WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.990 align:middle line:90% 00:00:00.990 --> 00:00:03.550 align:middle line:84% Welcome back to the conceptual poetry symposium, 00:00:03.550 --> 00:00:06.160 align:middle line:84% and this is our conceptual poetry panel. 00:00:06.160 --> 00:00:07.382 align:middle line:90% Thanks for coming. 00:00:07.382 --> 00:00:09.840 align:middle line:84% I'm Tenney Nathanson from the University of Arizona English 00:00:09.840 --> 00:00:12.048 align:middle line:84% department, and it's a privilege and a great pleasure 00:00:12.048 --> 00:00:14.483 align:middle line:90% to get to moderate the panel. 00:00:14.483 --> 00:00:15.900 align:middle line:84% Like everybody else, I really want 00:00:15.900 --> 00:00:17.700 align:middle line:84% to thank Gail and Frances and Renee 00:00:17.700 --> 00:00:19.770 align:middle line:84% and all the Poetry Center staff, and especially 00:00:19.770 --> 00:00:21.770 align:middle line:84% Marjorie for putting the whole shindig together. 00:00:21.770 --> 00:00:23.152 align:middle line:90% It's absolutely fantastic. 00:00:23.152 --> 00:00:24.360 align:middle line:90% A couple of technical things. 00:00:24.360 --> 00:00:26.190 align:middle line:84% I guess we're live streaming, so when 00:00:26.190 --> 00:00:27.930 align:middle line:84% we get to the question and answer part, 00:00:27.930 --> 00:00:29.400 align:middle line:84% I've been asked to ask you guys to please 00:00:29.400 --> 00:00:31.140 align:middle line:84% wait until the microphone comes to you before you 00:00:31.140 --> 00:00:32.460 align:middle line:90% start asking your question. 00:00:32.460 --> 00:00:34.650 align:middle line:84% And for the panelists, there are only two live mics, 00:00:34.650 --> 00:00:37.120 align:middle line:84% so these things here are recording mics 00:00:37.120 --> 00:00:38.620 align:middle line:84% and not what you need to speak into. 00:00:38.620 --> 00:00:40.950 align:middle line:90% Excuse me. 00:00:40.950 --> 00:00:44.865 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to make a sort of opening series of questions, 00:00:44.865 --> 00:00:47.100 align:middle line:84% and also just make some kind of statement in turn, 00:00:47.100 --> 00:00:49.260 align:middle line:84% and then we'll turn it over to everybody. 00:00:49.260 --> 00:00:52.620 align:middle line:84% I was delighted to see the topic for Cole's session 00:00:52.620 --> 00:00:54.588 align:middle line:84% later today on ekphrasis because it 00:00:54.588 --> 00:00:56.880 align:middle line:84% seems to have a wonderfully strange notion of ekphrasis 00:00:56.880 --> 00:00:59.820 align:middle line:84% as doing something that doesn't respond directly 00:00:59.820 --> 00:01:01.470 align:middle line:90% to the painting in front of you. 00:01:01.470 --> 00:01:04.853 align:middle line:84% And I had sent the panelists a series of questions 00:01:04.853 --> 00:01:06.270 align:middle line:84% that they might choose to address, 00:01:06.270 --> 00:01:07.890 align:middle line:84% but they were free as to which one 00:01:07.890 --> 00:01:09.300 align:middle line:84% they would choose to address, and it would also 00:01:09.300 --> 00:01:11.258 align:middle line:84% be great if they chose to address none of them. 00:01:11.258 --> 00:01:14.280 align:middle line:84% So my ideas is I'm going to read these questions. 00:01:14.280 --> 00:01:15.780 align:middle line:84% Especially if nobody addresses them, 00:01:15.780 --> 00:01:17.657 align:middle line:84% then the panel is thereby more conceptual 00:01:17.657 --> 00:01:19.740 align:middle line:84% because it gives you at least two different things 00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:20.430 align:middle line:90% to think about. 00:01:20.430 --> 00:01:22.780 align:middle line:90% And that'll be good. 00:01:22.780 --> 00:01:25.150 align:middle line:84% So the questions were the topics. 00:01:25.150 --> 00:01:27.090 align:middle line:84% The first one is called Borderline. 00:01:27.090 --> 00:01:29.310 align:middle line:84% In this introduction to the UbuWeb anthology 00:01:29.310 --> 00:01:31.050 align:middle line:84% of conceptual writing, Craig Dworkin 00:01:31.050 --> 00:01:33.300 align:middle line:84% does a lot of forthright cleaving. 00:01:33.300 --> 00:01:34.800 align:middle line:90% Poetry he says expresses-- 00:01:34.800 --> 00:01:36.630 align:middle line:84% I feel now like this is endlessly 00:01:36.630 --> 00:01:38.520 align:middle line:84% been put into a lot of boxes here today 00:01:38.520 --> 00:01:39.410 align:middle line:90% for this implication. 00:01:39.410 --> 00:01:41.410 align:middle line:84% Many times I'll try and read it kind of quickly. 00:01:41.410 --> 00:01:43.320 align:middle line:84% But "poetry expresses the emotional truth 00:01:43.320 --> 00:01:45.420 align:middle line:84% of the self, a craft honed by especially 00:01:45.420 --> 00:01:46.620 align:middle line:90% sensitive individuals. 00:01:46.620 --> 00:01:48.893 align:middle line:84% It puts metaphor and image in the service of song, 00:01:48.893 --> 00:01:50.310 align:middle line:84% or at least that's the story we've 00:01:50.310 --> 00:01:52.050 align:middle line:90% inherited from romanticism. 00:01:52.050 --> 00:01:54.630 align:middle line:84% But what would a non-expressive poetry look like? 00:01:54.630 --> 00:01:56.642 align:middle line:84% A poetry of intellect rather than emotion? 00:01:56.642 --> 00:01:59.100 align:middle line:84% One in which the substitutions at the heart of the metaphor 00:01:59.100 --> 00:02:01.660 align:middle line:84% and image were replaced by the great presentation of language 00:02:01.660 --> 00:02:02.160 align:middle line:90% itself-- 00:02:02.160 --> 00:02:03.810 align:middle line:84% It would be against [INAUDIBLE]---- 00:02:03.810 --> 00:02:06.540 align:middle line:84% with spontaneous overflow supplanted by a meticulous 00:02:06.540 --> 00:02:09.840 align:middle line:84% procedure and exhaustively logical process in which 00:02:09.840 --> 00:02:12.390 align:middle line:84% the self-regard of the poet's ego would turn back onto 00:02:12.390 --> 00:02:14.670 align:middle line:84% the self-reflexive language of the poem itself." 00:02:14.670 --> 00:02:16.320 align:middle line:84% And that's at the end of the quotation. 00:02:16.320 --> 00:02:18.090 align:middle line:84% In a different moment and circumstance, 00:02:18.090 --> 00:02:20.670 align:middle line:84% Angus Fletcher suggests oddly that in considering 00:02:20.670 --> 00:02:23.970 align:middle line:84% and defining allegory, quote, "one cannot help wondering 00:02:23.970 --> 00:02:26.700 align:middle line:84% if borderline cases are not going to be the norm," 00:02:26.700 --> 00:02:30.660 align:middle line:84% end quote, might such a sense of borderline as norm be usefully 00:02:30.660 --> 00:02:33.022 align:middle line:84% brought to bear on the category of conceptual poetry, 00:02:33.022 --> 00:02:34.980 align:middle line:84% and then there's something else in parenthesis. 00:02:34.980 --> 00:02:36.938 align:middle line:84% The question of whether conceptual poetry might 00:02:36.938 --> 00:02:39.090 align:middle line:84% necessarily be quasi allegorical, 00:02:39.090 --> 00:02:41.460 align:middle line:84% at least in Fletcher's sense of decapitated allegory, 00:02:41.460 --> 00:02:42.960 align:middle line:84% isn't what I'm trying to raise here, 00:02:42.960 --> 00:02:45.330 align:middle line:84% though I think it's potentially interesting. 00:02:45.330 --> 00:02:48.270 align:middle line:84% Next topic is called "Ragging on Wordsworth, Preaching 00:02:48.270 --> 00:02:50.460 align:middle line:84% to the Converted, Drawing the Line." 00:02:50.460 --> 00:02:53.340 align:middle line:84% "It somehow seems unlikely that the UbuWeb introduction 00:02:53.340 --> 00:02:56.670 align:middle line:84% is preaching to the latter day Wordsworthians who votes. 00:02:56.670 --> 00:02:59.010 align:middle line:84% If let's say there are no Wordsworthians present 00:02:59.010 --> 00:03:00.990 align:middle line:84% in this room today, or are there, 00:03:00.990 --> 00:03:03.060 align:middle line:90% are we all conceptual poets? 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:05.280 align:middle line:84% Is conceptual poetry really just another 00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:08.340 align:middle line:84% name for the new American poetry and what came after? 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:10.530 align:middle line:84% Or if not, what sorts of work being 00:03:10.530 --> 00:03:12.750 align:middle line:84% done by the children of the new American poetry 00:03:12.750 --> 00:03:15.390 align:middle line:84% aren't properly considered conceptual, and what 00:03:15.390 --> 00:03:17.850 align:middle line:84% might such putatively non-conceptual poets 00:03:17.850 --> 00:03:20.100 align:middle line:90% learn from conceptual poetry?" 00:03:20.100 --> 00:03:23.550 align:middle line:84% Next topic, it's called "Having a Urinal Moment." 00:03:23.550 --> 00:03:26.640 align:middle line:84% "Plucking a urinal in a museum in 2008 presumably 00:03:26.640 --> 00:03:29.010 align:middle line:84% wouldn't constitute quite the same gesture or speech 00:03:29.010 --> 00:03:33.750 align:middle line:84% act as doing so in 1917, even if Duchamp hadn't done so then. 00:03:33.750 --> 00:03:37.560 align:middle line:84% How in the land of the logo post for this, post implosion, 00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:39.660 align:middle line:84% post everything that the provocations 00:03:39.660 --> 00:03:42.060 align:middle line:84% which conceptual poetry can offer its others? 00:03:42.060 --> 00:03:44.280 align:middle line:84% In the poetry world, the greater art world, 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:46.290 align:middle line:84% the larger culture differ from those 00:03:46.290 --> 00:03:50.010 align:middle line:84% it could offer in 1917 or even 1977. 00:03:50.010 --> 00:03:52.350 align:middle line:84% Does thinking about such contextual issues 00:03:52.350 --> 00:03:54.270 align:middle line:84% offer any reliable clues as to what 00:03:54.270 --> 00:03:56.400 align:middle line:84% sorts of conceptual gestures are now 00:03:56.400 --> 00:04:01.405 align:middle line:84% likely to seem most urgent, most merely self-congratulatory?" 00:04:01.405 --> 00:04:03.780 align:middle line:84% The next one is called "Pieces," and it's got an epigraph 00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:06.450 align:middle line:90% from Robert Creeley's Pieces. 00:04:06.450 --> 00:04:08.460 align:middle line:90% "God, I hate simplistic logic. 00:04:08.460 --> 00:04:09.780 align:middle line:90% I like it." 00:04:09.780 --> 00:04:11.970 align:middle line:84% Let me start again. '"God, I hate simplistic logic, 00:04:11.970 --> 00:04:13.110 align:middle line:90% like I like it. 00:04:13.110 --> 00:04:13.890 align:middle line:90% Who cares? 00:04:13.890 --> 00:04:17.327 align:middle line:84% Liking is as liking does for you for me." 00:04:17.327 --> 00:04:18.660 align:middle line:90% That's the end of the quotation. 00:04:18.660 --> 00:04:21.360 align:middle line:84% "Nevertheless, it might be useful to be vulgar and take 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.060 align:middle line:84% the bait so that the test of poetry's work 00:04:24.060 --> 00:04:26.142 align:middle line:84% suggests that the conceptual poems in mind 00:04:26.142 --> 00:04:28.350 align:middle line:84% were no longer whether it could have been done better 00:04:28.350 --> 00:04:30.210 align:middle line:84% the question of the workshop, but whether it 00:04:30.210 --> 00:04:31.980 align:middle line:84% could conceivably have been done otherwise." 00:04:31.980 --> 00:04:33.313 align:middle line:90% That's the end of the quotation. 00:04:33.313 --> 00:04:35.250 align:middle line:84% "But how about, was it worth doing? 00:04:35.250 --> 00:04:37.590 align:middle line:84% Was this one more worth doing that one? 00:04:37.590 --> 00:04:40.410 align:middle line:84% So this is an invitation to step up to the plate, 00:04:40.410 --> 00:04:42.510 align:middle line:84% pick a piece from the online Ubu anthology 00:04:42.510 --> 00:04:45.510 align:middle line:84% that you have high regard for and talk about why you like it, 00:04:45.510 --> 00:04:48.810 align:middle line:84% and also optionally pick another you don't much like and explain 00:04:48.810 --> 00:04:52.440 align:middle line:84% why and if you like extrapolate from the piece or pieces 00:04:52.440 --> 00:04:55.740 align:middle line:84% you discuss to say something about promising and unpromising 00:04:55.740 --> 00:04:57.607 align:middle line:90% avenues for conceptual poetry." 00:04:57.607 --> 00:04:59.940 align:middle line:84% And then finally one that's called No, which is actually 00:04:59.940 --> 00:05:02.000 align:middle line:90% a pun that nobody will get. 00:05:02.000 --> 00:05:03.070 align:middle line:90% No. 00:05:03.070 --> 00:05:05.650 align:middle line:84% "In the US at least there's been some significant overlap 00:05:05.650 --> 00:05:07.840 align:middle line:84% between people making conceptual art, including 00:05:07.840 --> 00:05:10.030 align:middle line:84% conceptual poetry, and those engaged 00:05:10.030 --> 00:05:13.480 align:middle line:84% in sustained spiritual, perhaps most often Buddhist practice. 00:05:13.480 --> 00:05:15.850 align:middle line:84% But some of the conceptual poetry you're interested in 00:05:15.850 --> 00:05:18.520 align:middle line:84% have a significant spiritual resonance. 00:05:18.520 --> 00:05:20.950 align:middle line:84% Does conceptual poetry seem to you especially 00:05:20.950 --> 00:05:23.080 align:middle line:84% to lend itself to such reverberation? 00:05:23.080 --> 00:05:24.102 align:middle line:90% If so, how or why?" 00:05:24.102 --> 00:05:26.560 align:middle line:84% And then the panel will not be about any of those questions 00:05:26.560 --> 00:05:27.400 align:middle line:90% at all. 00:05:27.400 --> 00:05:29.230 align:middle line:90% Charles is up first. 00:05:29.230 --> 00:05:34.390 align:middle line:90% 00:05:34.390 --> 00:05:38.047 align:middle line:84% I'm just presenting this five minute presentation. 00:05:38.047 --> 00:05:39.130 align:middle line:90% I'm not actually speaking. 00:05:39.130 --> 00:05:40.713 align:middle line:84% And this is a problem with this thing 00:05:40.713 --> 00:05:43.130 align:middle line:84% because if you can't read it, you won't be able to see it. 00:05:43.130 --> 00:05:45.790 align:middle line:84% It involves reading the text, which I'm not going to speak. 00:05:45.790 --> 00:05:46.992 align:middle line:90% So it's only five minutes. 00:05:46.992 --> 00:05:48.700 align:middle line:84% If those of you who are on the periphery, 00:05:48.700 --> 00:05:50.450 align:middle line:84% can you read this text from where you are? 00:05:50.450 --> 00:05:53.240 align:middle line:84% If you have any trouble reading it, you could move. 00:05:53.240 --> 00:05:55.370 align:middle line:90% Otherwise, just play on its own. 00:05:55.370 --> 00:06:14.712 align:middle line:90% 00:06:14.712 --> 00:06:18.205 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:06:18.205 --> 00:12:02.096 align:middle line:90% 00:12:02.096 --> 00:12:05.470 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:12:05.470 --> 00:12:12.720 align:middle line:90% 00:12:12.720 --> 00:12:17.040 align:middle line:84% "Dear Kenny G., my husband Jim and I 00:12:17.040 --> 00:12:18.900 align:middle line:84% have enjoyed your music for many years 00:12:18.900 --> 00:12:22.110 align:middle line:90% and are great fans of yours. 00:12:22.110 --> 00:12:25.410 align:middle line:84% I'm writing to share a very special experience with you, 00:12:25.410 --> 00:12:27.840 align:middle line:84% and I sincerely hope that you take this as a compliment 00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:31.110 align:middle line:90% because that's how it is met. 00:12:31.110 --> 00:12:33.750 align:middle line:90% Jim and I met in June of 1981. 00:12:33.750 --> 00:12:37.260 align:middle line:84% He was 6 foot 10 inches tall, me a strapping 5 foot 00:12:37.260 --> 00:12:38.560 align:middle line:90% 2 inches tall. 00:12:38.560 --> 00:12:40.650 align:middle line:84% I knew right then and there he was my soulmate 00:12:40.650 --> 00:12:42.630 align:middle line:90% and we would be married someday. 00:12:42.630 --> 00:12:45.420 align:middle line:84% Two weeks later he was seriously injured in a motorcycle 00:12:45.420 --> 00:12:48.810 align:middle line:84% accident where he broke his neck and was left a quadriplegic. 00:12:48.810 --> 00:12:50.280 align:middle line:90% Oh well, I teased. 00:12:50.280 --> 00:12:52.320 align:middle line:84% God just brought you down to my level 00:12:52.320 --> 00:12:55.350 align:middle line:84% so it wouldn't strain my neck trying to kiss you. 00:12:55.350 --> 00:12:57.720 align:middle line:84% Our courtship was in the hospital and rehab unit, 00:12:57.720 --> 00:13:01.830 align:middle line:84% and on December 19, 1981, we were married. 00:13:01.830 --> 00:13:04.980 align:middle line:84% We tried to have a family, even pursued fertility specialists 00:13:04.980 --> 00:13:06.300 align:middle line:90% to help us conceive. 00:13:06.300 --> 00:13:09.120 align:middle line:84% Actually did get pregnant, but lost the fetus early 00:13:09.120 --> 00:13:10.020 align:middle line:90% in the pregnancy. 00:13:10.020 --> 00:13:13.020 align:middle line:84% We were crushed, but decided it didn't matter 00:13:13.020 --> 00:13:15.330 align:middle line:90% if we gave birth or adopted. 00:13:15.330 --> 00:13:17.550 align:middle line:90% We wanted a family. 00:13:17.550 --> 00:13:20.010 align:middle line:84% We applied at a prominent agency in Seattle. 00:13:20.010 --> 00:13:22.590 align:middle line:84% They promptly called us and said we were a perfect couple. 00:13:22.590 --> 00:13:25.620 align:middle line:84% Good jobs, stable home, excellent references, 00:13:25.620 --> 00:13:28.890 align:middle line:84% time to proceed with the home study and the first installment 00:13:28.890 --> 00:13:29.850 align:middle line:90% of cash. 00:13:29.850 --> 00:13:33.510 align:middle line:84% Since they only asked a question of general health, I said good 00:13:33.510 --> 00:13:36.900 align:middle line:84% and didn't elaborate on Roger being confined to a wheelchair. 00:13:36.900 --> 00:13:39.540 align:middle line:84% But when money was to change hands, 00:13:39.540 --> 00:13:41.190 align:middle line:84% I decided I'd better let them know 00:13:41.190 --> 00:13:43.680 align:middle line:90% before the home study began. 00:13:43.680 --> 00:13:46.200 align:middle line:84% Upon telling the adoption representative, 00:13:46.200 --> 00:13:48.510 align:middle line:84% there was dead silence on the phone. 00:13:48.510 --> 00:13:50.250 align:middle line:84% I told her to be straight with me. 00:13:50.250 --> 00:13:53.190 align:middle line:84% As you can probably guess, Kenny, our chances 00:13:53.190 --> 00:13:56.970 align:middle line:84% were slim to none of receiving an infant to adopt. 00:13:56.970 --> 00:13:59.910 align:middle line:84% We decided to go through the state child services division, 00:13:59.910 --> 00:14:02.700 align:middle line:84% and that is where we met our future son, Eddie. 00:14:02.700 --> 00:14:05.430 align:middle line:90% 00:14:05.430 --> 00:14:06.330 align:middle line:90% What a blessing. 00:14:06.330 --> 00:14:08.730 align:middle line:90% We were finally parents. 00:14:08.730 --> 00:14:10.812 align:middle line:84% A few years passed by, fertility procedures 00:14:10.812 --> 00:14:12.270 align:middle line:84% changed so much in that time frame. 00:14:12.270 --> 00:14:14.370 align:middle line:84% It was actually Eddie that asked one day 00:14:14.370 --> 00:14:16.800 align:middle line:84% if he was going to ever have some brothers and sisters. 00:14:16.800 --> 00:14:19.200 align:middle line:84% So we decided to head back to Seattle 00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:21.810 align:middle line:84% to check into the new fertility procedures for us. 00:14:21.810 --> 00:14:23.700 align:middle line:84% They had a relatively new procedure then 00:14:23.700 --> 00:14:25.770 align:middle line:90% called ICSI for short. 00:14:25.770 --> 00:14:29.190 align:middle line:84% It's quite an involved process, but we were prime candidates 00:14:29.190 --> 00:14:30.570 align:middle line:90% for this procedure. 00:14:30.570 --> 00:14:35.490 align:middle line:84% In December 1995 after a series of at home hormone injections, 00:14:35.490 --> 00:14:38.730 align:middle line:84% monitoring and et cetera, we were now ready for our 10 day 00:14:38.730 --> 00:14:41.010 align:middle line:84% stay in Seattle, ready to proceed with the egg 00:14:41.010 --> 00:14:44.610 align:middle line:84% collection, fertilization, and finally the eggs 00:14:44.610 --> 00:14:49.650 align:middle line:84% were placed inside of me praying for our miracle. 00:14:49.650 --> 00:14:52.200 align:middle line:84% Believe it or not, Kenny G., this 00:14:52.200 --> 00:14:53.910 align:middle line:84% is where you come into the picture. 00:14:53.910 --> 00:14:56.160 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:14:56.160 --> 00:14:58.770 align:middle line:84% You and your beautiful song Miracles 00:14:58.770 --> 00:15:01.320 align:middle line:84% was playing during these procedures. 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:05.280 align:middle line:84% The doctors, nurses and medical staff, they love this song too. 00:15:05.280 --> 00:15:09.510 align:middle line:84% And we prayed we could get another miracle in our life. 00:15:09.510 --> 00:15:12.060 align:middle line:90% Are you ready for this, Kenny? 00:15:12.060 --> 00:15:14.758 align:middle line:90% We conceived on the first try. 00:15:14.758 --> 00:15:16.050 align:middle line:90% They said we were having twins. 00:15:16.050 --> 00:15:19.320 align:middle line:84% We were thrilled, and then at five months along 00:15:19.320 --> 00:15:21.000 align:middle line:90% I looked like I was full term. 00:15:21.000 --> 00:15:26.460 align:middle line:84% The ultrasound showed not two but five little ones squirming 00:15:26.460 --> 00:15:28.170 align:middle line:90% around inside of me. 00:15:28.170 --> 00:15:32.430 align:middle line:84% We delivered five beautiful miracles on June 20, 1996, 00:15:32.430 --> 00:15:34.950 align:middle line:84% 30 weeks along in Spokane, Washington. 00:15:34.950 --> 00:15:38.460 align:middle line:84% Their names are Charles Edward, Robin Edna, Rachel Mallory, 00:15:38.460 --> 00:15:42.150 align:middle line:84% Cynthia Naomi, and Darlene [INAUDIBLE] Kenny. 00:15:42.150 --> 00:15:44.190 align:middle line:84% I've wanted to share this with you for so long 00:15:44.190 --> 00:15:46.950 align:middle line:84% and thank you for the beautiful songs you play and share 00:15:46.950 --> 00:15:47.640 align:middle line:90% with us. 00:15:47.640 --> 00:15:50.070 align:middle line:84% Our miracles now dance to your music, 00:15:50.070 --> 00:15:53.970 align:middle line:84% and someday I'll tell them our special story of the Miracle 00:15:53.970 --> 00:15:58.320 align:middle line:84% song by Kenny G. With much respect, God bless, Jerry 00:15:58.320 --> 00:15:59.520 align:middle line:90% Bonham and family." 00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:08.800 align:middle line:90% 00:16:08.800 --> 00:16:13.480 align:middle line:84% "Dear Kenny G., I've always tried to distance myself 00:16:13.480 --> 00:16:18.700 align:middle line:84% from the controversy surrounding you, Mr. G. and your music, 00:16:18.700 --> 00:16:21.130 align:middle line:84% meaning all the hits you take because your music is not 00:16:21.130 --> 00:16:23.290 align:middle line:90% real jazz, et cetera. 00:16:23.290 --> 00:16:25.690 align:middle line:84% Well, I've always maintained that your music is simply 00:16:25.690 --> 00:16:29.200 align:middle line:84% pop music and that you're being labeled a jazz artist is simply 00:16:29.200 --> 00:16:31.120 align:middle line:84% because you happen to play the sax. 00:16:31.120 --> 00:16:32.500 align:middle line:90% No big deal. 00:16:32.500 --> 00:16:35.080 align:middle line:84% After all, as far as I know, you have never 00:16:35.080 --> 00:16:39.100 align:middle line:84% claimed that what you're doing is jazz. 00:16:39.100 --> 00:16:45.910 align:middle line:84% I never had a problem with you, Kenny, until now. 00:16:45.910 --> 00:16:51.130 align:middle line:84% Upon hearing your fake duet with the late Mr. Louis Armstrong, 00:16:51.130 --> 00:16:55.420 align:middle line:84% I was disgusted to say the least. 00:16:55.420 --> 00:16:59.290 align:middle line:84% The melding of the two of you was nothing short of criminal. 00:16:59.290 --> 00:17:04.869 align:middle line:84% Louis Armstrong, the undisputed father of jazz, 00:17:04.869 --> 00:17:08.650 align:middle line:84% one of the first documented improvisers playing 00:17:08.650 --> 00:17:14.230 align:middle line:84% with Kenny G. Did you, Mr. G., get permission 00:17:14.230 --> 00:17:17.440 align:middle line:90% from the late Mr. Armstrong? 00:17:17.440 --> 00:17:21.550 align:middle line:84% Somehow it seems highly unlikely unless you, Mr. G., 00:17:21.550 --> 00:17:24.490 align:middle line:90% are handy with a Ouija board. 00:17:24.490 --> 00:17:28.300 align:middle line:84% Where do you, Kenny G., get off even 00:17:28.300 --> 00:17:30.110 align:middle line:90% contemplating such a thing? 00:17:30.110 --> 00:17:33.790 align:middle line:84% Oh, it would be different if Mr. Armstrong were still 00:17:33.790 --> 00:17:35.800 align:middle line:84% alive and could consent to such a thing, 00:17:35.800 --> 00:17:38.410 align:middle line:84% but no you wait until he's dead and he 00:17:38.410 --> 00:17:41.560 align:middle line:90% can't defend his own music. 00:17:41.560 --> 00:17:44.860 align:middle line:84% The almighty dollar triumphs again. 00:17:44.860 --> 00:17:49.570 align:middle line:84% What an uncaring pretentious asshole you are. 00:17:49.570 --> 00:17:55.750 align:middle line:84% How dare you do such a thing what a wonderful world it sure 00:17:55.750 --> 00:17:57.160 align:middle line:84% doesn't seem like it, but we have 00:17:57.160 --> 00:18:01.558 align:middle line:84% plunderers like Slobodan Milosevic and Kenny G. running 00:18:01.558 --> 00:18:02.058 align:middle line:90% rampant. 00:18:02.058 --> 00:18:04.403 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:04.403 --> 00:18:11.670 align:middle line:84% Well, after defending you for so many years from the jazz 00:18:11.670 --> 00:18:13.920 align:middle line:90% purists, I'm through. 00:18:13.920 --> 00:18:15.210 align:middle line:90% No more. 00:18:15.210 --> 00:18:17.700 align:middle line:84% You're nothing but an opportunist jerk who 00:18:17.700 --> 00:18:20.280 align:middle line:84% plays the same tired ass licks incessantly 00:18:20.280 --> 00:18:23.160 align:middle line:84% and is a fucking grave robber to boot. 00:18:23.160 --> 00:18:24.870 align:middle line:90% Screw you. 00:18:24.870 --> 00:18:27.210 align:middle line:84% Richard Lewiston, Seattle, Washington." 00:18:27.210 --> 00:18:30.605 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:18:30.605 --> 00:18:32.550 align:middle line:90% 00:18:32.550 --> 00:18:34.352 align:middle line:84% I think that probably deserves applause. 00:18:34.352 --> 00:18:37.726 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:18:37.726 --> 00:18:43.030 align:middle line:90% 00:18:43.030 --> 00:18:44.910 align:middle line:84% My students when I'm teaching poetry 00:18:44.910 --> 00:18:48.390 align:middle line:84% always complain that they hate poetry. 00:18:48.390 --> 00:18:51.390 align:middle line:84% They hate it because they think it's hard. 00:18:51.390 --> 00:18:52.950 align:middle line:84% They hate it because they think it's 00:18:52.950 --> 00:18:56.430 align:middle line:84% difficult, obscurantist and hermetic. 00:18:56.430 --> 00:18:58.020 align:middle line:84% They don't want to study it because it 00:18:58.020 --> 00:18:59.760 align:middle line:90% doesn't make any sense. 00:18:59.760 --> 00:19:04.680 align:middle line:84% And after trying to parse the meanings of otherwise normative 00:19:04.680 --> 00:19:06.960 align:middle line:84% lyrical poetry, they're always disgusted 00:19:06.960 --> 00:19:10.920 align:middle line:84% to discover that, in fact, the insights were 00:19:10.920 --> 00:19:14.310 align:middle line:90% relatively banal and trite. 00:19:14.310 --> 00:19:15.990 align:middle line:84% The poetry didn't communicate anything 00:19:15.990 --> 00:19:17.563 align:middle line:90% of epistemological significance. 00:19:17.563 --> 00:19:19.980 align:middle line:84% They already knew what these poems meant and they wondered 00:19:19.980 --> 00:19:23.190 align:middle line:84% why the poets go to so much trouble 00:19:23.190 --> 00:19:25.440 align:middle line:84% to disguise and encipher these messages 00:19:25.440 --> 00:19:27.587 align:middle line:84% into these little cryptograms that they then 00:19:27.587 --> 00:19:28.545 align:middle line:90% are forced to decipher. 00:19:28.545 --> 00:19:31.900 align:middle line:90% 00:19:31.900 --> 00:19:36.370 align:middle line:84% I always respond by saying that poetry is not difficult. 00:19:36.370 --> 00:19:40.530 align:middle line:84% It is not hard because if it were hard 00:19:40.530 --> 00:19:42.270 align:middle line:90% poets would not do it. 00:19:42.270 --> 00:19:44.010 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:19:44.010 --> 00:19:46.440 align:middle line:84% Poets are the stupidest people I know, 00:19:46.440 --> 00:19:50.430 align:middle line:84% the laziest people I know, they are the most unimaginative 00:19:50.430 --> 00:19:52.260 align:middle line:90% people I know. 00:19:52.260 --> 00:19:55.650 align:middle line:84% When we're teaching poetry in a creative writing workshop, 00:19:55.650 --> 00:19:59.940 align:middle line:84% I do not tell my poetlings to write what they 00:19:59.940 --> 00:20:03.630 align:middle line:90% know because they know nothing. 00:20:03.630 --> 00:20:06.780 align:middle line:84% If they actually knew something of merit, 00:20:06.780 --> 00:20:08.800 align:middle line:84% something worthwhile, something of 00:20:08.800 --> 00:20:11.430 align:middle line:84% epistemological significance, surely they 00:20:11.430 --> 00:20:13.980 align:middle line:84% would be in that discipline doing it. 00:20:13.980 --> 00:20:16.710 align:middle line:84% They would be in history or in business, or in physics 00:20:16.710 --> 00:20:18.780 align:middle line:84% or in biology, or in mathematics. 00:20:18.780 --> 00:20:21.990 align:middle line:84% But the truth is that they're in my poetry workshop 00:20:21.990 --> 00:20:23.295 align:middle line:90% because math was hard. 00:20:23.295 --> 00:20:26.298 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:20:26.298 --> 00:20:28.110 align:middle line:90% 00:20:28.110 --> 00:20:30.510 align:middle line:84% They've been demoted to this job. 00:20:30.510 --> 00:20:33.810 align:middle line:90% 00:20:33.810 --> 00:20:36.810 align:middle line:84% They can't get a job as a secretary 00:20:36.810 --> 00:20:40.320 align:middle line:84% because they can't file the work. 00:20:40.320 --> 00:20:42.610 align:middle line:90% They procrastinate too much. 00:20:42.610 --> 00:20:45.330 align:middle line:90% They've got better things to do. 00:20:45.330 --> 00:20:48.510 align:middle line:84% And quite frankly, being a poet is the only job 00:20:48.510 --> 00:20:52.680 align:middle line:84% that I can think of where we're allowed to drink on the job. 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:54.867 align:middle line:84% I'm sure that's why many of my students 00:20:54.867 --> 00:20:56.700 align:middle line:84% have decided that they want to become poets. 00:20:56.700 --> 00:20:59.430 align:middle line:90% 00:20:59.430 --> 00:21:01.950 align:middle line:84% I think that the problem with the avant-garde, at least 00:21:01.950 --> 00:21:04.500 align:middle line:84% up until recently, certainly it's 00:21:04.500 --> 00:21:07.140 align:middle line:84% not evident in the quality of the presentations 00:21:07.140 --> 00:21:09.570 align:middle line:84% that we've seen delivered here today, 00:21:09.570 --> 00:21:12.240 align:middle line:84% but I've always thought that one of the problems 00:21:12.240 --> 00:21:14.790 align:middle line:84% of the avant-garde was that it suffered 00:21:14.790 --> 00:21:18.330 align:middle line:84% from a lethal dose of seriousness. 00:21:18.330 --> 00:21:23.100 align:middle line:84% That in fact it was, despite it's vaunted, statements 00:21:23.100 --> 00:21:25.890 align:middle line:84% about the value of pleasure, la jouissance 00:21:25.890 --> 00:21:28.980 align:middle line:84% of the readerly experience, that these pleasures were in fact 00:21:28.980 --> 00:21:32.140 align:middle line:84% reserved primarily for the writer 00:21:32.140 --> 00:21:35.850 align:middle line:84% who sequestered those experiences, cousined them 00:21:35.850 --> 00:21:39.240 align:middle line:84% closely to their chest and took pride in the fact 00:21:39.240 --> 00:21:46.140 align:middle line:84% that they could take some pleasure in owning a secret 00:21:46.140 --> 00:21:48.720 align:middle line:84% and having hermetic mastery over a set of skills 00:21:48.720 --> 00:21:52.710 align:middle line:84% that the reader was not allowed to actually enjoy. 00:21:52.710 --> 00:21:54.150 align:middle line:84% And one of the great things about, 00:21:54.150 --> 00:21:56.010 align:middle line:84% at least some recent avant-garde poetry, 00:21:56.010 --> 00:21:58.890 align:middle line:84% is the degree to which it now makes 00:21:58.890 --> 00:22:02.370 align:middle line:84% a claim for the value of the obvious, the painfully 00:22:02.370 --> 00:22:05.040 align:middle line:90% transparent. 00:22:05.040 --> 00:22:07.950 align:middle line:84% It does not want to be difficult or hard. 00:22:07.950 --> 00:22:09.810 align:middle line:84% It does not want to suffer from this kind 00:22:09.810 --> 00:22:12.690 align:middle line:90% of lethal dose of seriousness. 00:22:12.690 --> 00:22:17.880 align:middle line:84% The concepts of art are easy to appreciate and understand, 00:22:17.880 --> 00:22:21.120 align:middle line:84% and what constitutes the newness of the avant-garde 00:22:21.120 --> 00:22:24.420 align:middle line:84% now is less to do with a kind of digital upgrade 00:22:24.420 --> 00:22:28.200 align:middle line:84% to ideology, the kind of planned obsolescence 00:22:28.200 --> 00:22:31.950 align:middle line:84% that we see in commodities where poetry is something that 00:22:31.950 --> 00:22:35.610 align:middle line:84% is new and improved, twice as many adjectives, something that 00:22:35.610 --> 00:22:41.070 align:middle line:84% constitutes a kind of upgrade to our language, 00:22:41.070 --> 00:22:43.740 align:middle line:84% that we don't actually imagine newness in the same way 00:22:43.740 --> 00:22:45.150 align:middle line:90% that we have in the past. 00:22:45.150 --> 00:22:48.810 align:middle line:84% Now, I note, for example, that much discussion, certainly 00:22:48.810 --> 00:22:51.870 align:middle line:84% in contemporary literary theory, the overuse of the word 00:22:51.870 --> 00:22:56.160 align:middle line:84% host as a prefix, post-colonials and postmodernism, 00:22:56.160 --> 00:22:59.430 align:middle line:84% post-feminism, et cetera, I feel a great deal 00:22:59.430 --> 00:23:03.450 align:middle line:84% of suspicion towards this prefix now as a gesture indicating 00:23:03.450 --> 00:23:07.200 align:middle line:84% a certain kind of novelty or advance in concept 00:23:07.200 --> 00:23:09.510 align:middle line:84% because I don't think it signifies that at all. 00:23:09.510 --> 00:23:14.100 align:middle line:84% To me, it's analogous to the prefix neo, which 00:23:14.100 --> 00:23:16.530 align:middle line:84% of course does not signal newness at all, 00:23:16.530 --> 00:23:19.140 align:middle line:84% but is really just a cipher for retro. 00:23:19.140 --> 00:23:21.720 align:middle line:84% To say neo-futurism suggests that in fact you 00:23:21.720 --> 00:23:24.930 align:middle line:84% have a very retro attitude, not a new attitude. 00:23:24.930 --> 00:23:26.580 align:middle line:84% I think that when we say post, we 00:23:26.580 --> 00:23:30.750 align:middle line:84% are not suggesting in fact that we've somehow transcended 00:23:30.750 --> 00:23:34.770 align:middle line:84% or exceeded a prior form or paradigm, 00:23:34.770 --> 00:23:36.720 align:middle line:84% but then in fact we are impatient to see 00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:40.550 align:middle line:84% it transcended, but it hasn't been yet 00:23:40.550 --> 00:23:42.170 align:middle line:84% and it really what it signifies now 00:23:42.170 --> 00:23:47.570 align:middle line:84% is something more like more of the same, only worse. 00:23:47.570 --> 00:23:49.280 align:middle line:84% To say something like postmodernism 00:23:49.280 --> 00:23:54.770 align:middle line:84% is tantamount to saying more of the same, but only worse. 00:23:54.770 --> 00:23:59.090 align:middle line:84% We tried to suggest ways in which conceptual literature 00:23:59.090 --> 00:24:03.230 align:middle line:84% and poetry might be of value despite its purported 00:24:03.230 --> 00:24:05.180 align:middle line:90% and vaunted valuelessness. 00:24:05.180 --> 00:24:09.320 align:middle line:84% It seems to me that any good idea is valuable at the moment 00:24:09.320 --> 00:24:13.700 align:middle line:84% that it spawns new ideas; that we look at the work that 00:24:13.700 --> 00:24:16.460 align:middle line:84% in fact creates discussion, creates 00:24:16.460 --> 00:24:19.820 align:middle line:84% provocation, that inspires in us a desire 00:24:19.820 --> 00:24:23.000 align:middle line:84% to run away and join the circus, to inspire us 00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:25.100 align:middle line:90% a desire to write. 00:24:25.100 --> 00:24:27.260 align:middle line:84% And it's those ideas that create ideas 00:24:27.260 --> 00:24:29.150 align:middle line:84% that constitute the most productive aspects 00:24:29.150 --> 00:24:31.790 align:middle line:90% of this kind of work. 00:24:31.790 --> 00:24:35.360 align:middle line:84% In effect, the good idea is the one that can be most imitated, 00:24:35.360 --> 00:24:38.330 align:middle line:84% the one that generates the most subsequent discussion, 00:24:38.330 --> 00:24:42.320 align:middle line:84% the one that lends itself to a kind of mutagenic radiation. 00:24:42.320 --> 00:24:44.450 align:middle line:84% It can fit in all kinds of different contexts 00:24:44.450 --> 00:24:47.300 align:middle line:84% and be appropriated in a whole variety of different milieus, 00:24:47.300 --> 00:24:50.000 align:middle line:84% to a whole variety of competing purposes, 00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:52.670 align:middle line:84% and that it's those ideas and concepts that we now 00:24:52.670 --> 00:24:56.120 align:middle line:84% regard as the ones that are in fact the most inspiring, 00:24:56.120 --> 00:24:59.270 align:middle line:84% the ones that constitute I think the foundation of this kind 00:24:59.270 --> 00:25:02.918 align:middle line:90% of conceptual literature. 00:25:02.918 --> 00:25:04.210 align:middle line:90% I think that deserves applause. 00:25:04.210 --> 00:25:07.465 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:25:07.465 --> 00:25:09.790 align:middle line:90% 00:25:09.790 --> 00:25:13.630 align:middle line:84% OK, I have a kind of a talky kind of talk, death knell 00:25:13.630 --> 00:25:14.130 align:middle line:90% seriousness. 00:25:14.130 --> 00:25:16.390 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:25:16.390 --> 00:25:19.210 align:middle line:84% And it's called Hard To Hear, Black Performativity 00:25:19.210 --> 00:25:21.670 align:middle line:84% Through Sonic Dissonance in the Topical Example 00:25:21.670 --> 00:25:23.482 align:middle line:90% Of Reverend Jeremiah Wright. 00:25:23.482 --> 00:25:25.642 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:25:25.642 --> 00:25:26.950 align:middle line:90% Think a little [INAUDIBLE]. 00:25:26.950 --> 00:25:27.470 align:middle line:90% Yeah, it's-- 00:25:27.470 --> 00:25:30.100 align:middle line:90% --a little curve. 00:25:30.100 --> 00:25:33.310 align:middle line:84% So it's [? even ?] nice Canadians. 00:25:33.310 --> 00:25:36.740 align:middle line:84% OK, well, I'm going to read the whole thing. 00:25:36.740 --> 00:25:38.420 align:middle line:90% It's not too long, I hope. 00:25:38.420 --> 00:25:40.690 align:middle line:84% I'm honored to be part of this august panel, 00:25:40.690 --> 00:25:43.450 align:middle line:84% scholars I respect, and my friends. 00:25:43.450 --> 00:25:44.810 align:middle line:90% I have to say all this stuff. 00:25:44.810 --> 00:25:49.690 align:middle line:84% And I want to thank, of course, Gail and Frances and Marjorie 00:25:49.690 --> 00:25:54.640 align:middle line:84% for letting me participate in this wonderful weekend. 00:25:54.640 --> 00:25:57.220 align:middle line:84% It was a daunting task to think about a topic that 00:25:57.220 --> 00:25:59.530 align:middle line:84% might be of interest to such a well-informed group 00:25:59.530 --> 00:26:02.230 align:middle line:84% of colleagues, but I do hope that my few comments will 00:26:02.230 --> 00:26:05.980 align:middle line:84% at least lead to further discussion, if not new news, 00:26:05.980 --> 00:26:08.590 align:middle line:90% or boring boring. 00:26:08.590 --> 00:26:10.600 align:middle line:84% This comment is part of a larger idea 00:26:10.600 --> 00:26:12.550 align:middle line:84% I'm working on regarding Black sound use 00:26:12.550 --> 00:26:14.800 align:middle line:90% and cultural interpretation. 00:26:14.800 --> 00:26:17.510 align:middle line:84% The last time I saw Kenny, Charles, Caroline, Marjorie, 00:26:17.510 --> 00:26:20.470 align:middle line:84% and Christian together was that my first and only 00:26:20.470 --> 00:26:24.100 align:middle line:84% MLA Conference in Philly in 2006. 00:26:24.100 --> 00:26:27.760 align:middle line:84% Marjorie spearheaded the poetics and sound theme of that MLA. 00:26:27.760 --> 00:26:30.340 align:middle line:84% And I felt that after the post traumatic effects 00:26:30.340 --> 00:26:32.290 align:middle line:84% of a recent dissertation defense, 00:26:32.290 --> 00:26:35.080 align:middle line:84% as if I had died and gone to heaven at the MLA. 00:26:35.080 --> 00:26:39.820 align:middle line:84% And I was also told that it was an incredibly tough conference 00:26:39.820 --> 00:26:41.980 align:middle line:90% act to follow. 00:26:41.980 --> 00:26:44.650 align:middle line:84% I think the person who told me that meant the other MLAs, 00:26:44.650 --> 00:26:46.630 align:middle line:84% but I also think that being on this panel 00:26:46.630 --> 00:26:52.600 align:middle line:84% is certainly tougher than being an observer at the conference. 00:26:52.600 --> 00:26:55.210 align:middle line:84% During my visit to Arizona, I've been intrigued 00:26:55.210 --> 00:26:57.460 align:middle line:84% by the talks I've heard so far and really look forward 00:26:57.460 --> 00:27:00.610 align:middle line:84% to more insights from Charles's Negative Confessions, 00:27:00.610 --> 00:27:06.760 align:middle line:84% a recantorium exemplified in the Solomonic repudiation 00:27:06.760 --> 00:27:10.060 align:middle line:84% of an aspect of the self, the true self in exchange 00:27:10.060 --> 00:27:11.950 align:middle line:84% for a more generous social standing-- 00:27:11.950 --> 00:27:14.440 align:middle line:84% which I guess I'm questioning with this talk on, right? 00:27:14.440 --> 00:27:17.260 align:middle line:84% Or at least a broader acceptance among the mundane 00:27:17.260 --> 00:27:20.320 align:middle line:84% of the Marjorie's elegant reflections 00:27:20.320 --> 00:27:23.350 align:middle line:84% on the normatively of language experimentation. 00:27:23.350 --> 00:27:26.860 align:middle line:84% Also gave me entrée into the boundary pushing of associative 00:27:26.860 --> 00:27:30.220 align:middle line:84% wordplay that we have each engaged in since we could 00:27:30.220 --> 00:27:32.350 align:middle line:84% absorb abstract sound and meaning, 00:27:32.350 --> 00:27:35.020 align:middle line:90% even possibly pre-birth. 00:27:35.020 --> 00:27:40.630 align:middle line:84% Craig's wrangling of the ethical implication of popular access 00:27:40.630 --> 00:27:43.840 align:middle line:84% also gives us pause, and Caroline's particularization 00:27:43.840 --> 00:27:49.330 align:middle line:84% of utterances affirms cultural distinctions and distortions 00:27:49.330 --> 00:27:53.050 align:middle line:84% without privileging one over the other. 00:27:53.050 --> 00:27:56.200 align:middle line:84% Language gives us a sense of society and the belonging 00:27:56.200 --> 00:27:59.290 align:middle line:84% to a group, and group exclusion determines 00:27:59.290 --> 00:28:02.770 align:middle line:84% the type of language evidence, as we construct and hear. 00:28:02.770 --> 00:28:05.650 align:middle line:84% Language as utterance and description, sound, and text, 00:28:05.650 --> 00:28:09.070 align:middle line:84% the poetics of sound, is of interest to me as, 00:28:09.070 --> 00:28:12.700 align:middle line:90% obviously, as a practitioner. 00:28:12.700 --> 00:28:15.880 align:middle line:84% I thought about the confluence of sound texts observances 00:28:15.880 --> 00:28:18.280 align:middle line:84% in modern life in contemporary contexts, 00:28:18.280 --> 00:28:22.090 align:middle line:84% and I thought I'd like to add to the idea as a performative text 00:28:22.090 --> 00:28:24.670 align:middle line:84% of controversial commentary of right 00:28:24.670 --> 00:28:27.340 align:middle line:84% and what it might mean in the context of both proto 00:28:27.340 --> 00:28:31.030 align:middle line:84% and post racial discourses embodied 00:28:31.030 --> 00:28:34.750 align:middle line:84% by the flurry around the Obama campaign. 00:28:34.750 --> 00:28:38.230 align:middle line:84% It was an extraordinary opportunity, in my opinion, 00:28:38.230 --> 00:28:40.300 align:middle line:84% to consider the poetics of utterances, 00:28:40.300 --> 00:28:42.010 align:middle line:84% and with this audience to consider 00:28:42.010 --> 00:28:45.290 align:middle line:90% how these utterances perform. 00:28:45.290 --> 00:28:48.410 align:middle line:84% After all, how often do we come across this above board, 00:28:48.410 --> 00:28:51.500 align:middle line:84% underground, over the top generation of sound and meaning 00:28:51.500 --> 00:28:53.720 align:middle line:84% in the news in a cultural context 00:28:53.720 --> 00:28:56.600 align:middle line:84% and in the environment of multiple social registers? 00:28:56.600 --> 00:28:58.310 align:middle line:84% I do hope that this is a location where 00:28:58.310 --> 00:29:00.890 align:middle line:84% in discussing poetics, concept, and otherness 00:29:00.890 --> 00:29:05.030 align:middle line:84% we can have a conversation based on a commonly 00:29:05.030 --> 00:29:08.060 align:middle line:90% known textual template. 00:29:08.060 --> 00:29:11.510 align:middle line:84% I want to focus these notes on the politics of undertone 00:29:11.510 --> 00:29:14.690 align:middle line:84% of sonic meaning rather than the emphasis of vocabulary 00:29:14.690 --> 00:29:17.570 align:middle line:84% and statement, the meaning of the sonic performance 00:29:17.570 --> 00:29:18.690 align:middle line:90% as a script. 00:29:18.690 --> 00:29:21.770 align:middle line:84% This will inescapably lead to references to the descriptive, 00:29:21.770 --> 00:29:23.570 align:middle line:84% but I think, in many instances, we 00:29:23.570 --> 00:29:26.480 align:middle line:84% have a sense of what the public Jeremiah Wright means, 00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:29.480 align:middle line:84% literally, the heat that comes from what has now been uttered 00:29:29.480 --> 00:29:32.960 align:middle line:84% and what the sounds indicate, the comfort and discomfort they 00:29:32.960 --> 00:29:35.390 align:middle line:90% carry depending on register. 00:29:35.390 --> 00:29:37.730 align:middle line:84% So I'm going to have to turn my back 00:29:37.730 --> 00:29:39.800 align:middle line:84% and plug this in really quick just 00:29:39.800 --> 00:29:42.890 align:middle line:90% to show you a couple of clips. 00:29:42.890 --> 00:29:48.501 align:middle line:84% Let's see, skip ahead a little bit and just play something. 00:29:48.501 --> 00:29:54.760 align:middle line:90% 00:29:54.760 --> 00:29:56.300 align:middle line:90% How do I do it? 00:29:56.300 --> 00:29:58.200 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:29:58.200 --> 00:30:00.300 align:middle line:84% Maybe I can do it from here, actually. 00:30:00.300 --> 00:30:01.378 align:middle line:90% I can take that out. 00:30:01.378 --> 00:30:11.392 align:middle line:90% 00:30:11.392 --> 00:30:12.850 align:middle line:84% Did you get the thing for this one? 00:30:12.850 --> 00:30:14.058 align:middle line:90% Yeah, I can it switch it out. 00:30:14.058 --> 00:30:15.785 align:middle line:90% OK, should I-- 00:30:15.785 --> 00:30:17.006 align:middle line:90% Yeah, just plug it in. 00:30:17.006 --> 00:30:17.506 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:30:17.506 --> 00:30:32.944 align:middle line:90% 00:30:32.944 --> 00:30:33.940 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:30:33.940 --> 00:30:39.916 align:middle line:90% 00:30:39.916 --> 00:30:42.406 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:30:42.406 --> 00:30:45.940 align:middle line:90% 00:30:45.940 --> 00:30:46.750 align:middle line:90% Oh, great. 00:30:46.750 --> 00:30:51.396 align:middle line:84% This is my [INAUDIBLE],, my wonderful typing, [? Kenny? ?] 00:30:51.396 --> 00:30:52.600 align:middle line:90% See how I type. 00:30:52.600 --> 00:30:54.100 align:middle line:90% Looks a lot like your typing. 00:30:54.100 --> 00:30:56.520 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:30:56.520 --> 00:31:00.880 align:middle line:90% 00:31:00.880 --> 00:31:04.650 align:middle line:90% OK, hope this works. 00:31:04.650 --> 00:31:09.648 align:middle line:84% All right, I want to show you a couple of clips, 00:31:09.648 --> 00:31:11.190 align:middle line:84% and I'll talk about them in a minute. 00:31:11.190 --> 00:31:19.622 align:middle line:90% 00:31:19.622 --> 00:31:23.153 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] Yay. 00:31:23.153 --> 00:31:23.820 align:middle line:90% [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 00:31:23.820 --> 00:31:30.510 align:middle line:84% - At [INAUDIBLE] Paul says the spirit help with our infirmity, 00:31:30.510 --> 00:31:35.490 align:middle line:84% which mean the spirit comes together and takes on the yoke. 00:31:35.490 --> 00:31:40.170 align:middle line:84% In other words, the Holy Ghost is feeling your drive. 00:31:40.170 --> 00:31:44.160 align:middle line:84% The Holy Ghost is feeling your temper. 00:31:44.160 --> 00:31:48.270 align:middle line:90% The Holy Ghost is-- 00:31:48.270 --> 00:31:55.450 align:middle line:90% 00:31:55.450 --> 00:31:56.980 align:middle line:84% This is not Jeremiah Wright, but-- 00:31:56.980 --> 00:31:57.480 align:middle line:90% 00:31:57.480 --> 00:32:01.420 align:middle line:84% - --feeling your energy, and he didn't leave you by yourself. 00:32:01.420 --> 00:32:05.350 align:middle line:84% But the Holy Ghost is yoking with you, 00:32:05.350 --> 00:32:10.790 align:middle line:84% and what he's saying is, I'm not going to take it by myself. 00:32:10.790 --> 00:32:15.790 align:middle line:84% But if you will understand it, and all you got to do 00:32:15.790 --> 00:32:21.080 align:middle line:84% is will it, and I will help you through. 00:32:21.080 --> 00:32:26.230 align:middle line:84% But you can't be caught between two opinions, leaving 00:32:26.230 --> 00:32:27.820 align:middle line:90% and coming back. 00:32:27.820 --> 00:32:30.430 align:middle line:84% But you got to make up your mind. 00:32:30.430 --> 00:32:32.660 align:middle line:90% Lord, I'll be here. 00:32:32.660 --> 00:32:37.300 align:middle line:84% I'll stand with you until you work it out, 00:32:37.300 --> 00:32:43.180 align:middle line:84% because the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost, gets sat on. 00:32:43.180 --> 00:32:45.430 align:middle line:90% I feel like preaching in here. 00:32:45.430 --> 00:32:48.160 align:middle line:84% Give somebody a high five, and say 00:32:48.160 --> 00:32:51.850 align:middle line:84% when I need to do the right thing here, 00:32:51.850 --> 00:32:55.600 align:middle line:84% I need the Holy Ghost to sit on me. 00:32:55.600 --> 00:33:00.960 align:middle line:84% When my flesh is at the other level, sit on me. 00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:07.134 align:middle line:84% When that one looks too good, and I can't get around it. 00:33:07.134 --> 00:33:08.550 align:middle line:90% Ah! 00:33:08.550 --> 00:33:09.494 align:middle line:90% Sit on--" 00:33:09.494 --> 00:33:11.390 align:middle line:90% [END PLAYBACK] 00:33:11.390 --> 00:33:15.260 align:middle line:84% All right, I'm going to say more about that. 00:33:15.260 --> 00:33:18.130 align:middle line:84% That was not actually meant to be funny. 00:33:18.130 --> 00:33:24.018 align:middle line:84% But I want to play it in the context of this clip. 00:33:24.018 --> 00:33:24.685 align:middle line:90% [VIDEO PLAYBACK] 00:33:24.685 --> 00:33:26.620 align:middle line:84% - passes a three strike law, and then want 00:33:26.620 --> 00:33:29.200 align:middle line:90% us to sing God Bless America? 00:33:29.200 --> 00:33:33.642 align:middle line:84% No, no, no, not God bless America, God damn America! 00:33:33.642 --> 00:33:35.106 align:middle line:90% It's in the Bible. 00:33:35.106 --> 00:33:37.058 align:middle line:90% You're killing innocent people. 00:33:37.058 --> 00:33:40.000 align:middle line:90% God damn America. 00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:41.430 align:middle line:90% Passes a three strike law-- 00:33:41.430 --> 00:33:44.364 align:middle line:90% [END PLAYBACK] 00:33:44.364 --> 00:33:50.240 align:middle line:90% 00:33:50.240 --> 00:33:55.010 align:middle line:84% I'm going to put that back in in a second, but actually can 00:33:55.010 --> 00:33:56.915 align:middle line:90% I play the-- 00:33:56.915 --> 00:34:01.970 align:middle line:84% here's the [? tip, ?] lovely [? tip. ?] Can I play something 00:34:01.970 --> 00:34:03.608 align:middle line:90% else that's on my iTunes here? 00:34:03.608 --> 00:34:04.400 align:middle line:90% Do I have to plug-- 00:34:04.400 --> 00:34:04.900 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:34:04.900 --> 00:34:07.240 align:middle line:90% OK, great, thank you. 00:34:07.240 --> 00:34:11.225 align:middle line:84% We kind of had it worked out, but I'm a little nervous here. 00:34:11.225 --> 00:34:12.850 align:middle line:84% OK, there's a couple of things I wanted 00:34:12.850 --> 00:34:15.644 align:middle line:84% to say about this combination of clips. 00:34:15.644 --> 00:34:17.440 align:middle line:90% Use the mic. 00:34:17.440 --> 00:34:18.670 align:middle line:90% Oh, I'm sorry. 00:34:18.670 --> 00:34:19.960 align:middle line:90% There's a couple of things-- 00:34:19.960 --> 00:34:22.270 align:middle line:84% that would help-- that I wanted to say 00:34:22.270 --> 00:34:25.719 align:middle line:84% about this combination of clips that, hopefully, 00:34:25.719 --> 00:34:29.499 align:middle line:84% relate to the context in which we're speaking of poetics. 00:34:29.499 --> 00:34:32.080 align:middle line:90% 00:34:32.080 --> 00:34:36.760 align:middle line:84% Let's see, these performances underscore 00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:40.670 align:middle line:84% what in performance studies is called spontaneous communitas. 00:34:40.670 --> 00:34:43.510 align:middle line:84% It is a type of inspired feeling and pervasive performance 00:34:43.510 --> 00:34:46.449 align:middle line:84% prompted by the collective spirituality of a group. 00:34:46.449 --> 00:34:48.850 align:middle line:84% That's kind of towards one of your questions. 00:34:48.850 --> 00:34:51.969 align:middle line:84% Part of the intimidation with Wright 00:34:51.969 --> 00:34:53.980 align:middle line:84% is that he articulated a sense of anger, 00:34:53.980 --> 00:34:56.590 align:middle line:84% humor, and clear cultural divisions that, for some, are 00:34:56.590 --> 00:34:59.440 align:middle line:84% not singular but are, in the mind of these people, 00:34:59.440 --> 00:35:01.840 align:middle line:90% indicative of Black rebellion. 00:35:01.840 --> 00:35:03.910 align:middle line:84% What form does this rebellion take? 00:35:03.910 --> 00:35:06.250 align:middle line:84% That the verbal retort of generationally 00:35:06.250 --> 00:35:11.080 align:middle line:84% festered cursing or marking speaks to a deep-seated ideas 00:35:11.080 --> 00:35:13.210 align:middle line:90% of post-slavery revenge. 00:35:13.210 --> 00:35:15.010 align:middle line:84% The utterance alludes to these things 00:35:15.010 --> 00:35:16.990 align:middle line:84% because of the non-western sensibility 00:35:16.990 --> 00:35:19.810 align:middle line:84% of the non-sequiturs between words. 00:35:19.810 --> 00:35:23.170 align:middle line:84% Wright is a modified version of an African based glossolalia 00:35:23.170 --> 00:35:26.710 align:middle line:84% that speaks to dark vengeful African spirituality. 00:35:26.710 --> 00:35:30.632 align:middle line:84% It is a fundamental distrust of collective Black communitas 00:35:30.632 --> 00:35:32.590 align:middle line:84% that is the heart of the resentment of Wright's 00:35:32.590 --> 00:35:33.640 align:middle line:90% utterances. 00:35:33.640 --> 00:35:35.920 align:middle line:84% A more explicit aspect of this glossolalia 00:35:35.920 --> 00:35:38.650 align:middle line:90% is presented in those clips. 00:35:38.650 --> 00:35:44.170 align:middle line:84% And this cannot be considered outside of the development 00:35:44.170 --> 00:35:48.070 align:middle line:84% of Black Christianity in the United States. 00:35:48.070 --> 00:35:49.930 align:middle line:84% I think I'm going to skip ahead, and I 00:35:49.930 --> 00:35:53.410 align:middle line:84% think something you know about anti-slavery laws and stuff. 00:35:53.410 --> 00:35:56.020 align:middle line:84% But I also wanted to complement this 00:35:56.020 --> 00:35:58.900 align:middle line:84% with just a couple of short excerpts 00:35:58.900 --> 00:36:01.210 align:middle line:84% that I want you to relate to sonically. 00:36:01.210 --> 00:36:03.520 align:middle line:84% One might be a little bit familiar. 00:36:03.520 --> 00:36:06.244 align:middle line:90% I hope you can hear it. 00:36:06.244 --> 00:36:09.160 align:middle line:90% [AUDIO PLAYBACK] 00:36:09.160 --> 00:36:19.366 align:middle line:90% 00:36:19.366 --> 00:36:29.410 align:middle line:90% (SINGING) go, go, go. 00:36:29.410 --> 00:36:30.350 align:middle line:90% [END PLAYBACK] 00:36:30.350 --> 00:36:35.400 align:middle line:84% So all right, and then there's another one 00:36:35.400 --> 00:36:41.020 align:middle line:84% I want you to hear that may not be as well known to you. 00:36:41.020 --> 00:36:44.956 align:middle line:90% 00:36:44.956 --> 00:36:48.410 align:middle line:90% [AUDIO PLAYBACK] 00:36:48.410 --> 00:36:50.080 align:middle line:84% This is for the sonic quality here. 00:36:50.080 --> 00:36:58.064 align:middle line:90% 00:36:58.064 --> 00:36:59.561 align:middle line:90% (SINGING) It's all right. 00:36:59.561 --> 00:37:00.559 align:middle line:90% I feel it. 00:37:00.559 --> 00:37:04.052 align:middle line:90% 00:37:04.052 --> 00:37:06.048 align:middle line:90% It's all right. 00:37:06.048 --> 00:37:07.046 align:middle line:90% I'm feel it. 00:37:07.046 --> 00:37:10.040 align:middle line:90% 00:37:10.040 --> 00:37:11.537 align:middle line:90% It's all right. 00:37:11.537 --> 00:37:12.535 align:middle line:90% I'm feel it. 00:37:12.535 --> 00:37:15.529 align:middle line:90% 00:37:15.529 --> 00:37:17.525 align:middle line:90% It's all right. 00:37:17.525 --> 00:37:18.523 align:middle line:90% I'm feel it. 00:37:18.523 --> 00:37:21.517 align:middle line:90% 00:37:21.517 --> 00:37:23.513 align:middle line:90% It's all right. 00:37:23.513 --> 00:37:26.507 align:middle line:90% I'm feel it. 00:37:26.507 --> 00:37:31.860 align:middle line:84% Music in my heart has kept me through all of the tainting 00:37:31.860 --> 00:37:33.750 align:middle line:90% the world has put me through. 00:37:33.750 --> 00:37:35.127 align:middle line:90% It's all right. 00:37:35.127 --> 00:37:37.881 align:middle line:90% I'm feel it. 00:37:37.881 --> 00:37:41.895 align:middle line:84% This feeling that you get can change thee. 00:37:41.895 --> 00:37:45.690 align:middle line:84% The power of the room will always see you through. 00:37:45.690 --> 00:37:47.113 align:middle line:90% It's all right. 00:37:47.113 --> 00:37:50.220 align:middle line:90% I'm feel it. 00:37:50.220 --> 00:37:53.970 align:middle line:84% Nothings block your way 'cause this is your day. 00:37:53.970 --> 00:37:55.670 align:middle line:90% Stand up and be free. 00:37:55.670 --> 00:37:59.020 align:middle line:84% You only got to say, it's all right. 00:37:59.020 --> 00:38:00.137 align:middle line:90% I feel it. 00:38:00.137 --> 00:38:00.720 align:middle line:90% [END PLAYBACK] 00:38:00.720 --> 00:38:04.447 align:middle line:84% OK, so those two excerpts, one was from James Brown, 00:38:04.447 --> 00:38:05.530 align:middle line:90% Give It Up, Turn It Loose. 00:38:05.530 --> 00:38:06.947 align:middle line:84% The other one was, It's All Right, 00:38:06.947 --> 00:38:08.670 align:middle line:90% I Feel It by Jocelyn Brown. 00:38:08.670 --> 00:38:12.690 align:middle line:84% With the Browns, the utterance unencumbered by meeting 00:38:12.690 --> 00:38:13.950 align:middle line:90% is more explicit. 00:38:13.950 --> 00:38:18.660 align:middle line:84% This sound work appropriately, for my purposes, 00:38:18.660 --> 00:38:20.490 align:middle line:84% Give It Up, Turn It Loose, segues 00:38:20.490 --> 00:38:24.480 align:middle line:84% between Jones and Wright, and not only articulates 00:38:24.480 --> 00:38:27.390 align:middle line:84% the explicit musicality of the performative utterances 00:38:27.390 --> 00:38:29.400 align:middle line:84% of Jones, Wright, and others, but also speaks 00:38:29.400 --> 00:38:32.200 align:middle line:84% to meaning unmoored from vocabulary. 00:38:32.200 --> 00:38:34.650 align:middle line:84% It is interesting to consider whether Jocelyn Brown's 00:38:34.650 --> 00:38:38.160 align:middle line:84% utterances also convey a masculinist tonality rather 00:38:38.160 --> 00:38:41.370 align:middle line:84% than a variation of Black female utterances being ascribed 00:38:41.370 --> 00:38:42.990 align:middle line:90% to her voice. 00:38:42.990 --> 00:38:45.210 align:middle line:84% If the vocabulary isn't prioritized here, 00:38:45.210 --> 00:38:47.730 align:middle line:84% then what are they saying that's not music? 00:38:47.730 --> 00:38:49.560 align:middle line:84% It's an utterance of identity that 00:38:49.560 --> 00:38:53.100 align:middle line:84% is a post African resonance of an African-American speech act. 00:38:53.100 --> 00:38:55.860 align:middle line:84% In The Preacherly Text, African-American Poetry 00:38:55.860 --> 00:39:00.330 align:middle line:84% and Vernacular Performance, Marcellus Blount 00:39:00.330 --> 00:39:03.930 align:middle line:84% writes, "Black utterance like other counter discourses 00:39:03.930 --> 00:39:07.350 align:middle line:84% mask this own continuity as a way of veiling the challenges 00:39:07.350 --> 00:39:09.990 align:middle line:84% to the legitimacy of dominant political institutions 00:39:09.990 --> 00:39:11.370 align:middle line:90% and cultural traditions." 00:39:11.370 --> 00:39:14.070 align:middle line:84% In theorizing about African-American poetry, 00:39:14.070 --> 00:39:16.380 align:middle line:84% critics might be guided by what Richard [? Terdiman ?] 00:39:16.380 --> 00:39:19.650 align:middle line:84% describes in a different context as the capacity of counter 00:39:19.650 --> 00:39:23.820 align:middle line:84% discourses to situate, to relativize the authority 00:39:23.820 --> 00:39:26.490 align:middle line:84% of stability of a dominant system of utterances, 00:39:26.490 --> 00:39:29.070 align:middle line:84% which cannot even countenance their existence as a way 00:39:29.070 --> 00:39:32.350 align:middle line:84% of enacting a new realm of subjectivity. 00:39:32.350 --> 00:39:35.730 align:middle line:84% So I'm interested in this sound of non-sequiturs. 00:39:35.730 --> 00:39:38.003 align:middle line:84% I'm just going to skip ahead because I 00:39:38.003 --> 00:39:39.330 align:middle line:90% know I'm running out of time. 00:39:39.330 --> 00:39:41.490 align:middle line:84% What I hope these few comments may offer, 00:39:41.490 --> 00:39:44.370 align:middle line:84% as we potentially hear Jeremiah Wright's remarks 00:39:44.370 --> 00:39:47.280 align:middle line:84% over and over again in the upcoming campaign season 00:39:47.280 --> 00:39:50.040 align:middle line:84% is, the opportunity for sonic dissonance 00:39:50.040 --> 00:39:54.150 align:middle line:84% to be manipulated exclusively as a confrontational discourse 00:39:54.150 --> 00:39:56.100 align:middle line:84% when we see their application in other realms 00:39:56.100 --> 00:39:58.260 align:middle line:84% of Black holy identity utterances, 00:39:58.260 --> 00:40:01.200 align:middle line:84% as well as other Black sounds susceptible to outsider 00:40:01.200 --> 00:40:01.913 align:middle line:90% interpretations. 00:40:01.913 --> 00:40:03.330 align:middle line:84% And here, I'm particularly talking 00:40:03.330 --> 00:40:05.160 align:middle line:84% about the grain of the voice, and how 00:40:05.160 --> 00:40:08.160 align:middle line:84% that particular sound and in Jocelyn Brown's voice 00:40:08.160 --> 00:40:11.020 align:middle line:90% and others, is articulated. 00:40:11.020 --> 00:40:13.470 align:middle line:84% It is my hope that we can apply poetic tools 00:40:13.470 --> 00:40:16.320 align:middle line:84% to parse the distinction between internal speech 00:40:16.320 --> 00:40:18.240 align:middle line:84% that politically confronts because 00:40:18.240 --> 00:40:21.600 align:middle line:84% of a vocabulary and those that culturally "confront" 00:40:21.600 --> 00:40:26.400 align:middle line:84% in quotes, because of a sound variety that is vocabularized 00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:28.080 align:middle line:90% as confrontation. 00:40:28.080 --> 00:40:30.240 align:middle line:84% As in hip hop sampling, the articulation 00:40:30.240 --> 00:40:33.270 align:middle line:84% of sonic dissonance can be used to create contrast 00:40:33.270 --> 00:40:37.230 align:middle line:84% with other sounds outside of the assumptions of valuations 00:40:37.230 --> 00:40:39.450 align:middle line:84% of standard utterances of these sounds. 00:40:39.450 --> 00:40:41.490 align:middle line:84% We, as poets and scholars, are uniquely 00:40:41.490 --> 00:40:45.507 align:middle line:84% able to make these distinctions in sounds and meanings. 00:40:45.507 --> 00:40:48.501 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:40:48.501 --> 00:40:57.740 align:middle line:90% 00:40:57.740 --> 00:40:59.690 align:middle line:84% I wanted to-- I knew that following 00:40:59.690 --> 00:41:01.700 align:middle line:84% on from my talk this morning I wanted 00:41:01.700 --> 00:41:06.440 align:middle line:84% to go back to someone whose work I admire 00:41:06.440 --> 00:41:10.160 align:middle line:84% and that has been undoubtedly an influence 00:41:10.160 --> 00:41:12.920 align:middle line:84% on my way of thinking about writing, 00:41:12.920 --> 00:41:14.540 align:middle line:84% although he's not a writer himself. 00:41:14.540 --> 00:41:18.920 align:middle line:84% And I've just plucked two slides that I realized-- there's 00:41:18.920 --> 00:41:20.420 align:middle line:90% another one I wish I had. 00:41:20.420 --> 00:41:22.140 align:middle line:90% I'm sure you know the work. 00:41:22.140 --> 00:41:24.290 align:middle line:84% So this is just this one introduction. 00:41:24.290 --> 00:41:28.250 align:middle line:84% It's work by Félix González-Torres, 00:41:28.250 --> 00:41:31.920 align:middle line:84% Cuban-American artist who died very prematurely of AIDS in New 00:41:31.920 --> 00:41:32.420 align:middle line:90% York. 00:41:32.420 --> 00:41:35.840 align:middle line:84% And I say this because his illness and his lover's illness 00:41:35.840 --> 00:41:38.780 align:middle line:90% were very much part of the work. 00:41:38.780 --> 00:41:40.700 align:middle line:84% Although you wouldn't necessarily know it, 00:41:40.700 --> 00:41:43.670 align:middle line:84% he said he was inspired by Christian Boltanski, 00:41:43.670 --> 00:41:46.280 align:middle line:84% or the much more minimal than Boltanski and at times 00:41:46.280 --> 00:41:48.950 align:middle line:90% also quite kitsch in his output. 00:41:48.950 --> 00:41:51.740 align:middle line:84% If I'm not mistaken, and I can't remember the exact term, 00:41:51.740 --> 00:41:54.327 align:middle line:84% but I think he called his work emotional minimalism. 00:41:54.327 --> 00:41:55.910 align:middle line:84% And if it wasn't emotional minimalism, 00:41:55.910 --> 00:41:58.010 align:middle line:84% it's something that had to do with bringing up 00:41:58.010 --> 00:42:01.550 align:middle line:84% emotion and bringing up feeling as part of this extremely 00:42:01.550 --> 00:42:04.550 align:middle line:90% pared down structure. 00:42:04.550 --> 00:42:06.110 align:middle line:84% So it's not necessarily the candy 00:42:06.110 --> 00:42:07.910 align:middle line:84% eating pieces that I wanted to talk 00:42:07.910 --> 00:42:11.090 align:middle line:84% about here with the implication of collective feeding, 00:42:11.090 --> 00:42:15.710 align:middle line:84% as well as collective pleasure, but those cited-- 00:42:15.710 --> 00:42:17.180 align:middle line:90% OK. 00:42:17.180 --> 00:42:21.410 align:middle line:84% Those cited biographies, you call them portraits. 00:42:21.410 --> 00:42:23.840 align:middle line:90% So why does it have to do this? 00:42:23.840 --> 00:42:27.440 align:middle line:90% OK, so what you'll see-- 00:42:27.440 --> 00:42:29.508 align:middle line:84% you see it there although it's a bit smaller. 00:42:29.508 --> 00:42:32.380 align:middle line:90% 00:42:32.380 --> 00:42:33.730 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:42:33.730 --> 00:42:37.360 align:middle line:84% Starting with this one, he would take private commissions 00:42:37.360 --> 00:42:41.890 align:middle line:84% for some of these portraits, interview the clients 00:42:41.890 --> 00:42:44.470 align:middle line:84% so that they would get dates and their biographies, 00:42:44.470 --> 00:42:48.010 align:middle line:84% chosen dates out of their lives, and then you 00:42:48.010 --> 00:42:49.690 align:middle line:84% would get those facts to tease out. 00:42:49.690 --> 00:42:52.195 align:middle line:84% And then he would go away and supplement-- 00:42:52.195 --> 00:42:55.030 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:42:55.030 --> 00:42:57.462 align:middle line:84% I was wondering what you were laughing because-- 00:42:57.462 --> 00:42:58.670 align:middle line:90% Like you weren't being funny. 00:42:58.670 --> 00:43:00.670 align:middle line:90% Yeah, really, really funny. 00:43:00.670 --> 00:43:02.670 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:43:02.670 --> 00:43:04.670 align:middle line:90% 00:43:04.670 --> 00:43:08.740 align:middle line:84% So he would supplement these personal information, 00:43:08.740 --> 00:43:10.930 align:middle line:84% these personal dates, with more collective, 00:43:10.930 --> 00:43:12.458 align:middle line:90% or public, let's say, dates. 00:43:12.458 --> 00:43:14.000 align:middle line:84% And then he would put these together. 00:43:14.000 --> 00:43:17.770 align:middle line:84% They didn't have the final choice on the dates. 00:43:17.770 --> 00:43:19.690 align:middle line:84% So basically, and then you also have 00:43:19.690 --> 00:43:22.420 align:middle line:84% those very public ones in which, again, the same system, 00:43:22.420 --> 00:43:25.120 align:middle line:90% very, very minimal way of-- 00:43:25.120 --> 00:43:28.990 align:middle line:84% this is an AIDS tribute, as you can see, 00:43:28.990 --> 00:43:33.250 align:middle line:84% and very, very minimal use of language and of dates. 00:43:33.250 --> 00:43:37.810 align:middle line:84% What I like about this work is the way the private, perhaps 00:43:37.810 --> 00:43:41.470 align:middle line:84% less this one, that the private becomes part of-- 00:43:41.470 --> 00:43:44.890 align:middle line:84% is acknowledged in its collective narrative 00:43:44.890 --> 00:43:49.270 align:middle line:84% and done with very, very sparse, sparse means. 00:43:49.270 --> 00:43:52.600 align:middle line:84% So I just wanted to bring that up here. 00:43:52.600 --> 00:43:55.660 align:middle line:84% There is another type of work of his 00:43:55.660 --> 00:43:58.540 align:middle line:84% that I very much like, as well, which he called The Stacks. 00:43:58.540 --> 00:44:01.510 align:middle line:84% And I'm sure, again, you know these pieces. 00:44:01.510 --> 00:44:03.700 align:middle line:84% The one that I was thinking of particularly 00:44:03.700 --> 00:44:05.980 align:middle line:90% is The Stacks of White Paper. 00:44:05.980 --> 00:44:08.500 align:middle line:84% I'm thinking of that one because it is called Passport. 00:44:08.500 --> 00:44:11.740 align:middle line:84% And I just-- again, this idea of taking away 00:44:11.740 --> 00:44:14.680 align:middle line:84% a white sheet of paper where the only connection that you have 00:44:14.680 --> 00:44:17.350 align:middle line:90% with language is in the title. 00:44:17.350 --> 00:44:21.550 align:middle line:84% You could forget the title once you've taken away the sheet. 00:44:21.550 --> 00:44:22.870 align:middle line:90% But he would still-- 00:44:22.870 --> 00:44:28.670 align:middle line:84% these stacks were also created with standard industrial paper. 00:44:28.670 --> 00:44:29.830 align:middle line:90% So these are paper. 00:44:29.830 --> 00:44:32.332 align:middle line:84% It will disappear, will quickly degrade. 00:44:32.332 --> 00:44:34.540 align:middle line:84% There was always a sense, even when he was traveling, 00:44:34.540 --> 00:44:38.560 align:middle line:84% he was looking for a standard sized stacks 00:44:38.560 --> 00:44:43.090 align:middle line:84% and was very conscious about the fact that they would degrade. 00:44:43.090 --> 00:44:44.770 align:middle line:84% What interests me about that, again, 00:44:44.770 --> 00:44:47.230 align:middle line:84% is this idea of the dispersed archive, dispersed 00:44:47.230 --> 00:44:48.280 align:middle line:90% in personal lives. 00:44:48.280 --> 00:44:50.080 align:middle line:90% Some information disappears. 00:44:50.080 --> 00:44:51.520 align:middle line:90% Some will remain. 00:44:51.520 --> 00:44:53.770 align:middle line:84% And you just have it for as long as, basically, 00:44:53.770 --> 00:44:54.970 align:middle line:90% you can carry that history. 00:44:54.970 --> 00:44:59.090 align:middle line:84% So I just wanted to bring his work to the table. 00:44:59.090 --> 00:44:59.980 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:44:59.980 --> 00:45:02.380 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:45:02.380 --> 00:45:06.710 align:middle line:90% 00:45:06.710 --> 00:45:10.850 align:middle line:84% I'm glad that both the collective spirituality 00:45:10.850 --> 00:45:15.500 align:middle line:84% and Tracie's and the collective pleasure that you mentioned 00:45:15.500 --> 00:45:18.050 align:middle line:84% also came up because I'm talking about something 00:45:18.050 --> 00:45:20.360 align:middle line:84% that's somewhat related, at least in the notion 00:45:20.360 --> 00:45:22.310 align:middle line:90% of collectivity. 00:45:22.310 --> 00:45:25.130 align:middle line:84% I wanted to start by addressing the others in the title 00:45:25.130 --> 00:45:27.380 align:middle line:84% Conceptual Poetry and Its Others. 00:45:27.380 --> 00:45:30.980 align:middle line:84% "I hear the word as implying that conceptual poetry has 00:45:30.980 --> 00:45:33.650 align:middle line:84% allies or counterparts in its projects, 00:45:33.650 --> 00:45:36.920 align:middle line:84% or that there are other contemporary modes of poetry 00:45:36.920 --> 00:45:39.020 align:middle line:84% that share some of the same goals 00:45:39.020 --> 00:45:41.690 align:middle line:84% and interests as conceptual poetry. 00:45:41.690 --> 00:45:44.960 align:middle line:84% Principle among those interests is the role of the subject." 00:45:44.960 --> 00:45:48.020 align:middle line:84% Craig Dworkin addresses it in his introduction to the UbuWeb 00:45:48.020 --> 00:45:51.110 align:middle line:84% Conceptual Poetry Anthology with this line as, 00:45:51.110 --> 00:45:52.180 align:middle line:90% "clearly the chorus." 00:45:52.180 --> 00:45:53.472 align:middle line:90% There should be a quiz on this. 00:45:53.472 --> 00:45:55.040 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:45:55.040 --> 00:45:56.390 align:middle line:90% We'll all have it memorized. 00:45:56.390 --> 00:45:59.930 align:middle line:84% It is mention of expressive poetry with the opening line, 00:45:59.930 --> 00:46:03.920 align:middle line:84% "poetry expresses the emotional truth of the self." 00:46:03.920 --> 00:46:07.250 align:middle line:84% Self here is for me a more problematic term 00:46:07.250 --> 00:46:10.030 align:middle line:84% than expresses, and many of conceptual poetry, 00:46:10.030 --> 00:46:12.920 align:middle line:84% as others, are also interested in replacing 00:46:12.920 --> 00:46:15.530 align:middle line:84% the assumption of a consistent sovereign I 00:46:15.530 --> 00:46:18.350 align:middle line:84% with a differently nuanced understanding of point 00:46:18.350 --> 00:46:21.050 align:middle line:90% of view framing and voice. 00:46:21.050 --> 00:46:22.730 align:middle line:84% In particular, a number of writers 00:46:22.730 --> 00:46:25.070 align:middle line:84% have approached the problem by constructing a speaking 00:46:25.070 --> 00:46:27.380 align:middle line:84% position that is broadly dispersed, 00:46:27.380 --> 00:46:30.680 align:middle line:84% creating a situation similar to that described by distributed 00:46:30.680 --> 00:46:33.440 align:middle line:84% cognition, which downplays the importance 00:46:33.440 --> 00:46:37.220 align:middle line:84% of individual experience and its claim to universality in favor 00:46:37.220 --> 00:46:39.920 align:middle line:84% of a model of shared cognition in which experience 00:46:39.920 --> 00:46:44.090 align:middle line:84% is recognized as gathered across both communities and time. 00:46:44.090 --> 00:46:47.930 align:middle line:84% And it's also a model, a neuroscientific model, 00:46:47.930 --> 00:46:54.290 align:middle line:84% that incorporates the object as part of the cognitive system. 00:46:54.290 --> 00:46:58.110 align:middle line:84% And I was thinking how well much of what's being done here, 00:46:58.110 --> 00:47:03.440 align:middle line:84% such as Kenny's work, which uses computers, or Christian's, 00:47:03.440 --> 00:47:04.940 align:middle line:90% which uses the DNA. 00:47:04.940 --> 00:47:08.150 align:middle line:84% There's all sorts of objects that are taking 00:47:08.150 --> 00:47:10.440 align:middle line:90% part in the thinking pattern. 00:47:10.440 --> 00:47:15.230 align:middle line:84% So there's no pretense to all the thought going on up here. 00:47:15.230 --> 00:47:17.930 align:middle line:84% Instead, there's a recognition with a distributed cognitive 00:47:17.930 --> 00:47:21.590 align:middle line:84% model that cognition is always a shared and, to some degree, 00:47:21.590 --> 00:47:24.150 align:middle line:90% collective experience. 00:47:24.150 --> 00:47:26.690 align:middle line:84% One example of this in contemporary poetry-- 00:47:26.690 --> 00:47:29.030 align:middle line:84% and I'm choosing it simply because it's one 00:47:29.030 --> 00:47:30.050 align:middle line:90% that I really enjoy-- 00:47:30.050 --> 00:47:33.710 align:middle line:84% is poets who are using history in ways that bring that 00:47:33.710 --> 00:47:36.000 align:middle line:90% to the center of their work. 00:47:36.000 --> 00:47:38.420 align:middle line:84% I'm going to just choose three quick examples, 00:47:38.420 --> 00:47:41.380 align:middle line:84% and I chose them, one, because she's here. 00:47:41.380 --> 00:47:43.130 align:middle line:84% Another one because she was supposed to be 00:47:43.130 --> 00:47:44.720 align:middle line:90% here and suddenly couldn't be. 00:47:44.720 --> 00:47:48.440 align:middle line:84% And a third because she might just as well have been here 00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:53.600 align:middle line:84% and, for me, she indicates how broadly spread the others 00:47:53.600 --> 00:47:55.130 align:middle line:90% of conceptual poetry are. 00:47:55.130 --> 00:47:57.650 align:middle line:84% Extremely different but quite numerous. 00:47:57.650 --> 00:48:01.070 align:middle line:84% So the first one is Caroline Bergvall's, Shorter Chaucer 00:48:01.070 --> 00:48:01.880 align:middle line:90% Tales. 00:48:01.880 --> 00:48:05.630 align:middle line:84% She not only chose a root text noted for its poly-vocality, 00:48:05.630 --> 00:48:08.420 align:middle line:84% but launched off from it with vocabulary 00:48:08.420 --> 00:48:11.480 align:middle line:84% from different languages, some living, some revived, 00:48:11.480 --> 00:48:15.380 align:middle line:84% some invented to create a stance from which she could strangify 00:48:15.380 --> 00:48:17.360 align:middle line:84% certain contemporary social issues, 00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:20.030 align:middle line:84% placing them in a constantly growing frame that 00:48:20.030 --> 00:48:22.880 align:middle line:90% demands historical accounting. 00:48:22.880 --> 00:48:27.530 align:middle line:84% Two, Susan Howe's, Scare Quotes I + II Almost all 00:48:27.530 --> 00:48:30.350 align:middle line:84% of Susan's work would make an equally good example, 00:48:30.350 --> 00:48:33.950 align:middle line:84% but Scare Quotes is particularly apt 00:48:33.950 --> 00:48:37.760 align:middle line:84% because of its use of collage, which pulls dimension as a lens 00:48:37.760 --> 00:48:39.110 align:middle line:90% into the center. 00:48:39.110 --> 00:48:41.600 align:middle line:84% And though she distinguishes her own experience 00:48:41.600 --> 00:48:43.700 align:middle line:84% through the use of the authorial eye, 00:48:43.700 --> 00:48:45.950 align:middle line:84% it is not privileged but is presented 00:48:45.950 --> 00:48:49.160 align:middle line:84% among many others, all of which are given equal weight 00:48:49.160 --> 00:48:51.950 align:middle line:84% and together constitute the voice of the text, which 00:48:51.950 --> 00:48:54.650 align:middle line:84% is quite different from Susan's own. 00:48:54.650 --> 00:48:57.740 align:middle line:84% And three is Thalia Field's, ULULU. 00:48:57.740 --> 00:49:00.320 align:middle line:84% Channeled through a fictional character, point of view 00:49:00.320 --> 00:49:03.020 align:middle line:84% is refracted through the prism of the imaginary 00:49:03.020 --> 00:49:05.990 align:middle line:84% and by presenting her in all her permutations 00:49:05.990 --> 00:49:09.230 align:middle line:84% Thalia redivides and multiplies it until the media 00:49:09.230 --> 00:49:13.010 align:middle line:84% itself, film, theater, extrapolation, censorship 00:49:13.010 --> 00:49:14.840 align:middle line:90% ends up doing the talking. 00:49:14.840 --> 00:49:18.320 align:middle line:84% The I that appears relatively frequently in the text 00:49:18.320 --> 00:49:21.590 align:middle line:84% is positive as both a construct and a function 00:49:21.590 --> 00:49:24.080 align:middle line:90% rather than a stable entity. 00:49:24.080 --> 00:49:27.200 align:middle line:84% Work such as this has nothing to do with the selflessness 00:49:27.200 --> 00:49:30.260 align:middle line:84% that Tenney refers to in his question about Buddhism. 00:49:30.260 --> 00:49:33.740 align:middle line:84% Their ultimate selflessness comes from an overflow of self 00:49:33.740 --> 00:49:36.050 align:middle line:90% that generates past counting. 00:49:36.050 --> 00:49:38.300 align:middle line:84% Both expressive and emotional, they 00:49:38.300 --> 00:49:41.810 align:middle line:84% do not express the emotions of a single consolidated subject. 00:49:41.810 --> 00:49:44.540 align:middle line:84% Instead, they refuse the easy invention 00:49:44.540 --> 00:49:47.480 align:middle line:84% of a self that amounts to self-centeredness to create 00:49:47.480 --> 00:49:50.600 align:middle line:84% a more intricate, as well as more generous and more accurate 00:49:50.600 --> 00:49:53.570 align:middle line:84% position from which language happens. 00:49:53.570 --> 00:49:55.580 align:middle line:84% But this approach does have implications 00:49:55.580 --> 00:49:57.830 align:middle line:84% for the direct presentation of language 00:49:57.830 --> 00:50:00.680 align:middle line:84% because the fluid distribution of subjectivity 00:50:00.680 --> 00:50:03.630 align:middle line:84% transfers authority to language itself. 00:50:03.630 --> 00:50:05.690 align:middle line:84% Language speaks the field through which 00:50:05.690 --> 00:50:08.720 align:middle line:90% the eye wanders unanchored. 00:50:08.720 --> 00:50:12.110 align:middle line:84% Research-based work, in general, tends toward both distributed 00:50:12.110 --> 00:50:15.980 align:middle line:84% subjectivity and foregrounded language because the subject is 00:50:15.980 --> 00:50:18.230 align:middle line:90% no longer the subject, i.e. 00:50:18.230 --> 00:50:21.380 align:middle line:84% the subject matter is no longer the speaking subject 00:50:21.380 --> 00:50:24.740 align:middle line:84% and his or her emotions recollected. 00:50:24.740 --> 00:50:28.280 align:middle line:84% Craig asks, what would a non-expressive poetry look 00:50:28.280 --> 00:50:28.790 align:middle line:90% like? 00:50:28.790 --> 00:50:32.480 align:middle line:84% A poetry of intellect rather than emotion. 00:50:32.480 --> 00:50:37.040 align:middle line:84% What I hear in his statement is not an either or proposition 00:50:37.040 --> 00:50:39.080 align:middle line:84% but a legitimate concern about poetry 00:50:39.080 --> 00:50:41.600 align:middle line:84% that is driven by emotion only and the role 00:50:41.600 --> 00:50:44.720 align:middle line:84% that such poetry plays in the anti-intellectualism that 00:50:44.720 --> 00:50:47.480 align:middle line:84% has been growing in this country for decades. 00:50:47.480 --> 00:50:50.240 align:middle line:84% Intellectual exploration has been, in part, 00:50:50.240 --> 00:50:52.340 align:middle line:84% replaced by a passion for judgment, 00:50:52.340 --> 00:50:56.373 align:middle line:84% and that's what I see in Craig's addressing in his comment 00:50:56.373 --> 00:50:58.790 align:middle line:84% that the test of poetry is no longer whether it could have 00:50:58.790 --> 00:51:01.970 align:middle line:84% been done better, but whether it could have been done otherwise. 00:51:01.970 --> 00:51:05.570 align:middle line:84% It's a much harder question, one that demands that, finally, we 00:51:05.570 --> 00:51:08.330 align:middle line:84% agree to encounter a work on its own terms, which 00:51:08.330 --> 00:51:12.050 align:middle line:84% means entering them ourselves with our own terms left behind. 00:51:12.050 --> 00:51:16.356 align:middle line:84% That's the generosity to which conceptual poetry leads us. 00:51:16.356 --> 00:51:18.796 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:51:18.796 --> 00:51:24.670 align:middle line:90% 00:51:24.670 --> 00:51:29.560 align:middle line:84% All right, so I don't have anything as formal or clever 00:51:29.560 --> 00:51:31.970 align:middle line:84% as anyone else, but I just wanted 00:51:31.970 --> 00:51:39.340 align:middle line:84% to raise an early and general warning, 00:51:39.340 --> 00:51:44.920 align:middle line:84% and this is purely selfish, as you'll see. 00:51:44.920 --> 00:51:52.120 align:middle line:84% But one of today's questions, aren't we all conceptual poets, 00:51:52.120 --> 00:52:00.460 align:middle line:84% reminded me of a slightly hurt and slightly defensive 00:52:00.460 --> 00:52:04.420 align:middle line:84% and slightly non-understanding response 00:52:04.420 --> 00:52:08.230 align:middle line:84% that you used to hear about language poetry. 00:52:08.230 --> 00:52:10.390 align:middle line:90% Well, I use language in my poem. 00:52:10.390 --> 00:52:11.920 align:middle line:90% Aren't I a language poet? 00:52:11.920 --> 00:52:18.010 align:middle line:84% And it got me thinking that the term-- 00:52:18.010 --> 00:52:23.860 align:middle line:84% I just want us to remember that the term conceptual poetry 00:52:23.860 --> 00:52:26.830 align:middle line:84% shouldn't lead us into the kind of confusions 00:52:26.830 --> 00:52:29.740 align:middle line:84% that Wittgenstein called grammatical errors, 00:52:29.740 --> 00:52:31.510 align:middle line:84% where just because of the way our grammar 00:52:31.510 --> 00:52:35.770 align:middle line:84% works we have this word conceptual poetry. 00:52:35.770 --> 00:52:37.870 align:middle line:84% And so since it plugs into sentences 00:52:37.870 --> 00:52:41.410 align:middle line:84% in the way there is a table plugs in, 00:52:41.410 --> 00:52:43.910 align:middle line:84% we hear it and we say, there is conceptual poetry and think, 00:52:43.910 --> 00:52:46.350 align:middle line:84% oh, there's some thing that is conceptual poetry. 00:52:46.350 --> 00:52:50.176 align:middle line:84% And then we have to fight about whether something is or isn't-- 00:52:50.176 --> 00:52:53.422 align:middle line:84% is the chair a table because I could put food? 00:52:53.422 --> 00:52:55.630 align:middle line:84% Then like Wittgenstein worried about as philosophers, 00:52:55.630 --> 00:52:56.530 align:middle line:90% we get all muddled. 00:52:56.530 --> 00:52:58.000 align:middle line:90% We get all angry. 00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.650 align:middle line:90% Our brows are furrowed. 00:52:59.650 --> 00:53:01.630 align:middle line:84% We fight with each other with fire pokers. 00:53:01.630 --> 00:53:02.290 align:middle line:90% It's awful. 00:53:02.290 --> 00:53:05.740 align:middle line:84% So I just want to say the selfish part of this 00:53:05.740 --> 00:53:09.040 align:middle line:84% is having colleagues and students then come 00:53:09.040 --> 00:53:11.590 align:middle line:84% for decades when we could have been doing 00:53:11.590 --> 00:53:15.730 align:middle line:84% real criticism on individual poems or individual poets, 00:53:15.730 --> 00:53:20.380 align:middle line:84% and instead have endless essays, what is language poetry? 00:53:20.380 --> 00:53:21.970 align:middle line:90% Or I know you. 00:53:21.970 --> 00:53:23.740 align:middle line:90% I think you're a language poet. 00:53:23.740 --> 00:53:28.510 align:middle line:84% And I would just, as a scholar, like to say, let's avoid that. 00:53:28.510 --> 00:53:31.300 align:middle line:84% Let's not define and bicker about 00:53:31.300 --> 00:53:34.420 align:middle line:84% whether something is or isn't conceptual poetry, 00:53:34.420 --> 00:53:37.450 align:middle line:84% and either ignore stuff you don't like, 00:53:37.450 --> 00:53:40.000 align:middle line:84% or do good work on stuff that you do like. 00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:43.090 align:middle line:84% And maybe we could skip that whole first decade of-- 00:53:43.090 --> 00:53:44.380 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:53:44.380 --> 00:53:47.920 align:middle line:84% --worry about this as critics and get to the good readings 00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:51.210 align:middle line:84% that we're finally getting about previous generations. 00:53:51.210 --> 00:53:51.870 align:middle line:90% So that's all. 00:53:51.870 --> 00:53:54.240 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:53:54.240 --> 00:53:58.990 align:middle line:90% 00:53:58.990 --> 00:54:02.000 align:middle line:84% So we have about half an hour, and we're open for questions. 00:54:02.000 --> 00:54:09.320 align:middle line:90% 00:54:09.320 --> 00:54:10.500 align:middle line:90% What is conceptual poetry? 00:54:10.500 --> 00:54:12.905 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:54:12.905 --> 00:54:14.858 align:middle line:90% 00:54:14.858 --> 00:54:16.650 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE],, could you repeat the question 00:54:16.650 --> 00:54:19.500 align:middle line:90% for the online people? 00:54:19.500 --> 00:54:23.220 align:middle line:84% Oh, what-- hey, guess, what is conceptual poetry? 00:54:23.220 --> 00:54:25.737 align:middle line:84% I won't say what the speech act was. 00:54:25.737 --> 00:54:35.770 align:middle line:90% 00:54:35.770 --> 00:54:37.450 align:middle line:84% Oh, I just wondered if any one of you 00:54:37.450 --> 00:54:39.970 align:middle line:84% wanted to take up Tenney's question, 00:54:39.970 --> 00:54:42.610 align:middle line:84% let's see, I'm maybe not phrasing it right, 00:54:42.610 --> 00:54:44.537 align:middle line:84% about could it have been done otherwise? 00:54:44.537 --> 00:54:46.870 align:middle line:84% And you said, or should it have been-- what did you say? 00:54:46.870 --> 00:54:48.010 align:middle line:90% Should it have been done at all? 00:54:48.010 --> 00:54:48.910 align:middle line:90% Yeah, I was just-- 00:54:48.910 --> 00:54:50.590 align:middle line:90% Do you want to talk about that? 00:54:50.590 --> 00:54:51.220 align:middle line:90% No, I don't. 00:54:51.220 --> 00:54:52.360 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:54:52.360 --> 00:54:53.970 align:middle line:84% I'd love to make a comment on it. 00:54:53.970 --> 00:54:54.730 align:middle line:90% Since nobody mentioned it. 00:54:54.730 --> 00:54:56.605 align:middle line:84% Christian was going to do it and then decided 00:54:56.605 --> 00:54:58.270 align:middle line:90% to do something better instead. 00:54:58.270 --> 00:55:02.370 align:middle line:84% I just-- when I was reading through the anthology 00:55:02.370 --> 00:55:04.120 align:middle line:84% just quickly online, there are some things 00:55:04.120 --> 00:55:07.900 align:middle line:84% that I really like, and I was wondering if other people had 00:55:07.900 --> 00:55:09.570 align:middle line:90% particular favorites and why. 00:55:09.570 --> 00:55:10.420 align:middle line:90% That's all. 00:55:10.420 --> 00:55:14.590 align:middle line:84% I wanted to come back to this idea about judgment on that, 00:55:14.590 --> 00:55:16.960 align:middle line:90% because I thought there's-- 00:55:16.960 --> 00:55:22.060 align:middle line:84% and it's the workshop model is to judge these poems 00:55:22.060 --> 00:55:25.730 align:middle line:84% and to say, effectively, if I had done this, 00:55:25.730 --> 00:55:27.110 align:middle line:90% what would I have done? 00:55:27.110 --> 00:55:31.180 align:middle line:84% And so I think that tendency to judge 00:55:31.180 --> 00:55:36.160 align:middle line:84% is another refuge for the little me, as it's sometimes termed. 00:55:36.160 --> 00:55:40.390 align:middle line:84% And so I-- well, I also have my response 00:55:40.390 --> 00:55:43.450 align:middle line:84% about things that move me more or that engage me more. 00:55:43.450 --> 00:55:45.640 align:middle line:84% I was a little worried about judgment 00:55:45.640 --> 00:55:48.190 align:middle line:84% coming back in the backdoor from that 00:55:48.190 --> 00:55:51.850 align:middle line:84% and actually violating the spirit of that suggestion 00:55:51.850 --> 00:55:55.810 align:middle line:84% that we ask instead, could this have been done otherwise, 00:55:55.810 --> 00:56:00.100 align:middle line:84% which focuses us much more on the mechanics of it, 00:56:00.100 --> 00:56:03.940 align:middle line:84% the intricacies of it, what it actually 00:56:03.940 --> 00:56:05.815 align:middle line:90% is, rather than is it good. 00:56:05.815 --> 00:56:08.880 align:middle line:90% 00:56:08.880 --> 00:56:10.860 align:middle line:84% Do you want to comment on anything on that? 00:56:10.860 --> 00:56:18.787 align:middle line:90% 00:56:18.787 --> 00:56:21.120 align:middle line:84% Yeah, rather than actually interact with the technology, 00:56:21.120 --> 00:56:24.630 align:middle line:90% I elected to extemporize. 00:56:24.630 --> 00:56:26.670 align:middle line:84% But I do think that the work that's, 00:56:26.670 --> 00:56:29.918 align:middle line:84% for example, in that anthology, is interesting, 00:56:29.918 --> 00:56:31.710 align:middle line:84% in part because of the kind of provocations 00:56:31.710 --> 00:56:34.800 align:middle line:84% it instills in certain kinds of writers, 00:56:34.800 --> 00:56:36.510 align:middle line:84% especially those kinds of young writers 00:56:36.510 --> 00:56:40.050 align:middle line:84% who go into a creative writing workshop expecting 00:56:40.050 --> 00:56:43.530 align:middle line:84% to have their own practice otherwise validated, 00:56:43.530 --> 00:56:47.027 align:middle line:84% that the kind of writer who believes they have a lightning 00:56:47.027 --> 00:56:49.110 align:middle line:84% bolt on their forehead and the job of the workshop 00:56:49.110 --> 00:56:50.610 align:middle line:84% is pretty much to weed out everybody 00:56:50.610 --> 00:56:53.445 align:middle line:90% who isn't Harry Potter, right? 00:56:53.445 --> 00:56:55.320 align:middle line:84% When, really, I think the job of the workshop 00:56:55.320 --> 00:56:59.040 align:middle line:84% is a kind of hothouse activity for a certain experimental 00:56:59.040 --> 00:57:01.320 align:middle line:84% practice, or it is supposed to be probative, 00:57:01.320 --> 00:57:04.050 align:middle line:90% trying to generate new ideas. 00:57:04.050 --> 00:57:06.150 align:middle line:84% In the job of science, for example, nowadays 00:57:06.150 --> 00:57:09.480 align:middle line:84% is not so much to validate a prior paradigm 00:57:09.480 --> 00:57:13.020 align:middle line:84% as to increase the number of problems and anomalies 00:57:13.020 --> 00:57:17.340 align:middle line:84% to study, to try and impose upon the prior paradigm 00:57:17.340 --> 00:57:20.790 align:middle line:84% a whole series of disruptions and subversions 00:57:20.790 --> 00:57:23.070 align:middle line:84% or interruptions that make it now possible to conceive 00:57:23.070 --> 00:57:23.970 align:middle line:90% something new. 00:57:23.970 --> 00:57:29.520 align:middle line:84% And the work that we see showcased on UbuWeb, I think, 00:57:29.520 --> 00:57:31.020 align:middle line:84% has gone a long way to doing that. 00:57:31.020 --> 00:57:32.430 align:middle line:84% Whether it should have been done, 00:57:32.430 --> 00:57:36.990 align:middle line:84% I think is verified by the desire of subsequent writers 00:57:36.990 --> 00:57:38.675 align:middle line:90% to engage with it. 00:57:38.675 --> 00:57:40.050 align:middle line:84% Does it constitute something that 00:57:40.050 --> 00:57:42.480 align:middle line:84% instills in us a desire to run away and join the circus 00:57:42.480 --> 00:57:43.620 align:middle line:90% and become poets? 00:57:43.620 --> 00:57:46.320 align:middle line:84% Do we decide that we will pursue this activity 00:57:46.320 --> 00:57:50.100 align:middle line:84% or that we will act actively against it? 00:57:50.100 --> 00:57:52.398 align:middle line:90% What constitutes its merit? 00:57:52.398 --> 00:57:53.940 align:middle line:84% I think has a lot to do with the fact 00:57:53.940 --> 00:57:57.570 align:middle line:84% that it constitutes a repeatable gesture that people want 00:57:57.570 --> 00:58:00.120 align:middle line:84% to see repeated, and that it also 00:58:00.120 --> 00:58:03.270 align:middle line:84% constitutes a gesture that instills in others a desire 00:58:03.270 --> 00:58:04.710 align:middle line:90% to advance that program. 00:58:04.710 --> 00:58:06.270 align:middle line:90% It's a generative activity. 00:58:06.270 --> 00:58:08.160 align:middle line:84% I know the work that shouldn't have been done 00:58:08.160 --> 00:58:10.560 align:middle line:84% is the kind of work that instills in me no desire 00:58:10.560 --> 00:58:12.570 align:middle line:84% to continue reading it or no desire to actually 00:58:12.570 --> 00:58:13.980 align:middle line:90% engage with it, subsequently. 00:58:13.980 --> 00:58:15.540 align:middle line:84% Or it doesn't raise any new problems. 00:58:15.540 --> 00:58:17.665 align:middle line:84% It doesn't teach me anything I didn't already know. 00:58:17.665 --> 00:58:20.820 align:middle line:84% And I really feel that I'm most interested in that kind 00:58:20.820 --> 00:58:23.340 align:middle line:84% of work, which induces in me a sense 00:58:23.340 --> 00:58:26.258 align:middle line:90% of enigmatic bewilderment. 00:58:26.258 --> 00:58:28.050 align:middle line:84% I know that I'm probably on the right track 00:58:28.050 --> 00:58:29.925 align:middle line:84% if I don't understand the work to begin with. 00:58:29.925 --> 00:58:31.342 align:middle line:84% The job of the critic, I think, is 00:58:31.342 --> 00:58:32.820 align:middle line:84% to confront those kinds of enigmas 00:58:32.820 --> 00:58:34.260 align:middle line:90% and make them intelligible. 00:58:34.260 --> 00:58:35.820 align:middle line:84% Typically, though, for most critics, 00:58:35.820 --> 00:58:37.487 align:middle line:84% all they really need to do or want to do 00:58:37.487 --> 00:58:40.710 align:middle line:84% is in fact to reassert what they already know in the classroom, 00:58:40.710 --> 00:58:43.200 align:middle line:84% rather than raise issues and problems and anomalies 00:58:43.200 --> 00:58:46.260 align:middle line:84% for students, to showcase certain kinds of limited cases 00:58:46.260 --> 00:58:50.490 align:middle line:84% of these concepts, to showcase a whole variety of milieus 00:58:50.490 --> 00:58:53.640 align:middle line:84% for writing that are outside their standard paradigms. 00:58:53.640 --> 00:58:56.040 align:middle line:84% For me, I would say that, if I want to find a poem, 00:58:56.040 --> 00:58:58.020 align:middle line:84% I don't go to poetry to find it now. 00:58:58.020 --> 00:59:01.770 align:middle line:84% You find the poetry elsewhere, probably, in our modern life. 00:59:01.770 --> 00:59:04.500 align:middle line:90% 00:59:04.500 --> 00:59:10.560 align:middle line:84% I'm interested to contrast Christian's statement right now 00:59:10.560 --> 00:59:14.490 align:middle line:84% with his initial comment, which, on the face of it, 00:59:14.490 --> 00:59:15.750 align:middle line:90% would be quite different. 00:59:15.750 --> 00:59:18.120 align:middle line:84% And think about the concept of difficulty 00:59:18.120 --> 00:59:20.760 align:middle line:84% as the way it's been discussed here and is often discussed, 00:59:20.760 --> 00:59:25.560 align:middle line:84% as indeed, the issues of invention and innovation, 00:59:25.560 --> 00:59:30.330 align:middle line:84% which often have these negative connotations to them which 00:59:30.330 --> 00:59:31.050 align:middle line:90% trouble me. 00:59:31.050 --> 00:59:37.470 align:middle line:84% And I think Tracie makes a fundamental contribution for me 00:59:37.470 --> 00:59:39.000 align:middle line:90% in this respect. 00:59:39.000 --> 00:59:42.900 align:middle line:84% Difficulty, in my understanding, is usually social difficulty 00:59:42.900 --> 00:59:44.610 align:middle line:90% and cultural difficulty. 00:59:44.610 --> 00:59:46.380 align:middle line:84% I know very often with my own work 00:59:46.380 --> 00:59:48.630 align:middle line:84% just as a practical experience with translators, which 00:59:48.630 --> 00:59:50.430 align:middle line:84% is interesting, that they very rarely 00:59:50.430 --> 00:59:52.410 align:middle line:84% have a problem understanding syntactic 00:59:52.410 --> 00:59:54.285 align:middle line:84% or what, in a very conventional sense, 00:59:54.285 --> 00:59:55.410 align:middle line:90% would seem to be difficult. 00:59:55.410 --> 00:59:57.618 align:middle line:84% What they don't understand are my cultural references 00:59:57.618 --> 01:00:00.580 align:middle line:84% and where I'm coming from, the nature of the humor and so on, 01:00:00.580 --> 01:00:01.830 align:middle line:90% which is very hard to explain. 01:00:01.830 --> 01:00:03.090 align:middle line:84% You say, I looked it up in your dictionary. 01:00:03.090 --> 01:00:03.900 align:middle line:90% I can't find it. 01:00:03.900 --> 01:00:06.600 align:middle line:84% And this kind of cultural difficulty 01:00:06.600 --> 01:00:09.990 align:middle line:84% is enacted in the right question, 01:00:09.990 --> 01:00:12.420 align:middle line:84% and that's why I had to do-- in order to really understand 01:00:12.420 --> 01:00:13.795 align:middle line:84% where the difficulty is, it isn't 01:00:13.795 --> 01:00:18.720 align:middle line:84% just a question of understanding the context of rage, anger, 01:00:18.720 --> 01:00:21.585 align:middle line:84% repression, and expression, and how that works 01:00:21.585 --> 01:00:22.710 align:middle line:90% in a communal circumstance. 01:00:22.710 --> 01:00:23.877 align:middle line:90% That's an easy thing to say. 01:00:23.877 --> 01:00:26.070 align:middle line:84% I think what-- it's the painful thing to say, 01:00:26.070 --> 01:00:28.962 align:middle line:84% but it's also how has to do with particular kinds of sounds, 01:00:28.962 --> 01:00:30.420 align:middle line:84% which you also have to have as it's 01:00:30.420 --> 01:00:31.935 align:middle line:90% overlaid within that context. 01:00:31.935 --> 01:00:34.980 align:middle line:90% 01:00:34.980 --> 01:00:37.800 align:middle line:84% I'm writing a book, of which this recantorium probably 01:00:37.800 --> 01:00:41.640 align:middle line:84% be the last piece called, The Attack of the Difficult Poems, 01:00:41.640 --> 01:00:45.990 align:middle line:84% and it's actually something I've been working on for some years. 01:00:45.990 --> 01:00:47.650 align:middle line:84% And it comprises many essays, including 01:00:47.650 --> 01:00:49.720 align:middle line:84% one that Craig published, which is 01:00:49.720 --> 01:00:51.990 align:middle line:84% a composite of a number of things in his new book 01:00:51.990 --> 01:00:54.427 align:middle line:84% from Roof, which is a terrific book. 01:00:54.427 --> 01:00:56.010 align:middle line:84% And I recommend that people get a hold 01:00:56.010 --> 01:00:58.470 align:middle line:90% of that collection of essays. 01:00:58.470 --> 01:01:02.355 align:middle line:84% The question, for example, of what Tan Lin calls ambience, 01:01:02.355 --> 01:01:04.980 align:middle line:84% in a way that relates to some of the things that are being said 01:01:04.980 --> 01:01:08.160 align:middle line:84% here, that he's interested in a surface that has kind 01:01:08.160 --> 01:01:10.620 align:middle line:84% of an ambient listening thinking of Brian Eno, 01:01:10.620 --> 01:01:14.730 align:middle line:84% rather than a kind of high modernist difficulty. 01:01:14.730 --> 01:01:16.513 align:middle line:84% Those interest me in terms of textures. 01:01:16.513 --> 01:01:17.930 align:middle line:84% What I would be concerned about is 01:01:17.930 --> 01:01:20.330 align:middle line:84% if one takes this one kind of difficulty or another 01:01:20.330 --> 01:01:24.950 align:middle line:90% and has some kind of genius. 01:01:24.950 --> 01:01:27.410 align:middle line:84% It takes it out of a kind of historical and social context 01:01:27.410 --> 01:01:29.960 align:middle line:84% of what those difficulties mean because, 01:01:29.960 --> 01:01:32.420 align:middle line:84% as my interests in disciplinary and bachelor machines 01:01:32.420 --> 01:01:36.980 align:middle line:84% are, very often, one person's difficulty is another person's 01:01:36.980 --> 01:01:37.610 align:middle line:90% pleasure. 01:01:37.610 --> 01:01:42.800 align:middle line:84% And so, even if it's set in the spirit of liberation, 01:01:42.800 --> 01:01:46.610 align:middle line:84% I'm always wary of saying this is really painful. 01:01:46.610 --> 01:01:48.020 align:middle line:90% You can't understand it. 01:01:48.020 --> 01:01:50.540 align:middle line:84% You don't like-- I've gotten that all my life. 01:01:50.540 --> 01:01:52.940 align:middle line:84% Not only is this no good, nobody could like this. 01:01:52.940 --> 01:01:54.710 align:middle line:84% And I say, well, you know, I actually 01:01:54.710 --> 01:01:55.985 align:middle line:90% get pleasure from what I read. 01:01:55.985 --> 01:01:56.240 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:01:56.240 --> 01:01:57.470 align:middle line:84% I mean, I don't get pleasure from everything 01:01:57.470 --> 01:01:59.678 align:middle line:84% I read, and furthermore, the idea that you should get 01:01:59.678 --> 01:02:01.520 align:middle line:84% pleasure from reading as opposed to have 01:02:01.520 --> 01:02:03.950 align:middle line:84% other kinds of reactions that would be important to you 01:02:03.950 --> 01:02:07.400 align:middle line:84% would be a ridiculous, in the world of the equinox health 01:02:07.400 --> 01:02:10.040 align:middle line:84% club where I go and the people seem to be suffering, 01:02:10.040 --> 01:02:11.290 align:middle line:90% I have a hard time doing that. 01:02:11.290 --> 01:02:12.915 align:middle line:84% And they all say, no, you got to do it. 01:02:12.915 --> 01:02:14.740 align:middle line:84% You got to have all of this pain in order 01:02:14.740 --> 01:02:16.490 align:middle line:84% to get this other thing on the other side. 01:02:16.490 --> 01:02:18.650 align:middle line:84% I just do it because I'm told I have to do it, 01:02:18.650 --> 01:02:21.230 align:middle line:84% so I'm like the bad sports student. 01:02:21.230 --> 01:02:23.840 align:middle line:84% But within the realm of poetry, you 01:02:23.840 --> 01:02:25.310 align:middle line:84% can't even have what is considered 01:02:25.310 --> 01:02:28.817 align:middle line:84% to be a basic conception that you might cook something. 01:02:28.817 --> 01:02:30.900 align:middle line:84% The process of cooking, it might take a long time, 01:02:30.900 --> 01:02:33.407 align:middle line:84% but in the end, it might be fun and might be enjoyable. 01:02:33.407 --> 01:02:34.490 align:middle line:90% You might learn something. 01:02:34.490 --> 01:02:37.422 align:middle line:84% So I would just emphasize that these kinds of terms 01:02:37.422 --> 01:02:38.630 align:middle line:90% in poetics, it's kind of my-- 01:02:38.630 --> 01:02:39.680 align:middle line:90% I always go back to that. 01:02:39.680 --> 01:02:43.280 align:middle line:84% Poetics, unlike philosophy, is almost always hyperbolic, 01:02:43.280 --> 01:02:45.110 align:middle line:90% situational, and one sided. 01:02:45.110 --> 01:02:48.410 align:middle line:84% If somebody says I'm against subjectivity, 01:02:48.410 --> 01:02:49.940 align:middle line:84% they are not against subjectivity. 01:02:49.940 --> 01:02:51.590 align:middle line:84% They're against the way subjectivity 01:02:51.590 --> 01:02:56.960 align:middle line:84% has been foisted on them and scleroticized and reified, 01:02:56.960 --> 01:02:58.640 align:middle line:84% and perhaps, is suggesting another kind. 01:02:58.640 --> 01:03:00.600 align:middle line:90% You can't be for something-- 01:03:00.600 --> 01:03:01.940 align:middle line:90% I'm against emotion. 01:03:01.940 --> 01:03:03.050 align:middle line:90% I'm for the intellect. 01:03:03.050 --> 01:03:05.330 align:middle line:84% These are absurd binary oppositions, 01:03:05.330 --> 01:03:08.180 align:middle line:84% but the reason that they exist and they're crucial in poetry 01:03:08.180 --> 01:03:11.150 align:middle line:84% is that poetry is situational ethics and a dialogue. 01:03:11.150 --> 01:03:13.610 align:middle line:84% And unless you understand the context 01:03:13.610 --> 01:03:15.560 align:middle line:84% in which those utterances appear, 01:03:15.560 --> 01:03:21.230 align:middle line:84% [INAUDIBLE] Tracie's situating a very important American 01:03:21.230 --> 01:03:23.090 align:middle line:84% political context, you can't understand 01:03:23.090 --> 01:03:25.610 align:middle line:84% what the meaning is because meaning is always social. 01:03:25.610 --> 01:03:28.670 align:middle line:84% Meaning is always political, and it's always site specific. 01:03:28.670 --> 01:03:31.880 align:middle line:84% And the difficulty of the 1960s, and how difficulty 01:03:31.880 --> 01:03:34.820 align:middle line:84% or non-difficulty or ambiance worked in the 60s, 01:03:34.820 --> 01:03:38.540 align:middle line:84% cannot be the same in 2008 because we read it differently. 01:03:38.540 --> 01:03:41.280 align:middle line:84% And poems, written in a particular time, 01:03:41.280 --> 01:03:44.120 align:middle line:84% take on their meaning through those kinds of particulars. 01:03:44.120 --> 01:03:50.860 align:middle line:84% And even the refusal of the historical is historical. 01:03:50.860 --> 01:03:52.035 align:middle line:90% Can I put in for one second. 01:03:52.035 --> 01:03:53.660 align:middle line:84% I just want to takes some run with that 01:03:53.660 --> 01:03:57.350 align:middle line:84% and go back toward Craig and ask something like the following. 01:03:57.350 --> 01:04:01.190 align:middle line:84% If, when you say you hate expression, 01:04:01.190 --> 01:04:04.760 align:middle line:84% you don't hate expression, and so on-- 01:04:04.760 --> 01:04:07.530 align:middle line:84% Craig, could you also announce that book for me, the book 01:04:07.530 --> 01:04:08.030 align:middle line:90% from Roof? 01:04:08.030 --> 01:04:09.770 align:middle line:90% What's the name? 01:04:09.770 --> 01:04:13.760 align:middle line:84% The Consequence of Innovation, 21st Century Poetics 01:04:13.760 --> 01:04:14.930 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 01:04:14.930 --> 01:04:16.310 align:middle line:90% Sorry about that. 01:04:16.310 --> 01:04:18.575 align:middle line:84% If you'd like to order at home, it's $19.95 plus tax. 01:04:18.575 --> 01:04:19.760 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:04:19.760 --> 01:04:22.760 align:middle line:84% It is The Consequence of Innovation, 21st Century 01:04:22.760 --> 01:04:25.910 align:middle line:90% Poetics from Roof Books. 01:04:25.910 --> 01:04:27.360 align:middle line:84% So what I'm trying to ask is this, 01:04:27.360 --> 01:04:32.150 align:middle line:84% if you lay out that dichotomy in provocative terms 01:04:32.150 --> 01:04:34.550 align:middle line:84% in the introduction, and presumably, you're 01:04:34.550 --> 01:04:37.700 align:middle line:84% not in some literal way addressing it 01:04:37.700 --> 01:04:39.470 align:middle line:84% to those who would very obviously fall 01:04:39.470 --> 01:04:41.137 align:middle line:84% on the other side of the spectrum, which 01:04:41.137 --> 01:04:43.730 align:middle line:84% is kind of the audience, that poll that you invoked, 01:04:43.730 --> 01:04:47.150 align:middle line:84% those who have sort of done something very simplistic 01:04:47.150 --> 01:04:49.070 align:middle line:90% to American poetry that-- 01:04:49.070 --> 01:04:51.260 align:middle line:84% If in some way it's an intervention addressed 01:04:51.260 --> 01:04:53.780 align:middle line:84% to the other people in this room, what's 01:04:53.780 --> 01:04:57.080 align:middle line:84% the force of that intervention or what's the force of making 01:04:57.080 --> 01:05:00.620 align:middle line:84% that binary distinction to this group of people, 01:05:00.620 --> 01:05:02.550 align:middle line:84% I guess is what I would try to ask. 01:05:02.550 --> 01:05:06.770 align:middle line:84% Right, let me say first that there is the-- 01:05:06.770 --> 01:05:10.610 align:middle line:84% the little introductory essay returns to words 01:05:10.610 --> 01:05:14.190 align:middle line:90% with actually the Wordsworth-- 01:05:14.190 --> 01:05:18.740 align:middle line:84% the Wordsworth quote is already interesting even in its model, 01:05:18.740 --> 01:05:22.700 align:middle line:84% that I think is kind of silly, about the spontaneous overflow 01:05:22.700 --> 01:05:23.610 align:middle line:90% of emotion. 01:05:23.610 --> 01:05:26.660 align:middle line:84% But it's recollected in tranquility. 01:05:26.660 --> 01:05:29.910 align:middle line:84% And it was very hard to parse exactly what he's saying. 01:05:29.910 --> 01:05:34.400 align:middle line:84% But his final phrase is that this emotion that I've 01:05:34.400 --> 01:05:37.160 align:middle line:84% schematically poses, the thing I don't want to foisted on me, 01:05:37.160 --> 01:05:39.740 align:middle line:84% but it takes place in the mind, he says at the end. 01:05:39.740 --> 01:05:44.210 align:middle line:84% So I must say that I wanted to complicate that binary even 01:05:44.210 --> 01:05:47.780 align:middle line:90% within the argument there. 01:05:47.780 --> 01:05:49.920 align:middle line:90% But the argument that's there-- 01:05:49.920 --> 01:05:52.550 align:middle line:84% And I think one of the things I'd 01:05:52.550 --> 01:05:57.440 align:middle line:84% want to say about that little web collection, which, 01:05:57.440 --> 01:06:01.730 align:middle line:84% the name is a little grandiose, the UbuWeb anthology, 01:06:01.730 --> 01:06:08.810 align:middle line:84% because it's not really as much an anthology in the way that-- 01:06:08.810 --> 01:06:10.970 align:middle line:84% in the American Tree, which was mentioned earlier, 01:06:10.970 --> 01:06:12.230 align:middle line:90% is an anthology. 01:06:12.230 --> 01:06:13.440 align:middle line:90% And it's not comprehensive. 01:06:13.440 --> 01:06:14.780 align:middle line:90% It's not representative. 01:06:14.780 --> 01:06:16.937 align:middle line:84% It's more like an illustrated argument, 01:06:16.937 --> 01:06:18.270 align:middle line:90% and Christian picked up on this. 01:06:18.270 --> 01:06:22.200 align:middle line:84% There are certain very sketchy provocations there. 01:06:22.200 --> 01:06:23.923 align:middle line:84% And in some ways the argument that I 01:06:23.923 --> 01:06:26.340 align:middle line:84% want to make that I think is different than the discussion 01:06:26.340 --> 01:06:29.190 align:middle line:84% we're having today-- which is a good thing, 01:06:29.190 --> 01:06:33.510 align:middle line:84% and this actually goes back to answering your question 01:06:33.510 --> 01:06:36.000 align:middle line:84% about the relationship of conceptual poetry 01:06:36.000 --> 01:06:39.870 align:middle line:90% to broad poetic practices today. 01:06:39.870 --> 01:06:41.700 align:middle line:84% What I really wanted to argue there 01:06:41.700 --> 01:06:46.890 align:middle line:84% was that poems often have affinities 01:06:46.890 --> 01:06:50.460 align:middle line:84% to things that are not poems, and those affinities 01:06:50.460 --> 01:06:51.698 align:middle line:90% are much closer than-- 01:06:51.698 --> 01:06:53.490 align:middle line:84% this goes back to this Wittgensteinian era, 01:06:53.490 --> 01:06:55.620 align:middle line:84% that we had this category called poetry, which 01:06:55.620 --> 01:06:59.010 align:middle line:84% is hopelessly huge and encompasses, I think, 01:06:59.010 --> 01:07:00.600 align:middle line:90% actually contradictory things. 01:07:00.600 --> 01:07:04.710 align:middle line:84% And they don't all need to be thought of together. 01:07:04.710 --> 01:07:07.920 align:middle line:84% And a poem might be just as likely 01:07:07.920 --> 01:07:14.850 align:middle line:84% to have a close cousin in a film or in a piece of sculpture 01:07:14.850 --> 01:07:17.250 align:middle line:84% or in writing from some other realm 01:07:17.250 --> 01:07:19.650 align:middle line:84% than it's ever going to have something else that also 01:07:19.650 --> 01:07:22.600 align:middle line:90% happens to be called a poem. 01:07:22.600 --> 01:07:24.900 align:middle line:84% But we shouldn't get confused by this category 01:07:24.900 --> 01:07:28.620 align:middle line:84% of poetry would be the argument I'd want to make. 01:07:28.620 --> 01:07:29.400 align:middle line:90% I'm sorry. 01:07:29.400 --> 01:07:32.640 align:middle line:84% And [INAUDIBLE] Wordsworth seemed 01:07:32.640 --> 01:07:36.210 align:middle line:84% like a safe enough person, in terms of reputation, 01:07:36.210 --> 01:07:38.670 align:middle line:84% that I wasn't going to harm him by having 01:07:38.670 --> 01:07:40.380 align:middle line:90% him be the straw figure there. 01:07:40.380 --> 01:07:44.010 align:middle line:84% I don't particularly have anything against him either. 01:07:44.010 --> 01:07:47.340 align:middle line:84% I want to address your Buddhism question, since you raise it, 01:07:47.340 --> 01:07:49.110 align:middle line:90% and it relates to that. 01:07:49.110 --> 01:07:51.420 align:middle line:84% The question that Tenney asked about Buddhism 01:07:51.420 --> 01:07:53.273 align:middle line:84% is something that's quite significant. 01:07:53.273 --> 01:07:54.690 align:middle line:84% Marjorie and I had the opportunity 01:07:54.690 --> 01:07:56.730 align:middle line:84% to be in China just about a year ago, 01:07:56.730 --> 01:07:58.680 align:middle line:84% and it's a lot of possible interest 01:07:58.680 --> 01:08:00.930 align:middle line:84% in the relation of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. 01:08:00.930 --> 01:08:02.850 align:middle line:84% And it became very apparent to me 01:08:02.850 --> 01:08:05.550 align:middle line:84% that, of course, from a Chinese point of view, 01:08:05.550 --> 01:08:07.657 align:middle line:84% the Buddhism that was in American culture 01:08:07.657 --> 01:08:09.990 align:middle line:84% had nothing to do with Buddhism because it's an American 01:08:09.990 --> 01:08:11.040 align:middle line:90% Buddhism, and its assemblage. 01:08:11.040 --> 01:08:12.420 align:middle line:90% But it does relate to John Cage. 01:08:12.420 --> 01:08:13.837 align:middle line:84% It does relate to Jackson Mac Low. 01:08:13.837 --> 01:08:16.800 align:middle line:84% It does relate to Mac Low, does relate to [? T.D. ?] Suzuki. 01:08:16.800 --> 01:08:19.859 align:middle line:84% And in that context, the significance for poetry-- 01:08:19.859 --> 01:08:21.750 align:middle line:84% and remember I think a new American poetry is 01:08:21.750 --> 01:08:27.162 align:middle line:84% fundamentally indebted to the idea of a non-goal driven 01:08:27.162 --> 01:08:28.620 align:middle line:84% understanding of what you're doing, 01:08:28.620 --> 01:08:30.968 align:middle line:84% non- [? procreative, ?] perhaps, non-purposeful. 01:08:30.968 --> 01:08:33.510 align:middle line:84% So that the meaning doesn't have to actually-- so that you're 01:08:33.510 --> 01:08:36.210 align:middle line:84% in the process, that the process is significant, 01:08:36.210 --> 01:08:38.069 align:middle line:84% that the meaning can't be extracted, 01:08:38.069 --> 01:08:42.362 align:middle line:84% but also that it's a non-teleological view of life, 01:08:42.362 --> 01:08:44.529 align:middle line:84% that what's happening right now is what's important. 01:08:44.529 --> 01:08:46.425 align:middle line:84% It's not the career that I have, and so on. 01:08:46.425 --> 01:08:48.300 align:middle line:84% So in the context of the Cold War in the 50s, 01:08:48.300 --> 01:08:50.160 align:middle line:84% it's just fundamentally important, 01:08:50.160 --> 01:08:52.680 align:middle line:84% it's impossible, really, to get beyond that. 01:08:52.680 --> 01:08:55.680 align:middle line:84% Now that, for me, I won't speak for anybody else, 01:08:55.680 --> 01:08:57.420 align:middle line:84% but my generation coming up with that, 01:08:57.420 --> 01:09:02.609 align:middle line:84% is fundamental to my poetics because I'm 01:09:02.609 --> 01:09:06.240 align:middle line:84% completely indebted to it, as I am to feminism and the Civil 01:09:06.240 --> 01:09:09.210 align:middle line:84% Rights movement to understand the very nature of the ground 01:09:09.210 --> 01:09:10.740 align:middle line:90% where I enter into writing. 01:09:10.740 --> 01:09:19.668 align:middle line:90% 01:09:19.668 --> 01:09:22.149 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:09:22.149 --> 01:09:24.170 align:middle line:84% Why don't you go back up, thinking 01:09:24.170 --> 01:09:26.470 align:middle line:84% about what Tracie and Charles was 01:09:26.470 --> 01:09:30.100 align:middle line:84% saying about the epistemology and sound. 01:09:30.100 --> 01:09:32.710 align:middle line:84% And what I really liked when Tracie presented 01:09:32.710 --> 01:09:35.830 align:middle line:84% the piece was the part where I feel like I was watching 01:09:35.830 --> 01:09:39.340 align:middle line:84% a kind of patient moment with Jones, 01:09:39.340 --> 01:09:42.340 align:middle line:84% with the being written by a God moment. 01:09:42.340 --> 01:09:44.319 align:middle line:84% And when you said, that's actually not 01:09:44.319 --> 01:09:46.010 align:middle line:90% supposed to be funny. 01:09:46.010 --> 01:09:49.750 align:middle line:84% And yet, people felt very happy laughing at it, 01:09:49.750 --> 01:09:52.600 align:middle line:84% just as they felt very happy laughing at Kenny's piece, 01:09:52.600 --> 01:09:54.340 align:middle line:84% whereas, I felt that wasn't actually 01:09:54.340 --> 01:09:55.775 align:middle line:90% supposed to be funny either. 01:09:55.775 --> 01:09:56.777 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:09:56.777 --> 01:09:58.360 align:middle line:84% And it's the same thing because you're 01:09:58.360 --> 01:10:00.298 align:middle line:84% playing with notions of epistemology, 01:10:00.298 --> 01:10:02.590 align:middle line:84% and you're playing with notions of belief and disbelief 01:10:02.590 --> 01:10:05.500 align:middle line:84% and betrayal by a god and not betrayal by god. 01:10:05.500 --> 01:10:13.895 align:middle line:84% And what's the point at which, I guess, some of it-- and this 01:10:13.895 --> 01:10:15.270 align:middle line:84% goes to the thing of like does it 01:10:15.270 --> 01:10:18.720 align:middle line:84% work, which is maybe a better question than is it good? 01:10:18.720 --> 01:10:22.260 align:middle line:84% Does it work is, does it for me, does it push me 01:10:22.260 --> 01:10:24.090 align:middle line:90% past the point of comfort? 01:10:24.090 --> 01:10:28.080 align:middle line:84% Or is it too easy to slide into, let's laugh at the people 01:10:28.080 --> 01:10:34.560 align:middle line:84% who like Kenny G, which I think is a very easy stance 01:10:34.560 --> 01:10:37.640 align:middle line:84% to take, especially here, especially now. 01:10:37.640 --> 01:10:39.830 align:middle line:84% And I'm really interested in people 01:10:39.830 --> 01:10:41.870 align:middle line:84% talking about where they find themselves 01:10:41.870 --> 01:10:45.840 align:middle line:84% or how they push themselves to the border of that discomfort. 01:10:45.840 --> 01:10:50.480 align:middle line:90% Well, if I-- gracias, thank you. 01:10:50.480 --> 01:10:52.970 align:middle line:84% Thanks, I would say that there's a couple of things 01:10:52.970 --> 01:10:54.410 align:middle line:90% that complicate that scenario. 01:10:54.410 --> 01:10:57.530 align:middle line:84% One is that there was like three people who were saying things 01:10:57.530 --> 01:11:00.138 align:middle line:84% that had a humorous undertone, and then 01:11:00.138 --> 01:11:02.430 align:middle line:84% it kind of like-- so they were building upon each other 01:11:02.430 --> 01:11:05.180 align:middle line:84% and then all of a sudden I'm turning a totally different 01:11:05.180 --> 01:11:05.840 align:middle line:90% corner. 01:11:05.840 --> 01:11:09.800 align:middle line:84% And there is a weird way in which to address that 01:11:09.800 --> 01:11:14.150 align:middle line:84% performative, and I think the response is to write 01:11:14.150 --> 01:11:19.220 align:middle line:84% in the-- preferencing Jones, right, with Jones, 01:11:19.220 --> 01:11:21.290 align:middle line:90% it does seem like I'm making-- 01:11:21.290 --> 01:11:22.790 align:middle line:90% one can see that I'm-- 01:11:22.790 --> 01:11:24.415 align:middle line:84% one can interpret that as a dichotomy. 01:11:24.415 --> 01:11:25.790 align:middle line:84% Now, there's an interesting thing 01:11:25.790 --> 01:11:28.010 align:middle line:84% that I didn't get into that I just wanted to note 01:11:28.010 --> 01:11:31.070 align:middle line:84% is that Bishop Noel Jones also happens 01:11:31.070 --> 01:11:33.270 align:middle line:84% to be the twin brother of Grace Jones. 01:11:33.270 --> 01:11:33.770 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:11:33.770 --> 01:11:38.060 align:middle line:84% So there's a whole other familial performativity 01:11:38.060 --> 01:11:42.307 align:middle line:84% that's, in some ways, culturally Caribbean, right, 01:11:42.307 --> 01:11:43.640 align:middle line:90% because this is a Haitian thing. 01:11:43.640 --> 01:11:46.010 align:middle line:84% But it's also just, it's pan-African. 01:11:46.010 --> 01:11:49.550 align:middle line:84% And when we were talking, I think-- 01:11:49.550 --> 01:11:53.970 align:middle line:84% who was talking about Fred Moten at lunch? 01:11:53.970 --> 01:11:54.645 align:middle line:90% Steve. 01:11:54.645 --> 01:11:56.660 align:middle line:84% That this notion of what we lose when 01:11:56.660 --> 01:12:02.000 align:middle line:84% we become so transpersonal or transcultural, 01:12:02.000 --> 01:12:04.250 align:middle line:84% it's like this cultural specificity. 01:12:04.250 --> 01:12:08.780 align:middle line:84% And the location of Black Holy Spirit, 01:12:08.780 --> 01:12:12.200 align:middle line:84% of that being incorporated, is totally pan-African, 01:12:12.200 --> 01:12:16.220 align:middle line:84% and it's an echo that we don't often make associations 01:12:16.220 --> 01:12:20.270 align:middle line:84% with because of the assimilative nature 01:12:20.270 --> 01:12:23.900 align:middle line:84% of African-American culture into Americanness. 01:12:23.900 --> 01:12:27.920 align:middle line:84% So I want to make sure that in this context that we're talking 01:12:27.920 --> 01:12:32.000 align:middle line:84% about, African and Africanism that is specifically 01:12:32.000 --> 01:12:34.700 align:middle line:84% African-American, even though in this particular presentation 01:12:34.700 --> 01:12:36.530 align:middle line:84% it's by somebody who's African-American, 01:12:36.530 --> 01:12:37.970 align:middle line:84% whose family is in the Caribbean. 01:12:37.970 --> 01:12:42.140 align:middle line:84% The utterance that is pan-African 01:12:42.140 --> 01:12:47.300 align:middle line:84% is dovetailing with an accent that is African-American, 01:12:47.300 --> 01:12:49.880 align:middle line:84% not necessarily what we would consider a Caribbean affect. 01:12:49.880 --> 01:12:53.840 align:middle line:84% So just to make that little note. 01:12:53.840 --> 01:12:56.510 align:middle line:84% But the idea of humor, I think, is 01:12:56.510 --> 01:13:00.200 align:middle line:84% that the out-of-control, funny, wild, black person 01:13:00.200 --> 01:13:04.700 align:middle line:84% is another way of sort of pushing away 01:13:04.700 --> 01:13:08.990 align:middle line:84% the cultural confrontation of that grain of the voice, which 01:13:08.990 --> 01:13:11.960 align:middle line:84% in maybe other years European-American context 01:13:11.960 --> 01:13:16.340 align:middle line:84% is heard as hostile when it's just 01:13:16.340 --> 01:13:19.370 align:middle line:84% a vocalization of African utterances, 01:13:19.370 --> 01:13:23.070 align:middle line:84% pan-African utterances that are generally more West African. 01:13:23.070 --> 01:13:24.905 align:middle line:84% And there's a lot to be said for that 01:13:24.905 --> 01:13:28.040 align:middle line:84% that I couldn't go into in that short amount of time. 01:13:28.040 --> 01:13:32.570 align:middle line:84% But the advantage that we have, we think about Caroline's work 01:13:32.570 --> 01:13:36.440 align:middle line:84% and other theorists is that we have the opportunity 01:13:36.440 --> 01:13:40.430 align:middle line:84% to particularize sound on such a small level 01:13:40.430 --> 01:13:41.990 align:middle line:84% that we can make the distinctions 01:13:41.990 --> 01:13:44.193 align:middle line:84% that other kind of cultural theorists 01:13:44.193 --> 01:13:45.860 align:middle line:84% don't make because they don't hear sound 01:13:45.860 --> 01:13:49.520 align:middle line:84% as precisely and in such distinctions as we made. 01:13:49.520 --> 01:13:51.480 align:middle line:84% And that's why I wanted to talk about Wright, 01:13:51.480 --> 01:13:54.050 align:middle line:84% so that we don't throw the baby with the bathwater, that he's 01:13:54.050 --> 01:13:57.200 align:middle line:84% neither a buffoon nor just an angry Black man who 01:13:57.200 --> 01:13:58.550 align:middle line:90% might pull out a gun. 01:13:58.550 --> 01:14:02.270 align:middle line:84% He's using a particular African-American pan-African 01:14:02.270 --> 01:14:04.410 align:middle line:84% sound system that's not connected 01:14:04.410 --> 01:14:05.660 align:middle line:90% to either one of those things. 01:14:05.660 --> 01:14:09.180 align:middle line:84% It's connected to its own self-identity. 01:14:09.180 --> 01:14:10.430 align:middle line:90% That was a really long answer. 01:14:10.430 --> 01:14:13.010 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 01:14:13.010 --> 01:14:16.498 align:middle line:84% I wanted to come back to your question of Buddhism, 01:14:16.498 --> 01:14:18.290 align:middle line:84% and specifically, the point you brought up, 01:14:18.290 --> 01:14:20.240 align:middle line:84% Charles, of the teleological poem 01:14:20.240 --> 01:14:24.500 align:middle line:84% because I wonder to what extent that is a Western problem, 01:14:24.500 --> 01:14:26.780 align:middle line:84% or particularly, American problem 01:14:26.780 --> 01:14:29.210 align:middle line:84% in the sense that I feel that-- and I 01:14:29.210 --> 01:14:31.977 align:middle line:84% think that Christian's comments also spoke to this-- the fact 01:14:31.977 --> 01:14:33.560 align:middle line:84% that when you're trying to teach, say, 01:14:33.560 --> 01:14:36.830 align:middle line:84% in the classroom, that that's precisely what students are 01:14:36.830 --> 01:14:38.750 align:middle line:84% looking for is the telos is the point. 01:14:38.750 --> 01:14:41.960 align:middle line:84% Why am I reading this, and what am I supposed to get out of it, 01:14:41.960 --> 01:14:45.230 align:middle line:84% when poetry lingers as an enigma many times. 01:14:45.230 --> 01:14:47.210 align:middle line:84% I feel that's why Plato kind of kicked them out 01:14:47.210 --> 01:14:47.897 align:middle line:90% of the Republic. 01:14:47.897 --> 01:14:49.230 align:middle line:90% They're going to confuse people. 01:14:49.230 --> 01:14:50.960 align:middle line:84% And they're going to want to go join the circus 01:14:50.960 --> 01:14:52.220 align:middle line:90% rather than go to jury duty. 01:14:52.220 --> 01:14:54.950 align:middle line:84% So that essentially creates, I think, 01:14:54.950 --> 01:14:58.040 align:middle line:84% a conflict in terms of how we do interpret subjectivity. 01:14:58.040 --> 01:15:00.770 align:middle line:84% Is subjectivity and cognition essentially collective, 01:15:00.770 --> 01:15:04.220 align:middle line:84% where we have to incorporate this, perhaps, enigmatic 01:15:04.220 --> 01:15:07.730 align:middle line:84% sense of otherness to define what we or what we are 01:15:07.730 --> 01:15:09.440 align:middle line:90% or what we're not? 01:15:09.440 --> 01:15:12.830 align:middle line:84% Or is that essentially a problem of poetry 01:15:12.830 --> 01:15:14.420 align:middle line:90% regardless of cultural content? 01:15:14.420 --> 01:15:17.360 align:middle line:84% I think, Christian's use of the word enigma 01:15:17.360 --> 01:15:20.360 align:middle line:84% is what sort of sparked my response initially to that, 01:15:20.360 --> 01:15:26.270 align:middle line:84% and enigma itself, or ambiguity, is an interesting measure 01:15:26.270 --> 01:15:28.610 align:middle line:84% of what some people find pleasurable or not. 01:15:28.610 --> 01:15:31.040 align:middle line:84% But it isn't an absolute quality. 01:15:31.040 --> 01:15:34.310 align:middle line:84% It has to do with your own particular cultural and social 01:15:34.310 --> 01:15:36.510 align:middle line:84% circumstance and what's allowed and not allowed. 01:15:36.510 --> 01:15:38.350 align:middle line:84% And for the kind of identification 01:15:38.350 --> 01:15:40.480 align:middle line:84% which, by the way, hermetic, if we 01:15:40.480 --> 01:15:42.647 align:middle line:84% go back to what the meaning of or even open poetry 01:15:42.647 --> 01:15:44.230 align:middle line:84% closed portion of the medieval period, 01:15:44.230 --> 01:15:46.720 align:middle line:84% hermetic was often a necessary thing 01:15:46.720 --> 01:15:52.390 align:middle line:84% for groups that would have been not 01:15:52.390 --> 01:15:56.260 align:middle line:84% able to continue living if they expressed in a more open way 01:15:56.260 --> 01:15:56.830 align:middle line:90% their views. 01:15:56.830 --> 01:15:58.600 align:middle line:84% So they're able to express affiliation 01:15:58.600 --> 01:16:00.370 align:middle line:90% through the hermetic. 01:16:00.370 --> 01:16:05.440 align:middle line:84% It isn't a conspiracy of the elitists to exclude, 01:16:05.440 --> 01:16:08.980 align:middle line:84% although there's an interesting area of closed groups. 01:16:08.980 --> 01:16:12.432 align:middle line:84% For example, the group in San Francisco around Jack Spicer, 01:16:12.432 --> 01:16:13.890 align:middle line:84% a very interesting group of people, 01:16:13.890 --> 01:16:17.290 align:middle line:84% where part of their closedness in their magic workshop 01:16:17.290 --> 01:16:21.430 align:middle line:84% had to do with the gay subculture, which 01:16:21.430 --> 01:16:24.190 align:middle line:84% was not possible to exist in the open culture. 01:16:24.190 --> 01:16:25.660 align:middle line:84% You have to read it through that. 01:16:25.660 --> 01:16:31.510 align:middle line:84% And that becomes a very powerful talisman for poetic meaning. 01:16:31.510 --> 01:16:34.660 align:middle line:84% Hart Crane, because I'm seeing you next to Brian, 01:16:34.660 --> 01:16:36.760 align:middle line:84% Brian's just wonderful book about Hart Crane, 01:16:36.760 --> 01:16:38.740 align:middle line:84% the cultural meanings that can still 01:16:38.740 --> 01:16:41.440 align:middle line:84% be read when Hart Crane is smashed last year in the New 01:16:41.440 --> 01:16:44.830 align:middle line:84% York Times by a neoconservative, mainstream critic. 01:16:44.830 --> 01:16:46.420 align:middle line:84% When you wonder, how is that possible? 01:16:46.420 --> 01:16:47.980 align:middle line:90% He's an American icon. 01:16:47.980 --> 01:16:51.280 align:middle line:84% It's like saying you don't like cherry pie or something, 01:16:51.280 --> 01:16:52.120 align:middle line:90% I mean, Hart Crane. 01:16:52.120 --> 01:16:55.580 align:middle line:84% But it is possible because Hart still 01:16:55.580 --> 01:16:57.580 align:middle line:84% signifies, in this way, that's not [INAUDIBLE].. 01:16:57.580 --> 01:17:00.910 align:middle line:84% But that's, in a way, the meaning of Hart Crane, 01:17:00.910 --> 01:17:04.000 align:middle line:84% is in part-- and I think Brian does an incredible job in 01:17:04.000 --> 01:17:07.210 align:middle line:84% After His Lights in articulating those things. 01:17:07.210 --> 01:17:08.860 align:middle line:90% Is it American? 01:17:08.860 --> 01:17:09.430 align:middle line:90% Sure. 01:17:09.430 --> 01:17:11.472 align:middle line:84% I think the same kinds of issues exist elsewhere, 01:17:11.472 --> 01:17:14.840 align:middle line:84% but we're in the US, and we have these issues. 01:17:14.840 --> 01:17:17.590 align:middle line:84% And I think there's the question of difficulty, which 01:17:17.590 --> 01:17:19.210 align:middle line:84% in a teacher you can dispel often 01:17:19.210 --> 01:17:22.878 align:middle line:84% within a few hours, a few hours, which is, you think that this 01:17:22.878 --> 01:17:23.920 align:middle line:90% is what you do in a poem. 01:17:23.920 --> 01:17:27.100 align:middle line:84% But actually, if you treat a poem as an ambient environment 01:17:27.100 --> 01:17:30.130 align:middle line:84% that you move around in, if you don't try to figure it out, 01:17:30.130 --> 01:17:33.670 align:middle line:84% if you retype it, if you memorize it and recite it, 01:17:33.670 --> 01:17:36.520 align:middle line:84% the most old fashioned thing, if you try to imitate it, 01:17:36.520 --> 01:17:38.230 align:middle line:84% you may not have that difficulty. 01:17:38.230 --> 01:17:40.780 align:middle line:84% If-- it's like, I always use the example it's like trying 01:17:40.780 --> 01:17:43.775 align:middle line:84% to operate a Windows environment with the DOS program, 01:17:43.775 --> 01:17:46.150 align:middle line:84% and you get really frustrated because you don't-- no, no, 01:17:46.150 --> 01:17:46.900 align:middle line:90% you use the mouse. 01:17:46.900 --> 01:17:48.890 align:middle line:90% It can't be done with the-- 01:17:48.890 --> 01:17:52.660 align:middle line:84% you don't type D-I-R, you actually click on the thing. 01:17:52.660 --> 01:17:54.430 align:middle line:84% Poetry is a clickable environment, 01:17:54.430 --> 01:17:56.710 align:middle line:84% and you have to learn to treat it as an environment. 01:17:56.710 --> 01:17:58.180 align:middle line:90% That isn't that hard a thing. 01:17:58.180 --> 01:18:00.250 align:middle line:84% So that level of difficulty is not 01:18:00.250 --> 01:18:02.560 align:middle line:84% like the level of difficulty of learning calculus. 01:18:02.560 --> 01:18:06.220 align:middle line:84% It's actually-- but the Puritan ethic, 01:18:06.220 --> 01:18:08.800 align:middle line:84% let's call it, that lies behind the idea 01:18:08.800 --> 01:18:11.260 align:middle line:84% that meanings should be able to be recuperated 01:18:11.260 --> 01:18:14.770 align:middle line:84% and extracted and transferred in relatively fixed ways, 01:18:14.770 --> 01:18:18.760 align:middle line:84% has a very deep philosophical and the recantorium, 01:18:18.760 --> 01:18:20.650 align:middle line:84% I try to articulate what that is, 01:18:20.650 --> 01:18:22.525 align:middle line:84% and of course, it does have to do with Plato, 01:18:22.525 --> 01:18:24.550 align:middle line:84% has an idea that meaning is an ideal that 01:18:24.550 --> 01:18:30.370 align:middle line:84% exists outside of the social and cultural ambiance in which it 01:18:30.370 --> 01:18:31.300 align:middle line:90% exists. 01:18:31.300 --> 01:18:33.400 align:middle line:84% And if that's what you think, that it always 01:18:33.400 --> 01:18:38.530 align:middle line:84% relates to some ideal, then of course, poets are sophists. 01:18:38.530 --> 01:18:50.590 align:middle line:90% 01:18:50.590 --> 01:18:57.120 align:middle line:84% This is for Cole and Charles and Tracie and/or anybody. 01:18:57.120 --> 01:19:00.580 align:middle line:90% 01:19:00.580 --> 01:19:04.180 align:middle line:84% About the cognition and the distributive, communitive model 01:19:04.180 --> 01:19:10.090 align:middle line:84% and the challenges that that presents in a fact 01:19:10.090 --> 01:19:17.040 align:middle line:84% that cognition is sort of like a non-conscious thing that 01:19:17.040 --> 01:19:27.630 align:middle line:84% happens within us, and how concept can actually fluidly do 01:19:27.630 --> 01:19:31.170 align:middle line:84% embeddings and mobius actions with it, 01:19:31.170 --> 01:19:36.320 align:middle line:84% and how it's challenged by cognition 01:19:36.320 --> 01:19:39.020 align:middle line:84% and the distributive-- the environment 01:19:39.020 --> 01:19:43.790 align:middle line:84% of cognition that's not just between the two 01:19:43.790 --> 01:19:48.350 align:middle line:84% parts of our mind and that is also outside of us, 01:19:48.350 --> 01:19:52.670 align:middle line:84% how those two interact and challenge one another. 01:19:52.670 --> 01:19:56.840 align:middle line:84% Yeah, I think too, that much of our cognition 01:19:56.840 --> 01:20:00.710 align:middle line:84% is actually quite conscious, if we stop 01:20:00.710 --> 01:20:04.790 align:middle line:84% and, well, I see you shaking your head. 01:20:04.790 --> 01:20:06.650 align:middle line:84% Obviously, much of it is not too, 01:20:06.650 --> 01:20:09.720 align:middle line:84% but I think it's a matter also of awareness. 01:20:09.720 --> 01:20:11.630 align:middle line:84% And if we stop and just think about it 01:20:11.630 --> 01:20:13.310 align:middle line:84% with a slightly different paradigm 01:20:13.310 --> 01:20:17.990 align:middle line:84% and think, OK, how is my thinking actually 01:20:17.990 --> 01:20:18.920 align:middle line:90% part of a field? 01:20:18.920 --> 01:20:23.510 align:middle line:84% What else contributes to this thing that I think is my idea? 01:20:23.510 --> 01:20:25.610 align:middle line:84% I think we can easily make conscious 01:20:25.610 --> 01:20:27.950 align:middle line:84% some of the networking that goes on 01:20:27.950 --> 01:20:31.430 align:middle line:84% with the smallest decisions or the smallest kinds of thought. 01:20:31.430 --> 01:20:34.280 align:middle line:84% When it comes to an artistic practice, 01:20:34.280 --> 01:20:37.400 align:middle line:84% I think it gets much thicker because then we're always 01:20:37.400 --> 01:20:39.860 align:middle line:84% dealing not only with an immediate environment 01:20:39.860 --> 01:20:41.660 align:middle line:90% but one that spans time. 01:20:41.660 --> 01:20:44.600 align:middle line:84% And we're bringing things forward 01:20:44.600 --> 01:20:48.110 align:middle line:84% in a continual kind of basis that 01:20:48.110 --> 01:20:49.860 align:middle line:90% makes it much more complicated. 01:20:49.860 --> 01:20:53.780 align:middle line:84% The connection to the conceptual, I don't-- 01:20:53.780 --> 01:20:57.380 align:middle line:84% I think there's maybe too easy a seeming link between thinking 01:20:57.380 --> 01:21:00.290 align:middle line:84% about cognitive patterns and conceptual work 01:21:00.290 --> 01:21:03.780 align:middle line:84% because it seems to focus on the brain. 01:21:03.780 --> 01:21:05.990 align:middle line:84% But what interests me in this case 01:21:05.990 --> 01:21:09.770 align:middle line:84% is the actual process, the idea of working 01:21:09.770 --> 01:21:13.830 align:middle line:84% not only with a kind of community of exchange, 01:21:13.830 --> 01:21:17.870 align:middle line:84% which we certainly see going on, but also a community that 01:21:17.870 --> 01:21:22.670 align:middle line:84% includes inanimate objects, that includes very direct feedback 01:21:22.670 --> 01:21:23.840 align:middle line:90% kinds of loops. 01:21:23.840 --> 01:21:27.980 align:middle line:84% That sometimes the person ends up 01:21:27.980 --> 01:21:30.650 align:middle line:84% being a very small part of the whole system 01:21:30.650 --> 01:21:32.190 align:middle line:90% that that's happening. 01:21:32.190 --> 01:21:37.190 align:middle line:84% And so, obviously, the eye becomes something 01:21:37.190 --> 01:21:41.150 align:middle line:84% that has multiple possibilities for perspective, 01:21:41.150 --> 01:21:46.100 align:middle line:84% and we end up with a much more intricate, complex object 01:21:46.100 --> 01:21:48.620 align:middle line:90% that is the poem. 01:21:48.620 --> 01:21:51.590 align:middle line:84% Charles, you want to talk to that? 01:21:51.590 --> 01:21:53.240 align:middle line:90% Can I? 01:21:53.240 --> 01:21:55.610 align:middle line:84% Yeah, just wanted to pursue a little bit this idea 01:21:55.610 --> 01:21:59.240 align:middle line:84% of the collective in relation to subjectivity and thinking 01:21:59.240 --> 01:22:06.580 align:middle line:84% about the local, these ideals of expressiveness contrast 01:22:06.580 --> 01:22:07.360 align:middle line:90% structure. 01:22:07.360 --> 01:22:10.240 align:middle line:84% And I was thinking about Wordsworth, 01:22:10.240 --> 01:22:14.650 align:middle line:84% who wrote while walking, you know, was a walking poet. 01:22:14.650 --> 01:22:17.350 align:middle line:84% And these early years also informed 01:22:17.350 --> 01:22:23.260 align:middle line:84% his initial pro-French revolution interest, 01:22:23.260 --> 01:22:25.370 align:middle line:84% and his politics changed later on. 01:22:25.370 --> 01:22:29.260 align:middle line:84% So this idea of a poet, who is physically engaged in nature, 01:22:29.260 --> 01:22:36.520 align:middle line:84% develops poetry and also has a very engaged continental, 01:22:36.520 --> 01:22:40.550 align:middle line:84% political idealism or interest in what's going on. 01:22:40.550 --> 01:22:44.650 align:middle line:84% And it brings me back to this idea of what do we do today 01:22:44.650 --> 01:22:47.830 align:middle line:84% with notions of activism, with notions of witnessing, 01:22:47.830 --> 01:22:51.580 align:middle line:84% how we take part as, not only poets, but also citizens 01:22:51.580 --> 01:22:53.470 align:middle line:90% with our art pieces. 01:22:53.470 --> 01:23:00.280 align:middle line:84% And again, this idea of the difficulty of identity, 01:23:00.280 --> 01:23:03.970 align:middle line:84% that if you, in relation to expressiveness, 01:23:03.970 --> 01:23:07.030 align:middle line:84% you find yourself having to say I am, for example, 01:23:07.030 --> 01:23:08.260 align:middle line:90% and so-and-so. 01:23:08.260 --> 01:23:10.057 align:middle line:84% If you think of structure in the way 01:23:10.057 --> 01:23:11.640 align:middle line:84% that when you're trying to discuss it, 01:23:11.640 --> 01:23:13.570 align:middle line:84% in the way that I think so many of us 01:23:13.570 --> 01:23:17.080 align:middle line:84% know so much work that deals with it in that way, 01:23:17.080 --> 01:23:22.150 align:middle line:84% you are thinking much about the markers and signals that 01:23:22.150 --> 01:23:24.820 align:middle line:84% might identify points of conflict 01:23:24.820 --> 01:23:28.900 align:middle line:84% rather than place you in a biographical-- 01:23:28.900 --> 01:23:30.910 align:middle line:84% expressively biographical positioning. 01:23:30.910 --> 01:23:36.010 align:middle line:84% So in a way, you then set up a event or a proposition 01:23:36.010 --> 01:23:38.230 align:middle line:84% rather than a solution even in the work. 01:23:38.230 --> 01:23:41.200 align:middle line:84% And that's really what I was bringing up González-Torres 01:23:41.200 --> 01:23:43.660 align:middle line:84% but also thinking about Wordsworth's strategy 01:23:43.660 --> 01:23:48.670 align:middle line:84% of walking, his politics at that point and his poetry. 01:23:48.670 --> 01:23:51.280 align:middle line:84% The politics of Wordsworth's subjectivity, but taken 01:23:51.280 --> 01:23:54.580 align:middle line:84% in conjunction with lyrical ballads, and in particular, 01:23:54.580 --> 01:23:56.170 align:middle line:84% and the introduction to it, which 01:23:56.170 --> 01:23:58.990 align:middle line:84% seems like a manifesto for an avant garde. 01:23:58.990 --> 01:24:00.850 align:middle line:84% And it's the beginning of something 01:24:00.850 --> 01:24:04.900 align:middle line:84% that seems to me the rhetoric of this conference 01:24:04.900 --> 01:24:06.730 align:middle line:90% is attempting to revive. 01:24:06.730 --> 01:24:09.715 align:middle line:90% I don't know. 01:24:09.715 --> 01:24:12.490 align:middle line:90% It isn't a tradition. 01:24:12.490 --> 01:24:16.100 align:middle line:84% It seemed to me that Wordsworth's taking 01:24:16.100 --> 01:24:20.328 align:middle line:84% the formal structures of the ballot and intervening in them, 01:24:20.328 --> 01:24:22.870 align:middle line:84% setting up a ballot, and then saying you're reading a ballot, 01:24:22.870 --> 01:24:26.990 align:middle line:90% and then I'm not finishing it. 01:24:26.990 --> 01:24:29.800 align:middle line:84% And in that process doing something different, which 01:24:29.800 --> 01:24:37.300 align:middle line:84% is engaging the subjectivity of readers with people 01:24:37.300 --> 01:24:41.770 align:middle line:84% who, socially at that time, in small rural communities, 01:24:41.770 --> 01:24:45.510 align:middle line:84% are being institutionalized because they're marginal. 01:24:45.510 --> 01:24:47.890 align:middle line:84% Yeah, and it seems to me that collection 01:24:47.890 --> 01:24:56.560 align:middle line:84% is a highly politicized document which is using and changing 01:24:56.560 --> 01:25:02.290 align:middle line:84% known forms in order to make a political argument 01:25:02.290 --> 01:25:05.050 align:middle line:84% through new ways of getting poetry 01:25:05.050 --> 01:25:07.930 align:middle line:84% to speak to subjectivities and collective subjectivities 01:25:07.930 --> 01:25:09.370 align:middle line:90% at that. 01:25:09.370 --> 01:25:12.940 align:middle line:84% Which is a coming back to, maybe, 01:25:12.940 --> 01:25:21.570 align:middle line:84% the question that I have about that tongue in cheek or retro 01:25:21.570 --> 01:25:28.120 align:middle line:84% avant garde rhetoric around conceptual writing and the idea 01:25:28.120 --> 01:25:29.080 align:middle line:90% of-- 01:25:29.080 --> 01:25:35.410 align:middle line:84% it seems to me that the writing that is thought to precede it 01:25:35.410 --> 01:25:39.640 align:middle line:84% was extraordinarily careful about the language 01:25:39.640 --> 01:25:43.720 align:middle line:84% of the avant garde, tiptoed around it, seeked to avoid it, 01:25:43.720 --> 01:25:47.620 align:middle line:84% to be avant garde, maybe, be new, 01:25:47.620 --> 01:25:51.520 align:middle line:84% but not to use the same language. 01:25:51.520 --> 01:25:58.300 align:middle line:84% And indeed, while wanting to protect the idea 01:25:58.300 --> 01:26:01.090 align:middle line:84% or investigate whether the idea of an avant garde 01:26:01.090 --> 01:26:03.580 align:middle line:84% is even possible anymore, it seems to me 01:26:03.580 --> 01:26:06.430 align:middle line:84% a kind of conventional wisdom in many areas 01:26:06.430 --> 01:26:09.310 align:middle line:90% of art practice in the culture. 01:26:09.310 --> 01:26:13.400 align:middle line:84% There's a very easy, and how tongue in cheek, 01:26:13.400 --> 01:26:17.140 align:middle line:84% I want to know, is the revived rhetoric 01:26:17.140 --> 01:26:22.160 align:middle line:84% of the avant garde in which the idea of conceptual writing 01:26:22.160 --> 01:26:22.660 align:middle line:90% comes? 01:26:22.660 --> 01:26:25.410 align:middle line:90% 01:26:25.410 --> 01:26:28.860 align:middle line:90% Christian? 01:26:28.860 --> 01:26:30.930 align:middle line:84% I know that there's always objection to the use 01:26:30.930 --> 01:26:34.200 align:middle line:84% of the word avant garde by contemporary poets, 01:26:34.200 --> 01:26:38.040 align:middle line:84% and I continue to mobilize that term because even 01:26:38.040 --> 01:26:40.840 align:middle line:84% the avant garde itself, as a concept, 01:26:40.840 --> 01:26:44.040 align:middle line:84% is subject to avant garde innovation. 01:26:44.040 --> 01:26:47.550 align:middle line:84% That it is likewise undergoing a whole series of anomalous limit 01:26:47.550 --> 01:26:50.070 align:middle line:84% cases, and that what we, of course, think 01:26:50.070 --> 01:26:51.840 align:middle line:84% of as the avant garde does not apply 01:26:51.840 --> 01:26:53.250 align:middle line:90% to our contemporary context. 01:26:53.250 --> 01:26:56.910 align:middle line:84% Right now, there is no linear model of history 01:26:56.910 --> 01:27:00.600 align:middle line:84% to which a visionary personality could stand at the forefront 01:27:00.600 --> 01:27:03.720 align:middle line:84% and lead the way into a future of dynastic progress. 01:27:03.720 --> 01:27:05.100 align:middle line:84% That is not our model of history. 01:27:05.100 --> 01:27:08.430 align:middle line:84% Now it's all fractured into these rhizomatic networks 01:27:08.430 --> 01:27:10.950 align:middle line:84% that are all stabilized in this weird spatial domain. 01:27:10.950 --> 01:27:13.500 align:middle line:84% And really, the avant garde constitutes 01:27:13.500 --> 01:27:16.920 align:middle line:84% those little probative gestures, those little pseudopods 01:27:16.920 --> 01:27:20.220 align:middle line:84% that are struck out in any number of diverse directions, 01:27:20.220 --> 01:27:24.000 align:middle line:84% all of which are proposing to increase the amount of anomaly. 01:27:24.000 --> 01:27:26.460 align:middle line:84% Do we expand the boundaries of the unknown in whatever 01:27:26.460 --> 01:27:28.290 align:middle line:90% direction looks appropriate? 01:27:28.290 --> 01:27:31.230 align:middle line:84% It is impossible for any person, I think, to actually stake 01:27:31.230 --> 01:27:33.730 align:middle line:84% a claim for any specific model of innovation, 01:27:33.730 --> 01:27:36.750 align:middle line:84% so long as it doesn't merely become a digital upgrade 01:27:36.750 --> 01:27:38.050 align:middle line:90% to prior forms, right? 01:27:38.050 --> 01:27:42.090 align:middle line:84% It's not supposed to be poetry 2.0, right, slightly faster 01:27:42.090 --> 01:27:43.290 align:middle line:90% to the max, right? 01:27:43.290 --> 01:27:46.800 align:middle line:84% It's supposed to be better than that, I suppose. 01:27:46.800 --> 01:27:50.135 align:middle line:84% And this kind of context here I think 01:27:50.135 --> 01:27:52.260 align:middle line:84% is attempting to suggest that even the avant garde, 01:27:52.260 --> 01:27:55.740 align:middle line:84% the concept itself, is likewise subject to this kind of meta 01:27:55.740 --> 01:27:58.110 align:middle line:84% level analysis that is itself avant garde. 01:27:58.110 --> 01:28:01.410 align:middle line:84% That it constitutes an attempt to bring those into new limit 01:28:01.410 --> 01:28:03.420 align:middle line:90% cases of understanding. 01:28:03.420 --> 01:28:06.330 align:middle line:84% Obviously, something like Kenny's claim, 01:28:06.330 --> 01:28:08.220 align:middle line:90% but it's not new, right? 01:28:08.220 --> 01:28:09.960 align:middle line:84% And it's distressing, that we have 01:28:09.960 --> 01:28:13.860 align:middle line:84% to drag poets kicking and screaming from the workshop 01:28:13.860 --> 01:28:15.960 align:middle line:84% into a milieu where Duchamp is just simply 01:28:15.960 --> 01:28:18.540 align:middle line:90% the normative air you breathe. 01:28:18.540 --> 01:28:20.370 align:middle line:84% Why is it the case in the visual arts, 01:28:20.370 --> 01:28:22.440 align:middle line:84% with all of their numerous miscegenations 01:28:22.440 --> 01:28:25.890 align:middle line:84% and mutagenic interactions that we don't have that 01:28:25.890 --> 01:28:27.930 align:middle line:84% as a normative cause, that we don't simply 01:28:27.930 --> 01:28:30.100 align:middle line:84% respond to those precedents set in the world of art. 01:28:30.100 --> 01:28:33.277 align:middle line:84% I mean, artists, right now, have nothing to learn from poets. 01:28:33.277 --> 01:28:34.860 align:middle line:84% They have nothing to learn from poets. 01:28:34.860 --> 01:28:36.652 align:middle line:84% It used to be, though, that if you referred 01:28:36.652 --> 01:28:38.640 align:middle line:84% to an aesthetic movement, there would typically 01:28:38.640 --> 01:28:42.120 align:middle line:84% be a relatively multifaceted aesthetic engagement with it. 01:28:42.120 --> 01:28:44.250 align:middle line:84% There was poets and painters doing surrealism. 01:28:44.250 --> 01:28:47.070 align:middle line:84% There was poets and painters doing symbolism, yeah. 01:28:47.070 --> 01:28:48.300 align:middle line:90% I just have to-- 01:28:48.300 --> 01:28:50.080 align:middle line:90% I strongly disagree with you. 01:28:50.080 --> 01:28:50.580 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 01:28:50.580 --> 01:28:52.872 align:middle line:84% That an artist don't have anything to learn from poets. 01:28:52.872 --> 01:28:56.905 align:middle line:84% I think the art world is admired in its own commercial 01:28:56.905 --> 01:28:58.530 align:middle line:84% production of the poetry world in terms 01:28:58.530 --> 01:29:00.090 align:middle line:84% of its social organization, in terms 01:29:00.090 --> 01:29:01.925 align:middle line:84% of the circulation of ideas, in terms 01:29:01.925 --> 01:29:04.050 align:middle line:84% of its regard for verbal language and understanding 01:29:04.050 --> 01:29:06.092 align:middle line:84% the difference between verbal and visual language 01:29:06.092 --> 01:29:08.310 align:middle line:84% has an enormous contribution to make, 01:29:08.310 --> 01:29:12.070 align:middle line:84% not greater than other areas, but certainly equal to. 01:29:12.070 --> 01:29:12.670 align:middle line:90% OK. 01:29:12.670 --> 01:29:15.420 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER]