00:50:41.720 --> 00:50:44.570 align:middle line:84% You're all going to make me lose my mind. 00:50:44.570 --> 00:50:47.090 align:middle line:84% In post conceptual writing, the idea or concept 00:50:47.090 --> 00:50:49.348 align:middle line:90% is prepositional to the work. 00:50:49.348 --> 00:50:51.140 align:middle line:84% And so it's important to know how to insert 00:50:51.140 --> 00:50:53.210 align:middle line:90% a tampon the right way. 00:50:53.210 --> 00:50:54.890 align:middle line:84% The idea embodied in the writing, 00:50:54.890 --> 00:50:56.960 align:middle line:90% the writing ideated in the body. 00:50:56.960 --> 00:50:59.270 align:middle line:84% As in constrained writing and conjoined babies, 00:50:59.270 --> 00:51:02.570 align:middle line:84% the concept cannot exist apart from its formal nature, 00:51:02.570 --> 00:51:06.320 align:middle line:84% which is necessarily incarnate, necessarily twin. 00:51:06.320 --> 00:51:08.090 align:middle line:90% Up in here. 00:51:08.090 --> 00:51:11.720 align:middle line:84% Because we now understand that the brain is not Cartesian. 00:51:11.720 --> 00:51:14.360 align:middle line:90% Oh, what to me, the little room. 00:51:14.360 --> 00:51:16.680 align:middle line:84% Inserting a tampon seems tricky at first. 00:51:16.680 --> 00:51:18.440 align:middle line:84% But after trying several times, insertion 00:51:18.440 --> 00:51:21.380 align:middle line:84% becomes as easy as putting on lipstick. 00:51:21.380 --> 00:51:23.990 align:middle line:90% America is going to go all out. 00:51:23.990 --> 00:51:26.840 align:middle line:84% And there is no essentialism in the matter of the medium, 00:51:26.840 --> 00:51:29.780 align:middle line:84% just as there is no segregation of conception and perception, 00:51:29.780 --> 00:51:32.300 align:middle line:84% production and consumption, actus and reus, song 00:51:32.300 --> 00:51:33.740 align:middle line:90% and silence. 00:51:33.740 --> 00:51:35.840 align:middle line:90% The key is to relax. 00:51:35.840 --> 00:51:38.870 align:middle line:84% Most of us will try to put on lipstick at some time. 00:51:38.870 --> 00:51:41.540 align:middle line:84% Most of us will try to kill someone at some time. 00:51:41.540 --> 00:51:46.070 align:middle line:84% Some of us unintentionally, some of us, someone else. 00:51:46.070 --> 00:51:48.560 align:middle line:84% Worrying about it may make you tense, making insertion 00:51:48.560 --> 00:51:50.300 align:middle line:90% even harder. 00:51:50.300 --> 00:51:53.420 align:middle line:84% Many of us will die thinking putting on someone else. 00:51:53.420 --> 00:51:55.560 align:middle line:84% Someone will die thinking of his beloved-- 00:51:55.560 --> 00:51:57.860 align:middle line:90% if I can't have you, no one can. 00:51:57.860 --> 00:52:00.050 align:middle line:84% Another will die in the arms of his enemy-- 00:52:00.050 --> 00:52:02.750 align:middle line:90% if I can have you, anyone can. 00:52:02.750 --> 00:52:04.470 align:middle line:90% Up in here. 00:52:04.470 --> 00:52:08.450 align:middle line:84% This is expressionism, yet avoids transom subjectivity. 00:52:08.450 --> 00:52:11.390 align:middle line:84% That was brimmed with prayer and rest. 00:52:11.390 --> 00:52:14.840 align:middle line:84% This is appropriation, yet dodges trim fidelity. 00:52:14.840 --> 00:52:17.690 align:middle line:84% Post-conceptual writing peeps through the tumorous masks 00:52:17.690 --> 00:52:18.770 align:middle line:90% of the many. 00:52:18.770 --> 00:52:20.720 align:middle line:84% Like the African kru mask, the eyes 00:52:20.720 --> 00:52:22.160 align:middle line:90% are several and protruding. 00:52:22.160 --> 00:52:23.480 align:middle line:90% They see out and in. 00:52:23.480 --> 00:52:27.350 align:middle line:84% The unliving shot through with the sight of the future dead. 00:52:27.350 --> 00:52:29.570 align:middle line:84% The tip of the applicator's larger outer tube 00:52:29.570 --> 00:52:33.080 align:middle line:84% should be pointed to into the body, towards the lower back. 00:52:33.080 --> 00:52:35.570 align:middle line:84% The end of the smaller inner tube with the removal cord 00:52:35.570 --> 00:52:38.780 align:middle line:84% showing should be pointed away from the body. 00:52:38.780 --> 00:52:41.660 align:middle line:84% Subjectivity is neither voided nor exclusive. 00:52:41.660 --> 00:52:45.380 align:middle line:84% Language roams both at large and at lyric. 00:52:45.380 --> 00:52:48.200 align:middle line:84% Terrorists trying to act the fool. 00:52:48.200 --> 00:52:51.620 align:middle line:84% We are aware of the bleary implications of multiplicity 00:52:51.620 --> 00:52:54.980 align:middle line:84% and the cool terror of the short-term eternal. 00:52:54.980 --> 00:52:57.200 align:middle line:90% Up in here, up. 00:52:57.200 --> 00:52:59.210 align:middle line:84% The cult of the author is not replaced 00:52:59.210 --> 00:53:03.590 align:middle line:84% by the cult of the authority or the kissing crush of anxiety. 00:53:03.590 --> 00:53:06.680 align:middle line:84% There is no presumption that the individual ought be evacuated 00:53:06.680 --> 00:53:09.980 align:middle line:84% or extenuated, or that mergers and acquisitions is 00:53:09.980 --> 00:53:13.550 align:middle line:84% any more or less romantic than acting as either art's arbiter 00:53:13.550 --> 00:53:15.320 align:middle line:90% or abattoir. 00:53:15.320 --> 00:53:19.700 align:middle line:84% In here, there is sentiment solitary and confusion communal 00:53:19.700 --> 00:53:22.070 align:middle line:90% and isn't it uncomfortable? 00:53:22.070 --> 00:53:23.720 align:middle line:84% With the other hand spread the folds 00:53:23.720 --> 00:53:26.240 align:middle line:84% of the skin around the vaginal opening. 00:53:26.240 --> 00:53:28.910 align:middle line:90% He bade me out into the gloom. 00:53:28.910 --> 00:53:30.560 align:middle line:90% There's chance. 00:53:30.560 --> 00:53:33.200 align:middle line:90% America has done lost its cool. 00:53:33.200 --> 00:53:36.200 align:middle line:84% Anecdotal, as many biographical events, 00:53:36.200 --> 00:53:39.500 align:middle line:84% meaning it may be proof of psychology and ontology. 00:53:39.500 --> 00:53:42.050 align:middle line:84% For even fascists have fingerprints and daddy 00:53:42.050 --> 00:53:45.140 align:middle line:90% is Marinetti, come, Missy E. 00:53:45.140 --> 00:53:47.210 align:middle line:84% Place the tip of the outer tube of the tampon 00:53:47.210 --> 00:53:49.910 align:middle line:84% applicator in the opening of the hell, we say. 00:53:49.910 --> 00:53:52.130 align:middle line:84% Work stirs bombs to be packaged as carefully 00:53:52.130 --> 00:53:54.800 align:middle line:84% and as tightly wired to the vagina. 00:53:54.800 --> 00:53:57.470 align:middle line:84% The piece must be read more closely than the CV closer, 00:53:57.470 --> 00:54:01.280 align:middle line:84% than nary ambition, than dance to dancer or pisser to pissoir, 00:54:01.280 --> 00:54:05.040 align:middle line:84% than the open shores of the evermore to the never shall be. 00:54:05.040 --> 00:54:07.880 align:middle line:84% We're going to bring it home to you. 00:54:07.880 --> 00:54:10.520 align:middle line:84% Even the dematerialized is materialization, 00:54:10.520 --> 00:54:12.320 align:middle line:90% gendered colored and quick. 00:54:12.320 --> 00:54:15.050 align:middle line:90% Just ask information management. 00:54:15.050 --> 00:54:17.240 align:middle line:90% And it's going to be quick. 00:54:17.240 --> 00:54:20.130 align:middle line:84% For all you terrorists make me sick. 00:54:20.130 --> 00:54:22.790 align:middle line:84% We all agree that some have bigger tits. 00:54:22.790 --> 00:54:26.420 align:middle line:84% And my breast lies upon his breast, pointed and pointless 00:54:26.420 --> 00:54:28.160 align:middle line:90% like the tribe's tubular eyes. 00:54:28.160 --> 00:54:30.530 align:middle line:84% Like lumber lies latent in ships and trees, 00:54:30.530 --> 00:54:32.750 align:middle line:84% and maybe more or less permeable, penetrable, 00:54:32.750 --> 00:54:34.160 align:middle line:90% and seaworthy. 00:54:34.160 --> 00:54:35.847 align:middle line:90% As the picture shows. 00:54:35.847 --> 00:54:37.430 align:middle line:84% For the question is not whether you've 00:54:37.430 --> 00:54:39.680 align:middle line:84% built the boat itself, though you might, could. 00:54:39.680 --> 00:54:41.450 align:middle line:90% The vagina slants upward. 00:54:41.450 --> 00:54:44.030 align:middle line:84% Or whether it's a skiff or a scowl, though it may well be, 00:54:44.030 --> 00:54:45.410 align:middle line:90% and towards the back. 00:54:45.410 --> 00:54:47.510 align:middle line:84% But whether you pompom the French sailors 00:54:47.510 --> 00:54:49.560 align:middle line:90% and what's stowed in the hold. 00:54:49.560 --> 00:54:51.140 align:middle line:84% So in the tampon, towards a point 00:54:51.140 --> 00:54:52.790 align:middle line:90% low in the small of the back. 00:54:52.790 --> 00:54:56.400 align:middle line:84% Symbolic or semantic, the curved area of the lower back. 00:54:56.400 --> 00:54:58.280 align:middle line:90% We want cargo. 00:54:58.280 --> 00:55:00.950 align:middle line:84% Oh, what to me of my mother's care? 00:55:00.950 --> 00:55:05.060 align:middle line:84% Appropriation is, what the hell you smoking on? 00:55:05.060 --> 00:55:08.120 align:middle line:84% One gesture, think it's, were an echo, 00:55:08.120 --> 00:55:11.270 align:middle line:90% time we flarf this one bitch. 00:55:11.270 --> 00:55:14.450 align:middle line:84% Gesture, wearing slapped, erasure 00:55:14.450 --> 00:55:16.940 align:middle line:84% is one where Eulalia gestures to echo, 00:55:16.940 --> 00:55:19.470 align:middle line:84% wherein I am the sacrificial lamb. 00:55:19.470 --> 00:55:20.900 align:middle line:90% The Taliban. 00:55:20.900 --> 00:55:23.480 align:middle line:90% The statistical me, army. 00:55:23.480 --> 00:55:26.300 align:middle line:84% Authentic and to ready-made ubiquity. 00:55:26.300 --> 00:55:27.930 align:middle line:90% The house where I was. 00:55:27.930 --> 00:55:30.470 align:middle line:84% We are media denim, safe and warm. 00:55:30.470 --> 00:55:33.590 align:middle line:84% Expansive in our cognitions, our recognitions, our recon, 00:55:33.590 --> 00:55:35.630 align:middle line:90% our shrunken ambitions. 00:55:35.630 --> 00:55:37.010 align:middle line:90% Load up. 00:55:37.010 --> 00:55:38.810 align:middle line:84% The danger of a face man is replication 00:55:38.810 --> 00:55:40.890 align:middle line:84% without embedded critique, whereby 00:55:40.890 --> 00:55:43.040 align:middle line:84% I regurgitate the cha-cha of culture 00:55:43.040 --> 00:55:45.590 align:middle line:84% as freshly copied bit writ by me. 00:55:45.590 --> 00:55:47.120 align:middle line:90% Gently push in. 00:55:47.120 --> 00:55:50.480 align:middle line:84% Or Alternatively hop aboard the 2-2 of Arbeit Macht Frei 00:55:50.480 --> 00:55:51.890 align:middle line:90% fungibility. 00:55:51.890 --> 00:55:55.310 align:middle line:84% The danger of expressionism is a belief in the ace of Yeats. 00:55:55.310 --> 00:55:58.280 align:middle line:84% The tampon applicator insertion of one transcendent. 00:55:58.280 --> 00:56:02.530 align:middle line:84% We were overlies, the et ceterative eyes of flies. 00:56:02.530 --> 00:56:04.270 align:middle line:84% Let's have tradition without trajectory, 00:56:04.270 --> 00:56:07.150 align:middle line:84% meaning without missionary position, co-cogitation 00:56:07.150 --> 00:56:10.630 align:middle line:84% without the bang bang against the laurel headboard. 00:56:10.630 --> 00:56:13.030 align:middle line:84% For us, defacement is also the thinning of the cervix 00:56:13.030 --> 00:56:15.940 align:middle line:84% as it dilates during labor, which expresses something that 00:56:15.940 --> 00:56:19.570 align:middle line:84% is, by virtue of its birth, no longer a historical, no longer 00:56:19.570 --> 00:56:21.160 align:middle line:90% mine. 00:56:21.160 --> 00:56:24.760 align:middle line:84% For flushable cardboard applicator, airborne. 00:56:24.760 --> 00:56:26.500 align:middle line:84% Post-conceptualism is the realization 00:56:26.500 --> 00:56:28.510 align:middle line:84% of the sentimental, the senti- that 00:56:28.510 --> 00:56:30.460 align:middle line:84% is cogitative perception, the mental that 00:56:30.460 --> 00:56:31.810 align:middle line:90% is popped cognition. 00:56:31.810 --> 00:56:34.300 align:middle line:84% The shadowy object of the concept 00:56:34.300 --> 00:56:37.180 align:middle line:84% may not be dematerialized any more than a Dada scream 00:56:37.180 --> 00:56:39.910 align:middle line:84% on scrummed or rose blossom, unpeddled 00:56:39.910 --> 00:56:42.340 align:middle line:90% for the tangled web of my hair. 00:56:42.340 --> 00:56:44.560 align:middle line:84% Of what is actuality and what is effect 00:56:44.560 --> 00:56:46.420 align:middle line:84% is true as to be as pink and gray 00:56:46.420 --> 00:56:50.230 align:middle line:84% neurology, as all things produced by belief. 00:56:50.230 --> 00:56:52.840 align:middle line:84% Tampons ease in the applicator by. 00:56:52.840 --> 00:56:55.750 align:middle line:84% We live amidst a glut of popping eye sockets, 00:56:55.750 --> 00:56:58.600 align:middle line:84% slightly twisting or rotating it from side to side. 00:56:58.600 --> 00:57:01.060 align:middle line:84% And in the wet collision between the synthetic, that 00:57:01.060 --> 00:57:03.370 align:middle line:84% is to say perceptual and analytic, 00:57:03.370 --> 00:57:06.010 align:middle line:84% that is to say conceptual fundament. 00:57:06.010 --> 00:57:08.110 align:middle line:84% And in each, I'm a stone motherfucker, 00:57:08.110 --> 00:57:10.960 align:middle line:84% carving out handholds in the pendulous rock. 00:57:10.960 --> 00:57:12.400 align:middle line:90% Hook up. 00:57:12.400 --> 00:57:14.620 align:middle line:84% Avoid twisting a plastic applicator, 00:57:14.620 --> 00:57:17.710 align:middle line:84% which slides in best when pushed at the proper angle. 00:57:17.710 --> 00:57:20.710 align:middle line:84% My breath mixed with his and hers, hers and his, 00:57:20.710 --> 00:57:22.120 align:middle line:90% it's and it is. 00:57:22.120 --> 00:57:26.140 align:middle line:84% Locked and cocked, will hide us from the bitter storm. 00:57:26.140 --> 00:57:28.510 align:middle line:90% Navy, stop. 00:57:28.510 --> 00:57:30.400 align:middle line:84% Post-conceptual writing is a cathedral 00:57:30.400 --> 00:57:32.590 align:middle line:84% of the least seen in Kong, comprehended. 00:57:32.590 --> 00:57:35.290 align:middle line:84% When the outer tube is inside the vagina, picture 00:57:35.290 --> 00:57:37.210 align:middle line:90% this is an objective allegory. 00:57:37.210 --> 00:57:39.730 align:middle line:84% Then the two fingers holding the applicator tube, touch 00:57:39.730 --> 00:57:41.710 align:middle line:84% the writing is rubric and rebrus. 00:57:41.710 --> 00:57:45.130 align:middle line:84% Blow them, and then place your finger or fingers up. 00:57:45.130 --> 00:57:48.940 align:middle line:84% Another Baroque carnival with me tomorrow, borrowed motion. 00:57:48.940 --> 00:57:51.910 align:middle line:84% Air Force, so hiding hair and dewy eyes. 00:57:51.910 --> 00:57:54.820 align:middle line:84% There's far too much presence for us to pretend absence. 00:57:54.820 --> 00:57:57.010 align:middle line:84% Too much shit at our vaginal opening 00:57:57.010 --> 00:57:59.290 align:middle line:84% to pretend to meet middle-aged management. 00:57:59.290 --> 00:58:01.180 align:middle line:84% Too much of the other hand, at the end 00:58:01.180 --> 00:58:04.000 align:middle line:84% of the inner to them up to, where the court comes out 00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:05.890 align:middle line:90% of not enough Marines. 00:58:05.890 --> 00:58:07.510 align:middle line:84% Post-conceptual writing is a poetics 00:58:07.510 --> 00:58:09.250 align:middle line:84% of the leather-bound, improbable. 00:58:09.250 --> 00:58:12.370 align:middle line:84% The crowning point where sound calls around the neck, and baby 00:58:12.370 --> 00:58:15.310 align:middle line:84% turns blue in creamy anticipation. 00:58:15.310 --> 00:58:17.470 align:middle line:84% I am no more with life and death. 00:58:17.470 --> 00:58:21.250 align:middle line:84% Like all rank gods, we insist on excessive instantiation. 00:58:21.250 --> 00:58:23.860 align:middle line:84% That is to say, what if everyone was a woman? 00:58:23.860 --> 00:58:25.630 align:middle line:90% That is to, say nothing. 00:58:25.630 --> 00:58:29.140 align:middle line:84% That is to say, my heart upon his warm heart lies. 00:58:29.140 --> 00:58:31.000 align:middle line:90% What if everyone was nothing? 00:58:31.000 --> 00:58:34.030 align:middle line:84% That is to say, another kind of man. 00:58:34.030 --> 00:58:35.950 align:middle line:84% Push the inner tube until it is completely-- 00:58:35.950 --> 00:58:38.710 align:middle line:84% or what if everyone was-- inside the outer tube? 00:58:38.710 --> 00:58:41.420 align:middle line:84% This pushes the tampon out of-- what-- the applicator. 00:58:41.420 --> 00:58:42.430 align:middle line:90% And my breath is mixed. 00:58:42.430 --> 00:58:45.370 align:middle line:84% Slice them up into freedom, into your vagina. 00:58:45.370 --> 00:58:46.990 align:middle line:90% That's his breath. 00:58:46.990 --> 00:58:48.230 align:middle line:90% That's what's up. 00:58:48.230 --> 00:58:51.670 align:middle line:84% Darling, I want to say, is that still you? 00:58:51.670 --> 00:58:52.844 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:58:52.844 --> 00:59:01.110 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:59:01.110 --> 00:59:02.010 align:middle line:90% Thanks, everybody. 00:59:02.010 --> 00:59:04.230 align:middle line:84% I'm going to try and summarize, just very 00:59:04.230 --> 00:59:07.110 align:middle line:84% briefly, what some of the unifying features were. 00:59:07.110 --> 00:59:09.660 align:middle line:84% And then chief panel members want to talk to each other. 00:59:09.660 --> 00:59:11.490 align:middle line:84% And then we'll open it up for discussion. 00:59:11.490 --> 00:59:14.040 align:middle line:84% You notice that thread went through-- 00:59:14.040 --> 00:59:17.190 align:middle line:84% now the improbable, for instance-- "other" that I think 00:59:17.190 --> 00:59:20.940 align:middle line:84% everybody agreed that there's some kind of "other" 00:59:20.940 --> 00:59:22.230 align:middle line:90% that has entered here. 00:59:22.230 --> 00:59:25.950 align:middle line:84% That it is not more traditional kinds of poetry. 00:59:25.950 --> 00:59:30.810 align:middle line:84% Brian described it so beautifully in that all 00:59:30.810 --> 00:59:32.730 align:middle line:84% these other things are going on now. 00:59:32.730 --> 00:59:34.590 align:middle line:84% And in fact that the text themselves 00:59:34.590 --> 00:59:36.430 align:middle line:90% exist in different states. 00:59:36.430 --> 00:59:40.937 align:middle line:84% I already argued this years ago about some Kenny Goldsmith 00:59:40.937 --> 00:59:43.020 align:middle line:84% works-- that they're differential texts, in a way. 00:59:43.020 --> 00:59:45.220 align:middle line:84% There isn't one text anymore, for one thing. 00:59:45.220 --> 00:59:47.040 align:middle line:84% Moreover, people who work with text 00:59:47.040 --> 00:59:48.630 align:middle line:84% work with all kinds of other things. 00:59:48.630 --> 00:59:51.750 align:middle line:84% And ghosts and others come in, as Linda said. 00:59:51.750 --> 00:59:57.510 align:middle line:84% And then the whole notion that Marie brought in about chance-- 00:59:57.510 --> 00:59:59.610 align:middle line:90% at which I'm very tantalized-- 00:59:59.610 --> 01:00:03.143 align:middle line:84% as a kind of and nonsubjectivity, and so on. 01:00:03.143 --> 01:00:05.310 align:middle line:84% At the same time, maybe this is just our old friend, 01:00:05.310 --> 01:00:06.930 align:middle line:90% defamiliarization. 01:00:06.930 --> 01:00:09.720 align:middle line:84% Jesper brought this up in new dress. 01:00:09.720 --> 01:00:13.380 align:middle line:84% And I think the question is about archive and editorial 01:00:13.380 --> 01:00:16.410 align:middle line:84% things-- are things we really do, we will have to discuss-- 01:00:16.410 --> 01:00:17.470 align:middle line:90% that are important. 01:00:17.470 --> 01:00:21.510 align:middle line:84% So actually, I don't think there was any great disagreement 01:00:21.510 --> 01:00:22.230 align:middle line:90% on the panel. 01:00:22.230 --> 01:00:24.780 align:middle line:84% The idea of physical pleasure and the actual tactile 01:00:24.780 --> 01:00:25.468 align:middle line:90% pleasure. 01:00:25.468 --> 01:00:26.760 align:middle line:90% Very good point, another thing. 01:00:26.760 --> 01:00:29.250 align:middle line:84% So we have a kind of agreement, but also 01:00:29.250 --> 01:00:32.880 align:middle line:84% an agreement I think that some of the more contentious things 01:00:32.880 --> 01:00:35.430 align:middle line:84% that came up, before that some of the claims made, 01:00:35.430 --> 01:00:37.890 align:middle line:84% that it's totally new, and so on. 01:00:37.890 --> 01:00:40.830 align:middle line:90% It's also perhaps not the case. 01:00:40.830 --> 01:00:42.540 align:middle line:84% And then of course, Vanessa, you're 01:00:42.540 --> 01:00:44.880 align:middle line:84% talking about post-conceptual rather than conceptual, 01:00:44.880 --> 01:00:46.110 align:middle line:90% so which is that. 01:00:46.110 --> 01:00:48.450 align:middle line:84% But then as Brian said-- and I'm glad corrected me-- 01:00:48.450 --> 01:00:49.890 align:middle line:84% but of course, it is an evolution. 01:00:49.890 --> 01:00:52.223 align:middle line:84% And I actually think I had a correct version of Tynyanov 01:00:52.223 --> 01:00:56.280 align:middle line:84% somewhere that Michael Heim gave me. 01:00:56.280 --> 01:00:58.230 align:middle line:84% I'm very glad for that correction. 01:00:58.230 --> 01:01:00.960 align:middle line:84% But it is-- you'll still agree that Tynyanov's is a very 01:01:00.960 --> 01:01:02.070 align:middle line:90% important point-- 01:01:02.070 --> 01:01:04.768 align:middle line:84% about how genres are not fixed and things change. 01:01:04.768 --> 01:01:06.810 align:middle line:84% But on the other hand, then they come back again. 01:01:06.810 --> 01:01:08.910 align:middle line:84% And the main thing is not to always make claims. 01:01:08.910 --> 01:01:10.650 align:middle line:84% And the idea of collaboration which 01:01:10.650 --> 01:01:13.260 align:middle line:90% came up, which is important. 01:01:13.260 --> 01:01:14.817 align:middle line:84% It is of more interest to people. 01:01:14.817 --> 01:01:15.900 align:middle line:90% And yet, how do you do it? 01:01:15.900 --> 01:01:17.550 align:middle line:84% But you almost have to do it when 01:01:17.550 --> 01:01:19.590 align:middle line:84% you are using all these different media 01:01:19.590 --> 01:01:20.460 align:middle line:90% and different forms. 01:01:20.460 --> 01:01:23.370 align:middle line:84% And you may not be any good at using the others. 01:01:23.370 --> 01:01:25.950 align:middle line:84% So that that itself becomes a problem. 01:01:25.950 --> 01:01:28.740 align:middle line:84% Now do you all want to ask each other? 01:01:28.740 --> 01:01:30.720 align:middle line:84% Do you have questions for one another 01:01:30.720 --> 01:01:31.860 align:middle line:90% that you want to bring up? 01:01:31.860 --> 01:01:37.725 align:middle line:90% 01:01:37.725 --> 01:01:40.330 align:middle line:84% Are we all agreed that by now, we're 01:01:40.330 --> 01:01:42.186 align:middle line:90% in post-conceptual writing? 01:01:42.186 --> 01:01:43.020 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:01:43.020 --> 01:01:43.750 align:middle line:90% No. 01:01:43.750 --> 01:01:45.625 align:middle line:84% We don't even know what's conceptual writing. 01:01:45.625 --> 01:01:50.380 align:middle line:84% Well, I think, though I'd like to say that post-conceptual 01:01:50.380 --> 01:01:54.790 align:middle line:84% writing is better than conceptual writing-- 01:01:54.790 --> 01:01:57.010 align:middle line:90% it's newer and it's better-- 01:01:57.010 --> 01:01:59.338 align:middle line:84% I think it's more like post-trauma. 01:01:59.338 --> 01:02:01.330 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:02:01.330 --> 01:02:06.160 align:middle line:84% It can exist at the same time or shortly on the heels thereof. 01:02:06.160 --> 01:02:07.920 align:middle line:84% And one may never recover from either. 01:02:07.920 --> 01:02:11.260 align:middle line:90% 01:02:11.260 --> 01:02:16.180 align:middle line:84% One thing, I think just as we are multimedia 01:02:16.180 --> 01:02:20.380 align:middle line:84% and now we're maybe multi periods, too. 01:02:20.380 --> 01:02:24.310 align:middle line:84% We can be conceptual, post-conceptual, even 01:02:24.310 --> 01:02:27.460 align:middle line:84% modernist, postmodernist, and romantic, and expressive, 01:02:27.460 --> 01:02:29.470 align:middle line:84% as all at the same time in the same work. 01:02:29.470 --> 01:02:32.320 align:middle line:84% And I actually think that may be possible. 01:02:32.320 --> 01:02:37.700 align:middle line:84% But just one comment about Marie and chance. 01:02:37.700 --> 01:02:41.830 align:middle line:84% I know Jackson Mac Low specifically used 01:02:41.830 --> 01:02:46.840 align:middle line:84% to very much correct people when they said he was using chance, 01:02:46.840 --> 01:02:49.930 align:middle line:84% that he was determining procedures. 01:02:49.930 --> 01:02:53.110 align:middle line:84% And so there was nothing about chance about it. 01:02:53.110 --> 01:02:56.500 align:middle line:84% And that's just a complicated term, using chance 01:02:56.500 --> 01:02:59.228 align:middle line:84% and how you just be careful about it. 01:02:59.228 --> 01:03:01.270 align:middle line:84% I still think one of the best things is Katherine 01:03:01.270 --> 01:03:04.070 align:middle line:84% Hayles's essay on chance operations-- 01:03:04.070 --> 01:03:06.250 align:middle line:84% which is in the little book I edited on Cage-- 01:03:06.250 --> 01:03:10.030 align:middle line:84% which she says, to bear in mind that it is an operation. 01:03:10.030 --> 01:03:12.222 align:middle line:84% You may generate something by chance to begin with. 01:03:12.222 --> 01:03:13.930 align:middle line:84% But once you've generated it, then you're 01:03:13.930 --> 01:03:15.490 align:middle line:90% following it as a rule. 01:03:15.490 --> 01:03:17.500 align:middle line:84% And so I prefer actually thinking of it often 01:03:17.500 --> 01:03:19.570 align:middle line:90% as rule-based rather than that. 01:03:19.570 --> 01:03:22.870 align:middle line:84% Why don't we open the floor to, unless? 01:03:22.870 --> 01:03:24.610 align:middle line:90% Why don't we open-- yeah. 01:03:24.610 --> 01:03:25.430 align:middle line:90% Question over here. 01:03:25.430 --> 01:03:26.247 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:03:26.247 --> 01:03:28.115 align:middle line:90% Can I just posit up the mic? 01:03:28.115 --> 01:03:28.680 align:middle line:90% Is that OK? 01:03:28.680 --> 01:03:30.430 align:middle line:84% You can, but why don't you give your name? 01:03:30.430 --> 01:03:34.570 align:middle line:84% I've been disappointed that, from the floor discussions-- 01:03:34.570 --> 01:03:36.140 align:middle line:90% Why don't you give your name? 01:03:36.140 --> 01:03:36.640 align:middle line:90% It's useful. 01:03:36.640 --> 01:03:39.650 align:middle line:84% My name is [INAUDIBLE],, and I want 01:03:39.650 --> 01:03:49.040 align:middle line:84% to respond to Marie and Brian, and I guess everybody. 01:03:49.040 --> 01:03:51.980 align:middle line:90% In a way, Linda, of course. 01:03:51.980 --> 01:03:53.990 align:middle line:84% Marie, when you mentioned at the end 01:03:53.990 --> 01:03:57.180 align:middle line:84% about machine versus politics, and I was wondering, 01:03:57.180 --> 01:04:01.408 align:middle line:84% it could perhaps be the politics of the machine. 01:04:01.408 --> 01:04:02.450 align:middle line:90% I think you need the mic. 01:04:02.450 --> 01:04:04.730 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:04:04.730 --> 01:04:05.990 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 01:04:05.990 --> 01:04:13.380 align:middle line:84% It could be perhaps the politics. 01:04:13.380 --> 01:04:17.600 align:middle line:90% 01:04:17.600 --> 01:04:22.520 align:middle line:84% I come from an oppressed culture and from music and science. 01:04:22.520 --> 01:04:25.130 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to introduce some elements here 01:04:25.130 --> 01:04:31.080 align:middle line:84% of evolution and physics, things like that. 01:04:31.080 --> 01:04:36.920 align:middle line:84% So about what Craig and Christian and Ken are doing 01:04:36.920 --> 01:04:41.810 align:middle line:84% are sort of responding to Beckett, whom I adore. 01:04:41.810 --> 01:04:45.770 align:middle line:84% And there is a word, exactation, which 01:04:45.770 --> 01:04:51.410 align:middle line:84% is Darwin's theories being mushed over this time. 01:04:51.410 --> 01:04:54.380 align:middle line:84% And some of Darwin is OK, but there 01:04:54.380 --> 01:05:00.020 align:middle line:84% is a chance and willful adaptation both working 01:05:00.020 --> 01:05:04.370 align:middle line:84% through artificial intelligence now, but also in our brain. 01:05:04.370 --> 01:05:10.310 align:middle line:84% And these things come up in the creative mind as well, 01:05:10.310 --> 01:05:15.050 align:middle line:84% and the trouble about talking about these or doing these. 01:05:15.050 --> 01:05:24.770 align:middle line:84% And I'm very much impressed by Vanessa's writing 01:05:24.770 --> 01:05:27.290 align:middle line:84% about this because she is doing it, 01:05:27.290 --> 01:05:31.550 align:middle line:84% what I'm going to talk about, which I also attempt to do. 01:05:31.550 --> 01:05:35.210 align:middle line:84% First of all, writing, when we hear Avital Ronell talk 01:05:35.210 --> 01:05:37.190 align:middle line:90% about writing, it's work. 01:05:37.190 --> 01:05:39.440 align:middle line:90% It's ergon. 01:05:39.440 --> 01:05:41.190 align:middle line:90% We just do the work. 01:05:41.190 --> 01:05:44.570 align:middle line:84% And it's not just in the mind's eye 01:05:44.570 --> 01:05:47.540 align:middle line:84% because the mind is not just between these two. 01:05:47.540 --> 01:05:50.280 align:middle line:84% The mind is outside of ourselves as well. 01:05:50.280 --> 01:05:56.660 align:middle line:84% And this is part of this exactation concept. 01:05:56.660 --> 01:06:00.800 align:middle line:84% And also the fact that we cannot talk too much about these 01:06:00.800 --> 01:06:03.530 align:middle line:84% things is because when we talk, we're talking about something 01:06:03.530 --> 01:06:06.560 align:middle line:84% that doesn't exist anymore the minute that we talk about it. 01:06:06.560 --> 01:06:07.820 align:middle line:90% It's like Schrodinger's cat. 01:06:07.820 --> 01:06:10.850 align:middle line:84% And I wrote about this in how too many, many years ago. 01:06:10.850 --> 01:06:12.440 align:middle line:90% Can we come to the question? 01:06:12.440 --> 01:06:14.580 align:middle line:84% I mean, we want to give other people time. 01:06:14.580 --> 01:06:15.680 align:middle line:90% OK? 01:06:15.680 --> 01:06:18.210 align:middle line:90% Well, it's comments, actually. 01:06:18.210 --> 01:06:18.710 align:middle line:90% All right. 01:06:18.710 --> 01:06:22.370 align:middle line:84% But let's keep it a little short because we have other people. 01:06:22.370 --> 01:06:25.940 align:middle line:84% I wanted to mention actually that concept is the vehicle, 01:06:25.940 --> 01:06:27.530 align:middle line:90% just like Cole mentioned. 01:06:27.530 --> 01:06:30.740 align:middle line:90% And that's basically it. 01:06:30.740 --> 01:06:34.190 align:middle line:84% That there is adaptation by exactation. 01:06:34.190 --> 01:06:37.100 align:middle line:84% And so these are the things I'm throwing out there 01:06:37.100 --> 01:06:39.800 align:middle line:84% as comments or response to what you 01:06:39.800 --> 01:06:47.820 align:middle line:84% two are saying, to Brian, Hugh, and Marie, and Linda. 01:06:47.820 --> 01:06:59.170 align:middle line:90% 01:06:59.170 --> 01:06:59.670 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:06:59.670 --> 01:07:01.800 align:middle line:90% Thanks, everybody. 01:07:01.800 --> 01:07:03.390 align:middle line:90% I just wanted to respond to-- 01:07:03.390 --> 01:07:04.680 align:middle line:90% Name, can we have names? 01:07:04.680 --> 01:07:05.490 align:middle line:90% Oh, yeah. 01:07:05.490 --> 01:07:06.240 align:middle line:90% Rob. 01:07:06.240 --> 01:07:07.950 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 01:07:07.950 --> 01:07:12.360 align:middle line:84% I was very interested in Marie's term, 01:07:12.360 --> 01:07:17.227 align:middle line:84% unsubjective subjective or unsubjective subjectivity. 01:07:17.227 --> 01:07:18.810 align:middle line:84% And I think that there's a way that we 01:07:18.810 --> 01:07:24.300 align:middle line:84% could think about this in terms of subjectivities 01:07:24.300 --> 01:07:25.680 align:middle line:90% that seems interesting to me. 01:07:25.680 --> 01:07:27.330 align:middle line:84% And why I'm bringing this up I guess 01:07:27.330 --> 01:07:30.910 align:middle line:84% is that I think the web is very useful to talk about 01:07:30.910 --> 01:07:33.510 align:middle line:84% at this point because we now have access 01:07:33.510 --> 01:07:37.080 align:middle line:90% to everybody's subjectivity. 01:07:37.080 --> 01:07:41.400 align:middle line:84% And I get in a lot of trouble by saying, 01:07:41.400 --> 01:07:46.635 align:middle line:84% I like subjectivity, I just would rather it not be my own. 01:07:46.635 --> 01:07:49.110 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:07:49.110 --> 01:07:50.880 align:middle line:84% We got some pretty interesting examples 01:07:50.880 --> 01:07:53.910 align:middle line:84% of this from Craig's piece, I think, 01:07:53.910 --> 01:07:56.640 align:middle line:84% and also in Caroline's piece, where 01:07:56.640 --> 01:07:59.220 align:middle line:84% you have lots of subjectivities coming 01:07:59.220 --> 01:08:02.290 align:middle line:84% through the language itself, or of course, in Craig's 01:08:02.290 --> 01:08:05.400 align:middle line:90% piece, where it's web based. 01:08:05.400 --> 01:08:07.530 align:middle line:84% And why I think this is important, 01:08:07.530 --> 01:08:10.710 align:middle line:84% why I think this is essential to this question, 01:08:10.710 --> 01:08:15.060 align:middle line:84% "why conceptualism, why now," is very interesting 01:08:15.060 --> 01:08:20.830 align:middle line:84% because for me, "why now" is we have this opportunity-- 01:08:20.830 --> 01:08:23.760 align:middle line:84% and, one could even say, responsibility-- 01:08:23.760 --> 01:08:27.689 align:middle line:84% to carve our way through this morass of information 01:08:27.689 --> 01:08:30.569 align:middle line:90% and unsubjectivities. 01:08:30.569 --> 01:08:32.760 align:middle line:84% And this is one term that I think 01:08:32.760 --> 01:08:39.370 align:middle line:84% is really useful to think about, unsubjectivity or subjectivity. 01:08:39.370 --> 01:08:39.870 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 01:08:39.870 --> 01:08:48.840 align:middle line:90% 01:08:48.840 --> 01:08:51.060 align:middle line:90% My name is Jake Whitby. 01:08:51.060 --> 01:08:52.740 align:middle line:84% I'm really interested in the concept 01:08:52.740 --> 01:08:56.310 align:middle line:84% of this boring boring and unboring boring. 01:08:56.310 --> 01:08:57.960 align:middle line:90% That's Kenneth Goldsmith. 01:08:57.960 --> 01:09:03.740 align:middle line:84% Well my question, being a new fairly ignorant student-- 01:09:03.740 --> 01:09:06.569 align:middle line:84% like I'm new, I'm not as well read-- 01:09:06.569 --> 01:09:09.840 align:middle line:84% is for me to study stuff, that is, 01:09:09.840 --> 01:09:14.229 align:middle line:84% to contextualize unboring boring versus boring boring. 01:09:14.229 --> 01:09:17.670 align:middle line:84% It's like O'Hare and Ashbery's unboring, where as Lowell 01:09:17.670 --> 01:09:18.930 align:middle line:90% and Sexton are boring. 01:09:18.930 --> 01:09:24.569 align:middle line:84% And that's how I best learned, and I can contextualize things. 01:09:24.569 --> 01:09:26.040 align:middle line:84% I mean, compared to other events I 01:09:26.040 --> 01:09:29.850 align:middle line:84% go to and things that are going on, this is very unboring. 01:09:29.850 --> 01:09:31.500 align:middle line:84% Maybe I'll just use the modifier. 01:09:31.500 --> 01:09:35.250 align:middle line:84% And a lot of other stuff I see and read, it's very boring. 01:09:35.250 --> 01:09:36.314 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:09:36.314 --> 01:09:39.779 align:middle line:84% How for me when I best contextualize-- 01:09:39.779 --> 01:09:42.000 align:middle line:84% if you could give me some examples 01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:44.859 align:middle line:90% that you know better than I do-- 01:09:44.859 --> 01:09:48.270 align:middle line:84% when I can contextualize what's going on conceptual poetry 01:09:48.270 --> 01:09:51.310 align:middle line:90% to the boring boring. 01:09:51.310 --> 01:09:53.398 align:middle line:90% Oh wow. 01:09:53.398 --> 01:09:54.690 align:middle line:90% Who would like to address that? 01:09:54.690 --> 01:10:00.460 align:middle line:90% 01:10:00.460 --> 01:10:01.210 align:middle line:90% Was it Marjorie? 01:10:01.210 --> 01:10:01.770 align:middle line:90% Was that you? 01:10:01.770 --> 01:10:05.140 align:middle line:84% We were talking about having students present readymades 01:10:05.140 --> 01:10:07.340 align:middle line:90% in class, and they didn't work. 01:10:07.340 --> 01:10:07.840 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:10:07.840 --> 01:10:09.400 align:middle line:90% That's a boring boring. 01:10:09.400 --> 01:10:14.940 align:middle line:84% And the readymades that Duchamp does, that's unboring boring. 01:10:14.940 --> 01:10:18.860 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:10:18.860 --> 01:10:20.830 align:middle line:90% 01:10:20.830 --> 01:10:25.900 align:middle line:84% Well, I guess I'm going to take my arguments with my own way. 01:10:25.900 --> 01:10:28.300 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:10:28.300 --> 01:10:31.000 align:middle line:84% Well, just to respond to that and I guess what the panel was 01:10:31.000 --> 01:10:35.537 align:middle line:84% saying that I think, one of the things that Kenny raised with 01:10:35.537 --> 01:10:37.870 align:middle line:84% that-- and that has come up with notions of the physical 01:10:37.870 --> 01:10:40.480 align:middle line:84% pleasure and conceptual notions in general-- 01:10:40.480 --> 01:10:43.287 align:middle line:90% is why something bores us. 01:10:43.287 --> 01:10:45.370 align:middle line:84% And it has a lot to do with, I think, at the heart 01:10:45.370 --> 01:10:47.290 align:middle line:84% that we haven't really explicitly said, 01:10:47.290 --> 01:10:48.070 align:middle line:90% but it is implied. 01:10:48.070 --> 01:10:51.190 align:middle line:84% And that is the notion of repetition and redundancy. 01:10:51.190 --> 01:10:55.930 align:middle line:84% And why that becomes boring is because of its safety, 01:10:55.930 --> 01:10:57.530 align:middle line:84% because of the way that it lulls us 01:10:57.530 --> 01:11:00.760 align:middle line:84% into a physical interaction with the body, of rhythmically 01:11:00.760 --> 01:11:02.500 align:middle line:84% that we are so familiar with we're not 01:11:02.500 --> 01:11:04.360 align:middle line:90% interested in the disruption. 01:11:04.360 --> 01:11:07.750 align:middle line:84% So we're talking about how do we disrupt things 01:11:07.750 --> 01:11:12.820 align:middle line:84% that our physical body, that we know that's beyond the mind 01:11:12.820 --> 01:11:16.750 align:middle line:84% but is just part of our existence. 01:11:16.750 --> 01:11:21.130 align:middle line:84% Is it boring when it's something that we feel comfort in or not? 01:11:21.130 --> 01:11:23.800 align:middle line:84% Or is this-- quite also this physical comfort-- 01:11:23.800 --> 01:11:27.970 align:middle line:84% predicate the idea of something being of interest revelatory? 01:11:27.970 --> 01:11:30.600 align:middle line:84% Some people can argue the exact opposite, like when 01:11:30.600 --> 01:11:32.890 align:middle line:90% you put chance in that context. 01:11:32.890 --> 01:11:34.390 align:middle line:84% Which is the origins of what we talk 01:11:34.390 --> 01:11:36.160 align:middle line:90% about when we discuss poetry-- 01:11:36.160 --> 01:11:39.790 align:middle line:84% the spirituality, the notion of an elevation. 01:11:39.790 --> 01:11:41.480 align:middle line:84% People would say that's not born of it, 01:11:41.480 --> 01:11:43.147 align:middle line:84% but it goes back to what you were saying 01:11:43.147 --> 01:11:45.790 align:middle line:84% at the very beginning, Marjorie, about how 01:11:45.790 --> 01:11:50.740 align:middle line:84% this visuality negotiate with poetry and poetics in this way, 01:11:50.740 --> 01:11:55.060 align:middle line:84% and the mastery of imitation as a form of repetition 01:11:55.060 --> 01:11:56.710 align:middle line:90% and redundancy and stuff, too. 01:11:56.710 --> 01:11:58.580 align:middle line:84% So maybe this is what we're talking about. 01:11:58.580 --> 01:12:00.247 align:middle line:84% It actually does come back to the notion 01:12:00.247 --> 01:12:02.530 align:middle line:84% of physical pleasure, the body and the Western concept 01:12:02.530 --> 01:12:05.020 align:middle line:84% of the body should be alienated from us. 01:12:05.020 --> 01:12:14.280 align:middle line:90% 01:12:14.280 --> 01:12:17.220 align:middle line:84% And I think this also brings up a really, really interesting 01:12:17.220 --> 01:12:19.320 align:middle line:84% Greenbergian question underneath that, which 01:12:19.320 --> 01:12:20.955 align:middle line:90% is, how do you tell what works? 01:12:20.955 --> 01:12:24.690 align:middle line:90% 01:12:24.690 --> 01:12:27.308 align:middle line:84% Let's talk about Fountain for a second, OK. 01:12:27.308 --> 01:12:29.100 align:middle line:84% Part of the thing with that, it wasn't just 01:12:29.100 --> 01:12:32.820 align:middle line:90% a urinal on a platform. 01:12:32.820 --> 01:12:34.560 align:middle line:90% It was a urinal, A, in a museum. 01:12:34.560 --> 01:12:36.600 align:middle line:84% It was also a urinal on its side. 01:12:36.600 --> 01:12:38.610 align:middle line:84% And what I don't see talked about very much is, 01:12:38.610 --> 01:12:40.200 align:middle line:84% the view of the urinal, when you were 01:12:40.200 --> 01:12:42.900 align:middle line:84% looking at it in the museum, is the view 01:12:42.900 --> 01:12:44.550 align:middle line:90% of the pisser to the pissoir. 01:12:44.550 --> 01:12:46.350 align:middle line:84% That's what I was alluding to in my speech. 01:12:46.350 --> 01:12:48.090 align:middle line:90% It's the God view. 01:12:48.090 --> 01:12:49.183 align:middle line:90% You're looking down. 01:12:49.183 --> 01:12:51.600 align:middle line:84% Which is a view, A, if you're a woman, you can never have, 01:12:51.600 --> 01:12:52.650 align:middle line:90% probably. 01:12:52.650 --> 01:12:56.130 align:middle line:84% And B, if you're a man, you haven't had it like this. 01:12:56.130 --> 01:12:57.650 align:middle line:90% So suddenly, it is unboring. 01:12:57.650 --> 01:12:59.490 align:middle line:84% It's decontextualized, not because it 01:12:59.490 --> 01:13:01.470 align:middle line:84% necessarily even the institutional critique, 01:13:01.470 --> 01:13:03.490 align:middle line:84% but the actual perceptual critique, which is, 01:13:03.490 --> 01:13:05.448 align:middle line:84% I think, part of what Tracie was talking about. 01:13:05.448 --> 01:13:08.130 align:middle line:84% So these are elements that you can take into your assessment 01:13:08.130 --> 01:13:09.840 align:middle line:90% of, why does something-- 01:13:09.840 --> 01:13:12.030 align:middle line:84% I mean, we all have our little Greenbergian 01:13:12.030 --> 01:13:14.490 align:middle line:84% thing that goes up and goes, oh yeah, that's it. 01:13:14.490 --> 01:13:17.585 align:middle line:84% But then if you try to rationalize it or do a content 01:13:17.585 --> 01:13:19.710 align:middle line:84% thing of like, well, what can I take from "oh yeah, 01:13:19.710 --> 01:13:21.180 align:middle line:90% that's it" to something else. 01:13:21.180 --> 01:13:23.730 align:middle line:84% It's things like, what is the shift in perspective 01:13:23.730 --> 01:13:25.800 align:middle line:90% that makes it worth it? 01:13:25.800 --> 01:13:26.460 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:13:26.460 --> 01:13:30.930 align:middle line:84% And also, it has to do with perception, which is often 01:13:30.930 --> 01:13:35.085 align:middle line:84% the term I would prefer to any of the psychologizing terms. 01:13:35.085 --> 01:13:37.673 align:middle line:90% 01:13:37.673 --> 01:13:39.090 align:middle line:84% When you think of boredom, boredom 01:13:39.090 --> 01:13:41.160 align:middle line:84% can be a synonym of "I don't like it," 01:13:41.160 --> 01:13:43.260 align:middle line:84% which is why my students could use it. 01:13:43.260 --> 01:13:45.330 align:middle line:84% But boring can also be used in the sense 01:13:45.330 --> 01:13:47.340 align:middle line:84% that Cole was talking about figure and ground 01:13:47.340 --> 01:13:48.630 align:middle line:90% relationships. 01:13:48.630 --> 01:13:50.430 align:middle line:84% Often what constitutes the ground 01:13:50.430 --> 01:13:53.430 align:middle line:84% is called boring, because it's that against which we 01:13:53.430 --> 01:13:55.350 align:middle line:90% differentiate what stands out. 01:13:55.350 --> 01:13:57.357 align:middle line:84% And the boring boring, I would say, 01:13:57.357 --> 01:13:59.940 align:middle line:84% in a lot of contemporary writing would simply be when you pick 01:13:59.940 --> 01:14:02.430 align:middle line:84% up the journal and you randomly open the page and you look 01:14:02.430 --> 01:14:04.680 align:middle line:84% at it and like, uh, it's just like everything else . 01:14:04.680 --> 01:14:06.540 align:middle line:90% And it's perceptually based. 01:14:06.540 --> 01:14:09.450 align:middle line:84% And one can be attentive in different ways. 01:14:09.450 --> 01:14:11.580 align:middle line:84% And you can take the lyric that you would normally 01:14:11.580 --> 01:14:14.940 align:middle line:84% pass over and read it against the grain or any 01:14:14.940 --> 01:14:18.060 align:middle line:84% of the kinds of methods that Craig talks about in his book, 01:14:18.060 --> 01:14:19.170 align:middle line:90% Reading the Illegible. 01:14:19.170 --> 01:14:22.065 align:middle line:84% So the boring boring can be made newly interesting. 01:14:22.065 --> 01:14:24.922 align:middle line:84% It has to do, again, like perception 01:14:24.922 --> 01:14:26.880 align:middle line:84% and-- as Tracie was talking about-- embodiment, 01:14:26.880 --> 01:14:29.070 align:middle line:84% and how these things are playing out, 01:14:29.070 --> 01:14:31.367 align:middle line:84% and how it becomes aware and conscious. 01:14:31.367 --> 01:14:32.950 align:middle line:84% And that's what I find really exciting 01:14:32.950 --> 01:14:34.530 align:middle line:84% in a lot of contemporary writing, 01:14:34.530 --> 01:14:36.932 align:middle line:84% is investigating this kind of complex of issues. 01:14:36.932 --> 01:14:38.640 align:middle line:84% And in many ways, when I talk about mixed 01:14:38.640 --> 01:14:42.810 align:middle line:84% or multimedia, that's really talking about perception, 01:14:42.810 --> 01:14:47.280 align:middle line:84% sensation, recognitions, that our senses work analogically. 01:14:47.280 --> 01:14:53.310 align:middle line:84% That one can move from sight to sound and interesting ways, 01:14:53.310 --> 01:14:54.430 align:middle line:90% as Cole was talking about. 01:14:54.430 --> 01:14:56.880 align:middle line:84% They don't have to be metaphoric. 01:14:56.880 --> 01:15:01.050 align:middle line:84% And so in trying to figure out how one can use terms 01:15:01.050 --> 01:15:04.603 align:middle line:84% like "boring boring"-- that could be jargony instantly, 01:15:04.603 --> 01:15:06.270 align:middle line:84% that can lead you to these kinds of very 01:15:06.270 --> 01:15:10.100 align:middle line:84% profound and interesting questions. 01:15:10.100 --> 01:15:12.470 align:middle line:84% Everybody is ready to speak on this. 01:15:12.470 --> 01:15:15.050 align:middle line:84% I just wanted to pick up on the couple of comments 01:15:15.050 --> 01:15:17.330 align:middle line:84% about recontextualization and connect it to something 01:15:17.330 --> 01:15:19.640 align:middle line:84% that Linda brought up, which was the other that 01:15:19.640 --> 01:15:20.780 align:middle line:90% is inhabiting things. 01:15:20.780 --> 01:15:23.360 align:middle line:90% 01:15:23.360 --> 01:15:25.400 align:middle line:84% And again, not meaning this metaphorically, 01:15:25.400 --> 01:15:28.790 align:middle line:84% that recontextualization is more than changing the frame. 01:15:28.790 --> 01:15:33.290 align:middle line:84% But if something happens in displacing a text or anything 01:15:33.290 --> 01:15:38.510 align:middle line:84% text here, that opens a crack that allows something else in, 01:15:38.510 --> 01:15:42.500 align:middle line:84% so that making strange is a matter of somehow accidentally 01:15:42.500 --> 01:15:45.230 align:middle line:84% allowing in a stranger into the heart of the text. 01:15:45.230 --> 01:15:47.870 align:middle line:84% So how to think about that in concrete terms 01:15:47.870 --> 01:15:49.400 align:middle line:84% rather than the metaphoric, which 01:15:49.400 --> 01:15:55.830 align:middle line:84% is where my mind defaults, but I was suggesting that. 01:15:55.830 --> 01:15:56.780 align:middle line:90% Name? 01:15:56.780 --> 01:15:59.240 align:middle line:84% Just to tack on to what Cole was saying. 01:15:59.240 --> 01:16:03.260 align:middle line:84% Although I certainly have made my life 01:16:03.260 --> 01:16:07.550 align:middle line:84% trying to take on stigmatized terms and accepting them, 01:16:07.550 --> 01:16:10.100 align:middle line:84% I would know just something from a more conservative point 01:16:10.100 --> 01:16:12.770 align:middle line:84% of view that I had in terms of literary history. 01:16:12.770 --> 01:16:16.700 align:middle line:84% And it has to do with, for me, the very negative aspects 01:16:16.700 --> 01:16:20.300 align:middle line:84% of what progress consists of-- evolutionary dynamic. 01:16:20.300 --> 01:16:23.390 align:middle line:84% Which is that within literary history, very often 01:16:23.390 --> 01:16:26.450 align:middle line:84% the new methods of writing and reading 01:16:26.450 --> 01:16:28.200 align:middle line:90% do open up new possibilities. 01:16:28.200 --> 01:16:31.470 align:middle line:84% But they also, at the same time, close off other possibilities. 01:16:31.470 --> 01:16:34.700 align:middle line:84% And it makes it impossible to go back to those other things 01:16:34.700 --> 01:16:37.640 align:middle line:84% because we lose our ability to read them, find it boring. 01:16:37.640 --> 01:16:39.980 align:middle line:84% And boring is often a term of contempt. 01:16:39.980 --> 01:16:41.975 align:middle line:84% Sometimes we want to embrace it or what 01:16:41.975 --> 01:16:43.100 align:middle line:90% we want to be entertaining. 01:16:43.100 --> 01:16:46.800 align:middle line:84% But basically, it has a pejorative edge to it. 01:16:46.800 --> 01:16:48.770 align:middle line:90% So it's always about exclusion. 01:16:48.770 --> 01:16:51.140 align:middle line:84% But it isn't necessarily a conscious exclusion. 01:16:51.140 --> 01:16:53.900 align:middle line:84% You can't get it, but we lose access all the time 01:16:53.900 --> 01:16:58.280 align:middle line:84% within literary history to those things which no longer can 01:16:58.280 --> 01:17:00.770 align:middle line:84% be read, given the new dynamics and criteria-- 01:17:00.770 --> 01:17:04.310 align:middle line:84% not only of value but just of what we can experience. 01:17:04.310 --> 01:17:06.080 align:middle line:84% I think one of the most important aspects 01:17:06.080 --> 01:17:08.390 align:middle line:84% of what I call second wave modernism and on-- 01:17:08.390 --> 01:17:12.080 align:middle line:84% which is poetry in the US from the 1920s 01:17:12.080 --> 01:17:14.840 align:middle line:84% and on-- that we've understood this term "boring" much more 01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:17.480 align:middle line:84% within a socially specific context in which 01:17:17.480 --> 01:17:19.880 align:middle line:84% different cultural groups, different kinds 01:17:19.880 --> 01:17:23.180 align:middle line:84% of aesthetic groupings, have created ways of understanding 01:17:23.180 --> 01:17:26.270 align:middle line:84% things which systematically make it impossible to access 01:17:26.270 --> 01:17:27.320 align:middle line:90% other things. 01:17:27.320 --> 01:17:29.990 align:middle line:84% And that that's derided, thought of as boring. 01:17:29.990 --> 01:17:32.510 align:middle line:84% And this is, of course, the great problem with Greenberg. 01:17:32.510 --> 01:17:35.090 align:middle line:84% Because Greenberg cannot accommodate anything other than 01:17:35.090 --> 01:17:36.890 align:middle line:90% a monological path. 01:17:36.890 --> 01:17:40.490 align:middle line:84% So the negative aspect of evolution, 01:17:40.490 --> 01:17:42.320 align:middle line:84% which I don't think we can totally avoid, 01:17:42.320 --> 01:17:44.660 align:middle line:90% is a dystopian possibility. 01:17:44.660 --> 01:17:47.032 align:middle line:84% And I don't think that there's a solution for it. 01:17:47.032 --> 01:17:49.490 align:middle line:84% I mean, for example, it becomes impossible to read Rossetti 01:17:49.490 --> 01:17:52.610 align:middle line:84% and Swinburne, In a way, in the wake of first wave modernism. 01:17:52.610 --> 01:17:54.240 align:middle line:84% And maybe we can now go back to it. 01:17:54.240 --> 01:17:55.130 align:middle line:90% But for many people-- 01:17:55.130 --> 01:17:57.420 align:middle line:84% and for many people now-- it's just impossible. 01:17:57.420 --> 01:17:59.330 align:middle line:84% So the great pleasure of Swinburne 01:17:59.330 --> 01:18:00.740 align:middle line:90% is very hard to recuperate. 01:18:00.740 --> 01:18:03.530 align:middle line:84% I mean, you can do it if you decide you want to do it. 01:18:03.530 --> 01:18:08.330 align:middle line:84% But as a practical matter, it's quite difficult. 01:18:08.330 --> 01:18:09.120 align:middle line:90% Carlos? 01:18:09.120 --> 01:18:09.620 align:middle line:90% Let's see. 01:18:09.620 --> 01:18:10.700 align:middle line:90% Can I see hands? 01:18:10.700 --> 01:18:11.870 align:middle line:90% First, Carlos. 01:18:11.870 --> 01:18:16.020 align:middle line:90% Then Wystan, Gabriela, and Anna. 01:18:16.020 --> 01:18:16.520 align:middle line:90% OK? 01:18:16.520 --> 01:18:17.110 align:middle line:90% In that order. 01:18:17.110 --> 01:18:17.610 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 01:18:17.610 --> 01:18:18.878 align:middle line:90% We'll get to you. 01:18:18.878 --> 01:18:19.420 align:middle line:90% Thanks, Marg. 01:18:19.420 --> 01:18:22.160 align:middle line:84% You already said my name so I don't need to say it again. 01:18:22.160 --> 01:18:24.710 align:middle line:84% I'm a little weird, but I'm going 01:18:24.710 --> 01:18:29.600 align:middle line:84% to raise what I hear circulating as a philosophical argument 01:18:29.600 --> 01:18:31.772 align:middle line:90% in a poetry symposium. 01:18:31.772 --> 01:18:32.480 align:middle line:90% Always dangerous. 01:18:32.480 --> 01:18:34.940 align:middle line:84% But it has to do with the question 01:18:34.940 --> 01:18:39.020 align:middle line:84% of unsubjective subjectivity and chance. 01:18:39.020 --> 01:18:41.330 align:middle line:84% And I think it relates to this issue of boredom 01:18:41.330 --> 01:18:44.090 align:middle line:84% because ironically, I've always differentiated 01:18:44.090 --> 01:18:46.640 align:middle line:84% between individual identity and subjectivity, 01:18:46.640 --> 01:18:51.290 align:middle line:84% and understood subjectivity as a capacity to act and a capacity 01:18:51.290 --> 01:18:52.250 align:middle line:90% to have agency. 01:18:52.250 --> 01:18:53.570 align:middle line:84% And therefore, you can be a subject to the state. 01:18:53.570 --> 01:18:54.590 align:middle line:84% You can be a subject for yourself, 01:18:54.590 --> 01:18:56.420 align:middle line:84% but you're subject because you're capable of acting. 01:18:56.420 --> 01:18:57.950 align:middle line:84% And that's different from your sense 01:18:57.950 --> 01:18:59.570 align:middle line:90% of identity and individualism. 01:18:59.570 --> 01:19:01.070 align:middle line:84% And when I hear conceptual poetry-- 01:19:01.070 --> 01:19:03.320 align:middle line:84% when I hear Craig's piece, when I hear Kenny's piece-- 01:19:03.320 --> 01:19:05.900 align:middle line:84% actually, there's a lot of subjectivity 01:19:05.900 --> 01:19:08.300 align:middle line:84% behind that in terms of the choice, 01:19:08.300 --> 01:19:10.640 align:middle line:84% in terms of the editing, in terms of the timing, 01:19:10.640 --> 01:19:12.090 align:middle line:84% even in terms of the performance. 01:19:12.090 --> 01:19:14.180 align:middle line:84% But there's very little identity. 01:19:14.180 --> 01:19:16.520 align:middle line:84% There's very little individualism and that kind 01:19:16.520 --> 01:19:19.050 align:middle line:90% of romantic notion. 01:19:19.050 --> 01:19:23.120 align:middle line:84% So I think that it'd be interesting to differentiate 01:19:23.120 --> 01:19:25.730 align:middle line:84% what we understand as subjectivity from what 01:19:25.730 --> 01:19:28.160 align:middle line:84% we traditionally understand as identity. 01:19:28.160 --> 01:19:32.060 align:middle line:84% Because when we do write poetry in a project-oriented matter, 01:19:32.060 --> 01:19:33.140 align:middle line:90% we do collaborate. 01:19:33.140 --> 01:19:36.620 align:middle line:84% We tend to open up our subjectivity to chance 01:19:36.620 --> 01:19:39.620 align:middle line:84% because our sense of how we choose 01:19:39.620 --> 01:19:42.950 align:middle line:84% and how we take responsibility for our choices and agency 01:19:42.950 --> 01:19:45.600 align:middle line:84% will be affected by our environment, 01:19:45.600 --> 01:19:47.600 align:middle line:84% whether it's the other people we're working with 01:19:47.600 --> 01:19:49.400 align:middle line:84% or whether it's the time and place in which we're 01:19:49.400 --> 01:19:50.040 align:middle line:90% working with. 01:19:50.040 --> 01:19:54.380 align:middle line:84% And I think that affects identity and personality 01:19:54.380 --> 01:19:57.510 align:middle line:84% and individualism, but not necessarily the subjectivity 01:19:57.510 --> 01:20:00.520 align:middle line:84% and the capacity to do something. 01:20:00.520 --> 01:20:01.670 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry, I just have to-- 01:20:01.670 --> 01:20:04.350 align:middle line:84% I would absolutely disagree with that. 01:20:04.350 --> 01:20:06.120 align:middle line:84% I would just totally disagree with that. 01:20:06.120 --> 01:20:10.310 align:middle line:84% I think that the position of abstract identity 01:20:10.310 --> 01:20:14.780 align:middle line:84% is a classic, white male, European thing. 01:20:14.780 --> 01:20:18.890 align:middle line:84% The dematerialized identity is as much of an identity. 01:20:18.890 --> 01:20:23.030 align:middle line:84% Lawrence Weiner is a perfect example of white male identity 01:20:23.030 --> 01:20:23.570 align:middle line:90% art. 01:20:23.570 --> 01:20:25.980 align:middle line:84% It's just that people don't call it that. 01:20:25.980 --> 01:20:28.208 align:middle line:84% And so I think that that distinction, 01:20:28.208 --> 01:20:29.750 align:middle line:84% It's a distinction with no difference 01:20:29.750 --> 01:20:30.920 align:middle line:90% at all, as far as I can see. 01:20:30.920 --> 01:20:34.130 align:middle line:84% We only recognize identity by what 01:20:34.130 --> 01:20:35.670 align:middle line:90% we see is against a backdrop. 01:20:35.670 --> 01:20:36.763 align:middle line:90% Why does it have to be-- 01:20:36.763 --> 01:20:38.180 align:middle line:84% well, I won't get it, but why does 01:20:38.180 --> 01:20:39.530 align:middle line:90% it have to be a group identity? 01:20:39.530 --> 01:20:40.340 align:middle line:90% Well, it's both. 01:20:40.340 --> 01:20:41.000 align:middle line:90% It's both. 01:20:41.000 --> 01:20:41.645 align:middle line:90% It's obviously both. 01:20:41.645 --> 01:20:41.810 align:middle line:90% All right. 01:20:41.810 --> 01:20:42.740 align:middle line:90% Let's have Wystan go. 01:20:42.740 --> 01:20:47.070 align:middle line:90% 01:20:47.070 --> 01:20:52.792 align:middle line:84% My question relates much to Linda's reminder-- 01:20:52.792 --> 01:20:56.020 align:middle line:90% it's all from that. 01:20:56.020 --> 01:21:04.370 align:middle line:84% And it's this question of others and poetry 01:21:04.370 --> 01:21:07.910 align:middle line:84% being inhibited with something else, which 01:21:07.910 --> 01:21:14.240 align:middle line:84% you connected with poetry being pregnant with thought. 01:21:14.240 --> 01:21:17.900 align:middle line:84% I just think it would be useful if we got a distinction going 01:21:17.900 --> 01:21:24.630 align:middle line:84% between meaning which is inside poetry and meaning which 01:21:24.630 --> 01:21:27.210 align:middle line:90% is outside. 01:21:27.210 --> 01:21:30.690 align:middle line:84% I prefer cohabiting-- something that cohabits 01:21:30.690 --> 01:21:35.250 align:middle line:84% rather than inhabits the meaning of the poem. 01:21:35.250 --> 01:21:43.365 align:middle line:84% I think that, to give white to all complexity, 01:21:43.365 --> 01:21:46.680 align:middle line:84% and ideas of conceptual poetry that we're 01:21:46.680 --> 01:21:50.010 align:middle line:84% having in this symposium, we need 01:21:50.010 --> 01:21:54.000 align:middle line:84% to complicate notions of service meaning 01:21:54.000 --> 01:22:00.100 align:middle line:84% rather than meanings that are inside and in the inhabitant, 01:22:00.100 --> 01:22:04.600 align:middle line:84% and elaborate a language for meaning which 01:22:04.600 --> 01:22:07.810 align:middle line:84% is of the surface, of the context, 01:22:07.810 --> 01:22:14.860 align:middle line:84% and of the contingencies that in which the work resides. 01:22:14.860 --> 01:22:17.790 align:middle line:84% So contingencies and contextualities 01:22:17.790 --> 01:22:20.760 align:middle line:84% pull in conversations about chance. 01:22:20.760 --> 01:22:26.100 align:middle line:84% There was a pull-in of conversations about other texts 01:22:26.100 --> 01:22:29.280 align:middle line:90% that precede or follow. 01:22:29.280 --> 01:22:32.100 align:middle line:84% And I think there is a realm of complex meaning 01:22:32.100 --> 01:22:36.240 align:middle line:84% possible by exploring that way-- horizontally 01:22:36.240 --> 01:22:38.940 align:middle line:90% rather than vertically. 01:22:38.940 --> 01:22:44.170 align:middle line:84% Let's move it paratactically rather than downwards. 01:22:44.170 --> 01:22:46.170 align:middle line:84% Are you going to talk about that this afternoon? 01:22:46.170 --> 01:22:46.690 align:middle line:90% Maybe not. 01:22:46.690 --> 01:22:47.190 align:middle line:90% No. 01:22:47.190 --> 01:22:49.200 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:22:49.200 --> 01:22:50.768 align:middle line:84% I think the next person was Gabriela. 01:22:50.768 --> 01:22:52.560 align:middle line:84% I'm just doing this in sequence, and if you 01:22:52.560 --> 01:22:54.240 align:middle line:84% want to speak, raise, because otherwise, 01:22:54.240 --> 01:22:55.370 align:middle line:84% we won't be able to take care of it. 01:22:55.370 --> 01:22:57.060 align:middle line:84% All right, Gabriela, and then Anna. 01:22:57.060 --> 01:23:00.775 align:middle line:90% And then Robert? 01:23:00.775 --> 01:23:01.275 align:middle line:90% Roberto? 01:23:01.275 --> 01:23:07.650 align:middle line:90% 01:23:07.650 --> 01:23:10.800 align:middle line:84% To go back to this recontextualization 01:23:10.800 --> 01:23:15.270 align:middle line:84% and the conservative or the old school, 01:23:15.270 --> 01:23:19.670 align:middle line:90% I was wondering if we could-- 01:23:19.670 --> 01:23:22.670 align:middle line:90% I had a question about metaphor. 01:23:22.670 --> 01:23:25.700 align:middle line:90% And Kenneth mentioned moving. 01:23:25.700 --> 01:23:29.610 align:middle line:84% What he's doing is moving information from here to there. 01:23:29.610 --> 01:23:33.530 align:middle line:84% So what that immediately echoed for me was μεταφερειν 01:23:33.530 --> 01:23:40.010 align:middle line:84% in the Greek bus, as in moving or translating. 01:23:40.010 --> 01:23:43.520 align:middle line:84% And so I was wondering if in this expanded 01:23:43.520 --> 01:23:49.880 align:middle line:84% field, as he called it, would it expand the notion-- 01:23:49.880 --> 01:23:52.520 align:middle line:90% or expand it to the ground-- 01:23:52.520 --> 01:23:54.320 align:middle line:90% the notion of metaphor? 01:23:54.320 --> 01:24:00.020 align:middle line:84% And since Bourriaud was invoked, could we 01:24:00.020 --> 01:24:05.630 align:middle line:84% say we're moving sideways from relational aesthetics 01:24:05.630 --> 01:24:07.670 align:middle line:90% to translational aesthetics? 01:24:07.670 --> 01:24:13.560 align:middle line:90% 01:24:13.560 --> 01:24:15.750 align:middle line:84% Well, that was the question I raised, actually, 01:24:15.750 --> 01:24:18.390 align:middle line:84% about the translation being a possible concept 01:24:18.390 --> 01:24:22.770 align:middle line:84% for articulating a lot of the stepping strategies that 01:24:22.770 --> 01:24:24.900 align:middle line:84% are being displayed here on the conference 01:24:24.900 --> 01:24:28.830 align:middle line:84% or manifested in the works of the poets here. 01:24:28.830 --> 01:24:31.740 align:middle line:84% And I was just throwing out the question 01:24:31.740 --> 01:24:33.720 align:middle line:84% because translation seemed to be a concept that 01:24:33.720 --> 01:24:37.770 align:middle line:84% can be applied to almost all the activities that have been done. 01:24:37.770 --> 01:24:42.900 align:middle line:84% Even though the detective job that Craig 01:24:42.900 --> 01:24:45.630 align:middle line:84% talked about yesterday about David Hicks, 01:24:45.630 --> 01:24:48.480 align:middle line:84% even that could be seen as translates to act, actually. 01:24:48.480 --> 01:24:51.707 align:middle line:90% 01:24:51.707 --> 01:24:53.290 align:middle line:84% Well, I haven't got an answer to that. 01:24:53.290 --> 01:24:55.560 align:middle line:84% And I'm not sure if it would be productive, 01:24:55.560 --> 01:24:59.260 align:middle line:84% but it might be able then to connect these kind of practices 01:24:59.260 --> 01:25:01.920 align:middle line:84% to sacred practices to other issues that 01:25:01.920 --> 01:25:04.170 align:middle line:84% relates to translations between cultures 01:25:04.170 --> 01:25:08.400 align:middle line:84% and so on today, which is an imminent issue 01:25:08.400 --> 01:25:11.340 align:middle line:84% in cultural poetics and cultural theory in general. 01:25:11.340 --> 01:25:16.265 align:middle line:90% 01:25:16.265 --> 01:25:17.890 align:middle line:84% That's exactly what I want to speak to. 01:25:17.890 --> 01:25:19.180 align:middle line:90% So thank you. 01:25:19.180 --> 01:25:20.050 align:middle line:90% Anna? 01:25:20.050 --> 01:25:21.107 align:middle line:90% My name is Anna. 01:25:21.107 --> 01:25:22.690 align:middle line:84% And I've been hoping that I'm not just 01:25:22.690 --> 01:25:24.490 align:middle line:84% projecting my work on all of this 01:25:24.490 --> 01:25:27.130 align:middle line:84% because I think it's all about translation. 01:25:27.130 --> 01:25:29.170 align:middle line:84% And I'm really glad that other people do, too. 01:25:29.170 --> 01:25:30.940 align:middle line:84% Because these issues that keep coming up, 01:25:30.940 --> 01:25:35.500 align:middle line:84% the dual subjectivity and obscuring 01:25:35.500 --> 01:25:38.220 align:middle line:84% of your own subjectivity, the simultaneous, 01:25:38.220 --> 01:25:39.970 align:middle line:84% a lot of the work that we're talking about 01:25:39.970 --> 01:25:42.910 align:middle line:84% is about doing a reading of something 01:25:42.910 --> 01:25:45.250 align:middle line:84% by reframing your reading of it and, simultaneously, 01:25:45.250 --> 01:25:46.570 align:middle line:90% writing of it. 01:25:46.570 --> 01:25:49.660 align:middle line:84% That's authorship that's also in the service of questioning 01:25:49.660 --> 01:25:51.910 align:middle line:84% authorship and authority and the idea of displacement, 01:25:51.910 --> 01:25:56.350 align:middle line:84% and certainly being inhabited or haunted by the other, 01:25:56.350 --> 01:25:58.420 align:middle line:90% by others. 01:25:58.420 --> 01:26:01.210 align:middle line:84% These are absolutely the issues of translation 01:26:01.210 --> 01:26:05.320 align:middle line:84% and of the translator and the translator's subjectivity. 01:26:05.320 --> 01:26:07.210 align:middle line:90% So if we're talking about-- 01:26:07.210 --> 01:26:10.520 align:middle line:84% I would like to phrase translational aesthetics, 01:26:10.520 --> 01:26:13.270 align:middle line:84% I think that's really being useful here-- 01:26:13.270 --> 01:26:16.180 align:middle line:84% if we're talking about not literal translation 01:26:16.180 --> 01:26:19.210 align:middle line:84% or not translation per se, but a kind 01:26:19.210 --> 01:26:21.080 align:middle line:84% of translational aesthetics, then we 01:26:21.080 --> 01:26:22.580 align:middle line:84% might want to be also thinking about 01:26:22.580 --> 01:26:27.310 align:middle line:84% and implore some of the problems of translation 01:26:27.310 --> 01:26:28.945 align:middle line:90% and the ethics of politics. 01:26:28.945 --> 01:26:30.820 align:middle line:84% And I was really glad that you brought it up. 01:26:30.820 --> 01:26:34.480 align:middle line:84% I don't think that we need to talk about ethics and politics 01:26:34.480 --> 01:26:37.000 align:middle line:84% in ways that shut down and the experimentation 01:26:37.000 --> 01:26:40.280 align:middle line:84% in the same place to work things out. 01:26:40.280 --> 01:26:43.580 align:middle line:84% But it needs to be part of the conversation as well. 01:26:43.580 --> 01:26:46.720 align:middle line:84% I don't use words like appropriation. 01:26:46.720 --> 01:26:47.590 align:middle line:90% That's a huge issue. 01:26:47.590 --> 01:26:49.240 align:middle line:84% When translation comes appropriation, 01:26:49.240 --> 01:26:51.310 align:middle line:84% that's generally considered a negative. 01:26:51.310 --> 01:26:53.800 align:middle line:90% And who is appropriating what? 01:26:53.800 --> 01:26:55.220 align:middle line:90% What are the power structures? 01:26:55.220 --> 01:26:57.430 align:middle line:84% And when we translate into English, 01:26:57.430 --> 01:26:59.950 align:middle line:84% what are we doing in terms of power and hegemony? 01:26:59.950 --> 01:27:03.700 align:middle line:84% And so I think that those questions, slightly modified, 01:27:03.700 --> 01:27:06.610 align:middle line:84% are probably hugely productive for the conversation 01:27:06.610 --> 01:27:08.390 align:middle line:90% that we're having. 01:27:08.390 --> 01:27:12.590 align:middle line:84% And so I'm really glad that that is already in the [INAUDIBLE],, 01:27:12.590 --> 01:27:15.220 align:middle line:84% just bringing all my translator baggage to the-- 01:27:15.220 --> 01:27:15.720 align:middle line:90% Yup. 01:27:15.720 --> 01:27:16.380 align:middle line:90% Great. 01:27:16.380 --> 01:27:16.560 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:27:16.560 --> 01:27:17.670 align:middle line:90% I think Tenney was next? 01:27:17.670 --> 01:27:21.650 align:middle line:90% 01:27:21.650 --> 01:27:22.150 align:middle line:90% Thanks. 01:27:22.150 --> 01:27:24.210 align:middle line:84% And this follow on really nicely from what 01:27:24.210 --> 01:27:25.168 align:middle line:90% Anna was talking about. 01:27:25.168 --> 01:27:27.120 align:middle line:84% Just wanted to offer a quick plug. 01:27:27.120 --> 01:27:31.350 align:middle line:84% I really like what Jesper had to say about the quotation he 01:27:31.350 --> 01:27:33.450 align:middle line:84% offered on the notion of broken English 01:27:33.450 --> 01:27:35.250 align:middle line:90% as the lingua franca of poetry. 01:27:35.250 --> 01:27:37.908 align:middle line:84% And so the plug would be for the Tijuana poet and blogger 01:27:37.908 --> 01:27:40.200 align:middle line:84% Heriberto Yépez, whose work a lot of you probably know. 01:27:40.200 --> 01:27:42.840 align:middle line:84% But he's done incredibly wonderful poetry 01:27:42.840 --> 01:27:46.650 align:middle line:84% and performance pieces that can be canny, explosively funny, 01:27:46.650 --> 01:27:51.090 align:middle line:84% really disturbing, specifically about broken 01:27:51.090 --> 01:27:53.850 align:middle line:84% English or English as the horrific lingua 01:27:53.850 --> 01:27:55.530 align:middle line:90% franca of the future. 01:27:55.530 --> 01:27:57.810 align:middle line:84% And it's the work it's that in the specific context 01:27:57.810 --> 01:28:00.240 align:middle line:84% of somebody whose local community has been pretty 01:28:00.240 --> 01:28:02.000 align:middle line:90% much obliterated by that. 01:28:02.000 --> 01:28:05.970 align:middle line:84% It's Heriberto Yépez, if people don't mind. 01:28:05.970 --> 01:28:10.442 align:middle line:84% Brian wanted just before Can we have the mic? 01:28:10.442 --> 01:28:12.150 align:middle line:84% Before, and then the next one is Rebecca. 01:28:12.150 --> 01:28:14.000 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:28:14.000 --> 01:28:17.150 align:middle line:84% And the expanded field discussion of translation 01:28:17.150 --> 01:28:18.620 align:middle line:90% is always a fascinating one. 01:28:18.620 --> 01:28:21.200 align:middle line:84% But I think in this case, it's important not only to go that 01:28:21.200 --> 01:28:25.700 align:middle line:84% direction, but translation and metaphor-- carrying across-- 01:28:25.700 --> 01:28:28.730 align:middle line:84% but one could also use transfer, transmit, 01:28:28.730 --> 01:28:30.620 align:middle line:84% and a range of other kinds of words 01:28:30.620 --> 01:28:33.323 align:middle line:84% that are etymologically related that would actually 01:28:33.323 --> 01:28:35.240 align:middle line:84% push the discussion in interesting directions. 01:28:35.240 --> 01:28:37.340 align:middle line:84% Because a lot of what Kenny is doing 01:28:37.340 --> 01:28:41.030 align:middle line:84% could also be talked about in relation to digital technology, 01:28:41.030 --> 01:28:43.850 align:middle line:84% language about copying, replicating. 01:28:43.850 --> 01:28:46.130 align:middle line:84% That lead us in a different kind of direction. 01:28:46.130 --> 01:28:48.710 align:middle line:84% And when I was talking about information and embodiment, 01:28:48.710 --> 01:28:51.200 align:middle line:84% I was trying to get at these sorts of things. 01:28:51.200 --> 01:28:53.120 align:middle line:90% What constitutes content? 01:28:53.120 --> 01:28:54.440 align:middle line:90% How is that portable? 01:28:54.440 --> 01:28:57.830 align:middle line:84% How is it led from one mediation to another? 01:28:57.830 --> 01:28:58.820 align:middle line:90% Is it remitted? ? 01:28:58.820 --> 01:28:59.828 align:middle line:90% Transmitted? 01:28:59.828 --> 01:29:01.370 align:middle line:84% These are kinds of conversations that 01:29:01.370 --> 01:29:04.790 align:middle line:84% are going on in communications theory and media theory. 01:29:04.790 --> 01:29:11.060 align:middle line:84% And while cultural translation is of course important, 01:29:11.060 --> 01:29:14.450 align:middle line:84% language can be looked at in so many different axes 01:29:14.450 --> 01:29:17.000 align:middle line:90% as carrying in different ways-- 01:29:17.000 --> 01:29:20.720 align:middle line:84% carrying itself, being carried through conduits, 01:29:20.720 --> 01:29:22.790 align:middle line:84% And then one begins to talk about borders 01:29:22.790 --> 01:29:24.670 align:middle line:84% in a variety of different fashions. 01:29:24.670 --> 01:29:26.420 align:middle line:84% So it's a potentially extraordinarily rich 01:29:26.420 --> 01:29:28.820 align:middle line:90% conversation. 01:29:28.820 --> 01:29:31.250 align:middle line:84% And so when such translation, I would 01:29:31.250 --> 01:29:35.590 align:middle line:84% invite to be within these kinds of other debates as well.