Some quick things prior to this first Saturday’s gathering.
1) For those of you new to this course, or who, for whatever reason, did not get the reading assignment for this week, please scroll below and click on the links to the Tzara and Retallack essays. We’ll spend the first part of the first Saturday (tomorrow) discussing this work, answering a few more questions, posing a few more, and then getting down to writing. “Getting down to writing” will mean beginning to form some smaller groups and doing some in-class work. The fun will be so fun I don’t want to spoil it by giving away the exercises. Suffice it to say, you’ll be happy in an irritated sort of way…
2) PLEASE join me in attending an evening of brilliant, politically charged performance by The Prince Myshkins, this SUNDAY @8pm at Evergreen’s RECITAL HALL. This troupe is nationally and internationally known for its musico-performative innovation, satire, and often strange behavior. They will be performing “Great Hymn of Thanksgiving.” Click the link below to find out more.
Thank you to Evergreen faculty Arun Chandra for bringing them to campus–a great opportunity. And… it’s free. I hope to see you there!
http://www.princemyshkins.com/
3) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! I’d like to use this site as a quasi-journal, i.e., to post things not only of interest to me, but to all of us. In that spirit, I’d love to see some of your creative work (prose, poetry, anything that wordpress can handle) in my inbox so that I can post it here, on this public blog. If you’re interested in publishing your work, just send it to wolachd@evergreen.edu. Response time will often be two or three days. It’s only fair that I take the bait first, so here, from a small book that died on the vine, The Poison Eaters:
Cougar Advice
Yes, to tree is a verb
Best way to lose your urbanity:
Move to fake American woods where real American woods used to be
Ask fake people in fake woods if “cougar” = “mountain lion”
Receive real Cougar Alert Email alerting you to fake-real
cougar sighting in fake woods
|
To All Faculty And Staff:
For those of you who are interested attached is some additional information on what to do if confronted by a cougar. Have A Good Day,
Bruce Sutherland Emergency Response Planning Coordinator 360-867-6517 |
Code orange for baby vs cougar
Code orange for house cat vs cougar
Code orange for corporate bailout vs cougar
Code orange for anthrax vs cougar
Code orange for border security vs cougar
Code orange for code yellow and other lesser codes vs cougar
Some advice:
Your poem never was urbane
Had it been, it would have been invited to more galas
Urbane poems borrow suits from David Lehman, have delicate
Sex with not-cougar, know names of tropical fauna, beach in Hamptons,
Drive to Hamptons in Saab, drive back to city in Saab, know nothing of the verb to tree
What’s more, stop, pick up small children and don’t run
If possible avoid IRT, NJT, LIR, any commuter rail that ramrods bowels of Penn Station
Face cougar and talk in strong voice about finances, fate, ennui, why no single payer
Give cougar a way to escape, preferably not via IRT, NJT, LIR, etc
Make yourself bigger, i.e., win Power Ball last second, quit job, tell cougar to fuck self,
you are your own boss now
Stand next to other people, supposing other people are nearby in fake forest, which they
invariably are, as other people is reason cougar is near you/other people
Don’t hide, turn your eyes away from cougar, supplicate and disavow all your fornications
Never walk toward cougar, unless in Harlem, as you lived in Harlem for 10 years, many
friends there who will have your back in event cougar tries to rob/make love to you
If cougar attacks fight back, you never know, cougar might run/drive away into fake forest
All else fails, tree
Which is to say, poll
txt.: [X, Y = “all homozygous dominant modifiers”]
2.1
our mantle X has no mantle owning
Y’s not calling it
shame
Y’s not is hunting behind the house
2.2
smoke billows
yet unlike like
agitated semiconductors light these fires
2.3
desiring an is or an operator
Y gathering
2.4
engine absent river company town
sawmills raging against velvety palms, transition from language to act
2.5
translaceration:
our vestibular systems
lamely grunted in the face of post-mortem post-modern
desiring the pure article
forget Saint Francis of Assisi’s legacy
recall Apollonia’s tooth
dangling from a chain master’s string
X: “The un between us is a hot
leather couch. It would turn me on in any other context. Florida
is our oppressor now. And we are not even there.”
________________________________________________________________________
READING INSTRUCTIONS
On December 11th, 2007, at 2:30pm, venture to The Strand Bookstore in New York City. Find a singular copy of Debord’s La Véritable Scission dans L’Internationale wedged between Society of the Spectacle and a misshelved volume of Johnathan Franzen’s The Corrections. Marvel at the sheer unlikelihood that even such a fine bookseller as The Strand would carry this rare Debord volume. Purchase it at any cost. Purchase it for $21 plus tax. Prior to reading the work, prior even to pursuing the title’s back cover, think about two chromosomes that have lived together for many years and have thus developed a certain gelid way of interacting. Muse about what kind of argument might ensue were each to read all the same books in the following manner: one reads only the EVEN pages and the other only the ODD pages; the odd page-reading chromosome would be responsible for summarizing the contents of what the even page-reading chromosome had missed. And vise versa. Call a friend. Ask your friend to come to your house. Together, go through the titles you own and perform this exercise from the hours of 5pm to 8:40 pm, January 8th, 2008.
4) FEATURED COLLECTIVES, COMMUNITIES, ETC. Each week I hope to feature one accessible (either regional or web-based) arts/literature collective, community, or group. Next week I will be featuring SubText, a reading series out of Seattle, currated by poet and media artist Nico Vassilakis. Along with info about SubText, I’ll be posting a short interview with him. THIS WEEK’s featured collective is FC2. Fiction Collective 2 has been around for a while and is still doing what most publishers will not: pool their collective resources together to print work that falls outside the commodity stream, that takes formal and political risks. In addition, FC2 sponsors events, happenings, and workshops worldwide.
FC2 is: an author-run, not-for-profit publisher of artistically adventurous, non-traditional fiction. FC2 is supported in part by the University of Utah, the University of Houston – Victoria, University of Alabama Press, Illinois State University, and private contributors.