Entry 06: Sylvia Plath’s Collage

Sylvia Plath, collage, 1960.

Like many who identified with the epochal chasm between The New American Poetry and mainstream verse of the 50s and 60s (whose benchmark anthology was Hall, Pack, and Simpson’s New Poets of England and America), I have been skeptical about Sylvia Plath; the cult of her suicide; the Plath, Sexton, Lowell, Berryman quadriviate; and any kind of confessionalism. As mainstays of workshop writing, these figures set in place terms for the personal lyric that is as close to a norm for verse culture as we have had—to the point that it becomes a cultural norm. But in the period since Plath’s mainstream and feminist reception in the 60s and 70s, much has changed. Lyric poetry has come under pressure from Language writing, and revisionist contextual and gendered readings have opened up Plath’s poetics, allowing one to see her negativity as critical and cultural, not simply formal and expressive.

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January 15, 2010

Image 04: The Author as Site

Laura (Riding) Jackson Home, Orchid Island, Fla. Photo (c) Barrett Watten 2009.

At various points in my lectures on Laura (Riding) Jackson last November, I suggested that her work could be compared to the literal monument that the LRJ Home Preservation Project had displaced and transported from its original site in Wabasso, across the Intercoastal Waterway to Orchid Island. (Riding) Jackson’s work on language suggests an overarching project of meaning as “site,” with the act of rational definition, perhaps, plotting its contours. … More

January 14, 2010

Entry 05: Criticizing the Poet/Critic

In today’s mail came the current Critical Inquiry (36, no. 2; Winter 2010), which I earlier noticed would contain an essay on George Oppen (John Wilkinson, “The Glass Enclosure: Transparency and Glitter in the Poetry of George Oppen”). I had been looking forward to that discussion with interest, in terms of Oppen but also of where poetry criticism seems to be going in CI, after some recent questionable efforts. “Poetry” itself is still a tarnished critical category, with the New Lyric Studies and Conceptual Writing failing to provide direction.

Flipping through, as one might likely do, scanning footnotes and catching the drift, I came up short at the penultimate paragraph: a strained mention of my Constructivist Moment in the service of—what point? That the split between Oppen’s poetics of “integrity” and his Left politics remains problematic, pointing to a tendency in American poetics to presume a convergence of politics and form that collapses under scrutiny? This is the quote:

The fantasy entertained by Barrett Watten of an American “constructivist moment” seeks to arrogate William Carlos Williams and Vladimir Mayakovsky as dialectically linked forefathers for Language Poetry. Watten seems ignorant of the two poets’ meeting in an apartment in East Fourteenth Street in Greenwich Village on 19 September 1925. Mayakovsky’s reading was a profound experience for Williams, according to his biographer—a touchstone for epic revolutionary art exposing the bombast of Carl Sandburg, even if its influence cannot be discerned directly in Williams’s poetry. But Williams continued to publish both poetry and prose through the Depression and the period of the Cultural Front . . . . (237–38).

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January 13, 2010

Event 03: Laura (Riding) Jackson Home

“The House of Language: Laura (Riding) Jackson’s Rational Meaning
and the Truth of Experience”

10 AM–12 PM, Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Laura Riding Jackson House/Environmental Learning Center, Vero Beach, Fla.
Sponsored by Florida Atlantic University and the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation

Installation of text from Rational Meaning at the Laura (Riding) Jackson House, Orchid Island, Fla., November 2009. Copyright (c) Barrett Watten 2009.

On 18 November 2009, I lectured on Laura (Riding) Jackson’s culminating work, Rational Meaning, which she wrote with Schuyler B. Jackson until his decease and then finished herself. … More

January 12, 2010

Entry 04: Computer Visualization

One should inscribe the letter A on the heart of one’s shadow.
[Next], without blinking, one should gaze fixedly at the latter A [drawn] at the heart [of the shadow],
And focus one’s awareness upon [the letter A].
Then, once the eyes have grown numb [through strain],
One should look up into the center of the cloudless sky,
At which time one’s own form should become visible in the sky.
One should then know that if the head and body of this [reflected image] are intact, and [the image] is pale in colour,
This is an auspicious sign that there will be no obstacles and that one will not die [imminently].

—Tibetan Book of the Dead, trans. Gyurme Dorje (159)

GLOSS: in the midst of computer malfunction, visualization exercizes restore a sense of well being. Computers are machines for visualization exercizes, but these must not be accepted as automatic. The letter A stands out beyond the dysfunctional interface. One should stare at the computer until the eyes grow numb and the screen itself disappears. When the screen disappears, one’s own form is made visible. This is the letter A on the heart of one’s shadow.

January 11, 2010

Link 02: Harryman’s Adorno’s Noise

From Stephen Cope at Essay Press: Carla Harryman discusses Adorno’s Noise and more in an interview recently published in [Inter]sections—the American Studies journal from the University of Bucharest, Romania:
http://www.americanstudies.ro/?article=55

Links to other reviews of Adorno’s Noise:

Rain Taxi review by Kit Robinson (posted on EMU Creative Writing Blog):
http://cw.emuenglish.org/?p=204

Jill Darling’s review in HOW/2 special feature “Reading Carla Harryman”:
http://www.asu.edu/pipercwcenter/how2journal/vol_3_no_3/harryman/darling.html

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January 9, 2010

Link 01: This at Wikipedia

This, the literary magazine I co-edited with Robert Grenier from 1971–74 and continued to edit and publish until 1982, now has a Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Press. This is how the entry currently reads:

This (magazine)

For the Canadian political magazine, see This Magazine.

This is a poetry journal associated with what would later be called Language poetry.

First three issues edited by Robert Grenier and Barrett Watten (1971-1973); subsequent nine issues edited by Watten (1973-1982) who also published monographs under the imprint This Press (1974?-1986?).

External links

Barrett Watten, comp., “This 1-12 Index” (Oakland, CA: This Press, 1983). Digital facsimile edition published by Eclipse.

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January 8, 2010

Document 04: Malacosa Sighting

Location: Ozarks region; date: circa 1516; time: various.

In the 1530s and 40s, the Spaniard Cabeza de Vaca and his conquistadores followed the Mississippi River and came in contact with various Native American tribes of varying dispositions. Upon befriending the Avavares further westward they were told a most unusual tale. According to the Indians, approximately sixteen years earlier the region had been visited by another “bearded” character of unusual aspect. This fellow was called by the Indians “Malacosa” or Mr. “Bad thing” (according to the Spaniards) an accurate appellation given his proclivities. Even though bearded his facial features were “never seen clearly” or where otherwise indistinct or else clouded by a mist. This character “invaded” Indian homes by night, accompanied by a light and an electrical sensation that would make the hair of the inhabitants “stand on end.” Apparently paralyzed, the poor tribespeople would stand helpless as, armed with a “blazing brand” or wand the bearded creature would rush inside and perform intrusive surgeries upon its victims. … More

January 7, 2010

Entry 03: Mala cosa

This entry takes the place of a previous one, which turned out to be a gateway for malware. I wanted to undertake a small conceptual project, after posting Asa’s logo of Detroit “rising from the ashes,” of searching for the words “deterritorializing Detroit” and putting up the results, for use later perhaps. I did so, and listed the top ten entries, with descriptive copy: theory and techno, Arab Detroit and hiphop, globalization and Fordism were among the links.

The next morning I clicked on one, a theory blog that connected Deleuze and Guattari with Detroit techno. I checked a music site for Drexciya, a techno group from the 90s that has since disbanded—this was the entry point for the malware, which crashed the firewall and set up a fake virus protection program that simulated a virus scan, posted the results, and demanded payment as protection from further threats. Every action I took to bypass it resulted in an error message that said “program infected” or produced another popup.

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January 6, 2010