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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Dear Friends,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Before a give an account of our last session of the WGCP, I
wanted to say that copies of the latest poetry collection by our next visitor,
John Koethe, are now available at the Whitney Humanities Center.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The book is ROTC Kills and can be found
on the bookshelves opposite the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>His book of essays on poetics should arrive any day—though obviously
delayed now by the recent storm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</span>Get your copy—free for any member of the WGCP—soon, as they tend to
disappear quickly. We will next meet on Nov. 9<sup>th</sup> at 3-5 PM in our
new room—B04—in the basement of the Whitney Humanities Center. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Here is Koethe’s official bio: John Koethe was born in San
Diego on December 25, 1945. He received an A.B. from Princeton in 1967 and
a Ph.D. in philosophy from Harvard in 1973. Since then, he has
taught in the philosophy department at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, from which he will retire as Distinguished Professor in
January 2010. <br>
<br>
His writings include eight books of poetry: Blue
Vents, Domes, The Late Wisconsin Spring, Falling Water, The Constructor, North Point North: New and Selected Poems,
Sally's Hair, and Ninety-fifth Street; two books on
philosophy: The Continuity of
Wittgenstein's Thought and Scepticism,
Knowledge and Forms of Reasoning; and a book of literary essays: Poetry at One Remove. <br>
<br>
Koethe has received the Frank O'Hara Award, the Kingsley Tufts Award, and
fellowships from the Guggenheim foundation and the national Endowment for the
Arts, and was the first Poet Laureate of Milwaukee. He was the 2008 Elliston
Poet in Residence at the University of Cincinnati and will be the Bain-Swiggett
Professor of Poetry at Princeton in the spring semester of 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Here is an interview with Koethe:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21926">http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21926</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">And here is a filmic version of his poem “Chester.”<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qld5fAtcmQ">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qld5fAtcmQ</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><br></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13px; "> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">+++<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">We met last Friday, October 26<sup>th</sup>, to discuss the
work of the highly lauded German poet Jan Wagner. <span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>The poet joined us for this conversation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We began by discussing his
influences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Early on, he seemed to
be working with a German as well as a British tradition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The latter came in large part from a
high school teacher who was particularly passionate about Shakespeare. His
German influences were Georg Heym (especially his Ophelia poems <a href="http://hor.de/gedichte/georg_heym/ophelia.htm">http://hor.de/gedichte/georg_heym/ophelia.htm</a>),
Rainer Maria Rilke, Gottfried Benn, Georg Trakl, Bertolt Brecht, and Peter
Huchel (editor of the important journal Sinn
und Form) with German expressionism being a particularly strong force
shaping his poetics. He also mentioned what he feels is an underappreciated
poem, “Weltende” by Joakob von Hoddis (and this can be read here <a href="http://german.berkeley.edu/news-events/german-after-class/poetry-corner/jakob-von-hoddis-weltende/">http://german.berkeley.edu/news-events/german-after-class/poetry-corner/jakob-von-hoddis-weltende/</a>)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Amongst the Anglo-American poets that he was being exposed
to, Wagner found himself drawn to Dylan Thomas, and then Paul Muldoon, Seamus
Heaney, W. H. Auden, W. B. Yeats, and Ted Hughes. Later Charles Simic and James
Tate would become important as well.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Interestingly, Wagner seemed to indicate that his influences
maintain a hold on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He had no
indication that early influences were burned away as he got older, but folded
into an increasing set of forces that could come from any direction—the past,
his contemporaries, conversations, and so forth.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>He indicated that he felt no anxiety when it came to
influences, but that these were elements that all interacted in his work,
sometimes more evidently than others. This was reflected in his sense of the
situation of contemporary poetry and poetics in Berlin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He indicated that the community there
has trebled in size and scope over the last 10-15 years and that will it is
very heterogeneous in its make-up, there doesn’t exist a strong sense of
competition of antipathies among schools or camps, since there isn’t the same
nodes of activity defined by ideology or aesthetics. The various poets in
Berlin draw from a wide range of sources and traditions, but these all exist
sympathetically in that city. He acknowledged that there are been a time where
there had a been not exactly a void of poetry in German, but that there had
been a period in the 70s, 80s, and even into the 90s, when poetry in that
country was finding its new possibilities and so was diffuse and underdetermined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Thomas Kling and Durs Grünbein appeared
in the 1990s and raised the profile of German poetry at home and abroad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These two (along with a few others, of
course) helped create new energy for the art, which resulted in a new
generation of poets realizing that there were models at hand to draw from and
other poets around them to whom they could turn for conversation. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Wagner said that from the Anglo-American strain of
influence, he was able to find a focus on the everyday and the at-hand that was
important to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The scale was
more specific and in that way was a useful alternative to the weight of the
German expressionists. There sense of traditional forms was also useful to
him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Wagner suggested that while
some of his peers feel that traditional forms prevent freedom, he feels that
the conscious avoidance of forms would be a far worse loss of freedom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He discussed the fact that he doesn’t
set out to write in a traditional form, but that during the process of drafting
that form starts to insert itself as a way of framing the poem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The fact that he begins to draw on such
conventions after he begins illustrates why for him to be able to use any
form—whether open or traditional—is a measure of freedom he wants available at
all times. He also discussed the fact that for him the image and scenic
particulars in a poem are his first priorities and that the music coalesces around
that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The music becomes the way
that he can undergird the images in order to emphasize given aspects and
elements. This was surprising given the intense lyric elements of his poems—one
might think that he composed primarily by ear.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">We discussed the reasons why he eschews capital
letters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As most people know, in
German the nouns are capitalized, but Wagner never employs them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He explains that while this might be a
nod to some older forms of experimental writing, that practice also allows him
to avoid giving any single word emphasis in a way that comes from a grammatical
form imposed beyond or outside the form he himself is composing in a given
poem. It also allows him the doubling of meanings that can be activated because
of the momentary slippage in wondering if a word is being used as a noun or a
verb. Again, his hope is for an openness that allows for various possibilities.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Again and again, it seemed that Wagner was interested in
maintaining an openness to forms, influences, topics, and ideas and that poetry
becomes a means for maintaining this receptivity to a wealth of possibilities.
It was a fascinating discussion about his work as well as his sense of what it
means to be a poet writing in present-day Berlin.<span style="mso-spacerun:
yes"> </span>It was a terrific, open and opening conversation, and we all
join in thanking Jan Wagner for meeting with us to engage his work.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">I will write again next week to give a fuller sense of our
next visitor and to let you know when his book of essays arrives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In the meantime I will paste below word
of a reading that is occurring tomorrow night.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Onward,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">Richard Deming, Group Coordinator<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">+++++++++++++++++<o:p></o:p></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p style="font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); ">Poetry Reading with
Anthony Madrid</span><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); "><o:p></o:p></span></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 13px;"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Thursday, November
1st at 7:00 pm in Linsly-Chittenden 317 (63 High St)<o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none;
text-autospace:none"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 13px;"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:13.0pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">The next
reading in the Grad Poets Reading Series will feature poet Anthony Madrid,
author of the chapbook The 580 Strophes (2009) and the
full-length collection I Am Your Slave Now Do What I Say (2012).
He has written in forms such as the ghazal and rhyming quatrain, bringing a
contemporary, associative, and surreal sensibility to received forms. A PhD
student in the University of Chicago graduate program in English language and
literature, Madrid’s study of poetics and American poetry resulted in his
dissertation “The Warrant for Rhyme.”<o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:13.0pt;mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:
none;text-autospace:none"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 13px;"><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: rgb(26, 26, 26); font-size: 13px;"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Books will be
available for purchase ($15 cash/check only). More information: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/events/496334843719439/"><span style="color:#1C48BB">http://www.facebook.com/events/496334843719439/</span></a> or
email Justin Sider (<a href="mailto:justin.sider@yale.edu"><span style="color:#1C48BB">justin.sider@yale.edu</span></a>).</font></span><span style="font-size:14.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Arial"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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