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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><img id="a7ae86f5-4b8f-4af6-945e-a34b07de68a1" height="240" width="284" apple-width="yes" apple-height="yes" src="cid:BB0BA456-7614-4C90-9D1A-A62DA54AA79A@gateway.2wire.net"></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Dear Poeticians,</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">I am writing to give word about our first session of the
semester, which took place on Friday September 14<sup>th</sup> from 3-5. I will
also add at the end some information about two readings that are happening next
week that are relevant to this group.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Sadly, they happen at roughly nearly overlapping moments.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">We met on 9/14 to discuss the work of the scholar and poet Michel
Delville.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Delville is one of the
foremost authorities on the prose poem, and this was our focus for most of the
afternoon. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Delville began by
indicating that he has had occasion to revisit his earlier thinking on the
prose poem because of a new book project that will<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>include a chapter on this same subject.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He indicated that some of his thinking
has changed since he began thinking about looping as a trope that is helpful in
describing some of Gertrude Stein�s strategies, particularly in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">Tender Buttons</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Delville is himself a working musician,
specifically a guitarist, and looping as regards to an effect that is the repetition
of segments of sound or music that are incorporated into a larger context of
music.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These repetitions end up
having to be seen not merely as neutral but as being part of a developing of
structure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>While these loops initially
sound the same, as the context changes, their effect changes as well.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">This trope was something that Delville hears in Stein�s work
as well, which means that each repetition keeps foregrounding the question of
context and structure within a text. This for him changes his sense of Stein�s
work, which he had initially read as drawing on a cubist method in which her
prose poems, with their departure from the strictures of prose (in terms of
argument on one hand and narrative on the other), were able to represent
through the collage like effect of fragments, phrases, and repetitions an
experience of simultaneity in viewing an object.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>In thinking of looping, the fragments don�t suggest a kind
of fractured cohesion, but a return that continually redetermines context.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">The implications of this are that Delville has begun folding
into his thinking the way that prose deals with the possibilities of
abstraction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Furthermore, he sees
the prose poem as uniquely situated at the site where conventions of both (or
either) prose and poetry can be troubled. The prose poem is not lineated
(obviously) and it has no history of a regular meter.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>As prose, it need not adhere to familiar rhetorical patterns
nor present a story that does not push against the features of narrative that
create a sense of wholeness or completion.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">When pressed whether he could come up with a positive
definition of the prose poem, Delville said that as he sees it the prose poem
can only be classified in terms of what it is not. Length, for instance, was
one such element that one cannot determine as being a �prose poem� length. In
that way, it remains a subversive form because it cannot be classified under
clear criteria that aren�t compared or contrasted with poetry or prose.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">In many ways, the most compelling question was whether or not
the prose poem is a form or a mode or a genre. Delville himself posited this
question, saying it is the one that he most wrestles with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Because the criteria of a prose poem is
not standardized nor settled, its conventions cannot be repeated again and again
and so genre seems inexact. There are no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style:normal">ur</i>-examples
of prose poems that are the defining models against which all other prose poems
are judged, so it seems unlikely to be a form per se.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>Indeed, each time, a text that is a prose poem begins the
argument about whether or not it is a prose poem or whether it is some form of
errant prose. The fact that this question is activated each time leads Delville
to believe it is a mode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This
raises the productive question of what constitutes a mode�how is a mode
distinct from a form? In classical terms, the mode distinguishes a manner of
writing, and this fluidity does seem characteristic of the prose poem. It then
seems clear why Stein is a recurring interest motivating Delville�s sense of
the trajectory of the prose poem as a mode that is always exploring the
possibilities of its overturning of conventions and expectations.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">As is clear, this was an intense and provocative discussion
that raised question not only about the prose poem and how one might chart its historical
conytext, but how contemporary poetics still engages the ongoing parameters of
the conversations it has with its various<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>branches.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We thank
Professor Delville for his comprehensive and engaged discussion of his work and
we will contnue to think about its implications.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Our next session isn�t until October 12.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We will be reading a selection of poems
by Jan Wagner, one of the most important poets of his generation in
Germany.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Within the week, I will
circulate these poems (in translation) by email.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>Wagner will joining us then on October 26<sup>th</sup> to
discuss his work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And it may be
that his main translator will be able to come that day as well.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Here is Wagner�s official bio:</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><strong><span style="font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:
minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;font-weight:normal">Jan Wagner </span></strong>was
born in 1971 in Hamburg, Germany, and has been living in Berlin since 1995. He
is a poet, a translator of English poetry (Charles Simic, James Tate, Matthew
Sweeney, Simon Armitage, Robin Robertson), a literary critic, and was, until
2003, a co-editor of the international literature box, <em><span style="font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:
minor-latin">Die Aussenseite des Elementes</span></em>. He published the poetry
collections <em><span style="font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Probebohrung im Himmel </span></em>(�A Trial
Drill in the Sky�; Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2001), <em><span style="font-family:
Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Guerickes
Sperling</span></em> (�Guericke�s Sparrow�, 2004), <em><span style="font-family:
Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Achtzehn
Pasteten </span></em>(�Eighteen Pies�, 2007) and <em><span style="font-family:
Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Australien</span></em>
(2010) and co-edited the comprehensive anthologies of young German language
poetry, <em><span style="font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Lyrik von Jetzt. 74 Stimmen</span></em>
(�Poetry of Now. 74 voices�, 2003) and <em><span style="font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Lyrik von
Jetzt zwei. 50 Stimmen</span></em> (Berlin Verlag 2008). A selection of his
essays, <em><span style="font-family:Cambria;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin">Die Sandale des Propheten. Beil�ufige Prosa</span></em>
(�The Prophet�s Sandal. Incidental Prose�), was published in 2011. For his
poetry, which has been translated into thirty languages, he received various
scholarships and literary awards, among them the Anna-Seghers-Award (2004), the
Ernst-Meister-Award for Poetry (2005), the Wilhelm-Lehmann-Award (2009), the
Villa Massimo residency of the German Academy in Rome (2011), the
Friedrich-H�lderlin-Preis of the city of T�bingen (2011) and the Kranichsteiner
Literaturpreis (2011).</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">And this Tuesday at 6 PM the writer and critic Lynne Tillman
will be giving a reading by a sister group, the Working Group in Contemporary
Culture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The reading will be held
in Linsley Chittenden 102.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Then at 7:00 <span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica;
mso-bidi-font-weight:bold">Eileen Myles, Matvei Yankelevich, Darcie Dennigan,
and DJ Shaki</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"> will be
reading at the Yale Marsh Botanical Gardens 227 Mansfield St, New Haven at an
event hosted by our very own Jason Labbe.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"> </font></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Until next
time,<o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family:Helvetica"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4">Richard
Deming, Group Coordinator </font><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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