Tuesday, February 26, 2008

john giorno

feb 4/08

some notes from john giorno master class (a mishmash and hastily scribbled hash):

"i'm seventy years old...and i became a poet when i was fourteen...you're all poets or prose writers - there's no difference. i went to school in the 40's, the middle ages, when nothing had happened yet.

concerned poetry is 75 years behind every other art form...time to try something new."

Journal Poetry Systems - "the idea that you don't have to be the victim of publishers. use the technology, from records to phones and so forth...nothing happens by mistake"

i.e. dial a poem...now telephone hotlines for love and dating, viral and reaching into the other world.

"painting and sculpture imprisoned by money but poetry, being worthless, enters a golden age. poetry is wisdom: nothing->wisdom->sound->word (poem).

- a great poem is that which releases the wisdom in other people's mind. Buddhism not a religion (practiced by giorno) but a way to train the chaos of the mind, to distill its ability to achieve wisdom.

bryan gyson
william burroughs

their return to NYC changed his world (they hated Warhol, his previous circle)

"i abandoned the lyric (beats) and i abandoned modernism (NYC aesthetic) and i don't really know what i am doing. poetry in translation. making the 60 pp score for a publication fit a later mode."

the poetry (scores) of performance, mediated for publication in terms of the greater body of work.

silk screen versions of the poems in production

a lot of people who would have been poets, like patti smyth, wound up picking up a guitar (tom waits)

60's onward: a loving golden age of promiscuity. then aids hit, a total catastrophe. "it felt like we failed" back then a gay poet was gide or proust. "then i read Howl and it was like reading of my mind. warhol didn't have the guts: in art, being gay was the kiss of death."

importance of public arts funding for small presses: crucial for the golden age of poetry...until the days of the NEA-4 and the conservatives slowly crushed it. they fought. i continued making poetry. i'm glad they fought but that wasn't for me.

as regards community: "wonderful when you reach the moment of feedback, of performance, but i prefer to be alone when making my poems."

re: money: actually, poets never have been paid, even when they are commissioned, in any culture, ever. even the poet-lamas were some how poor lamas. hou have to decide to be always marginal. someone as famous as william burroughs in visual arts would command $3-5million per year. he had to work for every penny.

if you choose to be a poet, you choose because you can't choose any thing else. this is a life.

call for sumbit

The University of Calgary's student newspaper, The Gauntlet, and the UofC's creative works magazine, NōD Magazine, are working together to publish a creative literary insert later this March.

Which means...

Open Call for creative submissions!

Interested? Or know someone who might be?
Submit to the Gauntlet via email to- gauntlet@ucalgary.ca.

Deadline: thurs. march15. 08.

Please include a few sentences of biographical information with your submission.
Submissions over 1500 words will not be considered.

One last reminder:
NōD will be accepting submissions for Issue 8 until March 1st. Issue 8 will be viral themed. We will consider creative work that is parasitic, replicative, or related to computer viruses, sickness or epidemics.

Quickly, spread the word!

Cheers,

Ian Kinney,
Editor, NōD


--
NōD Magazine
Department of English, University of Calgary
2500 University Drive N.W.
Calgary, AB
T2T 1N4

Monday, February 25, 2008

WJT Mitchell

Jan 17.08

Talk on upcoming book, 9-11 to Abu Graib, War of Images: Cloning Terror.

what an extraordinary attendance. I feel guilty for having arrived in time to get a seat. especially now that all my profs are showing up to stand in a crowded room. 9-11 sure is popular. a speaker for the new centre for interdisciplinary studies at concordia. that's nice for them.

reading images as interplay of the visible and the readable. uses such terms as horrific. 9-11 "designed to produce an image to traumatize a nation". circumscribed within a master metaphor: the war on terror. a logical impossibility, given you can't wage war on a tactic.

the realization that such a war is futile will not mark its end: vietnam lasted four years after that moment was reached and there can be no closure to a war with no enemy. (note to self: read his 2004 book through benjamin) the mechanical image production replaced with biological, viral production capable of replicating itself and being endlessly cloned in digital production.

image 1: frontis (text only)
image 2: table of contents

clonophobia: the fear of the simulacrum. modeled on homophobia.

torture the evil twin of terrorism: those who practice it are terrorists.

the war is over: there are no weapons of mass destruction in iraq
there is no al queada in iraq
there is no freedom from torture being offered by america

the taliban destroying buddhas in afganistan:
Bamyan Buddha Statues, 55m

Bamyan Buddha Statues were destroyed completely by ignorant Taliban
Bamyan Buddha Statues were destroyed completely by ignorant Taliban
images (iconography) destruction of images, must be seen as creative distruction. taliban used image as calendar poster. the iconographic gesture. americans reproduce this act in iraq, toppling statues of saddam - masquerade activity as spontaneous gesture by iraqi people.

the virtual memorial in place of inability to actually mourn: remember 2nd commandment: that of no graven image before god. was engraved as text, the longest commandment. tony mavrakos creates image of twin towers as the stones of the commandments. image no longer circulated online.

documentary: control room. regarding saddam pull-down.

saddam's dental exam: get inside the "head of state", reveal hidden secrets. appropriated quickly by internet cloning community. it took 60 years for iwo jima picture to be destabilized, 24 hours for the dental exam.

iraq never had a suicide bombing before invasion. now the bombers parade.

the wmd trucks, it turns out, where actually used to launch weather balloons. david reese (tom tomorrow) the new world of journalism.

'war on...' a metaphor for maximum effort, now made literal.

imagine a war on poverty where poor people get shot and bombed. oh wait. that's what actually happens.

the digital dinosaur: clone and terror, jurassic park. where dna and code overlap in cloning project. step forward, remember the after math of 9-11 and the efforts to find cellular matter of the dead to bury and mourn. those remains still highly toxic.
iRaq, blue version

'Blue iRaq' Apple iPod parody poster ( free 24x36 GIF version )

iRaq, green version

'Green iRaq' Apple iPod parody poster ( free 24x36 GIF version )

iRaq, pink version

'Pink iRaq' Apple iPod parody poster ( free 24x36 GIF version )

iRaq, yellow version

'Yellow iRaq' Apple iPod parody poster ( free 24x36 GIF version )

ask how much the insulated culture of the ipod contributes to the continual war on terror. enjoy listening to your itunes and ask how the invasion of iraq came to be.

benjamin's concern: the mass man and clone army. george lucas makes it happen.

terrorism the rubric of american foreign policy. domestic concern: stem cells and cloning. the debate over who clones what and how far continues to rage.

etymology: clone first meant the entire series, not the individual unit. clone as graven image.

al parker, gay superstar. simulates (clones) ideal hetero man. rugged and vigorous. cloning (as science) allows homosexual reproduction and men (real men) become irrelevant.

the abu ghraib archive (re: rockwell) finds the transference of lynching to abu ghraib from its normative black american association. shortages of everything at the prison except panties. those are sent by the pentagon to use as hoods on male moslem prisoners.

a few more things to consider: the claim by the jailers that they followed SOP (standard operating procedure). image carries two strands, the obscene (sexual) and the sacred (victim as christ) and the image of liberty as hooded, as clan.

osama as recruiter: purpose of 9-11 was to lure america into invading an arab country and alienating the arab world in all countries. it appears to have worked.

last note: john kerry chose not to bring up abu ghraib during the 2004 election. complicity is not partisan in america.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

fS call for submissions

Submit to filling Station

filling Station is a literary magazine based in Calgary, Alberta, that is dedicated to showcasing innovative poetry, fiction, drama, film and visual art, and to promotion local and international arts communities.

We are now accepting submissions for 2008. filling Station accepts poetry, visual art, fiction, drama, film, interviews and reviews.

Spring Issue (#42)Deadline: March 1st.

Summer Issue (#43) Deadline: June 1st. The release of this year's summer issue will coincide with the fourth annual Calgary Blow-Out! literary festival. Theme: Ugliness and Undesirability. If your work engages in any way with with the aesthetics and poetics of disgust, ugliness, and revulsion, please send in work for this issue.

Fall Issue (#44) Deadline: September 1st

Please visit http://www.fillingstation.ca for submission guidelines.