[Wgcp-whc] Waldrop session--Dec 4, minutes

[Richard Deming]

Dear Poeticians,


I bring you glad tidings of the great joy of our session on Friday,  
Dec 4th. On that day, we began our discussion of Keith Waldrop’s  
National Book Award-wining of poems, Transcendental Studies. Professor  
Olivier Brossard facilitated our discussion.


Before I get to relating the conversation of that session, I wanted to  
direct to people’s attention a short piece about Peter Gizzi written  
by our very own Edgar Diaz .  Edgar’s short essay on Gizzi appeared in  
the wake of Gizzi’s recent visit to Yale. http://www.thehydramag.com/archives/238#more-238

The article is part of a larger editorial collective Edgar is part of  
and the entire site is worth exploring.


++++++

The Dec. 4th conversation was a dynamic conversation that reached out  
to some of the most important and complicated questions posed in and  
as lyric poetry. One of the key issues in our discussion of Waldrop’s  
book was the question of method and how it does or does not shape  
reading practices. Those who had listened to the Charles Bernstein  
interview with Waldrop learned that the book’s poems were collages.   
Waldrop had several books open at hand and he would take words, lines,  
and sentences and weave them into new contexts  (the poems) and  
divorced from their original sources.

Here is what Waldrop says about the process:

I brought up a batch of books, all prose books, and no verse, no  
poetry. I stacked them on the dining room table. To write a poem I  
would take three of the books, of three different kinds: I would have  
one novel, usually a book of psychology or science or something, and  
then some third depending on what was around. I would start opening  
them and getting phrases out, sort of at random... My eyes might go  
down and light on a phrase, and I would put it in. I didn't spend a  
great deal of time doing it. I would put these phrases down, going  
from one book to another, and would make one stanza, let's say of four  
lines or so. Then I would do it again, and get another stanza of four  
lines, and when I had enough that I thought I'm tired of doing this...  
(it might be a page, it might be a couple of pages, not more than two  
or three) I would take it upstairs to type, and I would retype these  
stanzas in alphabetical order... and eventually, in a month or so, I  
had a book of poems. I arranged them alphabetically by title. You'll  
understand also, in retyping them and then reading over them -- If I  
didn't like a line or a word I could throw it out, I could change it,  
I could add something...It wasn't that I was trying to figure out  
something about collage. I was trying to find poems.
And eventually I had this book.

(I took this from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-lydon/keith-waldrop-quilter-in_b_389735.html

There is a fine streaming interview with Waldrop there as well—R.D.)

++++++


In creating the new context, Waldrop would change and alter the  
material as he saw fit. In the Bernstein interview, he indicated that  
people who had a real commitment to collage would dispute that the  
poems would count as collages.  Furthermore, the apparatus of the book  
doesn’t indicate that these are collages.  Thus, one could read the  
book and never know that the words and phrases mainly come from  
various sources.  If the poems absorb their collaged materials in such  
a way that they leave no discernible trace of the cut or suture, can  
we say that the process has no bearing on the way one reads the  
poems?  If one knows that they do, should that (can it not) somehow  
shape the meaning of the poems?  As knowing subjects, can we not read  
the poems as also commenting on their being pieced together?  In other  
words, can we read the book as commenting o the very nature of  
language as being itself a collage, that all instances of language use  
is culled from a commonwealth of language and so no word is only one’s  
own.

Brossard argues that the poems offer a lesson on reading, that they  
comment on the process of reading and meaning making.  As he put it,  
Waldrop’s work wrestles with the central and problematic question of  
“How do I say ‘I’?”  In terms of lyric poetry, the issue of  
subjectivity is perhaps the crucial one in terms of representation  
because the poems ask to consider the context of the words and lines.   
Where do they come from?  What is the context of the words?  Who is  
being addressed?  Who is addressing?  What are the contexts and  
conditions of the language that is being read?

Professor Brossard offered a bravura reading of the book’s cover,  
seeing a tension between surface and containment (tape and a cigarette  
wrapper affixed to brown paper such as a grocery bag would be made  
from), a collage by the Abstract expressionist, Robert Motherwell.  
Waldrop had seen a show of Motherwell’s work years ago and had  
suggested this work as a cover and he has acknowledged how  
Motherwell’s sense of form and the materiality in his collages shapes  
Waldrop’s own poetics.  Brossard argues that the use of the cigarette  
wrapper written in French but manufactured in the U.S. can represent  
the space of translation, and Waldrop himself is a renowned translator  
of French. At a certain level, this positions any act of reading or  
writing or speaking as a form of translation--a collaging of sources,  
references. But the wrapper also speaks to the cross-pollination of  
influence, even if in this case it is in terms of a commodity. The  
image of the faceless helmet that is part of the wrapper speaks to the  
ways that Waldrop’s poems are faceless or at least “de-face” the  
original context of the sources.  It also points out the absence of  
someone wearing the helmet. Moreover, given the radical parataxis of  
the lines, there is no clear presence of a speaking “I,” and the  
poems’ often difficult turns of syntax and reference create their own  
counter logic.  Yet, although the poems again and again suggest the  
presence of meaning, culture, and history—ghosts of an understanding  
of the poet’s own genealogies that persist and haunt the work and  
become conjuration for any reader’s own ghosts as he or she fashions  
meaning. Thus, this terrific reading of the cover informed our  
discussion of reading as always being a negotaiion with the traces of  
culture, history, and so forth that haunt our understanding.  The  
charged nature of poetry, it’s attention to the complexities of sound,  
reference, and meaning make it the perfect site to confront these  
questions.


I am attaching to this e-mail Brossard’s very useful abécédaire that  
he constructed in reading Waldrop’s book and noting some of the most  
recurring or resonant words appearing throughout Transcendental  
Studies.  This formed the provocative structure for a series of  
questions that Brossard sent to the poet. Waldrop’s responses to many  
of these questions are very enlightening.  Professor Brossard’s own  
comments, provocations, and interventions during his visit to our  
group were extremely generative and took our conversation to terrific  
heights and depths. We all join together in thanking him for his  
terrific work.


This was the last session of the semester.  When we start back up in  
the spring, our first session will be a continuation of our discussion  
of Waldrop’s book and the poet himself will join us for that discussion.

Below I will also paste a CFP very relevant to many people on this  
list.  It comes from John Cayley.  But before that, I will sign off  
for the semester.


Happy holidays and a great break to all.

Richard Deming, Co-coordinator.


+++++++++++++
ELO_AI - Archive & Innovate
The Electronic Literature Organization and Brown University's Literary  
Arts Program
invite submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2010  
Conference
to be held from June 3-6, 2010 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA
celebrating Robert Coover

Deadline for Submissions: January 15, 2009
Send to: elo.ai at eliterature.org
Notification of Acceptance: February 25, 2010
PLEASE NOTE: We will still aim to receive full papers by May 1, 2010.

For more details, please keep checking the website:
http://ai.eliterature.org

We welcome:
- Proposals for critical/academic papers relating to the topics and  
themes set out on the site. Submit an abstract - about 300 words, 500  
word maximum - with title and brief bio (indicating affiliation, if  
any).
- Proposals for performative or artistic presentations, including  
readings and artist talks. Submit a description and or artist  
statement - totaling about 300 words, 500 word maximum - and include a  
brief bio (indicating affiliation, if any).
- 'Panel' proposals - about 300 words, 500 word maximum - but note  
that these will be folded into 'Seeded' sessions. (More on this soon.)
- Proposals for the Arts Program which will focus on installable work.  
Submit a description and or artist's statement - totaling about 300  
words, 500 word maximum - and include a brief bio (indicating  
affiliation, if any).
- Alternative, innovative proposals through which we will attempt to  
diversify the format of the conference. Submit a description of about  
300 words, 500 word maximum.

NB. If you send illustrative, digitized AV materials, either keep  
these (byte-wise) small and short, or send us links.




  
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