I was honored to be asked by editor Oded Carmeli to choose fourteen poems published during the current decade by U.S poets for an anthology that has now been published in the most recent print issue of Hava LeHaba in Israel, a Hebrew-language magazine of experimental poetry and poetics. Click here to view a PDF copy of the relevant pages from the magazine. I wrote the following very brief prefatory statement:

Contemporary experimental poetry in the U.S. is so diverse in mode, tone, and conception that no introductory generalization will suffice. But having chosen fifteen poems I admire, all published in the current decade, I noticed post facto that they are all meta-poetic. Nada Gordon thieves Marianne Moore’s anti-ars poetica. Susan Howe’s “That This” presents, in part, the this-ness of the writing. Rae Armantrout’s post-God/post-mother linguistic smiting reminds her and us that she owes her writing life to a mother who taught her to wring sweetness from syllables as a kind of maternal sacrifice. Tyrone Williams “scribbles furiously to a mortgaged future.” Brenda Hillman’s own words fall out of sentences when aerial bombs fall on their targets. And the poem I chose to represent Dorothea Lasky is itself titled “Ars Poetica.” Poems about poetry need not indicate an escape from the world. On the contrary, these are mostly political poems—a language of politics and a politics of language. Laynie Browne gives us the real Hillary Clinton, lines Hillary would say, except that key words are left blank so that readers can be competent co-creators.

Making His MOOC an 'Outreach for Poetry'

One October 11, 2012, I hosted a debate on Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall.” Well, not quite a debate, but I knew that I, sitting in the middle of four poets, would be on the fence, as it were, with two on a side.  The live webcast, hosted by the Kelly Writers House, was associated with the 36,000-person free online course "ModPo," and was viewed synchronously by dozens in the room with us and thousands watching digitally around the world. We made a recording immediately afterward, and have posted it to YouTube here (1 hour, 9 minutes). (And here is a recording of Frost performing the poem. We began our discussion by listening to it; the performance is certainly important to at least the beginning of the debate.)

The differences between the sides, two versus two, didn't really emerge until the end of a fascinating discussion, but they did indeed emerge, Rachel Blau DuPlessis first finally expressing concerns about the attitude of the poem’s speaker, then Bob Perelman joining the view, pointedly. To be sure, all four poets — Bob, Rachel, and John Timpane and Taije Silverman — spent much of the time assembling a full close formal (and meta-poetic) reading of the poem. Its thematics — and politics — derived, as is apt, from the poem's quality as itself an instance in form of the speaker's impulse to have and also to keep apart from the stilled human object of his beautiful but empty annual cultural rite. Later John Timpane thought some more about his own position on the poem’s speaker; I'm pleased that he has given me permission to publish his statement here.

Ken Lum is the the new head of Penn’s undergraduate program in Fine Arts (as of Fall 2012). Lum is an artist, curator, editor, writer, and teacher. He has published extensively, and a book of Lum’s writings, edited by Hans Ulrich Obrist, is forthcoming from Walter Koenig Books. In addition to holding faculty positions at University of British Columbia (Vancouver) and Bard College, he has realized several permanent public art commissions including for Vienna, St. Moritz, Leiden, Toronto, Vancouver and Utrecht. He is currently working on public art commissions for the cities of Seattle, St. Louis, and New Orleans. This discussion took place at the Kelly Writers House on January 30, 2013.