NOTE:
SAFARI seems to no longer work
for comments...use another browser?

Thursday, September 22, 2011

A Modest Proposal (Uncreation Project)

Photograph courtesy of sxc.hu
and Keith Syvinski aka LeoSynapse
of Franklin, Indiana.
Hop two posts back ("Unskilling, uncreation") if you want to see the post this one continues, dealing with Professor Goldsmith the conceptual artist. I invite you to answer any of the questions below as yourselves or as Goldsmith Himself. To usurp his identity and burble, sing, or lecture as you please seems entirely in keeping with his various undertakings in uncreation.

Goldsmith always insists on primacy of the talk about the so-called book--talk about the object rather than any kind of encounter with the text (and since the text might not be nothing but an out-of-date train schedule, say, that is a profound relief to him and us--whereas I'm always thinking that what writers say about their books is interesting and sometimes very delightful or fascinating but in general doesn't really matter because: a. they might be wrong or misleading or have forgotten what they were doing ten years ago; and b. after art goes into the world it belongs to the world.

Of course when I say that, I am still saying something, and I may be entirely wrong... Afte all, I generally feel that I know what I am talking about when I talk about my work.

However, since it's talk about the book that matters and not the book itself in Goldsmith's case and according to his avant garde lights, I shall deal with his entire oeuvre by talking about it and him without reading it or knowing him (though I should very much like to see him in his paisley suit.)  In this way, I shall perform an uncreative act in keeping with his own beliefs.

Since Goldsmith likes to talk around his work, perhaps he will show up here in one of those marvelous paisley or striped or polka dot outfits and answer in some circuitous (or direct--he can be direct) fashion. But since nobody has any authority, feel free--whoever and wherever you are--to answer on his behalf and become Goldsmith. In that way, the meaning of Goldsmith will be altered (if you want to give your name and be some hybrid of Goldsmith-and-another, feel free to do that or link to your identity or else encode your real name in the text) and the project will become interestingly muddled. Oh, I like the idea of encoding your name in the text!

1.  Do you believe that every story has been told, and so there is no sense in adding to the world?

2.  Is the lyric gush of words from the fount alien to you?  Have you ever felt it, or would you manfully (or even womanfully or childishly) suppress such a thing in the interests of the avant garde moment?

3.  Goldsmith, some say, is the foremost figure in conceptual writing these days, and I for one am perfectly willing to believe them.  A curious thing to me is how your work is considered so new when really it is a deliberate, purposeful recycling of long-familiar ideas, which you appear to claim because written arts are "behind" visual arts--as though art was about progress somehow. Do you think art is about progress? On one hand, the avant garde appears to worship "progress." On the other, the avant garde artists or, as you say, "word processors" seem to believe that there are no new ideas.  Duchamp, Warhol, Borges--these are progenitors of the avant garde of 2011?

4.  Would you follow Borges's Pierre Menard and steal a novel in that "intellectual" way?  Would it have to be in public domain before you had the courage of your convictions? (Are they convictions, or are they just playful? Is conviction utterly irrelevant?) Would your attempt stand up in court if you, say, snitched the latest novel by Danielle Steel or some other empress or emperor of the popular with a lawyer at her or his beck and call?

5. If you knew the world would end (i.e. uncreate) in December, would you still bother with your uncreation? Why or why not?

6. If a student showed up in your "Uncreative Writing" class and insisted on usurping your role as professor and leading the uncreation, would that be all right with you?

7.  How about if that student appropriated your signature and then that rectangular text, your paycheck? Would that still be all right--I mean with you, rather than with the eminent University of Pennsylvania? Why or why not?

8.  How about if he adopted your Goldsmithian name and tried to go home to your family?

9.  I can't find any images of your sculptural work that preceded your verbal uncreations.  Why did you stop sculpting--and what was your medium and what were your concerns?

10.  Is the avant garde secretly horribly puritanical and adverse to pleasure?

27 comments:

  1. I have no desire to become this person who seems to want to drain all the pleasure out of art, the things I love about it. On the other hand, I love your questions. I wish you were on a talk show with this person, actually asking them. My guess is he would walk out. Wouldn't this just expose his whole project as a fraud?
    Interestingly, and not artistically but politically, I have been chatting with an acquaintance from my parents' support group days on Facebook about an apparent revolutionary movement in the US where proto-anarchists, mostly young people, are endeavoring to shut down Wall Street, hack into Facebook, foil government functions, etc. My question to her, from the perspective of someone who has seen a few such movements come and go and was even a part of a couple of them, is what do you plan to do when it all falls apart? What will you replace it with, and do you truthfully think things will necessarily be better when that happens?
    I could ask the same of avant-garde theorists.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hereby announce that Professor Goldsmith will be taking my place in the scullery while I accept his paycheck and take his place at the family hearth.

    Guess me if you can!

    ReplyDelete
  3. the Moderator of Some Things11:04 AM, September 22, 2011

    Robbi,

    Highly appropriate that we are getting a flood of uncreation at facebook on this topic: soon to be taken down by young anarchists, no doubt.

    ReplyDelete
  4. 1. Es ist ein phantastisches, ein tief ergreifendes und wild erregendes Schauspiel, solch einen Nachtfahrt vieler deutscher Flugzeuge, die als Ziel England haben, mitzuerleben. Flugleistungen von mehr als zweitausend Kilometer müssen (she's gone, the pipe's empty, insert more tobacco to play again) bewältigt werden und drüben dann, weit, weit von der Heimat entfernt, heißt es kämpferliche Leistungen vollbringen, die höchsten Mannesmut erfordern und eine nicht zu übertreffende Frische des Geistes und aller Sinne voraussetzen.

    2. Happy to be back in Pittsburgh this morning! (After finding a pasted post gone, I've just concluded that FB won't let you post anything that's simply pasted. You have to actually write something of your own - clearly an anti-plagiarism measure!) - Professor Gold(nat(that's)han)s(horo(me)witz)mith.

    3. I saw a gamut but I didn't realize it was of questions. Then they came for the stevedores. Then they came for the insects that live on rock piles. Then they came for the descendants of the lice that lived in Saint Francis's beard, and still I said nothing. I have been to the mountain.

    4. The propellers whoosh, and the drone of the motors trembles in the vastness of the dark night.

    5. Tumbleweed-like balls of rain.

    6. Squid. They come here to mate, and then to die.

    7. These european cities are abuzz with old numerological systems that form a continuum with contemporary mathematics and systems theory.

    8. If you live in a cave, you might as well paint bison.

    9. Not to get all theocratic on you or anything but is it just me or is it moist in here?

    10. Heat-seeking missal.

    ReplyDelete
  5. hæfdon hym to hyhte helle floras,
    beornende bealo. Blace hworfon
    scinnan forscepene, sceaðan hwearfedon, "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote" is indeed literary criticism but through the medium of fantasy, irony, and humor. His narrator/reviewer considers Menard's fragmentary Quixote (which is line-for-line identical to the original) to be much richer in allusion than Cervantes's "original" work because Menard's must be considered in light of world events since 1602. Cervantes, the reviewer claims, "indulges in a rather coarse opposition between tales of knighthood and the meager, provincial reality of his country".
    earme æglecan, geond þæt atole scref,
    for ðam anmedlan þe hie ær drugon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Dr. Frolic Goldsmith11:22 AM, September 22, 2011

    F400 - THE TOOELE LIFTRoute Map
    Weekday TO SENIOR CENTR | Weekday TO PARK N RIDE
    F401 - THE GRANSTVILLE/STANSBURY LIFTRoute Map
    Weekday GRNTSVILLE LOOP | Weekday STANSBURY LOOP
    451 - TOOELE EXPRESSDETOURRoute Map
    Weekday TO TOOELE | Weekday TO DOWNTOWN SLC
    453 - TOOELE - SALT LAKE VIA AIRPORTDETOURRoute Map
    Weekday TO TOOELE | Weekday TO DOWNTOWN SLC
    454 - GRANTSVILLE/SALT LAKEDETOURRoute Map
    Weekday TO GRANTSVILLE | Weekday TO DOWNTOWN SLC

    ReplyDelete
  7. Could that be the real Goldsmith?

    I meant this as a blog project, but it seems to be turning into a facebook project, which clearly is more appropriate if the anarchists are bent on taking down facebook... Because what could be more uncreationists than that?

    Back later... must go check out the shenanigans.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Take off that dratted "s," somebody!

    ReplyDelete
  9. 62 comments in the first two hours! I can see that if facebook continue at this pace, I could uncreate the whole facebook sequence into a book before long. Just imagine if they kept up at the same rate. I'd probably have a book before the week was out. Of course, I would have to appropriate and type the whole thing in by hand, and that would be rather laborious...

    Well, I must go and get some creation done after all this uncreation. Things are raveling, and entropy is setting in with a vengeance.

    Leave your uncreations, and I will see them when I take a break from creation (so very old-fashioned, and yet, dear to my heart.)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey...in the spirit of undoing, i decline to unanswer. And, in the unspirit of his unphilosophy, why untype? To uncreate your unFacebook unbook. Simply uncopy and unpaste into notepad, then uncopy from there into whatever unword processing unsoftware you unwish.

    oik

    ReplyDelete
  11. 1. I don't care about stories.

    2. That sounds like so much woo.

    3. Authentic art must answer to the now, which is by definition always new.

    4. No, no, no, yes, and probably not. It's not clear to me whether you are actually trying to interview me, or simply to score points. Either way, this is becoming boring, by which I mean boring boring and not unboring boring. (Not to be a boor.)

    5. Of course. It's what I do. The "external" "world" is of little concern, by and large.

    6. No, I'd kick him out of the class. I fail to see how this relates.

    7. I'm not sure you really grasp what conceptual writing is all about. Suggest you go back to your deeply sincere, so-called "creation" and not persist in trying to fathom the avant-garde.

    8. See answer to 7.

    9. I stopped sculpting because I couldn't keep the dung beetles from making off with all my raw materials.

    10. No. We all masturbate like fiends.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hello unzeph and G. H. Possibly but not Probably,

    Just home from two hours standing in rain watching boys of 14 play football... Oooph.

    Can't really be Goldsmith Himself (those lovely suits!), but just in case--scoring points is not in my vocabulary. It's not the way I think at all. Not even the teeny-tiniest.

    In fact, I wish the real G. H. good cheer and more power to him and his polka dot suits. I don't want to be like him, and no doubt he doesn't want to be like me. Oddly enough, there seems to be enough room for the two of us on the planet.

    So, settled that and must go and find some dry clothes.

    Missed Yolanda and Ashley's art opening in Oneonta because I was in Mohawk, soaking wet. Too bad.

    ReplyDelete
  13. LOOK.
    I got as far as 'Paisley suits' and that stopped me firmly in my tracks.
    The man is MENTAL.

    Who the hell wears paisley anything?
    Have you seen it? (Paisley, I mean?)
    Paisley is a horror of fractal-looking abomination. Based on a spiral (that goes nowhere and is as ugly as SIN when worn as clothing decoration), paisley represents the reprehensible; the manically monstrous, the bastard design of an ADHD Satan.

    I will have to try again later.
    Hopefully, by then, Mr Goldsmith will have changed out of this ghastly attire and into something less.... pleadingly controversial, and unpleasant.

    Marly, please forgive me, but I do not like paisley.

    ReplyDelete
  14. (People wear it as a 'joke', surely? Does this reflect Mr Goldsmith's musings? Musings that spiral up from, and down into... nowhere?)

    ReplyDelete
  15. Paul,

    How about polka dots? Giant polka dots? I think polka dots are rather fun...

    ReplyDelete
  16. Polka dots are absolutely fine.
    They are harmonious and amusing.

    Mr Goldsmith dons nothing harmonious or fun in his attire or in his need to draw attention to himself at all costs.
    I think he might do well to plagiarize himself if it weren't the fact that that would not be very ... original?

    I think it would be nice to have his house.
    I'm tempted to just move in.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Nathan Horowitz Es ist ein phantastisches, ein tief ergreifendes und wild erregendes Schauspiel, solch einen Nachtfahrt vieler deutscher Flugzeuge, die als Ziel England haben, mitzuerleben. Flugleistungen von mehr als zweitausend Kilometer müssen (she's gone, the pipe's empty, insert more tobacco to play again) bewältigt werden und drüben dann, weit, weit von der Heimat entfernt, heißt es kämpferliche Leistungen vollbringen, die höchsten Mannesmut erfordern und eine nicht zu übertreffende Frische des Geistes und aller Sinne voraussetzen.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Happy to be back in Pittsburgh this morning! (After finding a pasted post gone, I've just concluded that FB won't let you post anything that's simply pasted. You have to actually write something of your own - clearly an anti-plagiarism measure!) - Professor Gold(nat(that's)han)s(horo(me)witz)mith.
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Lawsy, Nathan, be sure and post that there as well! XD
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Whur?
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz on yo blawg?
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Click the title above or here--you can see the entire gamut of questions. Or add your own!
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans That's weird; it removed the link here http://thepalaceat2.blogspot.com/2011/09/modest-proposal-uncreation-project.html

    ReplyDelete
  18. The Palace at 2:00 a.m.: A Modest Proposal (Uncreation Project)
    thepalaceat2.blogspot.com
    Directions to the Palace: Seek out Giacometti’s “The Palace at 4 a.m.” Go back...
    See More
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Must have been an avant garde plot!
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz I saw a gamut but I didn't realize it was of questions. Then they came for the stevedores. Then they came for the insects that live on rock piles. Then they came for the descendants of the lice that lived in Saint Francis's beard, and still I said nothing. I have been to the mountain.
    14 hours ago · Like · 1 person

    Marly Youmans How's Austria doing?
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz It's an avant garde plot!
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Oh, I see. Knickers and spoons.
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans With gerbils.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz In the dining room.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Something's swaying outside my window and I think it's a plant.
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Flight 547 departing at 12:01.
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Just swayed outside the window: hovered, went on. Loaded with spoons and knickers.
    14 hours ago · Like · 1 person
    Nathan Horowitz Not to mention crates of exclusive Spam made from the bodies of unfrozen mastodons earmarked for the Socialist cave of Kim Jong-il's mouth.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz But what kind of idiot would mention those?
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Oh.
    14 hours ago · Like

    ReplyDelete
  19. Laura Murphy Frankstone Water seepage, leakage, dampness and, ah, standing water in the basement, crawl space or slab!
    14 hours ago · Unlike · 3 people
    Nathan Horowitz From these two perspectives, historical events in Japan are judged according to their (The Tao sinks more than 300 points in early trading following steep declines in world markets, (Class tools are appropriation, theft, stealing, plundering and sampling. Cheating, fraud and identity theft are all encouraged.) which were unsettled in part by the Federal Reserve's gloomy outlook.) distance from the particular European “normal time frame” in which such events should occur.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Fo(Gold(th(class(i(a(fr(spa(i(whi(ethi(quer(ca(b(condu(i(a(sa(environment)fe))n)cted)e)n)ies)cal)ch)n)ce)ee))s)room)e)smith)r.
    14 hours ago · Like

    Laura Murphy Frankstone Ooh, LOVE Marly's last pome. Swayed, hovered, loaded. Cool!
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Laura, there is no Hopkins but Hopkins, but I like yours anyway.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz There is no Hopkins but Hopkins, and Marly is his prophet.
    14 hours ago · Like · 1 person

    Marly Youmans Mouse spittle!
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Thank cream puffs.
    14 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Lord knows I do. What sort of insects do you rejoice in, where you come from?
    14 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Cicadas prophesy to me by day and katydids by night. Or is it the other way around?
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Don't know, katy never did what she did to my knowledge by day or night, but perhaps by something as yet unforeseen in between.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Awash in golden goat-glow.
    13 hours ago · Like · 1 person

    Marly Youmans Golden apples of the...
    13 hours ago · Like

    ReplyDelete
  20. Marly Youmans Still trying to decide if Laura Murphy Frankstone was actually answering one of the ten questions and, if so, which one?
    13 hours ago · Unlike · 2 people
    Nathan Horowitz In Japan, the term "Black Ships" would later come to symbolize a threat imposed by Western technology.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Because the rabbit's epiglottis is engaged over the soft palate except when swallowing, the rabbit is an obligate nasal breather. Rabbits have two sets of incisor teeth, one behind the other. This way they can be distinguished from rodents, with which they are often confused.[4] Carl Linnaeus originally grouped rabbits and rodents under the class Glires; later, they were separated as the predominant opinion was that many of their similarities were a result of convergent evolution. However, recent DNA analysis and the discovery of a common ancestor has supported the view that they share a common lineage, and thus rabbits and rodents are now often referred to together as members of the superclass Glires.[5]

    Rabbits are hindgut digesters. This means that most of their digestion takes place in their large intestine and cecum. In rabbits the cecum is about 10 times bigger than the stomach and it along with the large intestine makes up roughly 40% of the rabbit's digestive tract.[6] The unique musculature of the cecum allows the intestinal tract of the rabbit to separate fibrous material from more digestible material; the fibrous material is passed as feces, while the more nutritious material is encased in a mucous lining as a cecotrope. Cecotropes, sometimes called "night feces", are high in minerals, vitamins and proteins that are necessary to the rabbit's health. Rabbits eat these to meet their nutritional requirements; the mucous coating allows the nutrients to pass through the acidic stomach for digestion in the intestines. This process allows rabbits to extract the necessary nutrients from their food.[7]

    Rabbits are prey animals and are therefore constantly aware of their surroundings. For instances, in Mediterranean Europe, rabbits are the main prey of red foxes, badgers, and Iberian lynxes.[8] If confronted by a potential threat, a rabbit may freeze and observe then warn others in the warren with powerful thumps on the ground. Rabbits have a remarkably wide field of vision, and a good deal of it is devoted to overhead scanning.[9] They survive predation by burrowing, hopping away in a zig- zag motion, and, if captured, delivering powerful kicks with their hind legs. Their strong teeth allow them to eat and to bite in order to escape a struggle.[10]
    13 hours ago · Like

    Laura Murphy Frankstone oh, dear.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Where can I get some of those tumbleweed balls of rain?
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans And a heat-seeking missal?
    13 hours ago · Like

    Laura Murphy Frankstone The Alesian plain.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Oh, yes
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Good, cuz the Elysian Plane just took off.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans It wavered by your mirror.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz My mirror is wavy now.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans I'm going to the Alesian pla(i)ne to get a bottle of St. Peter's and a Speckled Hen.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Yor wavy is mirror now.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz The first of the state-run universities was digested by a rabbit in 1877.
    13 hours ago · Like · 1 person
    Nathan Horowitz How that speckled hen got into the bottle, I'll never know.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Juiced.
    13 hours ago · Like

    ReplyDelete
  21. Marly Youmans Regardng the land-grant university: "That explains so much," said Dr Goldsmith as he laughingly accepted his award.
    13 hours ago · Like · 1 person
    Nathan Horowitz Then tramps and beggars swarmed the streets.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Waving their copies of On the Juicelessness of Everything.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Juiced at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Laura Murphy Frankstone Ho, Greenlander! You have doused your meat in the horse piss and left none for the rest of us!
    13 hours ago · Unlike · 2 people

    Marly Youmans A stunner. No matter, green grows the rampy low.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Hey, does this poem make me look fat?
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Nay, antrab.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz I am a woman seeking man. Piepildīsim sapni par jauku un saulainu vasaru kopā!
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Let mgo get the timetables and I will show you.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is stretched out against the sky like a patient etherised on a table.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Mgo, cream puffs! So helpful. Now, here we are: open hours of the bus loo. 30 pages to copy out by hand. What a job. But inspiring.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Insp(holyshitthisiselectrifying!)iring.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz ‎27. Nunokawa, op. cit., p. 705.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Nunokawa the palladian paladin.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Must go create after all this ferment of uncreation. Please leave your answers to the ten questions on the blog or your uncreations there and/or here, and I shall see them when I take my next break.
    13 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person
    Nathan Horowitz We bell.
    13 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans N, you are a randlestop of uncreation. I congratulate your sheep.
    13 hours ago · Like · 1 person

    Marly Youmans Ah, we were on the same wave. Your sheep bell. Are belled. Arabella. More festivities to rinse.
    13 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz And more great webellions to warp and woof on the sheepish looms of the future.
    12 hours ago · Like · 1 person

    Laura Murphy Frankstone Tout simplement les meilleurs. Et bien, au revoir.
    12 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person

    Marly Youmans ‎Nathan Horowitz and Laura Murphy Frankstone, perhaps the real Goldsmith has turned up (to squash me like a bug, no doubt.)
    4 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Rabbits!
    4 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz gold's myth
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz his ansewers are hahlarryus.
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Larry us? Think it is His Own Self?
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz the difference between me and a donut is i don't know.
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans I dough know eder.
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz ether
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans I there
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans ‎(Waves)
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz Eye eye, Captain.
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz ‎((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((())))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))))))(((((((((())))))))(((((((())))))))((((((()))))))((((((((((()))))))))))))))))))
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Eyelashes!
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Beautifully Ikebana-ed.
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz you lashes?
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Oui lashes
    2 hours ago · Like
    Nathan Horowitz that goldman (im)person(ator) is pretty funny.
    2 hours ago · Like

    Marly Youmans Pretty bunny!
    2 hours ago · Like

    ReplyDelete
  22. Quite fond of paisley myself, except Ian. And I can understand the impulse to masquerade as a hallucination.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Verdict: Ubuweb is a fantastic project and Goldsmith is a hero for producing it.

    “I kind of had that impression,” I reply, thinking of Ayamo’s gaze, inviting, challenging me to make love to her in slow and stop motion.

    aruki
    mea
    mea go aruki
    mea go mea
    emempuki
    emempuki go aruki
    emempuki go mea
    emempuki go mea go aruki
    emempuki go mea go mea
    tum pepuki

    ReplyDelete
  24. It is the belief of certain remote clans of people in eastern Austria that Nathan Horowitz can stand in the sunshine juggling balls of moving rain. Whether this is true, I cannot ascertain for certain.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Ubuweb treasure: It is astonishing to think that Joseph Cornell made 30 little films...

    ReplyDelete
  26. Still bemused by the idea that I might have been seeking to score points, as if blogging were somehow about "getting attention" rather that finding out what you thought about something and then talking about it to other interested parties.

    So then I started wondering whether scoring points is an issue with the avant-garde, and I remembered this interesting quote by critic William Logan, in talking about Cole Swensen's book, Ours (he gives a measured review that finds things to praise and things to criticize):

    The avant-garde aesthetic almost demands some form of one-upsmanship, yet there are only so many ways of torturing syntax or splashing words onto the page. (Certain avant-garde mannerisms have been around so long, Calvin Coolidge could have written respectable poems with them.) If the avant-garde wants to make it new, in Pound’s dictum, what can be left to accomplish when the etiquette has been as codified as the place setting for a twelve-course banquet? Most experimental poets still come out of William Carlos Williams’s pickle jar or Charles Olson’s boot heel.

    ReplyDelete

Alas, I must once again remind large numbers of Chinese salesmen and other worldwide peddlers that if they fall into the Gulf of Spam, they will be eaten by roaming Balrogs. The rest of you, lovers of grace, poetry, and horses (nod to Yeats--you do not have to be fond of horses), feel free to leave fascinating missives and curious arguments.