Gil Ott: The form of our uncertainty

Al Filreis

Gil Ott at the Kelly Writers House in 2001

Gil Ott died in 2004 and is sorely missed in Philly poetry scenes, and (to be specific about one of many such sites where we miss Gil) at the Writers House where Gil was fairly regularly a member of audiences for PhillyTalks, poetry readings, book celebrations for poetry-world colleagues (especially Philly poets). Kristen Gallagher edited a book of commentary and critical response to Gil's work (published by Chax Press) and in the fall of '01 we hosted a Gil Ott celebration, co-organized by then-director of KWH Kerry Sherin and also Kristen Gallagher.

For about a year PennSound's Gil Ott page featured the whole recording of the 1.5-hour event and also segmented single mp3s of each reader. But later we released the 17th PennSound podcast - a 23-minute excerpt of the whole event, expertly edited by Steve McLaughlin. Here's a link to the PennSound podcast page. (More: When Gil interviewed Jackson Mac Low.)

From Kristen Gallagher's introduction to The Form of Our Uncertainty: "Evidence of Gil Ott's proficiencies have been left in spray paint and street-corner soliloquies, as well as in his work of editing and publishing the poetry and prose of writers practicing diverse tactics and politics. One thing has concerned him consistently: 'the struggle to articulate.' His acceptance of uncertainty and his history of stirring things up in status-quo-ville are the defining qualities of Gil Ott's poetics. One thing Gil says he has often reacted against is the assumption that 'people seek out order' Perhaps much of Gil's work gets its distinctive edge from his ability to hold tensions and attune to complex, often contradictory senses. In all of Gil's work one can find a certain pleasure he refers to as 'the satisfaction of articulation' – a presence of hearing and saying, of finding relation through more relation." The book is available from Chax.

April 29, 2011

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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.