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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal">Dear Friends,</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">The WGCP met last Friday (9/16) for our initial discussion
of Ben Lerner’s most recent collection of poems, Mean Free Path.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>From that discussion I have drawn a
series of questions that will be sent to Lerner prior to his visit to our next
session on Friday 9/30.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These
questions are more like prompts that will give the conversation some shape at
least in the beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I will
provide those questions below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The
session with Lerner will be from 3-5 and will meet in our usual room, #116 in
the Whitney Humanities Center. Of course, the sessions are always open to any
interested parties, so feel free to spread the word.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>Also, Lerner will be reading on 9/29<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>at 7.00 in Linsley-Chittenden 317, 63
High Street as part of the <em><span style="font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:
minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Grad Poets Reading Series</span></em>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> For a</span>ny questions about the reading (“will
it be gluten free?”), contact: <a href="mailto:sarah.stone@yale.edu">sarah.stone@yale.edu</a>, <a href="mailto:justin.sider@yale.edu">justin.sider@yale.edu</a> for more
information.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This and more info can also be found on our blog: <a href="http://wgcp.wordpress.com/">http://wgcp.wordpress.com/</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">In terms of additional “Lerner links”:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A useful interview with Lerner (largely dealing with his new
novel) is available here:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_lerner">http://www.believermag.com/exclusives/?read=interview_lerner</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">And an illuminating reading of sections of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mean Free Path</i> (with a Q and A) is here:</p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Lerner.php">http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Lerner.php</a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">One last matter to mention—at the last session we toasted
Jean-Jacques Poucel, who will soon be departing for the University of K<span style="mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria">ö</span>ln
for a fellowship that will keep him in Germany until July. This past session is
the only one Jean-Jacques will make this year.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>Jean-Jacques was a fellow founder of the WGCP back in 2003
and has been an ongoing convener of this group.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>His presence, guidance, wit, and charm will be sorely
missed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Good luck
Jean-Jacques!</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Thus,</p><p class="MsoNormal">Richard Deming</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p>+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Throughout <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mean Free Path</i>,
the concept of interference (and the term itself, perhaps) begins to
destabilize in that so many variations of interference occur (from culture
jamming to miscommunications to utterances overheard, white nose and so forth).
How would you define interference and did that change in the course of working
on the poems?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What values
(positive as well as negative) adhere to that for your poetics? Or, to put this
another way: how is interference different from resistance?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">A broader question might deal with your sense of form
(especially since poetic form as well as physical form are elements that are addressed
throughout the poems, explicitly and implicitly).<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>What is form?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Or how did you arrive at the form of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mean
Free Path</i>?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This questions
ranges from the specifics of your compositional practice as well as the largest
sense of form.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In terms of poetic
form, at some level is form a submission to larger structures of thought,
feeling, ideology? Is this only true of the employing of traditional forms? How
is it also true of breaking free of even more recent lines of thought (say,
Language poetry)?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">What role or function does beauty play in your sense of
contemporary (and especially post-avant-garde) poetry?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">One question that comes up frequently with our guests has to
do with the density and frequency of allusions.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mean Free Path</i> is
replete with literary artifacts, remnants, echoes.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>How conscious of these (along with pop culture references)
do you expect the reader to be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Do
you imagine a responsibility for the reader to hunt these down? If not, why
not?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Tied to the previous question is one that has to do with the
differences between the work on the page versus the work in the ear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>On the page, the patterning that you
employ is immediately apparent and the reader instantly works that into his or
her reading process from the very beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>In the space of a live reading, this patterning isn’t so
evident—at least can’t be held all at once.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>What are the differences for you between the page and the
poetry reading?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Did you imagine
people hearing this as you were writing the poems?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mean Free Path</i>
seems to be attempting to represent the experience (we might call it the
contemporary condition) of being caught between frequencies and caught in a
self-conscious dilemma—aware of all the social forces acting upon and forming
our subjectivities and yet only having our subjectivity as that which we can
experience things. In what ways, is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Mean
Free Path</i> creating a kind of moral vision—a claim that this is 1) how the
world is and 2) this is how one must be in order to experience that world with
eyes and ears wide open, as free as possible from illusions?</p>
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