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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">Friends,</font></p><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">last Friday, we met for our first of two sessions devoted to the work of Jan Wagner. The conversation was wide ranging and touched on issues of translation, tradition, German history, and the strategic use of naivete as an ironic device. Below I will paste a serious questions posed or extrapolated from that discussion. These are being sent to Wagner, who will join us in person next Friday, October 26th from 3PM to 4.45 (we will end a bit early so as to make it possible for members to also make the talk by Joan Retallack about Gertrude Stein that will occur at 5 that same day. </font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">These questions are just prompts that will help provide an opening structure to our conversation with one of contemporary German poetry's foremost figures.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><br></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">Before I give you those questions, I want to draw your attention to two events that are occurring this week that might be of interest.</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">+++++++++</font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; "><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">Dear All,<br><br>please join us for the next meeting of Yale's Working Group on Arabic Philosophy on Friday 19 October 2012 @ 2:00pm in Room B04 of the<br>Whiney Humanities Center(53 Wall Street).<br><br>Abdelkader Al Ghouz (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">Bonn International Graduate School, Oriental and Asian Studies</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">) will present: "Reason in Contemporary Arabic Philosophy. Al-Jabiri's Epistemological Approach to Tradition".<br><br>For more information see the attached flyer or write to<br></span><a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(51, 51, 153); text-decoration: none; ">matteo.digiovanni@yale.edu</span></a><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">.<br><br>Best wishes,<br>Matteo Di Giovanni </span></p><div><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; "><br></span></div><div><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: 'Courier New'; ">++++</span></div></font><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><strong>Please join us at the Beinecke Library for a poetry reading by C. S. Giscombe, on </strong><b>Thursday, October 18th, 4:00pm.</b><o:p></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; ">C.S. Giscombe is the author of books including <em>Prairie Style, Two Sections from Practical Geography</em>, <em>Giscome Road, Here, At Large, Postcards</em>, and <em>Into and Out of Dislocation</em>.<em>Prairie Style</em> was awarded an American Book Award by the Before Columbus Foundation; <em>Giscome Road</em> won the Carl Sandburg Prize, given by the Chicago Public Library. In 2010, Giscombe received the Stephen Henderson Award in Poetry from the African American Literature and Culture Society; he has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fund for Poetry. He is a member of the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley.<o:p></o:p></p><p style="margin-right: 0in; margin-left: 0in; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><strong>C. S. Giscombe, Poetry Reading</strong><br>Thursday, October 18th, 4:00pm<br>Beinecke Library, 121 Wall Street<br><em>Yale Collection of American Literature Reading Series</em><br>Contact: <a href="mailto:nancy.kuhl@yale.edu" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline; ">nancy.kuhl@yale.edu</a></p><div><br></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>++++++++++++++++++</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>And finally, it is with deep, deep sadness that we note the recent passing of Maria Rosa Menocal. Maria was a longtime director of the Whitney Humanities Center and she was a tremendous, sustaining supporter of the WGCP. She was a powerful force for the humanities in general and a bright light of the intellectual community at Yale and beyond its walls. This is a true loss and she will be profoundly missed.</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Sincerely,</div><div>Richard Deming, Group Coordinator</div><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"><br></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">Questions for Jan Wagner (Note: the "you" is , of course, directed to Wagner)</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">Who are the influences that you are drawing from and how do
you imagine/conceive of your relationship to tradition?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What, for you, does tradition entail
and what is the contemporary poet’s (or at least your) debt or resistance to
it?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">What does it mean to a contemporary German poet? What issues
of history, contemporaneity, what notions of form and community does a contemporary
German poet negotiate?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">You have been translated many times and you yourself have
translated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Moreover, you work
closely with at least one of your translators.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>What do you see as your relationship to your poems once they
have been translated? And what are you translating when you translate—form?
Some “essence” of the work?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">You have a deep affinity for British and American
poetry?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why is that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What do you gain from this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What perspectives do these offer you
and how do you work them into your poems? How does that locate in terms of your
contemporaries?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">Who do you see as your most influential contemporaries? This
can offer a shape of your understanding of contemporary German poetry as well
as the idea of community and one’s present moment.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">What is your sense of “voice” and/or perspective (and we
might say a “fictive” point of view) within a poem?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">What do you find you yourself cannot address in poetry?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This need not be more any “moral”
reasons, but elements that you might find historically overdetermined—or even
underdetermined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>For instance,
your work seems generally apolitical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Is there a reason for this?</font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">To ask a very specific question (and this is tied perhaps to
the previous), you refer to the Tyrant’s dream (or a tyrannical dream--tyrannentraum).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>What are we to make of some of the
implications that might have to classical Greek drama or German history?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And so is that poem, “Giersch” (“Spurge”)
a covertly political poem?<o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="'Times New Roman'" size="4">Can you say more about your defense of “like”? Just how is it you feel that it invites
the reader’s participation? How do other tropes facilitate the reader’s participation
or resist it? And could you say more about your decision not to capitalize? In
what ways do the lexical marks on a page create hierarchies? Do these power structures reveal
themselves in other grammatical and syntactical conventions? </font></p>
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