Poetry in Baltimore and the i.e. reader

i.e. reader
Narrow House Books
150 pgs.
$16

Contributors:

Elena Alexander, Bruce Andrews, Michael Ball, Sandra Beassley, Lauren Bender, Bill Berkson, Charles Bernstein, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Miles Champion, Norma Cole, CA Conrad, Bruce Covey, Tina Darragh, Ben Doller, Sandra Doller, Buck Downs, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, kari edwards, Cathy Eisenhower, Graham Foust, Heather Fuller, Peter Gizzi, Adam Good, Jamie Gaughran-Perez, K. Lorraine Graham, Jessica Grim, P. Inman, Lisa Jarnot, Bonnie Jones, Beth Joselow, Michael Kelleher, Amy King, Doug Lang, Katy Lederer, Reb Livingston, M. Magnus, Tom Mandel, Chris Mason, Kristi Mexwell, Megan McShea, Anna Moschovakis, Gina Myers , Chris Nealon, Mel Nichols, Aldon Nielsen, Tom Orange, Bob Perelman, Simon Pettet, Tom Raworth, Adam Robinson, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Ric Royer, Ken Rumble, Justin Sirois, Rod Smith, Cole Swensen, Maureen Thorson, Chris Toll, Edwin Torres, Les Wade, Rosemarie Waldrop, Ryan Walker, Mark Wallace, Terence Winch, Rupert Wondolowski, John Yau, Geoffrey Young



I’ve just finished reading the recently released i.e. reader, a chunky collection of poems from a variety of writers who have read at the i.e. reading series, hosted by Michael Ball, which has been running in Baltimore since May 2005. Michael is one of those people who works very hard in his own local environment to create opportunities for other people in the world of literature. He’s an energetic, restless, and sometimes even practical visionary who doesn’t come from any fancy side of anywhere, literary-wise or other, and whose work life, which I can’t claim to be entirely sure about (construction worker, handyman, painter and I don’t mean of paintings, things of that kind), nonetheless hasn’t taken away his love not just of literature but of helping to make literature happen. He’s a fine poet too, although it’s characteristic of his modesty that none of his own poems are included in a collection of work from a series he himself curates and hosts.

In the brief curator’s note that opens the collection, Michael mentions his indebtedness to the folks from Narrow House in Baltimore, the publishing group that has put out books and CDs from a significant group of contemporary poets and which produced and published the i.e. reader. Justin Sirois has been the founding brains and braun of Narrow House, and he works these days with Lauren Bender and Jamie Gaughran-Perez and, I think, in earlier days worked with others. Michael also mentions his close working connection to those of us who were running (and many of course still are; it’s just me who’s moved away) a variety of reading series and small presses in Washington, DC.

Although I don’t remember the date exactly (it must have been some time early in the 2000s), I remember first meeting Justin and some of the other young Baltimore poets. At the time, it felt like a significant change in the poetry energy in that part of the world. There hadn’t been much of an avant/experimental poetry scene in Baltimore before that, at least not any that I was aware of. All of a sudden there was a new group of energetic young writers traveling into DC for readings and doing their own events and publications in Baltimore.

Sometimes, it really doesn’t take any more than a few interested people willing to work hard and pay attention to get a literary community on its feet and on fire. In the early years of this decade, much of the new energy from Atlantic-area poetry below the Mason Dixon came from that Baltimore crowd, an infusion that I at least felt was very important for those of us in DC who were getting a bit woozy from years of effort.

I last read in Baltimore in May 2006 at an event hosted by Michael, and I think I met him for the first time that night. A man a few years older than me who had the marks of having lived a life of fairly tough experiences, he wasn’t immediately one of that younger crowd of poets but he had every bit the same level of enthusiasm and energy. His effort during the reading and afterwards made for a lively and memorable day that’s actually chronicled in a piece of my own writing called “We Need To Talk.”

As the list of contributors shows, the i.e. reader contains work by a combination of well-known avant poets, up-and-coming poets, and poets who have labored a long time making poems in Baltimore. For me, reading the book was some combination of nostalgic and informative about just how the world of poetry in that area has shifted since I moved away from the east coast.

There’s going to be an i.e. reader poetry event happening in Baltimore tomorrow night. Along with last weekend’s 20-year anniversary reading for Edge Books in Washington DC, it has clearly been a time for celebrating some of the significant literary work that has been done in that part of the world. It’s a subject worth celebrating. Needless to say maybe I’m more than a little sorry that I’m not going to be a direct part of either event. Just couldn’t get away from California in time, although right about now I sure wouldn’t mind being elsewhere. I’ve got the travel bug today and I’ve got it bad.

There are a lot of intriguing poems in the i.e. reader. Like a few other collections and anthologies that focus on a local scene but don’t feature exclusively local writing, the i.e. reader probably makes most sense for people who are part of the area community, or who are aware of the dynamics that make literary communities work, or who have some significant understanding already of directions in contemporary avant work. Yet I’m also going to use the book in a creative writing class this spring because of the impressive range of poetic approaches on display. It doesn’t contain explanatory or contextual material, not that by any means it automatically needs to, but it certainly constitutes a record (although, of course, not even close to a complete one) of what a group of people can do if they decide to work together where they live to make poetry an essential part of an active life that always involves much more than poetry.

As anyone who’s paying attention knows, the field of poetry, like any other, is regulated by systems of power and influence and connection and all the small foibles of who knows who and why and what’s in it for anyone. But it’s also made up of people who don’t stay at home, waiting for someone to discover them, but who make the effort to create opportunity for themselves and others. For me, that sense of working with people to make something happen is easily as important as anything else that literature may supposedly be about.

And if I don’t post again before that, Happy Holidays to everybody.

DVD of my Ghent, Belgium performance now available

For anyone interested, a DVD version of the reading I gave in Ghent, Belgium along with K. Lorraine Graham is now available. The DVD was created by Svend Thomsen (shown by his equipment in the photo above) as part of his Trekanten Video Formidling (TVF) project. The quality of the DVD is impressively high, especially considering how so many literary reading films turn out. I’m grateful that on this particular film I don’t look like too much of a large, overbearing goon pretending to be a writer.

Anyone interested in obtaining a copy can write Svend directly at:

tvf@artvideo.tv

More information about other available TVF videos can be found on the tvf website:

www.artvideo.tv

This particular set is actually a two DVD set, the first (62 minutes) featuring Helen White’s introduction, my reading, and then K. Lorraine Graham’s reading.

The second DVD (45 minutes) features the reading and performance that followed our event featuring a variety of poets and performance artists who live in and near Ghent or were visiting at the time, including Olaf Risee, Leila Rasheed, Wouter De Bruycker, Eddy Debuf, N.N., Tine Moniek, Josef Hajas, Philip Meersman, Réné Mogensen, Xavier Roelens, and Jelle Meander.

I blogged earlier about the variety of work that I heard presented that night, an excellent cross-section of the kind of poetry being practiced in Ghent among several generations of writers and particularly among an active younger generation.

My reading on the DVD is a bit unlike other readings I’ve given, although it shared my usual tendency to try to present different kinds of work at a reading. I was aware that I was going to be reading to an audience of individuals with different degrees of fluency in English, although as Helen White had told me, everyone or nearly everyone in Ghent speaks at least some English. I thought that a variety of my more minimalist poetry might work better than denser, more overwhelming or linguistically disruptive material, although I presented enough challenges, I hope, to conventional notions of poetry.

Watching the DVD, I also came to the conclusion that this reading was one of the most consistently and directly political readings I’ve given. Politics and social issues are always a part of my work, but I tend to think of the most explicitly political elements of my writing as part of a more varied framework that tries to engage politics as only one element (although a significant one) of the social and linguistic concerns it explores. I tend to work with the political as one aspect of the fabric of experience and language, rather than either trying to purge the political or make it the whole point. Still, in this particular reading, because of choosing more minimal poems, a more direct politics and cultural criticism than usual seems to come out.

Lorraine’s reading looks and sounds good too, although the most minimal aspect of it is perhaps her understated use of the hoola hoop. Her pieces, many from her book Terminal Humming, constitute a kind of reportage about the various language styles of people in Washington, DC, from state department confuse-speak to the language of young women and men on the prowl for love, although the linguistic game playing and appropriation and sheer sonic invention she works with are much more than simply reportage.

By the way, Svend Thomsen has made it clear that he doesn’t discourage bootlegged versions of the TVF material he shoots, so if you’d rather contact me than him about the DVD, please feel free. But I doubt that he’ll ask for all that much money, so please do consider contacting him first.

California Public Higher Education: What's Happening to Students in the California State University System

The article I have linked to here does a good job of explaining some of the main problems facing students in California who are seeking a college degree at an affordable cost though the California State University system, which as the article points out is the largest university system in the U.S., one for which student applications admissions are continuing to grow rapidly.

I hope everyone will remember that though there are genuine financial issues involved, the changes that are happening in California public education are not inevitable but are happening because of specific political decisions. Those who want California's students to have affordable education in the future (and that would certainly include, I hope, those who have benefited from it in the past) can make a difference by supporting education awareness drives and, crucially, by supporting California politicians who believe in the value of public higher education.

Thanks to Lauren Mecucci for pointing the article out to me.

300: Contemporary Fascist Film-Making, American-Style

When I watched the movie 300 about two months ago, I was astounded, in the proverbial jaw-dropping way, to be seeing a film that struck me as one of the purest examples of a fascist aesthetic ever filmed, rivaling even a film like Triumph of the Will for the sheer promotional quality of its ideological implications, and in fact exploring more deeply than Triumph many aspects of fascist ideology. It’s amazing, in fact, that 300 makes Triumph of the Will look rather reticent regarding the ugliest parts of fascism. That a film this starkly fascist could have been made in the U.S. in 2006 and toured the usual run of suburban and urban multiplexes seems to me both intensely fascinating and horrifying. Whether it surprises me is something I’m still trying to figure out.

When I posted a brief Facebook (where I’ve been spending a lot of time lately) comment about the fascism of 300, a friend of mine wrote back to challenge me to define what I meant by “fascist aesthetic.” So, thanks to John, I put together the list below.

This list doesn’t for the most part describe my individual take on fascist art. I consider it just more or less a description of the main elements of fascist art work as it was defined by Hitler and other artist-fascists at work in the Nazi regime and elsewhere. If you would like my personal take on fascist art though, I’m happy to offer it: I don’t like it. Now there’s a surprise. Fascist art works through an avoidance of history and any actual material conditions of the world. It offers a violent mythology and epic cartoon designed to blur and hide anything resembling actual history.

As Michael Theune pointed out in his response to me on Facebook, another thing that 300 illustrates is that a fascist aesthetic can indeed result in a boring film, not to mention an absolutely preposterous one. Still, by watching the film with the sound off and my own alternative soundtrack blaring, as well as with a generous serving of long commercial breaks courtesy of TNT (you don’t think I rented the damn thing, do you?), I was able to watch 300 in compact snippets that really highlighted the film’s affects and goals.

Of course, an argument can be made that the Spartans, the subject of the film, really were the world’s first main proto-fascists. Still, nothing about 300 is designed to be historically accurate, so claiming that historical accuracy was the reason behind taking such an approach obviously won’t wash.

And now my list of the basic characteristics of fascist art:

1) Belief in the moral corruption and physical and mental inferiority of dark-skinned people, homosexuals, and the physically disabled (all of which groups are, in fact, more or less interchangeable, in some degree).

2) Belief that the only true calling for a man is that of soldier, and that there is no greater honor than to die for one's country.

3) A promotion of the muscled male physique in a standardized, glorified way.

4) Belief that governments and democracy are corrupt hindrances to the activities of great moral soldier-leaders, who deserve the right to make decisions for all without the input of corrupt, morally and physically weak others.

5) A monumental, cleanly lined architecture whose goal is to emphasize physical strength both of building and of human physique.

6) Obfuscations about freedom and conformity; all free men must look, think, and act alike.

7) A sense of being a small, embattled moral elite in a world of corruption and decadence.

8) As that small, embattled elite, the group must finally die in defense of its values. Oddly, in fascist art, success is less beautiful and emotionally fulfilling than death.

9) A mythological landscape on which the fascist drama can be played out, one that describes even the environment of the world as a pure function of fascist values. No actual material messiness is allowed in the details.

This list may not be complete, but I hope it’s at least a good start. Of course, many of these values can be found in other art that is by no means fascist. It's the total combination of these characteristics that makes for fascist art, and that also makes 300 such a significant and unexpected new addition to the genre.

And have a happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Listen Up, Student Applicants: Let’s Talk MFA in Creative Writing

It’s that time of year when students applying to graduate programs are putting together lists of schools and portfolios and asking for recommendations. U.S. professional culture now has full-blown Recommendation Mania but I’ll save the details of my critique of that for another time.

Over the last few weeks, there have been some extended and quite useful blog discussions of the problems and possibilities of the MFA in Creative Writing. I’m gathering a few relevant links here for people wanting to read more.

I hope especially that students in the process of applying for MFA’s will check out these discussions. And that includes all of you who have been stopping by my office to talk about graduate school applications.

A significant discussion of the political, social, and economic problems that MFA programs both suffer from and promote can be found at Rachel Zolf’s Tolerance Project blog. Both Rachel’s initial post and the many responses are all well worth considering in detail:

http://thetoleranceproject.blogspot.com/2009/10/statement-to-mfa-workshop-october-13.html

A discussion of an entirely different tone and topic, regarding MFA Program Rankings and their value and why the very idea of such rankings makes many writers purple-faced with rage, took place over at Elisa Gabbert’s blog:

http://thefrenchexit.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-people-dont-like-mfa-program.html

And, partly in response to the conversation on Rachel Zolf’s blog, K. Lorraine Graham posts the following thoughts about her own MFA experiences and desires, and some of the contradictions and complexities she has found:

http://terminalhumming.blogspot.com/2009/11/pauvre-pierrot.html

What follows in the rest of this post are some of my own thoughts on getting graduate degrees in creative writing. Take them or leave them, as you will.

There’s no doubt that MFA programs participate in, and benefit from, a situation in which there’s a lack of satisfying career options in the U.S. for people who are in the process of becoming writers or deciding whether to become writers. Too many people enter MFA programs because there isn’t anything else they can find worth doing while still trying to develop their writing. In some instances, I suppose, that’s caused by lack of imagination on the part of the person applying, but in many (and I would say probably most) others, it’s closer just to being a social fact of life in the U.S.A. One, by the way, that needs to change.

MFA programs also therefore participate in university exploitation of labor. An MFA may help someone become prepared to teach, but most of those teaching options are not great. Adjunct teaching at low wages and with no job security is not automatically or even usually a stepping stone to a successful career as a professor. It can be such a stepping stone (and beware professors who too smugly say “There are no jobs for professors” and appear to be taking pride in their own success at the impossible) but isn’t always or even often one.

It is worth noting that many people who get an MFA or even an academic Ph.D. and who don’t end up working in universities are not automatically doomed. In fact, many who take such a degree and then leave academic institutions for other careers (or work in those institutions at jobs other than teaching) do better, at least financially, than some people who continue working as teachers. Despite cliches about English majors, most people getting literary degrees are quite capable of surviving once they leave their academic programs. Imagine that.

In terms of actual academic jobs teaching creative writing, the less prestigious a university is, the more likely it is to require that professors of creative writing have an MFA or Ph.D. More prestigious universities (Ivy League universities, for instance, and some similar others) will more often hire writers simply for their achievement as writers, although that approach may be increasingly disappearing at all but the most elite U.S. institutions.

What that means is that at most U.S. universities, just being a publishing writer isn’t considered a good enough background for teaching creative writing. You have to have both the degree and publish. Many writers have been critical of this fact, and rightly so in most instances, since having an MFA doesn’t mean that someone is automatically going to move forward as a writer or that their writing is any good. Still, right now that’s how most U.S. universities and colleges operate.

This problem is also tied to the issue of how universities consider the importance of teaching and writing when it comes to being a professor. The less prestigious the school, the less likely its administrations are to really want to see its professors publish that much. That’s a sad fact. For instance, as several of my very helpful academic colleagues pointed out in letters they wrote supporting my application for tenure, the fact that I’ve published a lot didn’t actively hurt my ability to be a good creative writing professor. I’m not criticizing my colleagues in saying this; it was a good practical tactic. The point though is that too many administrators at too many institutions see publication as getting in the way of good teaching.

Students who enter an MFA program are probably best off when they know what MFA programs offer and what they can’t. Such programs give people a few years to read and write and learn and to have further chances to create a community of others who share their interests. They give people a professional credential that has some potential career and earning value, but by no means necessarily much. Therefore by no means do MFA programs necessarily solve the problem of anyone’s future work life, and of course most last only two years. They end fast.

The students who are especially best off in MFA programs are the ones who enter an MFA while either developing or already having developed other possible options for their future work lives. Remember the saying, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” I myself worked as a professional journalist for many years, on and off, while getting my own academic degrees.

And remember, crucially, that getting an MFA degree doesn’t make anyone a writer. Only continuing to write will actually do that, and many people do that just as well without an MFA. And entering graduate school is not the only way to develop a connection to other writers or to become part of a community of them. Another approach is to move to a city where many writers already live and become part of the literary activities in that place.

One final irony here: having a developed social critique of MFA programs is helpful regarding knowing what you’re getting into, but is much less helpful than having other actual options.

I hope anyone with further thoughts or questions about MFAs will respond in the comments section.

Joseph Thomas and Mark Wallace reading at Agitprop this Saturday, November 7

The Agitprop Reading Series Presents:



Joseph Thomas and Mark Wallace



Saturday, November 7, 7 p.m.


A libertine of unimpeachable taste, Joseph T. Thomas, Jr. is an assistant professor of English at San Diego State University’s National Center for the Study of Children’s Literature. He is the author of two books, Poetry’s Playground: The Culture of Contemporary American Children’s Poetry (Wayne State UP, 2007) and Strong Measures (Make Now Press, 2007). Poetry’s Playground was named a 2009 honor book by the Children’s Literature Association.


Mark Wallace is the author of more than fifteen books and chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and essays. Temporary Worker Rides A Subway won the 2002 Gertrude Stein Poetry Award and was published by Green Integer Books. His critical articles and reviews have appeared in numerous publications, and he has co-edited two essay collections, Telling It Slant: Avant Garde Poetics of the 1990s, and A Poetics of Criticism. Most recently he has published a short story collection, Walking Dreams (2007), and a book of poems, Felonies of Illusion (2008). Forthcoming in early 2011 is his second novel, The Quarry and The Lot. He teaches at California State University San Marcos.


Reading Location:
AGITPROP Gallery
2837 University Avenue in North Park
(Entrance on Utah St., behind Glenn's Market)
San Diego, CA 92104
For more information, call 619.384.7989

The Agitprop Reading Series is currently hosted by James Meetze, but this event will feature special guest host Steve Willard.

Summer Reading: Theory and Criticism

Adam Roberts, The History of Science Fiction. Although it discusses a lot of fascinating books (and is great for compiling a reading list), Roberts’ account of the commonly accepted history of science fiction (essentially from Shelley and Poe forward) doesn’t add that much new and exciting, and The Cambridge Companion of Science Fiction is still a better book for that general overview. And Roberts’ understanding of gender and science fiction is somewhat weak in comparison to the Cambridge. What’s great about this book though is the convincing case it makes for exploding the belief that science fiction didn’t begin until the 19th century. The survey of science fiction among the ancient Greeks, the disappearance of it during the ascendence of Catholicism, and re-emergence in the 17th century was fascinating and informative. I also felt convinced by his detailed argument about how science fiction re-emerges in the tension between Catholicism and Protestantism, which is not exactly the same as the tension between belief in the heavens as metaphor and belief that outer space is a real material reality, althought the two tendencies are undoubtedly closely related.


T. J. Clark, Farewell To An Idea. There were a lot of things I loved about this book, especially its thoughtful detailing of painting as aesthetic practice that’s also always tied to cultural and political history. I found theoretically persuasive (partly because I’ve long believed it myself) Clark’s claim that painting always struggles both with a relationship to the world and a relationship to the fact of its own manipulable materials (that is, in both cases, the unavoidable problem of the representational status of any constructed art work). For Clark, there’s no such thing as a painting that’s solely about painting or that can unproblematically picture the rest of the world. The historical context he brought to bear on various painters was also fascinating and insightful. The best chapters were the earliest ones on Jacques-Louis David, Camille Pissarro, and Paul Cezanne. The chapter on El Lizzitsky and Malevich and the development of Russian communism was also brilliant. Diminishing returns for me started in the chapter on Cubism and grew larger in the chapters first on Pollack then on Abstract Expressionism more generally. What in the earlier chapters had been fascinating re-visiting of the significance of these painters became increasingly tendentious, more determined by the biases of his (genuinely complex) Marxist theoretical perspective. Clark is ultimately not quite capable of developing a convincing case regarding the history of 20th attempts to move beyond conventional representation, tending to see them as isolated moments that end up being dead ends, rather than as part of a whole history of such paintings, one that far from being dead continues to be ongoing. The idea, by the way, that’s being said farewell to in the book’s title is the idea that (fine) art has an important role to play in politics and social change. According to Clark, modernism emerges in the tension between art, politics and culture but also often finds itself saying goodbye to actual stakes in social change while simultaneously reflecting a nostalgic belief that there was a historical moment when it lost this power. Modernism according to Clark is thus often about its own defeated attempt to become socially relevant, and by relevant I mean something that forms a significant partnership with actually political practice and actually foments social change. I did find fascinating the idea that Modernism always dreams of a (past) time when art mattered, but I’m not sure I’m entirely convinced by it. I also got a kick out of the fact that Clark tries to re-write the value of Abstract Expression by describing it in ways that, to me, make it out to be a kind of proto-flarf. Clark argues that what makes AE still fascinating is not its ideas about representation but its cheap, gaudy vulgarity that thumbs its nose at the tasteful. Convincing, I don’t know, but eye-opening, sure.


Michael Azzerad, Our Band Could Be Your Life. Much more than a fan account, although it’s that too, Azzerad’s book is best at being a cultural history of the 1980s American underground punk/post punk bands that are now called Indie Rock (but were not at the time), beginning with Black Flag and going up through the alt-lifestyle revolution heralded by Beat Happening. The historical moment where the book ends is just prior to the commercial explosion of Nirvana, the creation of the concept of alternative rock, and a new world in which anti-mainstream alternative bands really could make big bucks in a way that had been unthinkable for bands like The Minutemen: a world, that is, in which the idea of “mainstream” and “alternative” became intermingled. Azzerad’s work covers that earlier decade when everybody thought they knew the difference. I was particularly fascinated by the story of what happens when communities create themselves in the hope of being genuine alternatives to the political and cultural repression of mainstream America. Not all the bands discussed here who were part of the environment shared that idea of community; some just wanted to take drugs, get drunk, and play music that ripped apart notions of the acceptable, not to mention more than one eardrum. There’s a lot to be learned here about the possibilities and limitations of imagining such social alternatives and really trying to put them into practice. The book suggests that the pitfalls are many, while also seeing real value in the kinds of communities created by bands like Fugazi who, as in many other accounts, are described here as genuine counterculture heroes as well as sometimes perhaps overly straitlaced moral preachers. Azzerad describes an era I lived through intimately, during the time when I was first publishing my own writing, record reviews in on campus and beyond campus publications in Washington, DC. I realized again how formative for me many of these bands were on the subject of how (and how not to) write about history, culture, and politics. In fact I’m tempted to say that it’s the lessons of this era that make my consciousness (and that of many writers I know) about politics one that seems so at odds with those writers whose came of age in and just after the 60s.