DREAM

Broken headline column:
“YOU ARE GO
IN TO END”
Allen Ginsberg dives through the space hatch.
I watch him from the rim, hear his voice
trail a statement “MAN ISSSSSSSSSS . . . . . . . . ”
as he disappears into dot-hood.
The Poets—Anne Waldman, me, “all The Poets”—float
in interstellar space—a substance I
can touch, a fine sheen. & then I’m up against the sun,
its soft orange neon glow. “THE SUN,” I say, “IS BIG!”
Pause, a chair sails silent past me & into solar radiance.
“CHAIR INTO SUN!” I remark (a parody of big
poetical remark).
Then I am back on Earth,
speed-skating on the “Power-Cones.”

—from This 8 (1977); see also Portrait and Dream, p. 154

I had come to New York with a purpose—to visit Ted Greenwald, whose health had been failing (see here), and to make contact with people and see art (see here). I was not expecting to see Bill, whom I knew had been living partly in New York but whom I had not seen for some time (not since we read at MOCAD in Detroit, an event so poorly framed and executed—not by Bill, of course, who sounded great—that I only remember it with displeasure). One of my contacts mentioned that Bill would be reading with Kyle Schlesinger at a gallery in Chelsea, and sent an email with time and place, to begin at 5:30. … More

I was in New York for a purpose—for one thing, I had not been for a while and it was time to catch up. At a conference in Boston, I received a phone call from Kit Robinson, in the middle of a session on surrealism no less, that Ted Greenwald’s health was failing. I made plans to visit as soon as the semester was over; a day was arranged, a plane flight, a hotel booking, and other appointments fell into place. I’ve outlined what I did over the four-day weekend here. The time was specified for 2 P.M. Ted was chipper over the phone: “I have an earlier appointment, but I can see you then.” He books his time like a New Yorker, I noted; I don’t, in some unstated way assuming every event is its own uniqueness, even if that has long since become unworkable as a way to manage time. (So it came to pass that I work the day shift on the assembly line of Modernity Inc., headquarters in Detroit. But what’s the difference? Differing cultural styles of time management all depend on the same passage of time.) I was nervous about the event; he had not overprepared it. … More

920x920

Bill Berkson Memorial
San Francisco Art Institute
24 July 2016

Moses Berkson
Nathaniel Dorsky
Duncan McNaughton
Mac McGinnes
Clark Coolidge
Norma Cole
Doug Hall
Joanne Kyger
… More

          Bavarian-American Academy
          Summer Academy
          Florida International University
          Miami Beach, 5–11 June 2016

Martha Schoolman
Heike Paul
Meike Zwingenberger
Margarethe Schweiger-Wilhelm
John Landreville
… More

          Berlin (23–30 May 2016)

Scott DeGregoris
Donna Stonecipher
Manfred Uhlitz
Shane Anderson
Ulf Stolterfoht
Christian Hawkey
Uljana Wolf
Florian Werner
Josepha Conrad
Dorothee Haffner
Susanne Reumschüssel

          Paris (30 May–1 June 2016)

Linda Watten
Hélène Aji

… More

Thursday, May 5

Michael Gottlieb

Luc Tuymans @ David Zwirner
Tracey Emin @ Lehman Maupin

The Tale of Tales, dir. Matteo Garone (IFC)

Friday, May 6

Michael Golston
Bruce Andrews

Unfinished @ Met Breuer
Andy Warhol, Electric Chairs @ Venus
Jean-Michel Basquiat, images and words @ t/k
David Hammons @ Mnuchin
Allen Jones @ Michael Werner
Anne Collier @ Anton Kern
Richard Serra @ Gagosian
Sigmar Polke @ David Zwirner
Mike Kelley @ Skarstedt
Jasper Johns @ Mathew Marks
Carlos Motta @ PPOW … More

American Comparative
Literature Association

Harvard University
17–20 March 2016
(after On Kawara)

Johannes Göransson
Jonathan Stalling
Brian Reed
Anastasiya Lyubas
Liansu Meng
Anthony Abiragi
Anna Horakova
Hongjian Wang
Omaar Hena
Michal Wenderski
… More

The Louisville Conference
on Literature and Culture since 1900
University of Louisville
18–20 February 2016
(after On Kawara)

Alan Golding
Aaron Jaffe
Rodrigo Toscano
Lisa Gitelman
Mat Johnson
Johanna Drucker
Lauri Ramey
C.S. Giscombe
Aldon Nielsen
Tyrone Williams
… More

Event 56: Poets Theater

From Amiri Baraka, Home on the Range

From Amiri Baraka, Home on the Range

Festival of Poets Theater
Sector 2337, Chicago
2–5 December 2015
(After On Kawara)

Heidi Bean
Patrick Durgin
Carla Harryman
Devin King
John Beer
Daniel Borzutzky
John Tipton
Jennifer Karmin
Jennifer Rupert
Chris Glomski
Peter O’Leary
Laura Goldstein
Dan Godston
Analeah Rosen … More

Barrett Watten, “The Poet/Critic:
Transvaluations of Value after Modernism”
MSA, 20 November 2015

I continue my discussion of the poetics of value in modernism (Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams) in taking up political economy and poetics as twin forms of historically specific making, twin discourses of the determination of value. For poetics as value making, let me advance that the thirty-six individual essays in our recent Guide to Poetics Journal, along with the editorial and publication work involved in soliciting, editing, rethinking, and repurposing their content, counts as such. Each essay in our Guide—for example, Ron Silliman on “the parsimony principle,” George Lakoff on avant-garde framing, Susan Howe on Emily Dickinson, Lyn Hejinian on “the rejection of closure,” in the volume’s first section—demonstrates how poetry is a value-making activity, in giving value to it. … More