Commentaries - December 2011

Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, 2005

In this episode of Close Listening, Rachel Blau DuPlessis discusses her long poem Drafts, the relation between poetry and politics, and the contemporary state of gender issues in writing with host Charles Bernstein, and reads a selection from Drafts.

Rachel Blau DuPlessis
Close Listening recording session, University of Pennsylvania, April 27, 2005
Conversation with Charles Bernstein
Draft 20: Incipit (Drafts 1-38: Toll, 2001)
Draft 25: Segno (Drafts 1-38: Toll, 2001)
Draft 63: Dialogue of Self & Soul (Torques: Drafts 58-76, 2007)
Draft 46: Edge (Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft, unnumbered: Précis, 2004)
Draft 64: Forward Slash (Torques: Drafts 58-76, 2007)
from Draft 51: Clay Songs (sections 4, 5, 10, and 12; Drafts 39-57, Pledge, with Draft, unnumbered: Précis, 2004)
Draft 61: Pyx (Torques: Drafts 58-76, 2007)

Tom Clark talks about Joanne Kyger, 1972

left, Tom Clark; right, Joanne Kyger

In June of 1972, in Bolinas, California, Tom Clark and Joanne Kyger recorded a conversation. At one point Clark talked for five minutes or so about Kyger's writing and here is the audio recording of those remarks.

Book sculpture

This was made of a book. To see many more such objects, go here.

Students respond to Jackson Mac Low's work

“A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore” was created by Jackson MacLow in memory of his friend Peter Moore, who in photographs documented the doings and performances of NYC Fluxus and other artists in the 1960s and early 70s. The text or, more properly, the score is filled entirely with words (960 of them) drawn from the letters in the name of “Peter Innisfree Moore”; words like smite, opinion, freer, re-import, Semite, fen, minister, and smote circle around one another in various hand-drawn shapes and sizes.

Richard Kostelanetz writes, “This visual-verbal text can then become a score for a live performance in which any number of readers are encouraged to read aloud whichever words they wish, at whatever tempo they wish, for indefinite durations; and Mac Low's instructions for this particular piece suggest that the individual letters can be translated into certain musical notes (and, thus, that the same text can be interpreted as a musical score).”

One performance in the summer of 1975 was managed by MacLow. Here is a 6-minute excerpt from the audio recording of that event.

A few years ago my students and I discussed this work. Some didn't find it beautiful; some had doubts about its effectiveness as an alternative mode of elegy or memorialization. Most found it beautiful, worthy and a good alternative to the usual methods we use to describe or narrate the life of a dead friend or colleague. You can hear a recording of the entire class session (1 hr 20 minutes).