you know how every now and then you'll meet a new poet and you're familiar with the poet's name but don't really know much about their work or if they're going to be cool or whatever? and then somewhere through that semi-awkward conversation (though not always) you're having with said poet you find out they're like one of those "John Wieners'ophiles"...that they are just totally all about Wieners arcana and gossip and totally OWN the original 8mm reel of the Wieners NET OUTTAKES (stolen from Kathleen Fraser's closet or whatever)...and then for some reason the conversation gets a little LESS awkward because for some reason you inherently TRUST Wieners'ophiles? like, in your own estimation you've never ever ever met a douchy-awkward Wieners fan? it's a weird po-scene phenomenon, Wieners fans are chill...well...i'm kind of thinking that i'm turning into a George Oppen'ophile...i'm seriously thinking that i've found my poetry-daddy, my big-po-poppa, my avant-astral guide...i'm not sure i've met any George Oppen freaks in my life, i know i certainly don't hang out with any...i know KK gave a lecture on Oppen at the Unitarian a few years ago (i boot-legged it while working as an intern at The Poetry Center, natch)...i own that Susan Thackery book but haven't cracked it yet (about 6 books down the line in THE ORDER), Buzanski gave me a first edition copy of Of Being Numerous for my birthday 5 years ago (that i didn't read until this week)...me and Brent and Laura had a semi-confusing conversation about Oppen the other day here at SPD...but yeah, that was the extent of my Oppen experience until this week when i finished The Collected Poems (and freaked the fuck out)...all i'm saying is if you're into Oppen i kind of want to know you and inherently trust you and absolutely want to grab drinks with you...it won't be awkward, it CAN'T be awkward, we're both into GEORGE "say damn" OPPEN!!! didn't you know? Oppen negates awkwardness...so let's just chill together and be super-folks...let's be the opposite of Conceptual Poetics! ZING!
18 comments:
booms!
i feel the same way bouts cage and issa!
u might talk to a mr. joseph bradshaw...he's a fellow portl dweller...he's into oppen (as well as spicer)...find him here JB...owls.rats.
jared
I really like george oppen. But I'm afraid I don't take poetry seriously enough to talk about how I like him. For taking things too seriously I'm afraid I don't give the biblios their proppers. He's great. Oppen. I like that (he said things about how )looking at bricks is amazing and that the sky can become oviporous. But I don't actually like those things. Well I like bricks...but I don't like oviporousness. The sky is kinda crazy, I mean visually.
daron
well...I don't know about opposing George Oppen to conceptual poetics. But I think Rob Halpern is probably one of the most interested readers of Oppen that I know. And, uh, you know, your friend Brandon Brown likes Oppen, and you've already done TONS of awkward shit around him so it should just be cash.
wv: pesse.
no way.
you ARE my friend...i LOVE you. i HAVE done tons of awkward stuff around you. new york new york it's a hella've town...
"Route" made me shiver in my car...it got rid of my hangover. made me go home and drink wine then beer then whiskey. made me send some embarrassing texts and then make some embarrassing calls...then it made me eat tortilla soup with honey mustard salad dressing poured in it for dinner...
just another thing we have in common. oppen is my hero.
What is conceptual poetics? I'm interested in what it means to you in BWM too.
Your friend françois luong is also a George Oppen-phile. He has hours of George Oppen MP3s on his iPod. And you have already done awkward things around me too. But that's okay, because you've joined us in George Oppen-philia.
Oh, which version of the Collected did you get? The new one with the CD?
daron,
BWM?
francois,
this is good. and i have the old ND version sans cd.
Remind me some time to burn you a copy of it (which I got from someone I converted to Oppen-philia; I too have an older edition sans Cédé).
John,
Brandon Brown abrievates Book Wrting Mode as BWM
http://brandonbrown.blogspot.com/search/label/talking%20points
that's my mini research from Colorado
so I'm interesetd both in what you mean by conceptual poets and what he does because I don't know what it is.
I'm also interested in a general definition -- I just want to understand more.
Hope I'm not trolling here -- I just like George Oppen and I like objectivism and I like objectivist writers and l I like thinking of writing as they might have I like that era
but I also just like George Oppen's poetry
hey daron (mueller?),
not trolling at all...my conceptual poetics (CP) jibe was tongue in cheek (since just about everyone has been blogging the hell out of CP for awhile now), and with the new fitterman/place book Notes On Conceptualism http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9781933254463/notes-on-conceptualisms.aspx just out from UDP people are going to continue to blog about it for some time (which is a good, don't get me wrong)...but really i'll let kenneth goldsmith do the talking (from Harriet Blog) http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2008/06/conceptual-poetics-kenneth-goldsmith/
glad you found the blog,
j
still mueller yeah! Glad I'm not trolling. I just get bored sometimes. I knew about the blogs for ages just saying an Oppen hello.
I can read about a paragraph of theory before completely tuning out so I'm useless in that department. I like SPD though.
Thanks for responding.
actually theory can be great -- referring to it as a category is kinda crazy -- thanks for the links looks good
Conceptual writing obstinately makes no claims on originality. On the contrary, it employs intentionally self and ego effacing tactics using uncreativity, unoriginality, illegibility, appropriation, plagiarism, fraud, theft, and falsification as its precepts; information management, word processing, databasing, and extreme process as its methodologies; and boredom, valuelessness, and nutritionlessness as its ethos. Language as junk, language as detritus. Nutritionless language, meaningless language, unloved language, entartete sprache, everyday speech, illegibility, unreadability, machinistic repetition. Obsessive archiving & cataloging, the debased language of media & advertising; language more concerned with quantity than quality.
I think good writing has always been doing this for centuries... maybe longer maybe CP does too. Lately I see things in terms of class -- so that's a theory -- a theory mode -- but not to take up too much space here...
found this link though which made my day
on harriet blogwhich made my day
thanks!
d
Eileen Myles
I Hate Poetry
I’m wondering why we hate poetry. I don’t mean people who don’t write it. I mean people who do. I hate poetry magazines by and large. You get two copies in the mail. One to archive and the other to read for a week and then to give away. Poems, fiction and a sad bit of art or two. It seems like poetry dies in such magazines. All alone with each other essentially. It’s the death of our art form these journals and I say it has to end here. Can’t we get our poems out some other way. Any way. In part I think the reason everyone wants to get a poem in the New Yorker is that people buy the magazine for other reasons and then they will stumble on your poem. They may or may not read it but they will see it. Maybe outside of The Nation it is the only journal I can think of that does that. Magazines and journals are dying of course like birds at superfund sites. So it’s time to give up on them first. Balloons, shirts, anything, send your poems out. And don’t let a poetry organization be put in charge of placing poems on buses. It upholds the cavalcade of nice. If poetry is nice then it is dead. The saddest job in America for instance is the poet laureate. The poet laureate of America. That’s like being Alfred E. Neuman. When you start to work for the government next thing you know you start demanding poetry be accessible. Or else what? You’ll get detention. Being forced to be clear is right next to being good. And why we considered moral or good? Cause we’re poor. That’s really sad. Remember Nicanor Parra – poems and anti-poems. I don’t even remember those poems but their existence, the fact that he wrote poems against poetry made me glad. I hate poetry movements. It seems like now that the art world knows that movements are dead the poetry world would at least slavishly imitate the big dogs. Oh no, poetry is all ready to get in on the past and is banding together in little groups to show its new flashy edge. Since the birth of MTV in the 80s when Madonna wore crucifix earrings like every junkie in the east village and suddenly every junior high girl in America was imitating her the idea of the avant-garde, the tiny little in crowd of art was dead. I know that artists feel that what they are up to is more profound than fashion – well some do – poets do for instance but in fact that in itself is a very old fashioned idea. There is nothing more profound than fashion. Except silence and it’s time for poetry to find a way to speak through both at once.
meant to past the url to the link whoops
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2009/05/i-hate-poetry/#comment-13089
I say yes to Oppen, too.
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