[Wgcp-whc] WG/Poetics--Fri March 25 Kent Johnson visit

[richard.deming at yale.edu]

Dear Group,

First welcome back, everyone, from spring break and it seems like 
spring itself may have finally arrived.  Also, I’d like to remind 
everyone that the Working Group in Contemporary Poetry and Poetics is 
reconvening Friday to discuss the work of Kent Johnson, who will be 
joining us himself for the day.  The packet of readings is now 
available in the usual spot at the Whitney Humanities Center. I will 
provide additional readings at the very end.

Some people may recall that we have already looked at Johnson poem, 
back during a session in the fall that we did on poetry and the U. S.  
war in/on Iraq.  Johnson is a poet, translator, and provocateur who 
gained some notoriety last decade for the “Araki Yasusada affair.”  
Johnson had put forward work by a Japanese poet and survivor of 
Hiroshima.  The poems were widely celebrated in many places and the 
poems were praised for their authenticity, lyrical grace, and 
poignancy.  It eventually came out, however, that there never had been 
a Yasusada.  Johnson had created him from whole cloth.  A bitter 
controversy ensued as many felt that they had been duped.  Some felt 
that the fictive persona aside, the poems still remained good, 
regardless of who had written them.  The result is a fascinating 
exploration about translation, ethics, and the authenticity of poetic 
subjectivity.  Thus, was Yasusada a hoax used to indict the poetry 
world or was Yasusada a fantastically successful heteronym?

The packet of readings is now available in the usual spot at the 
Whitney Humanities Center.  It begins with a selection from the book of 
Yasusada material that appeared, as well, selections of “traductions” 
of ancient Greek texts from a book of Johnson’s with a foward by Slavoj 
Zizek (or is it?).

Below I’m forwarding links suggested by Lucas Klein, or resident Kent 
Johnson expert.  I’ll also include a link to a recent interview with 
Johnson as well as Marjorie Perloff’s very useful essay on Yasusada, 
which appeared in the Boston Review.  Johnson is also a fine translator 
who has translated, for instance, the work of Jaime Saenz (with Forrest 
Gander—see some selections here http://jacketmagazine.com/08/saenz-
im.html).  We can imagine, then, a lively discussion of the poetics of 
translation and the politics of identity.

The discussion with Kent Johnson will be this Friday (March 25) at 1.45 
in the WHC.

Richard Deming, group secretary




First an expert from an article that appeared in Lingua Franca that 
encapsulates the Yasusada:

from Linguafranca: The Review of Academic Life
November 1996 issue, pp. 82-84
"TURNING JAPANESE: THE HIROSHIMA POETRY HOAX"
by Emily Nussbaum 
 
OVER THE PAST FIVE YEARS, major poetry journals like Grand Street and 
Conjunctions have showcased a remarkable discovery--the work of 
Hiroshima survivor Araki Yasusada. Vivid, surreal poems and assorted 
literary artifacts (letters, drains of haiku) appeared alongside a 
heart - wrenching biography: Yasusada, readers learned, had lost most 
of his family in the bomb blast. Hitherto unknown, this unexpectedly 
witty, experimental poet offered a striking new link between Japanese 
sensibilities and Western avant-garde poetics, with a style influenced 
by both renga and Roland Barthes. The writing impressed editors and 
readers alike with its brittle imagery ("When I hold by tongue inside a 
written sentence/it blisters"), so different from the sentimental 
voices of many other Hiroshima poets. Sadly, Yasusada had died of 
cancer in 1972, but his unruly notebooks, which were in the process of 
being translated, attracted enough interest to be considered for 
publication by Wesleyan University Press. 
But even as Yasusada's resume grew, a rumor began spreading in the 
poetry community: There was no Yasusada, editors whispered to each 
other--at least not in the usual, one-author-one-body sense. The same 
manuscripts submitted to poetry journals (and mailed from a variety of 
locations, including California, Tokyo, Illinois, and London) had shown 
up on the desks of prominent academics like MarJorie Perloff, but with 
a notable difference: "Yasusada" was presented as an invented persona, 
the creation of one or more people intent on keeping its origins a 
secret. Messages slowly surfaced on the Internet warning editors about 
an ongoing deception. 
ONCE WORK of the hoax leaked out, many editors who had published the 
writing--sometimes with poignant footnotes on the death of Yasusada's 
daughter from radiation poisoning--were furious. "This is essentially a 
criminal act," says Arthur Vogelsang, editor of American Poetry Review, 
which published an entire "special supplement" of Yasusada's work, 
complete with a fake "portrait" of the author, this past June. When 
Wesleyan's editors learned they'd been snookered, they dropped 
the "notebooks" manuscript cold. 
For every embarrassed editor, of course, there's a chuckling critic. 
Literary historians trumpet Yasusada's acceptance as proof of the 
American poetry community's shallow understanding of the Japanese avant-
garde. Postmodernists see it is as fitting rebuke to those stragglers 
who keep trying to roll back the rock from the tomb of the author. And 
critics of the popular "poetry of witness" school--a movement which 
champions work created in the crucible of war and oppression--are 
thrilled by the way the Yasusada writings seem to expose poetry editors 
as suckers for any writing by a Victimized Other. Writing in the Voice 
Literary Supplement, poetry critic Eliot Weinberger suggested that the 
Yasusada affair delivered a coup de grace to the idea of "poetry where 
you had to have been there." 

IN SEARCH OF THE AUTHENTIC OTHER: THE POETRY OF ARAKI YASUSADA  by 
MARJORIE PERLOFF 

http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/boston.html

Interview:
http://www.litvert.com/coyoteinterview.html

Here’s a list of some links with more works by and about Kent Johnson, 
to supplement the Yasusada and Miseries packets Lucas put together.

 http://jacketmagazine.com/bio/kent.html

http://www.litvert.com/poeticsofform.html

http://herecomeseverybody.blogspot.com/2004/09/photo-kent-johnson-left-
with-friends.html

http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/johnson_ducharme_i.html

 plus a negative review of The Miseries of Poetry: 
http://www.blazevox.org/kent-rev.htm
an article (“Hyperauthor, Hyperauthor”) by the same writer (Michael 
Atkinson) in The Believer (http://www.believermag.com/issues/200312/) 
prompted many letters to the editor. They were not included in The 
Believer, but did show up here, in Typo: 
http://www.typomag.com/issue03/letters.html. 


Also, not to overlook his political side, there’s this letter from Kent 
Johnson, in response to the recent Campus Watch controversy: 


Dear Campus Watch, 
I have recently read the diatribe on the poet and activist Ammiel 
Alcalay, published in the American Thinker on March 4.  
I am not writing this letter to argue politics with you, for that would 
be silly, wouldn't it? I am writing, rather, to ask that you add me to 
the list of American poets you are putting under surveillance. Allow me 
to briefly list some of my credentials, as I think you will agree I 
deserve to be given a file in the archives of your organization. 
I was one of the poets published in Sam Hamill's Poets Against the War 
anthology. My poem, which was widely distributed before its anthology 
publication, including by the openly Marxist journal Monthly Review, is 
titled Baghdad, and it is loosely based on the children's book 
Goodnight Moon.  

Days went by... Then, the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison 
happened, and I published a poem titled "Lyric Poetry After Auschwitz, 
Or: Get the Hood Back On." This poem may be of particular interest to 
you, since (in addition to the fact that it is accompanied by 
photographs and the music of Dean Martin) Ammiel Alcalay himself saw 
fit to send it abroad for possible translation into Arabic. I don't 
know if it has been translated yet, but the English version is 
available here, where it has received thousands of visits since its 
appearance: http://www.blazevox.org/kent.htm
 
Further, this poem is now the title poem of a collection of mine that 
is soon to appear. This book will contain numerous pieces by me (not 
everyone would judge it poetry!), all of which have some relation to 
the war in Iraq. The cover of this book will be, I think, somewhat 
original:
The infamous shot of the American soldier holding the leash which is 
clipped to the neck of the prone prisoner shall be surrounded by 
pictures of daffodils among which shall be little Cupids shooting their 
arrows inward, toward the picture. 
 
But the most important thing I wanted to say about the forthcoming book 
is this: I intend to announce in the book that all author royalties 
from the sale of the collection are to be donated to Campus Watch. I 
wish to do this (and I hope you will accept the gesture) because I 
strongly believe your proto-fascist activities are an excellent 
stimulant to the defense of American values, like civil liberties and 
other stuff. 

Also, I should tell you that I correspond with Joseph Safdie, one of 
the "leftist" poets mentioned in the American Thinker article! He and I 
almost co-edited a book of recipes and favorite dinner anecdotes by 
poets. Alas, this book idea fell through, though I now can't quite 
remember why. But someone else should certainly do it, as it is a 
wonderful idea. Oh, and I should also say that in the 1980's I worked 
as a literacy teacher in Nicaragua on two different occasions. This was 
when the Sandinista's were in power. Though I'm more or less a social 
democrat now, I was *really* radical back then. From our village, we 
could hear the Contra mortars going off almost every night. Some of my 
friends died. Then I came back and founded the Milwaukee Central 
America Solidarity chapter, which went on to do all sorts of protest 
activities.

One event we organized was called "Who's Watching You in 1984?" and 
hundreds of people attended, including numerous FBI agents. Not to get 
too sentimental, but it was at this event that I met my future wife. 
So, these would be some reasons you might wish to accept my request to 
be inducted into your files. I will be sure to send you a copy of the 
forthcoming book, which, again, shall go to support the activities of 
your organization.

 Sincerely, Kent Johnson