Al Filreis | Jacket2

Chat GPT cannot say why Stein is apt to teach online

Al Filreis

After a few unremarkable responses from ChatGPT about Gertrude Stein in ModPo, there was this bland answer. Perhaps this AI program isn't yet picking up content from YouTube videos. The third paragraph here is just guessing, based on what it finds about Stein on the web generally, that ModPo focuses on literary history in the survey-course sort of way. Most interesting to me: the program did not analyze any sort of relationship between Stein and the open online course form—many people, many interpretations, open verse, etc. The AI here is "thinking" in an authoritarian (this is the answer) sort of way even about Stein when asked the "why" about online teaching. What it's missing is not a super-subtle point, I think, and such an idea is amply available across web content. In short: somewhat surprisingly, not meta- at all.

John Kinsella's 'Star Shavings'

Al Filreis

Photo by John Kinsella from the 'Star Shavings' series.

I’m pleased here to present a brief excerpt from John Kinsella’s series titled “Star Shavings,” a cycle of photo-poems. Jacket2 and PennSound are making the cycle available HERE. Here is a link to Kinsella’s PennSound page, and here are some links to several of his previous appearances in Jacket: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

You can be a cruel word: On Fred Wah’s 'All Americans'

Al Filreis

The frontispiece of the housepress edition (2002; 125 copies) of Fred Wah’s poem-series All Americans is a reproduction of a commemorative plate produced by the Standard Brewing Company. The illustrated souvenir dish, of the sort common in its time, has been photographed upright on a wooden stand. In consultation with housepress founder, editor, and publisher Derek Beaulieu, Wah chose to open his book by featuring the lithograph reprinted and colorized on this plate. The drawing itself was apparently made in 1863 — presumably the artist had been a witness not long after the execution by hanging of 38 eastern Dakota people at Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862. These death sentences, rendered hastily and prejudicially by a military court in reaction to the uprising of the eastern Dakota that had commenced in August — sentences then affirmed by Abraham Lincoln in the White House — were carried out in the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history.

The essay was commissioned by Derek Beaulieu as he prepared to celebrate 25 years of No Press and housepress. I have now received a copy of a book, entitled Paper and Thread, edited by Derek, which includes my essay about Fred Wah along with contributions by Kyle Schlesinger, Charles Bernstein, Sacha Archer, Nasser Hussain, Richard Harrison, Kit Dobson, Gregory Betts, Gary Barwin, George Bowering, Johanna Drucker, Nick Montfort, bill bissett and a number of others. The book can be purchased here. I have made a PDF version of the published essay, and a copy of the essay follows as well:

Jerome Rothenberg reads from 'Mad King' at Kelly Writers House (photos and links)

Al Filreis

Jerome Rothenberg gave a reading on Thursday, September 29, 2022, at the Kelly Writers House. The full video recording is available below, along with seven photos taken during and after the event. He read, in part, his short new book, In the Shadow of the Mad King (available from Granary Books).

Chronology & notes for Sawako Nakayasu's "Some Girls"

Al Filreis

Partial page from Sawako Nakayasu, "Selected Chronology & Notes" to the book "Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From"

When Sawako Nakayasu’s book Some Girls Walk into the Country They Are From is acquired, some or perhaps most copies will include a pamphlet-style supplement entitled “Selected Chronology & Notes.” Apparently some copies do not include this extra. Yet the notes can be crucial to understanding individual poems in the book.

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DIGITAL PEDAGOGY: This was a magazine story published in 2001 about my use of e-media in teaching. “Postmodern poets focused on the process of their poetry, rather than on what the words in their poems actually said. The purpose was to make poetry and language new again. There's no better way to describe Filreis's teaching style. He uses technology to free class time for discussion, which to Filreis is more important than the course material itself. The point is to develop his students' ability to think critically, not to have memorized every last fact about Gertrude Stein. And yet, he said, through that active engagement with the material, students end up remembering more of the content.”

Click on the image.

ASHBERY PERFORMS STEVENS: In October of 1989, John Ashbery went to St. John's the Divine Cathedral in New York to be part of the induction of Wallace Stevens at the Poets' Corner. There was a vespers service and Ashbery read six sections of Stevens's "An Ordinary Evening in New Haven." Imagine that--that poem read at a vespers service! Anyway, I certainly don't know of another recording of Ashbery performing Stevens. Stevens was a fairly bad reader of his own poems. Ashbery is deemed by many to be an indifferent reader of his poems. (I don't agree, but understand the point.) But here, reading Stevens, Ashbery is marvelous. Here is a 7-minute recording of sections 3, 5, 12, 17, 18 and 30 of the Stevens poem that comes closest to real serial writing (seriality at the level of the section, anyway).

THE (ANTI)MODERN PRESIDENT. After looking at an abstract mural at the U.N. then President-elect Eisenhower said, “To be modern you don't have to be nuts.”

THE END OF THE LECTURE & PLANNING TO STAY. As often as I can, I call for the end of the lecture as we know it. I'm pretty serious about this - not often exaggerating on the point. Click here for one of many forays into the topic. Once you're there, click on the "end of the lecture" tag for still more. My thoughts on institutional politics and the arts were presented in a manifesto called "Planning to Stay" (published as a pamphlet by No Press); the text of that talk is available here.

KELLY WRITERS HOUSEPhiladelphia's PBS affiliate, WHYY-12, produces a TV show that in each episode features four centers for the arts and creativity in the Philadelphia region. For its winter 2010-11 program, the show devoted 15 minutes to the Kelly Writers House in a segment called “The Creative Campus.” To watch the video, click on the image above.

REPRESENTATIONS OF THE HOLOCAUSTI dislike Spielberg’s Schindler’s List intensely. It's a film, I think, that is very friendly toward sovereignty. For more on this minority view, click on the image above. I teach a course at Penn on representations of the Holocaust in literature and film every other fall semester.

In 2003 I founded and continue to direct the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing at the University of Pennsylvania. CPCW brought together the university's writing programs and projects: Critical Writing, Creative Writing, the Kelly Writers House, PennSound, RealArts@PENN, Writers Without Borders, Creative Ventures, Jacket2, and more. For information and links to each of these projects, click on the logo above.