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June 30, 2012

Document 18: D/Books/Annotated

[in memory of Ron Allen]

Returning to Detroit from Germany, I continued my frenzy for discovery in an afternoon session at John K. King Books, a monument to the material text located off a ramp of the Lodge Freeway, just beyond downtown Detroit. I think of John K. King as a kind of mine, much like one I visited in Germany, where one laboriously seeks an ore-bearing vein from the base substrate (of pulp fiction, back issues, technical manuals, legal handbooks, and so on). On the day I visited, the poetry vein was productive, as will be evident from the finds below.

Numerous personal associations surround these discoveries. Josephine Miles was the only woman faculty in the English Department at Berkeley in the 60s and wrote for my admission to the Iowa Writers Workshop. She pioneered the use of quantitative methods (word counting) in the study of poetry; the two volumes are the major results of her work. Christopher Caudwell is a now forgotten Marxist anti-modernist critic whose work I read, likely in this edition, in the 70s. Philip Whalen’s On Bear’s Head has always been a mystery as an object; how could such a mass of jottings find their way through a New York publisher? A similar mystery attends Clark Coolidge’s 1970 Space, from Harper & Row. Ronald Gross’s Pop Poems ought to be on any canonical list of conceptual writing, as it antedates that movement by forty years. Gross would take banal ad copy and other socially inflected messages and versify them, anticipating the work of Rob Fitterman and his “rubber duck” catalogue poem. … More

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June 29, 2012

Entry 16: Anecdoted History of Chance

Geschichte des Zufalls no. 15

On 17 June 2012, I visited the Mauerpark flea market with friend and poet D— S—. The market was bursting at the seams with the detritus of pop culture; archives of tape and vinyl; retro furniture and avant-garde t-shirts; remnants of the former socialist state and occasional contraband from darker times; out-of-date art books and mass market magazines bleaching in the sun. A carnival of objects to anchor social ground within the shadow of the former Wall.

At the end of a long alley of stands, objects, and crowds—or at the end of a confusing story that was just about to arrive at its point—appeared a stall selling what look like small cardboard boxes, each with a stenciled number cut out on the top that let optical green paper show through, under the banner “Geschichten des Zufalls.” In the center of the table stood a gumball machine, containing wooden balls with the same optical green numbers. We were invited to purchase one of the boxes as a “chance object,” and to participate in a conceptual project in which we would inform the sellers/organizers of any coincidences that had occurred after its purchase. We could pay whatever price we felt appropriate for an opportunity to encounter chance in this way.

… More

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June 28, 2012

Entry 15: Poetics of Failure

A resonant passage from Lyn Hejinian’s The Book of a Thousand Eyes, which should have wide circulation (and links) for pedagogical and moral purposes.

I am a failed fire chief
I am a failed thief

Didn’t I fail at the wrong thing, aren’t I a failure at failure

Failure is inevitable
I am a fan of failure
I am a failure flailed by failure
I leap into failure
I relish the self-pity that’s produced by the self-loathing that comes as a consequence of failure

The sauce has curdled, the meat is tough, the custard is runny—the meal is a failure

Failure is the offshoot of argument—but then failure occurs too from a lack of it
Moral failure
… More

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June 24, 2012

Document 17: DE/Exhibitions and Events

[for Carla Harryman]

The following chronology documents two weeks of intensive travels in the zone of the aesthetic, under the aspect of the political, in Germany. I accompanied Carla Harryman, who had been invited to present a lecture in the closing week of documenta and was a credentialed participant for the preview, for the first week, and then continued on alone through Munich, Nuremberg, Jena, Leipzig, to Berlin. Annotations will be added to the entries, as time permits.

Monday, June 4

JFK > FRA.

Tuesday, June 5

“Auf dem Goetheweg zum Brocken.” Nationalpark Harz, Torfhaus, Lower Saxony.

Grenzmuseum, Sorge, Lower Saxony.

Wednesday, June 6

Weltkulturerbe Rammelsberg, Museum und Besucherbergwerk, Goslar.

“Der Andere Blick: Alltagswelten von Martin Parr, Tim Wood, Antanas Sutkus.” Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar.

documenta 13, Kassel. Preview.

Thursday, June 7

documenta 13, Kassel. Fridericianum.

“On the Kabul-Bamiyan Seminars and Exhibition.” Conversation with Christine Christov-Bakargiev, Chus Martinez, and artists. Ständehaus.

… More

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Document 16: DE/Books

[for Donna Stonecipher]

Over two weeks in June, I traveled to eight German cities—Frankfurt, Goslar, Kassel, Munich, Nuremberg (including Erlangen and Fürth), Jena, Leipzig and Berlin—attended the opening of documenta 13; saw many related exhibitions and attended lectures and readings; presented a seminar at the University of Erlangen; bicycled, walked, and rode public transportation; and scanned for books. The list below documents the extent of my interests on what ended up as a research trip focusing on critical theory, poetics, and exhibitions. I will return in September for a second look at documenta, and to attend Carla Harryman’s closing keynote lecture, a re-presentation in poetic/musical form of Adorno’s 1959 lecture on New Music at documenta 2.

Critical theory

Adorno,  Theodor W. Philosophische Elemente einer Theorie der Gesellschaft  (1964). Ed. Tobias ten Brink and Marc Phillip Noguera. Nachgelassene Schriften, Vorlesungen, vol. 12.  Frankfurt am Main:  Suhrkamp, 2008. [Purchased at Buchladen zur schwankenden Weltkugel, Kastanienallee, Berlin]

Harman,  Graham. The Third Table/Der Dritte Tisch. 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, no.  85. Ostfildern, Germ.: Hatje Cantz, 2012. [documenta, Kassel]

Hawel,  Marcus, and Moritz Blanke, eds. Kritische Theorie: Der Krise. Berlin:  Karl Dietz, 2012. [Buchladen zur schwankenden Weltkugel]

Mann,  Thomas, & Theodor W. Adorno. An Exchange/Ein Austausch. 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts, no. 50. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2012. [documenta]

Mitscherlich,  Alexander, ed. Das beschädigte Leben: Diagnose und Therapie in einer Welt  unabsehbar Veränderungen. Grenzach/Baden, Germ.: Hoffman-La Roche, 1969. [Arkonaplatz,  Prenzlauerberg, Berlin]

Poetry  and poetics

Krutschonych,  Alexei (Alexei Kruchyonik). Phonetik des Theaters (1925). Ed. Valeri Scherstjanoi. Leipzig: Reinecke & Voß, 2011. [Lettrétage, Methfesselstraße, Berlin]

Reinecke,  Bertram. Sleutel voor de hoogduitsche Spraakkunst, ed. Ulf Stolterfoht.  Leipzig, Berlin, and Solothurn: roughbook, 2012. [Lettrétage]

… More

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April 2, 2012

Event 28: I Met (ACLA)

onkawara 01

I Met (ACLA)
American Comparative Literature Association
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
30 March–1 April 2012
After On Kawara

Omaar Hena
Nathan Suhr-Systma
Jim Cocola
Matthew Nelson
Sonya Posmentier
… More

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August 16, 2011

Document 15: What Is Literature? (FR)

Two publications I brought back from France this summer, both of which I would like to consider (and question) as possible definitions of “the literary”—after a quote from Jacques Rancière (cited by Omar Berrada): “L’homme est un animal politique parce qu’il est un animal littéraire, qui se laisse détourner de sa destination ‘naturelle” par le pouvoir des mots.” At which I asked, “How broad is “literature” for Rancière? Why would he not say, simply, “language”—or language in a certain sense?” Let us imagine two versions of “the literary” are represented by the above works: one a critical history of the international avant-garde journal transition, by modernist literary historian Céline Mansanti, and the other the catalogue of a stunning exhibition of politics, culture, and literature under the Occupation and during the Resistance. My thesis is that the “literary” should include both options, and I would go so far as to speculate that the “literary” in the French postwar period takes its fundamental bearings from the condition of print culture during the period of “national” instability. Hence my question of Rancière: is this the “literary” in the sense of the quote (“un animal littéraire”), or is there a more encompassing usage—something like “language,” as I suggested.

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August 6, 2011

Document 14: Nowa Poezja Amerykansky (Anthology)

Nowa poezja amerykanska (New American Poetry), special issue of Literatura na swiecie (Warsaw) no. 11–12 (2010). Featuring poetry translated into Polish by Lyn Hejinian, Tony Hoagland, Elizabeth Willis, Peter Gizzi, Lisa Jarnot, Harryette Mullen, Forrest Gander, Cole Swensen, Barrett Watten, John Yau, and David Schubert; with essays, reviews, and interviews; www.literaturanaswiecie.art.pl.

… More

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Entry 14: The Perfect Ashbery (Review)

Planisphere, by John Ashbery. New York: HarperCollins/Ecco Press, 2009.

There is one poem in Planisphere I would love to have written. I see it as an apogee of Ashbery’s art, toward which all combinations of rhetoric and slippage, on their elliptical path, tend. This is language art at its finest. I’ll leave it at that:

STRESS RELATED

You don’t see so much of these anymore,
not see so much of this. There were others
who saw more. Innocence is cool,
he offered. Now not so much.
Innocence is the finish. Through all our
wide day it stressed. It was foolish to argue,
idle to come undone. The post arrived.
It all failed. All failed somewhere. [104]

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July 11, 2011

Document 13: Multi-Language Poetry After 2001

At our recent conference in Mainz, Germany, on collectivity and literature, David Simpson (a critic of romanticism who made the theory/cultural studies turn in the 70s and has produced a number of significant and wide-ranging works since then) presented a keynote lecture titled “After 9/11: The Fate of Strangers,” on the position of the foreigner (stranger; étranger; Fremde) in writing. Simpson cited a range of post–9/11 fiction and the spontaneous outpouring of poetry opposed to American military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. I mentioned that, through the last decade, poets had also been interested in the status of other languages in their work as foreign and strange, and were investigating questions of alterity, opacity, and mistranslation through a range of experimental strategies. An example of the preservation of an individual word as “stranger” in a language appears with the German context of Fremdwörter, which are generally pronounced as closely to their original language as possible. Adorno had written, suggestively, on this embedding of the other in German: “Die Fremdwörter sind die Jüde der Sprache” (Foreign words are the Jews of language). A bit later, Simpson asked me for particulars of this practice (Cary Nelson also wondered what the hell was interesting about opacity and mistranslation; I responded that it was a site of cultural learning). I had just seen three readers in Berlin exploring the poetics of multi-languaged embedding and mis/translation (Eugene Ostashevsky, Uljana Wolf, and Christian Hawkey, with the texts by recently deceased Russian poet Alexei Parshchikov added to the mix) at an art space in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, named (significantly) “Ausland.” Not feeling that all the examples I knew of were coming to mind readily, I took the question to Facebook and have started a short bibliography. The criteria for inclusion here are: investigatng the opacity and otherness of multiple languages using experimental techniques; interrogating translation as a cultural politics; and publishing the results after 2001 (with a few exceptions). The list will be updated as more titles become available (contact b/c at barrett.watten@gmail.com).

Multi-Language Poetry After 2001
(compiled by Barrett Watten and friends; in process)

Dorantes, Dolores. SexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre. Trans. Jen Hofer. Kenning Editions, 2008. “Translator’s Note.” Other language (OL): Spanish.

Funkhouser, Chris. “perdido em transcreation: chuck(l)in’ globalization.” OL: French, Spanish, Portuguese. Available here.

Hadley, Jozuf Bradajo. 2 Poems. With CD. Tinfish, 2006. OL: Hawaiian Pidgin.

Iijima, Brenda. Glossematics, Thus. Least Weasel, 2011. OL: t/k.

Kanae, Lisa Linn. Sista Tongue. Tinfish, 2001. OL: Hawaiian Pidgin.

Karasick, Adeena. The House that Hijack Built. Talonbooks, 2004. “Phat Freitag” and  the homolinguistic translation of the Sefer Yetzirah (The Book of Letters). OL: Hebrew, German.

———. Amuse Bouche. Talonbooks, 2009. “What Have You Done with My Cabbala?” OL: Hebrew.

Kim, Myung Mi. Commons. U California P, 2002. “Works.” OL: Korean.

Lang, Abigail, and Thalia Field. A Prank of Georges. Essay Press, 2010. “From a poetry translation workshop hosted by Tamara Foundation in Paris, 2008. OL: French.

Stalling, Jonathan. Yingeleshi: Sinophonic English Poetry and Poetics. Denver: Counterpath, 2011. OL: Chinese.

Torres, Edwin. The All-Union Day of the Shock Worker. Roof, 2001. “A Nuyo-Futurist’s Manifestiny.” OL: Spanish.

———. The Popedology of an Ambient Language. Atelos, 2007. “The Impossible Sentence”; “Transla-lation-tion.” OL: Spanish.  

Tuntha-obas, Padcha. composite. diplomacy. Tinfish, 2005. OL: Thai.

Zolf, Rachel. Neighbour Procedure. Coach House, 2010. “Innocent Abroad.” OL: Hebrew, Arabic.

[More entries t/k]

 

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