Charles Bernstein

Anselm Hollo (1934-2013)

Tom Raworth on Hollo in The Independent (obit Jan. 31, 2013)

Anselm Hollo PennSound page
includes a section of The Empress Hotel Poems (1:30): MP3

Go through my things
   god knows what you'll find. When I'm not here.
I'm not here, in this poem
I'm in another room, writing praises
            of their loveliness and terror
the ones that dance through my mind
        not endlessly, but to be one at one
                               with them
                           I want to be.
                       I want to be one,
                   I want her to be one
              when the voice begins
         she is, and she dances.
I am the voice. I praise
There is
no mind.

Elena Berriolo: Transcription of Piero Manzoni's Infinite Line with Sewing Machine

Nothing could be more purely poetic than the line, so it is perhaps less a metaphor than usual to think of Elena Berriolo's performance as a reflection on the verse line. Charles Olson was once asked, how long is a line? He put his chalk to the board and ran a line to the end and continues, chalk in hand, to walk out of the room. Berriolo's work had something of that quality, though more whimsical: I was reminded of Mary Poppins flying with and umbrella as well as 1960s performance work by Charlotte Moorman or Yoko Ono. Or then again, as the line flew away in the sky, the sky writing poems of David Antin.

Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics series at Palgrave, ed. Rachel Blau DuPlessis

This series promotes and pursues topics in the burgeoning field of 20th and 21st century poetics. Critical and scholarly work on poetry and poetics of interest to the series includes social location in its relationships to subjectivity, to the construction of authorship, to oeuvres, and to careers; poetic reception and dissemination (groups, movements, formations, institutions); the intersection of poetry and theory; questions about language, poetic authority, and the goals of writing; claims in poetics, impacts of social life, and the dynamics of the poetic career as these are staged and debated by poets and inside poems. Topics that are bibliographic, pedagogic, that concern the social field of poetry, and reflect on the history of poetry studies are valued as well. This series will allow Palgrave to focus both on individual poets and texts and on larger movements, poetic institutions, and questions about poetic authority, social identifications, and aesthetics.

CFP: Poetics vs Philosophy at Texas A & M University, April (poetics of the Americas)

poet Eduardo Espina of Texas A&M

Call for Papers
Symposium: Poetics Versus Philosophy:
Life, Artifact, and Theory
Texas A & M University

April 11, 12, 13, 2013

The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, 4th edition

Roland Green and associates have done a tremendous job in revising Terry Brogan’s and Alex Preminger’s magisterial 3d edition of this classic work. It’s a vast compendium of poetic lore, terminology, technique, and history with an astutely chosen set of contributors. At 1664 pages, I am still cruising the book and wishing I had the  digital edition as well. This is a work to dip into at any page for a wealth of detailed and often absorbingly arcane information. PEPP is up to date, with entries for new poetic developments right up to the present (yes, Lavinia, Conceptual poetry, Kootenay school, and Flarf have entries, along with my own précis on “absorption,” and new entries on antropofagia, codework, cognitive poetics, Xul, Sanskrit poetry, and many more). The index alone is worth the price of admission. Here is “F” from the topical index (available on-line): 

fancy
fatras
feigning
figura
figuration
fili
flyting
folia
foot
formalism
formula
fourteener
fractal verse
fragment
Frankfurt school
frottola and barzelletta
furor poeticus