[Wgcp-whc] WG/CP--End of Year wrap-up

richard.deming at yale.edu richard.deming at yale.edu
Wed Jun 4 11:43:03 EDT 2008


Dear All,


Many apologies for a much-delayed wrap-up to the year of WGCP activities.  Two
back-to-back sessions, the end of the semester, and a two-week sojourn by your
humble narrator across Northern England put the schedule of a bit.  Given that
the two final sessions are long in the rearview mirror, the reports will be
fairly short, but should still give a general sense of the proceedings.


Digital Poetics
On April 25th, we were joined by Jon Cayley to discuss his work as a
theoretician and, more prominently, a practitioner of digital poetry.  One of
the questions that we discussed was what to call this nascent artform. There
are a few possibilities, including ?electronic writing.?  Cayley felt that
?electronic? is technically a misnomer and is vaguely retrograde (in terms
of the actual technology).  Cayley identifies himself as a poet specifically
and thus ?digital poetry? is a  more useful and appropriate term to use
(allowing for the possibility of digital writing to apply to various other
possibilities.  Cayley mentioned that his recurring emphasis if on the creation
of aesthetic objects (in terms of poems) and, by extension, aesthetic situations
or experiences.  His work began as page based text years ago and he naturally
gravitated to computers by way of his interest in languages (Cayley is trained
as a scholar of Chinese language and literature).  The computer has allowed
Cayley to expand the parameters of poetry to include larger aesthetic
environments. Indeed, throughout the session Cayley displayed various works of
his that are increasingly multimedia and interactive.  In one, video provides a
360 degree panoramic view while continually moving in and out of conversations
emanating from people who appear on screen.  Meanwhile, a clock that works out
a logarithm of letters and numbers tells a constant and precise time, once the
code of substitutions is established and figured out by the viewer. In another
piece, the operator of the computer (and Cayley mentioned that he believes that
?computer? is a misnomer and that a more appropriate term would be
?programmatron??this led to a brief discussion if it might be appropriate
to think of even traditional poetic forms as programmable machines that can only
carry out the operations with which?and by which?they are programmed))
navigates through an environment of different sounds, voices, and terrains. 
These create a multi-dimensional experience of a poem that Cayley believes is
more or less an extension of classical Chinese poetic aesthetics (according to
his reading) that conceived nature and the language of poetry as integrated.

Ultimately, this led to a discussion of the fact that digital poetics is
interpretable at two very different levels?one is the level of aesthetic (or
perhaps we call it ?naïve?) encounter and the other is in terms of coding.
 The group discussed at some length the fact that a programmer would experience
Cayley?s work in a very different way and can read code not only in practical
terms abut can (and they do, in fact) have aesthetic responses to coding.
although his work is very sophisticated and complex as art, Cayley acknowledged
that his coding and programming aren?t as elegant as they might be and a coder
would see that quickly.  This prompted us to consider Cayley?s work in ways
not dissimilar to previous discussions about combinations of text and image (in
the La Prose du Transsibérien, for instance and the combination of Blaise
Cendrars?s poetry and Sonia Delaunay?s art?or even Pound?s reading and
misreading of Fenellosa?s work on Chinese characters).  We wondered about the
ways that the coding is read differently by programmers than by those who
respond to Cayley?s work as art.  The programmers are apt to ignore the art
and see the work specifically as coding.  These two experiences are very
different and yet the object of attention for either group is dependent on the
other.  In this way, digital poetics brings back the tensions of form and
content (what is it that we actually experience and is there now a new form to
consider that is the coding that makes the form of the art possible?).  If we
are only considering certain aspects of a piece and willfully ignore (or are
lacking the literacy) other aspects, is our experience of a piece at best
partial, or possibly even false. The consideration of coding as form (and not
merely a set of instructions for running a program) foregrounds these questions
of the interpenetration of form(s) and content.

In many ways, Cayley?s discussion was a first foray for the group into the
developing field of digital poetry and yet as you can see, we quickly moved to
central concerns?ones that are can?t be resolved in two hours?
time?that touch on the very nature of poetry and question of form and
aesthetic experience.

Language for a New Century
On May 2, the group met to discuss the new anthology Language for a New Century:
Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond.  We were joined by
one of the editors (Ravi Shankar, who is of course a WGCP  member of good
standing) as well as three of the poets included in the collection: Pireeni
Sundaralingam, Kirpal Singh, Sudeep Sen.  The collection is decidedly
inclusive: 400 poets are represented, each by a single poem.  We discussed the
problems and dangers of constructing just such an anthology, especially one
published by a major corporate publisher (such as Norton).  The question hinges
on the fraught politics of identity and how to both represent identity and throw
it into question, dismantle the ways that it creates and polices difference,
power differentials, and hierarchies.  One way that the editors addressed this
was to expand their parameters to include 79 American poets.  In that way, the
anthology does not seek to create a canon and serve pedagogically to introduce
Asian and Middle eastern poetry and poetics to the United States. While these
introductions do happen using a coverage , the editors work in terms of
resituating the idea of ?The East? and what that term marks and what it is
marked by.

As a way of providing the sense of Ravi?s thinking about the work the
anthology is doing, I include an e-mail that he sent after the session.  This
gives a succinct summary of some of the issues we touched upon in the group?s
discussion.

Ravi writes:
[T]he session [?]was edifying and indeed instructive in the kind of critical
inquiry an anthologist can expect. I realized, rather ex post facto, that the
tenor [?] was in line with what Ray Bianchi covered in his blog post about
the project [the post Ravi refers to is here:
http://irasciblepoet.blogspot.com/2008/05/language-for-new-century-asian-poetry.html].

I don't know if you read it, but his basic precept was perhaps one that the
group was discussing [?], which is the inclusion of so many Americans and the
post-identity politics moment that we (I assume by that royal "we" he meant
academics, not the population at large) now live in. He buttressed this by the
rather fallacious analogy that Peter Gizzi would not be included in an
anthology of Italian poetry, a notion that I take issue with on a number of
fronts, perhaps most trenchantly based on my experience traveling in Mexico
over Spring Break and having trouble re-entering the country in Sherman,
Arizona. Apparently the border patrol guard there hadn't heard of the
post-identity politics moment that we're in. Somehow, much as I love Peter, I
don't expect he would have trouble using his US passport.

But that's beside the point I suppose and fodder for a larger discussion. Rather
than intentionality though, I think I might have spent more time on the notion
of disarticulation, in Homi Bhaba's sense (from an interview in Artforum, now
over a decade old): "My point here, about a particular kind of subject that is
constructed at the point of splitting, is part of a wider point about the
construction of authority. In situations where cultural difference -race,
sexuality, class location, generational or geopolitical specification -- is the
linchpin of a particular political edict or strategy, even the oppressor is
being constituted through splitting. The split doesn't fall at the same point
in colonized and colonizer, it doesn't bear the same political weight or
constitute the same effect, but both are dealing with that process. Actually,
this allows the native or the subaltern or the colonized the strategy of
attempting to disarticulate the voice of authority at that point of splitting."

I can only speak for myself, but that kind of splitting was integral to my sense
of the project - to simultaneously inhabit the duplicitous yet necessary
ghettoization of the hyphenated identity while arguing for a discreteness, a
lack of ethnic identification in the core constitution of self. Not sure if
that makes sense, but it's a paradox about which I was keenly aware throughout
the making and remaking of the book.
***


One added concern we touched upon is the way that a corporate publisher can
absorb and commodify the very efforts of Ravi and his co-editors by marketing
the book on the strength of identity.  This therefore limits identity to an
exoticization of ?Otherness? while making that ?Other? familiar and
recognizable, thereby remaking poetry into a form of travel writing or
literature as armchair tourism.  In this we signaled the ways that poetry
operates within ideological spectrums even when it tries to critique
normativity.  The session was an especially poignant one, since so many members
remarked on how the anthology foregrounds the problematics of identity and its
politics and indicates how thinking about poetry isn?t merely academic, but
has real political and ethical implications.  Ravi?s guests reiterated that
in their own comments about the possibility of a global community of
poetics?a space of consensus and dissensus, but dialogue nonetheless.  Many
thanks to Ravi, Sudeep, Kirpal, and Pireeni for their participating in this
discussion with such far-reaching implications. Since the three poets are only
represented by one poem each, I thought people might like to read more work by
our guests.

Pireeni Sundaralingam, http://www.wordandviolin.com/pireeni/index.htm

Kirpal Singh
http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/post/singapore/literature/poetry/singh/singhov.html

Sudeep Sen
http://www.sudeepsen.net/


And finally, I pass on a note from WGCP member Liansu?I will paste it below. 
The note refers to ways to provide aid to those involved in the recent
devastation in China.  Although the list typically refrains form circulating
anything not directly related to poetics, the interests and clear relationship
of group members here and at large justify including this note.


Otherwise, this is the final broadcast of the 2007-2008 year of the seminar. 
Many thanks to all our visitors and guests and especially to those who continue
to participate in the sessions throughout the year.  The group?s success comes
from the intensity, productivity, and collegiality of our ongoing discussions. 
The co-coordinators would also wish to take this opportunity to thank our
sponsors, the Whitney Humanities Center and the Beinecke Library.  We wish also
wish to thank the respective directors of these institutions, Maria Menocal and
Frank Turner, whose help and encouragement support the group?s efforts and
make what we do possible.

Have a great summer and until August,

Be well,

Richard Deming, Seminar Coordinator

****************

Dear Friends,

Several groups of Chinese poets and scholars are organizing donations for women
who badly need help after the earthquake in China. With the help of the
donations, Poet Zhai Yongming and her friends have been buying medicine and
feminine products and driving to the earthquake area to help people there. Poet
and scholar Zhou Zan (Zhou Yaqin) is coordinating the fund raising.

If you read Chinese, you may visit Wing women's poetry forum for more
information about their efforts. Zhou Zan is posting the names and donations on
the website to keep the process transparent. If you email me your names I will
post your donations and names there too. The link is

http://bbs.poemlife.com:1863/forum/list.jsp?forumID=60

For people in the States, there won't be transfer fee if you deposit a check
(make the check payable to "Yaqin Zhou") to Zhou Zan's account in a local Citi
Bank or mail the check to

Yaqin Zhou
Account Number: 5262 1910 4011 1519
Citibank
Broadway & 96th St
2560 Broadway
New York, NY, United States
10025


Yaqin Zhou's Citibank No.: 5262 1910 4011 1519; routing no. ?021000089

Please forward the message to as many people as possible. Your help is deeply
appreciated.

Best,
Liansu


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