[Wgcp-whc] Roubaud readings: Note, links, and first group

Fri Mar 13 19:10:09 EDT 2009

Dear Friends,

Before giving a short account of our up coming activities, I would  
like to congratulate Richard Deming for having won the 2009 Norma  
Farber First Book award. That book is called _Let's Not Call It  
Consequence_ (Shearsman, 2008). For more information please visit  
http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/

Congratulations Richard!

Now, yet again, onward ...

On Friday, 27 March, 3pm-5pm, the working group in contemporary  
poetics will meet at WHC116 to discuss select poems and prose works  
by Jacques Roubaud in English translation.

On Monday, 30 March, 3pm-5pm, the WGCP will convene a special session  
at the Beinecke Library (rm?) with Jacques Roubaud (in English).  
Directly following our conversation, Jacques Roubaud will give a  
brief reading at the Yale Bookstore (in Frenglish), sponsored by   
Cécil Cohen of the World Languages Center.  The meetings and readings  
are open to all.

The readings selected for these sessions are numerous, but short.  
After providing a short lists (in descending priority) of what to  
read for our 27 March meeting and thereafter,  I will briefly outline  
some of  the context behind those selections. The second and third  
group of suggested readings will follow under separate cover.   
Additional links are provided at the bottom of this email.

A. READINGS: short list

First group (poems and poetics)

EXCHANGES IN LIGHT (stay tuned for note signaling availability of  
this volume at the WHC 116)
CIRCLES IN MEDITATION (prose poems)
COMPOSE, CONDENSE, CONSTRAIN (essay)
POETRY&ORALITY (essay)

Second grouping (on Stein)

GERTRUDE STEIN GRAMMATICUS (essay)
Gertrude Stein and the making of Frenchmen (essay)

Third grouping (novel project)
excerpt from THE LOOP (prose) (trans Jeff Fort)
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/03/fiction/an-excerpt-from-jacques- 
roubauds-forthcoming-novel-the-loop

afterword from THE LOOP (essay) (by Jeff Fort)

B. context

Jacques Roubaud is an eminent French poet, novelist, translator and  
essayist.  A leading member of the Oulipo, he has long practiced a  
wide variety of constraint based procedures in composing the books  
that were supposed to take their place in a fully realized (and  
admittedly idealized) literary project which, according to the multi- 
volume novel* which tells its story, came to him in a dream in 1966.  
The list of titles that participate in this lifework are ample and  
wide-ranging in nature and genre; a selected bibliography of JR's  
works to date may be viewed here:   http://www.oulipo.net/oulipiens/ 
docs/jr-bibliographie-1967-2006

Among his many other interests (Troubadour poetry,Japanese court  
poetry, Mathematics), Roubaud has a long standing investment in  
English literature and contemporary American poetry. His English is  
very good, despite what he says to the contrary. With Michel Deguy,  
he published an important anthology of contemporary American poetry  
(Vingt poètes américains, 1980) and has translated works by the  
Objectivists, David Antin, Lyn Hejinian, Joan Retallack, and Keith  
and Rosmarie Waldrop.  He's also translated Lewis Carroll's "The  
Hunting of the Snark."  But, for the occasion of our meeting with him  
at the Beinecke, it should be noted that Roubaud is a dedicated  
reader of Gertrude Stein and one of her most respected French  
translators. The attached PDF entitled SteinGrammaticus is an English  
translation of a talk he recently gave about Stein's poetics. I have  
also attached an article about "Gertrude Stein and the Making of  
Frenchmen" (RRHubert) for those of you who are particularly  
interested in Stein's influence in France.

Just this spring, the sixth and final volume of  "the great fire of  
london" (*the general title of aforementioned multi-volume novel)  
appeared in France, printed in full color. In the US, this April, the  
second volume of that novel, THE LOOP (Dalkey Archive Press), is  
going to appear in translation, and this is in part the occasion for  
Roubaud's current visit to the US. That long prose work elaborated a  
series of visible and invisible constraints, the most obvious of  
which is a tendency to digress. The attached PDF entitled LOOP  
contains, near the end, a short excerpt from this new translation;  
and the PDF entitled Afterword, is the translators note about that text.

Also this Spring, Cole Swensen's La Presse is publishing a volume  
entitled EXCHANGES IN LIGHT. Copies of that book should be made  
available to group members within a week. It is a series of  
conversations about, well, the nature of light.

Two additional short essays and one poem sequence complete the list  
of readings included in this missive. "CIRCLES IN MEDITATION" are  
prose poems excerpted from _The plurality of worlds of Lewis_, and  
they are the most classically 'poetic' of the items included  
herewith.  COMPOSE&CONDENSE is a concise statement of Roubaud's  
poetics. POETRY&ORALITY is a short argument about the multiple lives  
of poems, some of which is rephrased in the following sonnet, which I  
offer (in translation) in conclusion this list.

Cheers,

Jean-Jacques

		Meaning

The written meaning wRitten, the oral, aural;

     The hand passing on the page riddles its surface

     With (w)holes, a sandy-screen where the eye bears witness,

     While, borne of those same spreading rays, the choral

Air fills with present sounds, which the page effaces.

     The private and public meanings are sack racing,

     Their wills under constraint, they are interlacing

     Fearful noises, from inside, outside such places.

Of this, nothing but this, and all of this, at least

     One can say: how rare the trusted who do not cease

     Observing the entirety. Whatever thought

Upon it’s thrown, a poem remains ever fast,

     Impervious to opinion, its sense is wrought:

     It is woof and warp of words by a voice gaze cast.

												By Jacques Roubaud (from Chruchill 40)

The Working Group in Contemporary Poetics meets in Rm 116 of the  
Whitney Humanities Center from 3-5, roughly every other Friday.  This  
group is open to all visitors and interested parties. Feel free to  
spread the word. To sign up for punctual email notices, please go to:  
http://beineckepoetry.wordpress.com/working-group-in-contemporary- 
poetry/

C. LINKS.

For further information about the OULIPO and Jacques ROUBAUD visit  
some of these sites:

Official OULIPO webste
http://www.oulipo.net/

essay: "A defense of Poetry" by J. Roubaud
http://international.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/
index.php?obj_id=366&x=1

Poems:

“Lipo: 1st Manifesto,” by François Le Lionnais (Trans. W. Motte)
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/article/show/80

Poems   in   Oulipo (Ou-x-po) dossier  (ed. Jean-Jacques Poucel)
http://www.drunkenboat.com/db8/index.html

Dossier about Roubaud's arborescent prose "the great fire of London"
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/casebooks/introduction_london

"On Reading Jacques Roubaud" (by John Taylor)
http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/article/show/136

BIO
Jacques Roubaud has been a member of the Oulipo since 1966. Now  
retired, he has been a Professor of Mathematics at the University of  
Paris X Nanterre, and a Professor of Poetics at the École des Hautes  
Études en Sciences Sociales. His books include: ∈ (signe  
d'appartenance) (1967), Quelque chose noir (1986), 'Le grand incendie  
de Londres' (1989), La Boucle (1993), Poésie, etcetera: ménage  
(1995), La forme d'une ville change plus vite, hélas, que le coeur  
des humains (1999), Churchill 40 (2004) and, with Florence Delay,  
Graal théatre (2005). Many of his works are available in English,  
including The Form of a City Changes Faster, Alas, than the Human  
Heart (Dalkey Archive, 2006; Translation Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop).

ps- for those of you who read French and are interested in Arthurian  
Romance, contact jean-jacques.poucel at yale.edu to attend a short   
discussion of the Delay/Roubaud play version of Galaad scheduled for  
Friday March 27, 6pm.

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