Let's Pretend it's Week Two Of The SWP!

J. Spahr 7/11/05:


form as social practice/ political, persuasion, love poem as activist poem, how does poetry make us do things?/ what types of community do “other” forms make-up?/ what kind of poem does the Ghazal want to hold, what do we need to be decadent about?/ P. Diddy to Biggie Smalls “every breath you take” at VHI awards as a form of public mourning (this seems a bit cute, yes, this is a little bit cute).../ people in Oakland getting killed going to shrines (yes, in SF too...a cousin being shot for visiting the shrine of her cousin who was mistakenly shot at the same location a week earlier...this is in front of a club i used to play at, THE TOP in the Lower Haight)/ the politics of public mourning/ gov. controlled mourning/ Maya Lin’s v. nam war memorial was originally designed with a parallel wall with all the Vietnamese casulties...didn’t happen...

Panel (The New American Writing) 7/11/05:

A. Glover- Howl as antisocial behavior (in high school)/ “Olson entered the room and my sense of direction was changed forever”/ “didn’t know what the New American Poetry was then, the book hadn’t come out yet”/ “a curriculum of the soul”/ to continue studying Olson’s work (at St. Lawrence) or what he was doing.
L. Warsh- Oscar Williams’ edited anthology “ “ was an original inspiration for Warsh/ Spicer: what do you do? Warsh: I’m a writer...(wrong answer)/ Heads of the Town Up To The Aether caused a row in SF when first published, “everyone was talking about it though I had a hard time understanding it”/ “maybe the New American Poets are one big community and they don’t know it yet”/ Anne Waldman was R. Duncan’s house guest at Berkeley Po. Conferance...two weeks later Anne and Lewis were off to Mexico.
A. Waldman- Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village was a bohemian mecca

J Spahr 7/12/05:

ex. wow “peace in the middle east” Abreu said. / write a Ghazal/ share the Ghazal/ Ghazal (one of the original definitions) is a gazelle cornered in the hunt, the noise the animal makes is the Ghazal.
consider these questions:
1. what sort of political community, what sort of world does this form possess/ suggest?
2. what sort of responsibility does it suggest?
3. how does it define a grievable life? what is it grieving?

Home Run Derby Ghazal

“The people got to know,” Abreu said.
“They’re going to talk about me,” Abreu said.
He knows he made a name for himself.
“This is a beautiful night,” Abreu said.
In fact, the ball carried very well to right field.
“I don’t know if I can sleep tonight,” Abreu said.
Santana placed a call back to his father.
“The country was paralyzed,” Abreu said.
Abreu picked up right where he left off.
“My arm got a little tired and stiff,” Abreu said.
With water fountains shooting high.
“Didn’t make it any easier,” Abreu said.
Players were tossed special gold baseballs.
“Hitting long bombs,” Abreu said.
The standing-room crowd went scurrying for a souvenir.
“It’s too easy getting the ball out of this park,” Abreu said.
And maybe a bit intimidating for the other competitors.
“I made it farther than I expected to,” Abreu said.
And he was good enough to advance.
“And I just kept doing it all night,” Abreu said.


A. Oliver Lecture (Harlem Renaissance) 7/13/05:

H. Ren was a conscious critical approach to MOVE into history/ to create a counter discourse to the popular attitude of the black people/ Lynch-named after a general “ “ Lynch, he enacted the first official hanging/ H. Ren started 1919(20) and ended 1938(39/40)/ H. Ren as “The New Negro Movement”/ Dubois originally thought of it/ called it that way. The New Negro was a taking back of race/ culture that was being killed off/ Elaine Locke “the old Negro has become more of a myth than a man.”

J. Spahr 7/12/05:

“operatic tilt” of weeping, textured in varying pitch as birds weep in a drama of ascending and descending melody.
“does something have to be familiar to be lamentable?” (R. West)...

C. Bernstein Lecture (Objectivest Blues) 7/15/05:

WOW...this lecture really polarized the student body...the best event of the summer...hands down...

I want my poetry to have both a poetics and an aesthetic/ where’s the orientation? how do we remain grounded?/ how do we understand future works in the present?/ the “now” of poetry is more than likely to be found on the web rather than in books/ “innovation” as a vexed term, the suspicion of the new valued over any other aesthetic style/ innovation comes from the spark of necessity/ it can be admirable to succeed at nothing...of which i had made a point of.../ form follows not function but failure rather/ disruptive innovation (who is the audience) vs. refinement (writing for the “best readers”)/ reconstitute the field of distribution/ not make it new but make it LIVE/ the poem is not finished even when it is completed/ poems that we reread become cultural time capsules/ inspiration is not what comes before the poem is written, it is what happens when the poem is read/ P.S.I. Poetry Scene Investigators/ a poetics of poetics/ to reveal history of poetics we need to be strong with our values.