Jake Marmer (in his new book, Cosmic Diaspora) tells us a story about his realization that art in performance must permit and include intrusions. This statement is a preface to a section of poems that are verbal score-like “transcriptions” of music he’s never heard but imagines, in some cases. In others, the poems are the effects of writings made while the writer listened to live improvised music. But again, also while he was “thinking about music’s reverberations.” And what, we might ask, is the distinction between those states? That’s the point. Marmer quotes Baraka in this prefatory statement: “Thought has a self. That self is music.”One bit of such self-expression is in Transcription #22 (p. 65): “not sound but sound’s / peel / a vector / trumpet’s footprint.” On the bottom of that printed page in the new book, one finds a QR code. Hold up the phone’s camera to it and get taken to a YouTube clip recording one of Marmer’s performances of the poem. Now back to the “holler” from outside.
Jake Marmer (in his new book, Cosmic Diaspora) tells us a story about his realization that art in performance must permit and include intrusions. This statement is a preface to a section of poems that are verbal score-like “transcriptions” of music he’s never heard but imagines, in some cases. In others, the poems are the effects of writings made while the writer listened to live improvised music. But again, also while he was “thinking about music's reverberations.” And what, we might ask, is the distinction between those states? That’s the point.
Poet Eve Merriam did her final two years of undergraduate education at Penn in the mid-1930s. Later, someone writing a Masters thesis wrote about her experience at Penn: here is a page from that. I’m grateful to Merriam’s son, Dee Michel, who shared the document with me.
And a transformation within language, in the very syntax of thinking, feeling, and acting in an endangered and dangerous world.
Addressing what’s happening at this particular moment in our collective experience is a lot harder than it might seem. Not that “we” don’t tend to agree in broad terms about the extraordinary challenge of the present — we being those who might actually read this series, poets and others interested in poetry with “a certain edge.” Rather because there’s so much agreement, the situation seems in fact to need somewhat lessrepetitive comment within the “group.” I can’t think of anyone I know, for instance, who isn’t experiencing fear of the terrifying consequences of the Abominable Four: a Trump win, another SCOTUS right-winger, more climate disaster, unending pandemic.
We need a transformation in this country. We need a transformation in the world. We need a transformation of our system, of our values, of our opportunities, towards love and justice and community. That’s why I write. I don’t want to be a writer against Trump. I want to be a writer for transformation.
— Lina Srivastava, in video for Writers Against Trump[i]
Mirror the holler
Jake Marmer's new book, 'Cosmic Diaspora'
Jake Marmer (in his new book, Cosmic Diaspora) tells us a story about his realization that art in performance must permit and include intrusions. This statement is a preface to a section of poems that are verbal score-like “transcriptions” of music he’s never heard but imagines, in some cases. In others, the poems are the effects of writings made while the writer listened to live improvised music. But again, also while he was “thinking about music’s reverberations.” And what, we might ask, is the distinction between those states? That’s the point. Marmer quotes Baraka in this prefatory statement: “Thought has a self. That self is music.” One bit of such self-expression is in Transcription #22 (p. 65): “not sound but sound’s / peel / a vector / trumpet’s footprint.” On the bottom of that printed page in the new book, one finds a QR code. Hold up the phone’s camera to it and get taken to a YouTube clip recording one of Marmer’s performances of the poem. Now back to the “holler” from outside.
Jake Marmer (in his new book, Cosmic Diaspora) tells us a story about his realization that art in performance must permit and include intrusions. This statement is a preface to a section of poems that are verbal score-like “transcriptions” of music he’s never heard but imagines, in some cases. In others, the poems are the effects of writings made while the writer listened to live improvised music. But again, also while he was “thinking about music's reverberations.” And what, we might ask, is the distinction between those states? That’s the point.
Communist poet at Penn in the 1930s
Poet Eve Merriam did her final two years of undergraduate education at Penn in the mid-1930s. Later, someone writing a Masters thesis wrote about her experience at Penn: here is a page from that. I’m grateful to Merriam’s son, Dee Michel, who shared the document with me.
Recencies
Speaking beyond the filter
George Quasha
And a transformation within language, in the very syntax of thinking, feeling, and acting in an endangered and dangerous world.
Addressing what’s happening at this particular moment in our collective experience is a lot harder than it might seem. Not that “we” don’t tend to agree in broad terms about the extraordinary challenge of the present — we being those who might actually read this series, poets and others interested in poetry with “a certain edge.” Rather because there’s so much agreement, the situation seems in fact to need somewhat less repetitive comment within the “group.” I can’t think of anyone I know, for instance, who isn’t experiencing fear of the terrifying consequences of the Abominable Four: a Trump win, another SCOTUS right-winger, more climate disaster, unending pandemic.
We need a transformation in this country. We need a transformation in the world. We need a transformation of our system, of our values, of our opportunities, towards love and justice and community. That’s why I write. I don’t want to be a writer against Trump.
I want to be a writer for transformation.
— Lina Srivastava, in video for Writers Against Trump[i]
Jake Marmer
New poems from 'COSMIC DIASPORA' with author's note as preface
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