WEBVTT

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.020 align:middle line:90%


00:00:01.020 --> 00:00:03.120 align:middle line:84%
My name is Matthew
Rotando, and I'm

00:00:03.120 --> 00:00:06.540 align:middle line:84%
a PhD candidate
at the U of A here

00:00:06.540 --> 00:00:09.120 align:middle line:84%
doing my PhD in
English literature,

00:00:09.120 --> 00:00:13.560 align:middle line:84%
and it's really a pleasure to
get to introduce Tenney, who

00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:16.830 align:middle line:90%
is my friend and my teacher.

00:00:16.830 --> 00:00:18.780 align:middle line:84%
And I was dreaming
when I wrote this so

00:00:18.780 --> 00:00:20.100 align:middle line:90%
excuse me if I go too fast.

00:00:20.100 --> 00:00:23.250 align:middle line:90%


00:00:23.250 --> 00:00:26.400 align:middle line:84%
Tenney Nathanson is
a poet and a critic,

00:00:26.400 --> 00:00:28.020 align:middle line:90%
but he's much more than that.

00:00:28.020 --> 00:00:30.915 align:middle line:84%
He's written one of the most
important books in our time

00:00:30.915 --> 00:00:34.470 align:middle line:84%
on Walt Whitman called
Whitman's Presence--

00:00:34.470 --> 00:00:39.210 align:middle line:84%
Body, Voice, and Writing
in Leaves of Grass.

00:00:39.210 --> 00:00:40.740 align:middle line:84%
He's written three
books of poetry--

00:00:40.740 --> 00:00:44.640 align:middle line:84%
One Block Over, Erased
Art, both published

00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:48.930 align:middle line:84%
by Chax Press here in
Tucson, and Home on the Range

00:00:48.930 --> 00:00:51.420 align:middle line:90%
by O Books.

00:00:51.420 --> 00:00:54.150 align:middle line:84%
Linguistic innovation
in his work

00:00:54.150 --> 00:00:59.430 align:middle line:84%
is fresh, startling, and
will help you unknow things.

00:00:59.430 --> 00:01:01.590 align:middle line:84%
When I first started
listening to Tenney read,

00:01:01.590 --> 00:01:04.349 align:middle line:84%
I was alarmed and
intrigued in a marvelous

00:01:04.349 --> 00:01:09.120 align:middle line:84%
way by the wild flow of collage
and abstract narrations.

00:01:09.120 --> 00:01:12.450 align:middle line:90%
And I get so happily lost.

00:01:12.450 --> 00:01:14.460 align:middle line:84%
Now I listen for
the way he moves

00:01:14.460 --> 00:01:17.520 align:middle line:84%
through the various
personalities of his phrasings

00:01:17.520 --> 00:01:19.290 align:middle line:90%
whose voices are these--

00:01:19.290 --> 00:01:21.450 align:middle line:90%
his mind.

00:01:21.450 --> 00:01:25.260 align:middle line:84%
In one listen I
hear a multitude.

00:01:25.260 --> 00:01:29.370 align:middle line:84%
The poet and critic Ron Silliman
says, "By now the Whitmanesque

00:01:29.370 --> 00:01:35.220 align:middle line:84%
line feels far less like Whitman
and far more like Nathanson."

00:01:35.220 --> 00:01:37.500 align:middle line:84%
And every line, if
you listen carefully,

00:01:37.500 --> 00:01:41.070 align:middle line:84%
becomes a hyperlink
under erasure.

00:01:41.070 --> 00:01:44.010 align:middle line:84%
Within Tenney's poetry
there is the constant sense

00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:48.660 align:middle line:84%
that everything is infinitely
likeable, infinitely connected,

00:01:48.660 --> 00:01:49.440 align:middle line:90%
or not.

00:01:49.440 --> 00:01:54.540 align:middle line:84%
Perhaps it's infinitely
fractured, but endearingly so.

00:01:54.540 --> 00:01:58.560 align:middle line:84%
From Erased Art quote, "Here is
an equivalent stretch of sand

00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:03.090 align:middle line:84%
or an equivalent stretch of
sand to the paper of this word,

00:02:03.090 --> 00:02:04.860 align:middle line:90%
"Fired like glass."

00:02:04.860 --> 00:02:07.620 align:middle line:84%
Then fired like
glass and perused

00:02:07.620 --> 00:02:12.280 align:middle line:84%
waffles everywhere, with splayed
mud giving it torsion in parts.

00:02:12.280 --> 00:02:14.430 align:middle line:84%
Here's some sand in your
glass, here's some mud

00:02:14.430 --> 00:02:17.190 align:middle line:84%
in your eye as
equivalence stretches

00:02:17.190 --> 00:02:20.670 align:middle line:84%
the breaking point like
a list including itself

00:02:20.670 --> 00:02:23.010 align:middle line:90%
as one of its minor items.

00:02:23.010 --> 00:02:26.340 align:middle line:84%
All had been well with the
big engine of its dream."

00:02:26.340 --> 00:02:31.630 align:middle line:90%


00:02:31.630 --> 00:02:33.970 align:middle line:84%
You see that the words and
the voices that motivate them

00:02:33.970 --> 00:02:36.460 align:middle line:84%
are always moving
towards and away from us.

00:02:36.460 --> 00:02:41.290 align:middle line:84%
Always slipping out of and
into the framework of art.

00:02:41.290 --> 00:02:44.800 align:middle line:84%
Tenney has also done his
fair share of cushion work

00:02:44.800 --> 00:02:47.410 align:middle line:84%
and has created a drifter
poetics that is always

00:02:47.410 --> 00:02:51.190 align:middle line:84%
grounded by that "Don't know
"mind, even though he does

00:02:51.190 --> 00:02:55.450 align:middle line:84%
know the academy,
the cushion, the con.

00:02:55.450 --> 00:03:00.160 align:middle line:84%
Frequently, his poetry treks
through our desert place

00:03:00.160 --> 00:03:03.430 align:middle line:84%
and I'd always hears voices
from all over and under

00:03:03.430 --> 00:03:05.410 align:middle line:90%
the literary world.

00:03:05.410 --> 00:03:09.010 align:middle line:84%
This drifted poetics is cozy
in the movement of language

00:03:09.010 --> 00:03:11.320 align:middle line:90%
and ranges wide.

00:03:11.320 --> 00:03:15.070 align:middle line:84%
It puts out its Whitmanian
thumb and is picked up

00:03:15.070 --> 00:03:19.180 align:middle line:84%
by Kafka, by Walter
Benjamin, by DT Suzuki,

00:03:19.180 --> 00:03:22.810 align:middle line:90%
by Tucson, and New York.

00:03:22.810 --> 00:03:26.890 align:middle line:84%
Writing about the content in
Tenney's most recent book Home

00:03:26.890 --> 00:03:30.520 align:middle line:84%
on the Range, again,
Ron Silliman says quote,

00:03:30.520 --> 00:03:34.450 align:middle line:84%
"I'm reminded of Peter Yates's
great definition of content

00:03:34.450 --> 00:03:38.770 align:middle line:84%
in music as aesthetic
consistency,

00:03:38.770 --> 00:03:42.070 align:middle line:84%
and Nathanson would be an
example of the principle.

00:03:42.070 --> 00:03:45.970 align:middle line:84%
It helps that he has an ear
that is continually complicated

00:03:45.970 --> 00:03:48.850 align:middle line:90%
by an overlay of mind.

00:03:48.850 --> 00:03:53.260 align:middle line:84%
At that level the poem is one
long elaboration of the senses

00:03:53.260 --> 00:03:56.740 align:middle line:84%
yet it's just as deeply
embedded in history.

00:03:56.740 --> 00:03:58.570 align:middle line:90%
It's a complex production.

00:03:58.570 --> 00:04:02.920 align:middle line:84%
It completely governed by
desire and its cognate.

00:04:02.920 --> 00:04:06.880 align:middle line:84%
And the texts feel less
like sources and almost as

00:04:06.880 --> 00:04:09.520 align:middle line:84%
though they were angels
particular to a given

00:04:09.520 --> 00:04:11.800 align:middle line:90%
section of the poem."

00:04:11.800 --> 00:04:13.090 align:middle line:90%
You'll hear angels.

00:04:13.090 --> 00:04:16.079 align:middle line:90%


00:04:16.079 --> 00:04:18.779 align:middle line:84%
I once heard an interview
with jazz titan Thelonious

00:04:18.779 --> 00:04:22.470 align:middle line:84%
Monk, who was asked about the
use of silence in his work.

00:04:22.470 --> 00:04:26.260 align:middle line:84%
Monk replied quote, "Silence
is the loudest thing around,

00:04:26.260 --> 00:04:29.995 align:middle line:84%
but most motherfuckers can't
hear it because it's moving."

00:04:29.995 --> 00:04:30.495 align:middle line:90%
Unquote.

00:04:30.495 --> 00:04:33.210 align:middle line:90%


00:04:33.210 --> 00:04:37.620 align:middle line:84%
Tenney's poetry hears the
silences, works with them,

00:04:37.620 --> 00:04:41.010 align:middle line:84%
brings out what they might say
in a language that doesn't ever

00:04:41.010 --> 00:04:43.350 align:middle line:90%
let us get complacent.

00:04:43.350 --> 00:04:45.180 align:middle line:84%
His poems attest
to the movement--

00:04:45.180 --> 00:04:48.210 align:middle line:84%
to the movement of language,
its awareness and unawareness

00:04:48.210 --> 00:04:49.500 align:middle line:90%
of itself.

00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:53.130 align:middle line:84%
His books create
climactic zones:

00:04:53.130 --> 00:04:57.810 align:middle line:84%
quote, "Musical notes turns
whose peaks as resonances.

00:04:57.810 --> 00:05:01.950 align:middle line:84%
The different vibrational
predications named together.

00:05:01.950 --> 00:05:05.700 align:middle line:84%
A finer level of matter,
the gravitational force,

00:05:05.700 --> 00:05:07.560 align:middle line:90%
there is no explanation."

00:05:07.560 --> 00:05:09.420 align:middle line:90%
Unquote.

00:05:09.420 --> 00:05:11.460 align:middle line:84%
It's a poetry that
listens and speaks

00:05:11.460 --> 00:05:15.360 align:middle line:84%
the body, and the newspaper,
and the full range of what we

00:05:15.360 --> 00:05:19.710 align:middle line:90%
mean when we say "Guatemala."

00:05:19.710 --> 00:05:22.710 align:middle line:84%
His current project, which
we will hear some of tonight,

00:05:22.710 --> 00:05:26.580 align:middle line:84%
is Ghost Snow Falls
Through the Void--

00:05:26.580 --> 00:05:28.860 align:middle line:90%
Globalization.

00:05:28.860 --> 00:05:32.610 align:middle line:84%
I encourage you to listen to the
silences between the multitudes

00:05:32.610 --> 00:05:37.440 align:middle line:84%
and you may find listening
a new thing altogether.

00:05:37.440 --> 00:05:40.200 align:middle line:84%
Please welcome my mentor and
friend, Tenney Nathanson.

00:05:40.200 --> 00:05:42.950 align:middle line:90%
[APPLAUSE]

00:05:42.950 --> 00:05:47.000 align:middle line:90%