[Wgcp-whc] John Koethe to visit dec 7

Richard Deming richard.deming at yale.edu
Wed Nov 14 13:00:50 EST 2012



Dear Friends,

Last Friday the WGCP met for our first discussion of the work of poet/philosopher John Koethe--specifically his recent book ROTC Kills and his book of essays Poetry at One Remove.  From that conversation--generative, thoughtful, provocative as it was about the intersections and delineations between philosophy and poetry--I derived a series of questions.  These should give people a sense of our conversation that day.  I have sent these to Koethe and they will help give us a foundation for our next session, which Koethe himself will attend.  That will occur on December 7th from 3PM-5PM in room B04 in the basement of the Whitney Humanities Center. All are welcome to attend, even people who have never visited the WGCP before.

Also, here is a brief vide of Koethe reading his work:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bGIMOUDUaE


And finally, our own Jennifer Gross has put together a landmark exhibition of the work of Richard Artschwager at the Whitney Museum of Art in NYC.  Jennifer will be giving a talk at the Whitney Museum tomorrow night (Thursday) at 7.30 with poet/art critic/former WGCP visitor John Yau.  This is a must see event and the information can be obtained here:  http://whitney.org/Events/GalleryTalkJohnYau

In the meantime, be well on this far side of a hurricane and an election season.

Richard Deming--Coordinator


++++++++++++++++++++++++

Questions from Yale Poetics Seminar.  Meeting to occur 12/7/12, 3 PM-5PM in the Whitney Humanities Center

 

 

·      Are you a comic poet with a sense of tragedy, or are you a tragic poet with a sense of humor?

 

·      Your work often makes use of popular culture as a set of meaningful references.  Do you worry about the ways that such things (particularly technological things) are often limited to their moment?  In that way, what do you think of a poem’s relationship to a larger context of time and even ideals of permanence or universality? Given that your books have been progressively dealing with aging and mortality, this seems like a particularly relevant question.

 

·      On what might be a complementary or a contrasting note (in regards to the preceding question), we might come from a different direction: ROTC Kills has poems clearly in discussion with philosophers who may not be household names.  What do you feel is the role of allusion in a poem and how much responsibility do you feel a reader needs to take on?  What do you feel your responsibility is to the reader, as well?

 

·      What do you feel is the uses as well as limitations of abstraction in poems (Wallace Stevens notwithstanding)? Do you see yourself as an abstract poet (or at least a writer of abstract poems)?

 

·      How does language and discourse (ranging from the technical to the discursive) create a challenge for poetry? What is the function of a sentence within a poem (this question gets at the discursive tendencies of your work and looking at what you see as the formal effect of long sentences as the sense of measure rather than the line).

 

·      You have written about a number of poets whom you admire from prior generations.  Who would you see as your influences?  What way do they influence you?  How do you work with and against these influences?  What do you see as the poet’s response and relationship to larger “traditions” of poetry?

 

·      Who do you see as your most influential contemporaries?  Do you feel part of a generation or a company of writers?  Do you think of yourself as a second-generation New York School poet?

 

·      You consistently use capital letters along the left-hand margin? Does this intentionally serve to create a tension between the ongoing horizntal pull of the long sentences that you use.

 

·      What is the role of narrative in poetry?  Are you a lyric or a narrative poet? While there really may not be a such thing as a pure genre, what motivates you first or even primarily?  The music or the story?

 

·      How has your sense of poetry (yours, and generally) changed over the years?

 

·      Although you have written extensively about the differences between poetry and philosophy, how do the study and practice of these disciplines intertwine for you?
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