Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 9 (Laura (Riding) Jackson)

Jackson, Laura (Riding)
The Poems of Laura Riding

Purchased at Talking Leaves...Books, I think–most likely for a course with Charles Bernstein. I guess this should have been filed under "J" for Jackson. It's all very confusing. Sorry, Laura. In my library, you are Riding, at least for now.

I always think of Charles Bernstein when I think of Laura (Riding) Jackson. He was always a big promoter of her work. I also think of Carla Billiteri, briefly a classmate of mine in Buffalo, who wrote quite extensively on Jackson.

I never really think of the author or her poems, however.

I always associate them with someone else thinking or writing or talking about them. I read them in graduate school, but they never made a huge impression on me. I like a poem here and there, but for the most part I find them rigid and overly abstract.

I like this one, though.

Dear Possible

Dear possible, and if you drown
Nothing is lost, unless my empty hands
Claim the conjectured corpse
Of empty water–a legal vengeance
On my own earnestness.

Dear creature of event, and if I wait the clock,
And if the clock be punctual and you late,
Rail against me, my time, my clock,
And rightfully correct me
With wrong, lateness and ill-temper.

Dear Scholar of love,
If by your own formula
I open heaven to you
When you knock punctually at the door,
Then you are there, but I where I was.

And I mean that fate in the scales
Is up, down, even, trembling,
Right, wrong, weighing and unweighing,
And I mean that, dear possible,
That fate, that dear fate.

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 8 (Charles Reznikoff)

Reznikoff, Charles
Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff

Purchased at Talking Leaves...Books.

I remember first reading Reznikoff in the basement archive of the Segue Foundation in New York. I remember reading from a copy of the anthology The Other Side of the Century, edited by Douglas Messerli, which contained selections from Holocaust. I was profoundly moved by these poems.

On one of my first trips to Talking Leaves, my wallet stuffed with student loan cash, I bought this book. It was only after I brought it home that I discovered that the word "Complete" in the title was qualified by the fact that it excluded Holocaust, Testimony, and several other works by Reznikoff. I was disappointed, to say the least, because neither of those books were easily available outside the library.

I've since read them in there, but have never owned them.

Another memory is of discussing the famous image of the "girder, still itself among the rubbish" in a seminar with Charles Bernstein. I think we discussed it in the context of George Oppen, though, for whom the line was something of a talisman. Or maybe it was a lecture on the Objectivists.  Not really sure. Anyhow...

from Poems 1918-1975: The Complete Poems of Charles Reznikoff

from Jerusalem the Golden

51

The dead tree at the corner

from the gray boughs of which bark has fallen

in places and all the twigs–

be thankful, you other trees,

that, bare and brown, are only leafless

in a winter of your lives.

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 7 (David S. Reynolds)

Reynolds, David S.
Beneath the American Renaissance

Purchased online.

I actually did begin my dissertation before leaving graduate school, believe it or not. It was going to focus on American poets writing prose about history, with chapters on Olson, Emerson, Whitman, Susan Howe and William Carlos Williams. I wrote the Olson chapter and I was at work on the Emerson chapter when I decided to move in a different direction with my life. Thus, I must have purchased this while I was working on the Emerson chapter.

Emerson is such a blank wall in my mind. I read all of his writings, several critical works, and a biography. Yet, when I think of Emerson the ideas that become images in my mind tend toward a blankness I can't quite explain. It's not that I don't remember what I read, but that what I read does not lend itself to the kind of enduring image creation typical of most writers I've spent a lot of time with.

Oddly, the one image that pops into my head right now is of John Travolta in "perfect." He plays a hip Rolling Stone journalist writing an article about the exercise craze. In one scene he quotes "Self-Reliance" to  Jamie Lee Curtis, an aerobics intructor, and suggests that the angle of his article will be that the new emphasis on fitness in American is actually a flowering of Emerson's thought.

Hmmm. Is this self-reliance? Or just a crotch-shot?

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 6.1 (Kenneth Rexroth)

Rexroth, Kenneth
American Poetry in the Twentieth Century

Purchased used, either at Rust Belt Books or at 7th Street Books in NYC. I can't remember which. I am inclined to believe the latter, as I have a vague recollection of acquiring it before I left for Buffalo.

It's funny. I have an unusually clear view of path that Rexroth took into my consciousness and how my understanding of him clarified and changed over time.

I think I first read about him in a biography of Kerouac. In it he was described more as a Marxist political figure with many cultural interests. I think it said he was a translator. But he was definitely portrayed as being older than, outside of, and inferior to the Beats with which he surrounded himself.

I then remember reading about him as an important translator. I think I bought this book around that time and got to read some of his opinions on various poets.

Later still, in graduate school, I became aware of the central role he played among the Berkeley renaissance poets.

Still later I read about all the stuff with Creeley and so on and how this at first turned everyone against Creeley and then later turned those same people (Levertov and Duncan, especially) against Rexroth.

So the movement in my head is of a a marginal figure to a central figure to a marginal figure once again.

Ok...I have rush to work. Until next time, dear readers...

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 6 (Kenneth Rexroth)

Rexroth, Kenneth
One Hundred Poems From The Japanese

I was about to write that I had purchased this at Talking Leaves, but now I am not so sure. A vague impression has crept into my mind of having held this book in my hands while standing in a Barnes & Noble somewhere, possibly Sarasota, Florida, where my mother lived for many years.

I do recall that we lived in our house in Black Rock at the time. I remember reading the book in bed in that house, and that I may have purchased it in the same spirit I bought all those books by Pam Rehm, that is, the poems in here are quite short and I did for a time study that form looking for useful models.

I may have bought this for another reason, though.

After reading Creeley's biography, followed by the Duncan/Levertov Correspondence, both of which spell out in great detail the affair between Creeley and Rexroth's wife, how they ran off together, even took the Rexroth children with them, and the terrible rift this caused, not just between Creeley and Rexroth, but between Creeley and Duncan and Levertov and Jess and the whole SF scene.

I may have bought it because I realized that I hadn't really read much Rexroth beyond a book of his literary essays.

I may have been thinking about all of this when I was standing in the poetry section of the B & N Sarasota. I may have said to myself, hunh, maybe I should read this.

I may then have stepped forward to counter, purchased the book, and driven back to my mother's house to read.

But this is all speculation.

from One Hundred Poems From The Japanese

I passed by the beach
At Tago and saw
The snow falling, pure white
High on the peak of Fuji.

Yamabe No Akahito

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 5.3 (Pam Rehm)

Rehm, Pam
The Garment In Which No One Had Slept

If what I said yesterday is true, and I am not certain it is, then it is likely I bought this online around the same time I bought To Give It Up and, possibly, Gone to Earth, that I was reading a lot of "minimalist" writers six or seven years ago and discovered that I liked Rehm's work and so bought several of her books at the same time. It's all a bit of a blur. I have no competing narrative to counter this, so it must be true.

Though I did not mention it before, I seem to remember reading this book in the Segue archive at the same time I read some of her other work. This one was published by Burning Deck, which was one of what was then only a handful of small presses that printed the work of innovative writers in perfect bound editions. You probably could have counted them on two hands: Roof, Burning Deck, Sun & Moon, The Figures, O Books, Edge, etc.

That number has skyrocketed in the last decade. I could not begin to name all the presses working to get out this kind of work today.  It's kind of amazing, especially given how few people actually read this stuff. It's as if the market has grown up in which the poet is both the producer of the work and the consumer of his or her own reputation. Or to put it another way: poetry is produced not to be read but to create some other form of cultural capital, i.e., reputation, status, etc.

Are we all cannibals, then?

from The Garment In Which No One Had Slept

The Multiplicities

Requiring that I submit no
absolute eye; not a
matter of amount, but effect to
form–in sleepless,
I know
not urge but pursuit
and the restraining

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 5.2 (Pam Rehm)

Rehm, Pam
To Give It Up

I am not positive, but I think I bought this online. I have a vague recollection of having bought two or so books by Rehm after having been sent a review copy of Small Works. In fact, I think at the time I may have been working on my first book, which was comprised of all small work, and so was reading a lot of authors working in that vein.

As I mentioned the other day, I remember reading it in the basement offices of the Segue foundation in New York when I worked there as an archivist in the mid-nineties. I also remember how impressive it seemed that a young poet had a perfect bound book, had won the national poetry series, etc. There was a kind of aura around those books and authors then because there weren't so many of them.

It's hard to get that same feeling now because of the deluge of publications and prizes that have sprung up in the last decade or so. Not that I am complaining, just noting that some of the aura of being a "published" or "prize-winning" poet has worn off as a result. The words sound very different now.

from To Give It Up

For His Laments Upon A False Image

White upon white you knew him
ONly embarrassed, you questioned
His nobility for you had lost
All grip and radius from any
Center that you could not bow
Your head but faced him, asking
That he tell you exactly who he
Thought he was       Oh how such
Pride tries a spirit's faith
The bloodless words that are
Couraged from pity will never find
A road to the City of Peace

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 5.1 (Pam Rehm)

Rehm, Pam
Gone to Earth

Sent to me by the publisher.

There's a little bit of creasing to the back cover. Not sure how that happened. Then again, maybe I did not get this from the publisher. The word "Poetry" is written on the first leaf, followed halfway down the page by the number 389044. Maybe I bought this online somewhere.

I used to get review copies of all the new books from Flood Editions, and often I would write reviews of them in Artvoice. But then Artvoice told me they were sick of poetry reviews and that was the end of that. I still get review copies now and then, but not like I used to. I do get books from all the authors who come to town for Just Buffalo.

I'd say I acquired ten percent or so of my library for free.

from Gone to Earth

from Let Me Enter

After a night of hesitation
the snow has come

A slipping path

I can't decide what I need most

Revelations or rest

I just want to be stilled
by love

to such a depth
that I'm forgotten

Among the flowers

To die for what is not mine

Your meaning is upon me

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 5 (Pam Rehm)

Rehm, Pam
Small Works

Sent to me by the publisher a few years back.

I saw Pam Rehm read in New York once. It was in 1997. I was just about to leave for Buffalo and I remember that Garrett Kalleberg introduced her at the Segue Foundation. In the weeks afterwards I browsed through her books in the basement of the building, where Segue kept it's archive. There were two books on the basement shelves: To Give It Up and a chapbook called Piecework.

I found a postcard in the back of this book with a black-and-white photo of the author. She has long, straight black hair and she is wearing a white, sleeveless button-down shirt with a floral pattern. She appears to be sitting in the cab of a tractor or a Bobcat or some such. She holds the controls of the machine in her hands and is staring straightforward into the camera, a very slight smile, almost a grin, breaking across her face.

from Small Works

Acts of Will

Let me open up
like morning down my spine

and find that I have found

no clear route
no evident map of destination

only a constant disappearing
into the days allowance

AIMLESS BLACKOUT

Folks, Aimless Reading is shut down today to protest 

the above named acts, which threaten internet freedom everywhere.

Contact your representatives in congress and tell them to stop

SOPA and PIPA.

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 4 (Salvador Redonet)

Redonet, Salvador
El Ánfora Del Diablo

Acquired in Cuba a little over ten years ago -- maybe eleven, now, or, gulp, twelve. It was in 2000 or 2001. Time do fly, don't she? Anyhow, I don't recall if I met the author or not. The name does not ring a bell. He may have given it to me or I may have bought it off the table of Cuban books available at the festival. Running late today....see you tomorrow.

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 3 (Nicholas Ray)

Ray Nicholas
I Was Interrupted: Nicholas Ray on Making Movies

Purchased in the Amazon Marketplace. I don't have much to say about this book. I never finished it. I think Ray expressed himself on film and in person in ways that don't always come across on paper. The book has some great moments, but not enough of them to keep me reading.

from I Was Interrupted

Say it's a rainy night. You're waiting on the street corner, for a guy or a gal. And the first thing you say when that person comes up is, "What time is it?" Do you realize how many ways you can say "What time is it?" Ask yourself: Am I reprimanding her? Am I blaming her? Am I putting her down? Am I tell her I am going to strangle her? Am I telling her she's done it again? That I'm fed up? That she's right on time, and we're going to have a ball? What am I saying? What am I really saying?

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 2.2 (Tom Raworth)

Raworth, Tom
Clean & Well Lit: Selected Poems 1975-1995

Acquired when I worked at the Segue Foundation in NYC, publisher of Roof Books and thus this.

I wasn't sure if that was where I had obtained this until I opened it up and discovered inside a catalog from 1996 or 7. It also contains a photocopied excerpt from the October/November 1997 issue of the Poetry Project Newsletter that highlights a review of Clean & Well Lit and a title by Laura Moriarty. It was written by Chris Stroffolino.

Hmm...the date on that review, though, leads me to believe that my first impression was correct. I moved to Buffalo in August of 1997, which means this review did not actually appear until after my arrival. This leads me to conclude that I bought the book in Buffalo, sometime after the Fall of 1997. Probably 1998.  As I mentioned the other day, I remember him reading in Buffalo around that time.

That said, I remember distinctly taking a copy of this book home when I did work at Segue. It's entirely possible that I simply borrowed it and then returned my copy after I'd read it. I never saw Tom read in New York, but everyone always referred to him as that poet who reads his poems really fast, as if that was all there was to it. I guess it's hard for people to think too far beyond their initial impressions of art or artists.

Anyhow, it looks like the catalog is from my time in NYC. Roof was about to publish the XUL reader. I remember this coming out while I was still living there. They were also about to publish We Speak Silent, by Hannah Wiener.

from Clean & Well Lit

Out of a Sudden

                                (Riva san Vitale, August 30 1995)

the alphabet wonders
what it should do
paper feels useless
colours lose hue

while all musical notes
perform only in blue

a lombardy poplar
shadows the ground
drifted with swansdown
muffling the sound

at the tip of the lake
of the road to the south

above in the night sky
scattered by chance
stars cease in heir motion
poppies don't dance

in the grass standing still
by the path no-one walks

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 2.1 (Tom Raworth)

Raworth, Tom
Caller and Other Pieces

Given to me by the publisher, Rod Smith, during the first Buffalo Small Press Book Fair.

I remember wandering around the book fair all day, returning again and again to the table occupied by Edge Books, which was manned variously by Rod, Mel Nichols, Gary Sullivan and Nada Gordon, all of whom had arrived in town a couple of nights earlier to read at Big Orbit Gallery. Kevin Thurston had brought the whole group to town to do a Flarf performance the night before the fair.

I remember after the fair going to eat at India Gate restaurant. We commandeered a table that ran nearly the width of the room, with seating for about 30 people. I have photos of it. In one, you can see that I sit at one end of the table. You can only see the back of my head. Far in the background, at the other end of the table, you can see Rod, hair slightly gray, eyes glowing flashbulb red.

from Caller and Other Poems

Envoi
I could go on like this all day
Ti-tum ti-tum and doodly-ay
With every now and then a glance
To see if I've still on my pants
And if I have, if that stain' jism
Or just a trace of modernism.

For isn't this what poetry is?...
A raincoat over similes
You've seen before... Flash... look again
The same. No need to strain your brain
Simply recline on the chaise longue
And listen to the rhymes go bong.

And on like this ad-infinitum
With a metrical change or two to brighten
The gloomy rhythm of these stanzas
(Metaphor a Belgium for my Panzers).
Let those who think that piss is water
Sup deeply this insipid Porter.

Aimless Reading: The R's, Part 2 (Tom Raworth)

Raworth, Tom
Collected Poems

Purchased at Talking Leaves...Books, I think. I am not one hundred percent certain.

I think I first met Tom Raworth at the Creeley's firehouse in Buffalo. My memory is of him giving a reading in the living room.  He's been to Buffalo many times since I've been here. Once he read in the Steel Bar series. Another time he read for the Creeley celebration at Babeville. He may even have come back the following fall for the second of the Creeley celebrations. I saw him again last spring when he read for an Olson celebration put on by the University.

During one of his readings, which took place towards the beginning of the Afghan war, I remember he used a hand-cranked music box through which could be threaded sheets of paper with little "chads" poked through them, and that, when cranked through the box, would pluck musical notes, much like a player piano scroll.

He'd written out the names of U.S. military operations like "Enduring Freedom" on long, thin sheets of white paper, through which he'd punched holes along the lines and contours of the letters in each phrase. He then read the phrase aloud before running it through the music box, making actual music out of military double-speak.

from Collected Poems

No Music

to rise steadily with reduction
was the theme revealed
outside a circle of suburbs

incapable of different history
to produce a backfire
when small and tender

passed by, paused, into top gear
from a position far too close
to tolerate the fury of opulence

bones lie across the country
covered in rare mixed leaves
unable to keep them

to choose the surest gain