Entries published during February, 2010

February 2, 2010

Entry 08: Homage to Lee Crabtree

Fugs Second Album.

Recent threads on The Fugs have brought to mind my early encounter with their music, and the band itself, during my first visit to the St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, November 1965. When asked for a short statement on the Poetry Project for Anne Waldman’s anthology Out of This World: An Anthology of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, 1966–91, I wrote:

Thinking back on the Poetry Project, I am reminded of an absurdist question posed by Gerard Malanga to Charles Olson in The Paris Review: “A school is place where one can learn something. Can a school lose by giving away its knowledge?” From my first involvement with it in about 1972, The Poetry Project seemed a place where a school of poetry—the New York School—was physically embodied in a group of writers who felt free to develop in the confidence of their mutual (and contending) assumptions, and I certainly learned something from that. … More

February 1, 2010

Document 09: A Propos Frame

from Frame

Multicolored piles of gravel on black asphalt
behind rows of aluminum sheds.

We put frames around anything we wish.

In one version, wild dogs go for each other’s
throats (they assume the optimal to exist).

Unoccupied territory between opposing sides.

Matter of interest unfolds as a story.
Conflicts put on the table for debate.

—Frame: 1971–1990, 260         

The parergon stands out [se détache] both from the ergon [the work] and from the milieu, it stands out first like a figure on a ground. But it does not stand out in the same way as the work. The latter also stands out against a ground. But the parergonal frame stands out against two grounds [fonds], but with respect to each of those two grounds, it merges [se fond] into the other. With respect to the work which can serve as a ground for it, it merges into the wall [on which the painting is hung], and then, gradually, into the general text. … More

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