I return to the vexed question of autobiography, which in earlier times I believed one should “start writing” only when all other options—of world transformation, for instance—had failed. The two key terms are brought together in the 1973 cover of The World 28, the “Autobiography Issue” edited by Lewis Warsh. As I recalled when Lewis died late last year, I first met him in Mendocino, on his way down the coast to Bolinas, where I visited him before he moved back east. In his editing of The World, he wanted to radicalize autobiography not as a genre but as a mode of writing. Writing from an immediate perspective of “personhood” in any genre was of interest, from poetry to fiction to memoir, journal entries, letters, portraits, and snapshots.

Autobiography would be the royal road to writing per se; there was a tradition and consensus that “self/life/writing” was what there was to do, in fact was all that could be done. For a brief while there was in fact a kind of period style of autobiographical self-discovery, nothing like the persona poems of the workshop but evoking a tradition from Rousseau and the romantics, Zukofsky’s “the words are my life,” Beat spontaneity, and New York School everyday life. The consensus—and it was not long lived—was that “into the company of self it all returns,” one might say. Warsh’s 1973 project, bringing together writers of several diverse schools, was the highpoint of that moment.

I was the early Language writer in that group, in company with Clark Coolidge, Bernadette Mayer, Tom Raworth, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Bill Berkson, Anne Waldman, all poets who would appear in the first issues of This, but also Diane Di Prima, Kenward Elmslie, Lee Harwood, Harris Schiff, and John Wieners. The issue should be reprinted in its entirety, to reflect on the question of writing that Lewis proposed: where the fact of writing and the events of life are seen as nearly identical. What historical circumstances obtained for that to be possible, desirable, likely? But there is also a moment of transition here: from person to language—at one pole the iconic representation of personhood, in condensed and presentable form, and on the other the endlessness of scribbling in letters and journals, a fascination of writing per se.

At the pole of iconic personhood is the cover by Alex Katz, a vigorously line-drawn self-portrait, or the sketch of Ted Berrigan by Joe Brainard, more tentative and wondering. Both conveyed an ironic presence that would be a hallmark of New York art in that period, continuing to the present by the work of Chuck Close and finding historical precedent in the career-long exhibition by Alice Neel. In the work of these earlier artists, there is a nasty underpinning to the “presentation of self in everyday life”; not a question of realism, warts and all, but something less quantifiable but undeniable.

Close’s large format, “in your face” aggressivity may be questioned, via masculinity critique or feminist condemnation, but it is broken up by the technical difficulty of its rendering in nonimagistic “pixels” that magically add up to the gestalt of a face (and convey the difficulty of execution due to Close’s disability and “facial blindness”). With Neel, the variance of style and clashes of color render unstable any fixity of person, an effect to be highly valued in this age of Selfies. Tending toward Close’s effects, Katz’s unapologetic iconic selfhood takes no prisoners through its brutally effective rendition. More in the direction of Neel’s portraits, Brainard’s Berrigan is in transition, an eternal moment of presence that conveys an aspect of nonidentity, never to be the same. In each of these works, there is a strong countercurrent to any unified presentation of self. A kind of “empty effect” exists in Katz, a sketchiness in Brainard.

I want to connect these values to aspects of autobiographical writing that Warsh attempted to bring together in his issue. On the one hand, a writerly proliferation of meanings at the scribbling pole of autobiographical writing: everything is fascinating, in flux, an ephemeral presence that is locked in place by the fact of inscription alone.  On the other, an effect of emptying out around the poetics of the name, the author, the ego scriptor: if the interest is really in language per se, something is taken away from the intention that authorized it. In the New York School we have an arbitrariness of names, canonized by Frank O’Hara and Berrigan, and this is given a West Coast interpretation in the work of Philip Whalen and Joanne Kyger (continuing on with Norman Fischer and Stephen Ratcliffe). Language writing would move in an other direction: toward obliteration of the Self,  immersion in inscription, the material text—placing autobiography “under erasure” but still there. Warsh’s “Autobiography Issue” is the moment they come together in a marvelous synthesis, before they went in separate directions.

Looking at my work in the issue, two journal entries from first days in San Francisco, I am astounded at how thoroughly I attempted to write the self while dismantling it simultaneously. After Breton, “personhood is elsewhere,” and it is figured in the object world that could smash and interrupt it—the “truck labeled SMISER” first of all. There is, as with Close and Neel, a kind of masculinity critique in this gestural self-portrait, readable from this distance in every moment of radical insufficiency. If there was going to be a person, that would be its ground. An entirely different register of personhood is given in the next work in the issue, Aram Saroyan’s “The Bolinas Book.” Here, the New York School emptying out of the name—and its persistence—is mapped onto the community of poets and their charmed lives on the Mesa. The iconic moment was ephemeral: it would not last; Saroyan’s text is one of the best registers of its seduction. I remember “Joanne,” as a call, a name, a face, a person. And there was no person more present than Joanne, whose work celebrates that empty effect. Between the materialist finality of 70s San Francisco, only starting out on its long decade, to the glimpse of an eternal present: that was 1973. “Orange flares on a hill, lead curtain going down.”

Notes

1.6. The World (1973). “April 5”; “March 20”.
in “Autobiographical Issue,” ed. LEWIS WARSH
tm, 2 pp.
cover, fm, pub work, xer, 2 pp.; cover, 1 p.

2.4.2. Aerial, ed. ROD SMITH (2016). “Hejinian’s Ethics”: research.
CHARLES ALTIERI, “Contemporary Poetry as Philosophy: Subjective Agency in John Ashbery and C.K. Williams,” xer w BW notes, 15 pp.
———, “Lyn Hejinian and the Possibiities of Postmodern Poetry,” xer, 6 pp.
———, “Some Problems about Agency in the Theories of Radical Poetics,” xer w BW notes, 16 pp.
CHRISTOPHER BEACH, “Poetic Positionings: Stephen Dobyns and Lyn Hejinian in Cultural Context,” xer, 17 pp.
MARJORIE PERLOFF, “John Cage’s Dublin, Lyn Hejinian’s Leningrad: Poetic Cities as Cyberspaces,” xer w BW notes, 11 pp.
———, “How Russian Is It?: Lyn Hejinian’s Oxota,” xer, 21 pp.
JULIANA SPAHR, “Resignifying Autobiography: Lyn Hejinian’s My Life,” xer, 11 pp.

3.8.1. CPITS (1984–86). Montera Junior High (Oakland).
“Up in the Air: Poetry from Montera Junior High,” BW and PAULA GOCKER, Mrs. Lundgren, Mr. Peninngton, Mrs. Carson, Spring 1984, 3 cps.
“Potential Autobiography,” Mrs. Lundgren, 9th grade, Spring 1985, 1 cp.
“Tub: The Poem Is Going to Be Inside the Tub,” CARLA HARRYMAN, 9th grade, Ms. Lundgren, Spring 1986, 1 cp.
“Post-Lunch Impressions,” BOB PERELMAN, 9th grade, Ms. Lundgren, Spring 1985, 1 cp.

5.1.7.2. how2 (2008). Tremblay-McGaw, Robin. “Hive and/or Dark Body of Friendship: The Grand Piano”.
ROBIN TREMBLAY-MCGAW, “Hive and/or Dark Body of Friendship: A Response to The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography”
printout, 6 pp.; tm, 13 pp.
TREMBLAY-MCGAW >> BW, 3 emails, 7 pp.

5.2.3. Soup (1981). Silliman, Ron. “Modes of Autobiography”
RON SILLIMAN. “Modes of Autobiography.” Review of So Going Around Cities by TED BERRIGAN, My Poetry by DAVID BROMIGE, and My Life by LYN HEJINIAN
xer, 5 pp.

7.1.1. MSS (70s). Davies, Alan. Poetry and hybrid writing.
ALAN DAVIES
“from Days In Journal,” tmx, 3 pp.
“Idiosyncracies,” tmx, 13 pp.
“THE / SCRAPE / OF / FLESH . . . ,” tmx, 7 pp.
“Works To Be Performed, Not Published,” tmx, 9 pp.
“Outside outside,” tmx, 3 pp.
“Reciprocal Autobiography,” with JAY BOGGIS, tmx, 6 pp.
“Recognition,” tmx, 33 pp.
“Notes on Recognition,” tmx, 5 pp.
“Thinking Split Thighs,” tmx, 4 pp.
“cow slips,” tmx, signed, stapled, 23 pp.

7.1.1. MS (1997). Scalapino, Leslie. Autobiography.
LESLIE SCALAPINO
Autobiography, tm, 60 pp.

7.1.2. Scientology (1995). Hubbard, L. Ron. The Poet/Lyricist.
L. RON HUBBARD,
Ron: The Poet/Lyricist, poetry [glossy magazine format], 122 pp.

7.2.1. MSS (1989). Palmer, Michael. “Autobiography, Memory and Mechanisms of Concealment”.
MICHAEL PALMER
“Autobiography, Memory and Mechanisms of Concealment,” marked “Talk at 80 Langton “St. / 31 July 80,” tmx signed, 25 pp.

10.1.1. research (90s). (Riding) Jackson, Laura. Essays.
LAURA (RIDING) JACKSON
“The Bondage,” xer, 5 pp.
“Dr. Gove and the Future of English Dictionaries,” xer, 13 pp.
“Interest,” xer w notes, 8 pp.
“Is There a World for Literature—,” xer w notes, 11 pp.
“Literary News as Literary History,” xer w notes, 15 pp.
“On Ambiguity,” xer w notes, 3 pp.
“Some Autobiographical Corrections of Literary History,’ xer w notes, 17 pp.
“What, If not a Poem, Poems?,” xer w notes, 7 pp.
“The Word-Play of Gertrude Stein,” xer, 11 pp.

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