Thanks to the wonderful people at ANMLY mag who have an awesome hybrid creative blog, “The Markings of Music.” The editor, Olivia Muenz, was kind enough to publish excerpts from the HIST soundtrack, “Canoe Chase on the Horican,” and “Narra-mattah,” my audio/visual collaborations with Matthew Klane. Our recordings are accompanied with an interview diving in to the process behind the book and the reasoning behind a soundtrack for it. There are so many wonderful things on the blog so check them all out!
Poetry
Hist premiere @ Unnameable Books, Amherst 10/22/22 /
Thanks to Unnameable Books for hosting the HIST soundtrack premiere!
Photo courtesy of Catherine Bresner
Excerpt from “The Rescue of Hist” courtesy of Catherine Bresner
Excerpt from “The Rescue of Hist” courtesy of Catherine Bresner
New Review in Journal of Modern Literature /
Emerging Improvisations
A Review of Paul Jaussen’s Writing in Real Time | Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital
My review of Paul Jaussen’s Writing in Real Time is out. Enjoy it when you get a chance!
Writing in Real Time
Excerpt: In Writing in Real Time | Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital, Paul Jaussen reconsiders the formal idiosyncrasies of the American long poem through contemporary systems theories. Jaussen claims that the immutable architectures that support long poems from Walt Whitman to Nathaniel Mackey cannot be reduced to the play of lyric intensities, nor are they productively approached through extensive genre categorization. Instead of these two methodologies, he argues that their forms interactively emerge; they unfold in real time as adaptive systems with the capacity to critique, rework, and respond to their changing material environments. To read the diversity of the American long poem through systems theoretical discourse is to reveal what Jaussen calls “interactive emergence,” the poet’s sustained creative/critical improvisation with the material dynamism of time.
New Review: Writing In Real Time /
Writing in Real Time
Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital. Cambridge UP, 2017. 226 pp. $105.00 hardback.
I just finished a review of Paul Jaussen’s excellent Writing in Real Time | Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital for the Journal of Modern Literature. I highly recommend it! With the Covid Pandemic, I’m not sure when this will be published, but I’ll keep you posted.
Abstract
In Writing in Real Time | Emergent Poetics from Whitman to the Digital, Paul Jaussen reconsiders the formal idiosyncrasies of the American long poem through contemporary systems theories. Jaussen claims that the immutable architectures that support long poems from Walt Whitman to Nathaniel Mackey cannot be reduced to the play of lyric intensities, nor are they productively approached through extensive genre categorization. Instead of these two methodologies, he argues that their forms interactively emerge; they unfold in real time as adaptive systems with the capacity to critique, rework, and respond to their changing material environments. To read the diversity of the American long poem through systems theoretical discourse is to reveal what Jaussen calls “interactive emergence,” the poet’s sustained creative/critical improvisation with the material dynamism of time.
Green Kill Performance of With Walden /
A great time reading with Ruth Danon at the Green Kill Performance Space on 2.13.20. Using Touchviz, I improvised video and read from an ongoing project titled With Walden. You can see other stills of the project here. I return to Green Kill on 2.27.20 to perform an except from a new sound poem called Idiopathic. Hopefully I’ll see you there!
Photo Courtesy of Bill Lessard
Photo Courtesy of Bill Lessard
Photo Courtesy of Bill Lessard
Photo Courtesy of Bill Lessard
Audio: Ronald Johnson’s “ARK 38, Ariel’s Songs to Prospero” /
I’m very excited to see access to the audio file of Ronald Johnson’s ARK 38 “Ariel’s Songs to Prospero” available (thanks Peter!). I was looking for this during my dissertation chapter on Ronald’s cookbooks! This is a wonderful addition to the recent reissue of Ark by Flood Editions.
Ronald Johnson's papers are held at the Kenneth Spencer Research Collection at the University of Kansas Libraries. His books are published in the U.S. by Flood Editions. Send all inquiries to peter [at] luxhominem [dot] com.
Below is a link to the recording of “ARK 38, Ariel’s Songs to Prospero,” for Dorothy Neal, recorded with Roger Gans at KQED in San Francisco in the early 1980s. It is “constructed out of recordings of songs of the birds of eastern United States,” according to Johnson.
English Department Colloquium Presentation /
Film Poem Published in Barzakh Magazine | With Walden /
My new film poem is in great company in the new alumni issue of Barzakh Magazine! With Walden employs improvised video, field recordings, drawings, and poetry to grapple with the claustrophobic vigor of love in the first months of fatherhood.
Post ALA Panel Notes: Ronald Johnson's Formal, Transgeneric, and Multimedia Innovations /
For the American Literature Association’s 2019 conference, Mark Scroggins organized a panel of wonderful papers that explored Johnson’s monumentalizing urge, gastrophilosophy, and sound art. It was a privilege presenting with…
Sally Connolly: “Formal Innovation and Ergodic Invitation in Ronald Johnson’s ‘Blocks to Be Arranged in a Pyramid: In Memoriam AIDS’.”
Devin King: “The Invisible Spire: Ronald Johnson’s ARK 38 and Bay Area Radio Drama.”
The excellent panel presentations helped me decide to start the book I’ve been toying with, a study of Ronald Johnson’s gastrophilosophy. My panel paper explored taste at the bookends of his publishing career, from his first book of poetry, A Line of Poetry a Row of Trees (1967) to his most comprehensive cookbook, The American Table: More Than 400 Recipes That Make Accessible for the First Time the Full Richness of American Regional Cooking. There is so much more, however, mixed throughout his oeuvre. His monument at the beginning of ARK to the Native staple “Bison Bison Bison,” his comparison of the brain to an orange, a critique of Columbus’s misunderstanding of the variegation of Native Corn, a taste of Thoreau’s “Wild Apples,” and a taste of William Bartram’s bitter orange salad dressings. I’ll explore all of these and more. I’ll let you know when the book is out!
L to R: James, Nathan, Devin, Mark. Disclaimer: The Bukowski Bar choice was not based on the quality of his poetry but of the beer list.
Audio from Performance @ Buffalo Street Books! /
A great time reading with great readers. Thanks to our host Joe Hall and Buffalo Street Books! Thanks to Kina Viola and J. Michael Martinez.
Audio of my performance of a new work for text and electronics titled Techniques for the Oddity.
