Notley

 One of my favorite poets, Alice Notley, has died. I could probably do a search through my blogs and find what I wrote about her.  Back in a minute.

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https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/1055932257464975902?blogID=1055932257464975902&q=Notley

 Alice Notley, writing about Frank O'Hara, says that poetry "exists to communicate with this entity" [a secret self]. "Its thoughts have the shape of speaking, but it doesn't have to explain to itself as much as one does to another person: it doesn't, e.g., think in prose fiction sentences at all. It sees while it thinks, self-observes often, constructs scenarios of triumph out of vulnerability, etc... etc... that it melts in and out of."

Now this surprises me because it is what I think too, but I don't think my (our) conception of poetry is widely held, necessarily. It is specific to New York School poetics. Not that other poetries don't do this in their own way, get in touch with a secret self and channel a kind of stream of consciousness.  It is odd that people misname O'Hara's poetics as a kind of casualness, something easy to achieve even though it is not. Look at how Notley's own prose imitates that tentative search for a definition.  She isn't writing those "prose fiction sentences.'  

The phrase "prose fiction sentences" is hilarious, because I can picture exactly those kind of sentences. Sometimes I narrate my life to myself in those sentences, imitating the cadence of a New Yorker short story, and they could make up an ironical poem.    

I don't know how other people see poetry. Maybe it's a kind of object to be crafted, or a serious message dressed up in poetical garb. Often, people write trying to make something sound like a poem, which is what you have to do, of course, but they go about it in the opposite way.  In other words, it should sound like a poem (not just prose!), but not in a "poetic" way as conventionally conceived, with the shimmering shards of light. Prosaic and colloquial elements enter for their oddness or jarring quality, not just as a default because the writer doesn't know any better.  

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 I was looking at some poetry by Alice Notley; I was trying to find something like that as fearless and honest in Spanish poetry, so I thought of Isla Correyero.  I had seen a book by her on my shelf the day before so I took it down. I found that the intro quotes me:

"Está en vanguardia cuando no queda nada de las vanguardias; así lo ve Jonathan Mayhew, quien la cuenta 'entre los que se mantienen, todavía, fieles a las premisas de la modernidad cultural.'"  

The book came out in 2018; I don't know when I bought it, but it looks like it is from La Central (Madrid or Barcelona).  I don't remember if I read the intro and saw my name before now, but it is a weird sensation. It sounds like something I would have written, but I'm not sure where, probably in The Twilight of the Avant-Garde.  

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 I was in some kind of literary gathering. A person there, though supposedly connected somehow to NY School poetry, had never heard of Alice Notley's Descent of Alette. I approached this person and was mock-indignant. I happened to have my copy of it in my backpack and I brought it out and began to pontificate in a kind of obnoxious way about it. I pointed out that many people didn't like the quotation marks around every phrase, but that these had a prosodic effect, etc....  [A dream]

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 I'd like to learn the trick of going on, 

Not ending the poem too soon in a fit of impatience

or fear, like I always do. But what am I afraid of 

anyway?  Making a mistake? Too late for that.

"Outwearing my welcome"? But we're all on borrowed time. 

Alice Notley say fearlessness is the key to the poetic voice.

That and a sense of the live presence of the person on the page,

a rare thing almost nobody gets or even thinks about. 

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Alice Notley's poem "The Prophet" seems to be an imitation/parody of Koch's "Some General Instructions." She has advice like "I'ts not a good idea to be a taxi driver if you don't drive at all well. However / You can probably manage to so so for some months, before you finally quit, / Without killing yourself or anyone else." How do you parody an already parodic style? Notley manages it by exaggerating the ridiculousness of the advice while introducing a darker tonality. It's brilliant!

Rescuing this post from another blog...

 I've never smoked, and I've always hated the smell of cigarette smoke. 

When I was 14 or 15, however, I once stood at some kind of outdoor event at a park, on a summer evening. (A musical performance or a play, I don't remember what.) A few feet away from me stood a woman in her late 20s or early 30s. She was fairly short and wore little make-up, and seemed quite absorbed in the performance, whatever it was. She was smoking cigarette after cigarette, and I made no attempt to move away. When I got home, of course, my shirt smelled strongly of smoke, which would have ordinarily been repulsive to me, but I slept in that shirt that night. Its repulsiveness, in fact, contributed to the erotic charge I felt all night long, associated as it was with this particular woman I had been standing next to for maybe an hour, and who probably was not even aware of my presence.  

Eroticism, for me, has often had that double movement of presence and absence, of attraction and repulsion, and of metonymic displacement. Without that smell there would have been no experience to be remembered now. I haven't thought of it for years.

Message from the Dean

 Dear Colleagues,

It is with profound sadness that I share the news of the tragic loss of Sarah Milgrim, killed in last night’s attack at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. 

Sarah, a cherished alumna of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and a bright light in our Environmental Studies and Honors programs, was a thoughtful, passionate student who embodied the very spirit of inquiry and compassion that defines The College. 

As Chancellor Girod said earlier today, “In the face of such senseless violence, I know our KU community will come together to support each other and honor Sarah’s memory.” We must lean on one another in this difficult time and carry forward the values we all stand for.

Today, the heart of KU is broken. But, together, we will remember Sarah and uphold the legacy of kindness, courage, and care she leaves behind.

With deepest sympathy,

Arash Mafi

Executive Dean, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences

Undeniable

 Suppose I have many Keith Jarrett CDs (from the days when I bought CDS) and also many tunes downloaded from the more recent years, on streaming services. I also listen to these a lot. The proper answer to who my favorite piano players are can be answered by my actual behavior. If the answer I give you verbally is different from my behavior, then I am fooling myself, or trying to make myself look different from I really am.  

The same it true of everything else on an individual level.  I cannot claim that like to read novels more if all my books are poetry. The same thing holds at the collective level.  

Another joke

 A doctor is telling an elderly patient about the results of some tests:

"I have some bad news for you: you have cancer."

The man sits for a while and then says.  "Ok. Is there anything else?"

"You have Alzheimer's..."

"At least I don't have cancer."  

I found this reader's report I wrote a while back peer reviewing an article...

 I recommend publication of this article without substantial changes: it is rare that I see an article manuscript that needs so few revisions. 

 

It is very well written, and clear in its objectives. The only stylistic changes I would recommend are (1) fewer sentences in the passive voice and (2) less obtrusive “sign-posting” of the “in the pages that follow” variety. Since the prose is careful and elegant throughout, it wouldn’t be difficult to make these discursive markers blend in a bit more with the development of the argument. By the same token, the use of the passive voice sometimes persists over the course of an entire paragraph in a way that detracts from the over-all eloquence and clarity of the prose. (These are optional changes from my perspective.)   

 

The article has a strong, clearly-stated central idea: ... The two books of poetry analyzed, though by authors who aren’t associated with each other, are comparable in several respects, since both books involve trips to such developing nations... . As a result, the comparisons never seem forced; in fact, the two poets don’t seem as different from one another as one might expect (based on the social networks to which they belong). I would actually not emphasize as much the fact that these poets are not often associated with one another: that doesn’t necessarily make the argument stronger, but I would leave that up to the discretion of the author as well.  

 

The author of the article has meaningful things to say about both .... , through careful but never over-wrought analyses of their poems. Another strong point is the integration of theoretical concepts and of the previous criticism on the poets. In conclusion, this article is rock-solid and fully deserving of publication in ....    

Spelling b

 I decided to use another method for the Spelling Bee puzzle. I look for the pangram, and enter no other words. If I go right for the word with the seven letters, I can often see it almost immediately, whereas if I just randomly put words down, I do not see the pangram until I have found many other words. Yesterday, I found loaded right away, but then broke my new rule and started looking for other words; it took me a long time to find the other pangram: diagonal. 

It is funny how the mind works. Today and the day before yesterday I just looked at the seven letters and the answers popped into my head.