(Apologies for cross posting)

Announcing Masthead No. 5 - now up at

http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/

Poetry selections:  RANDOLPH HEALY, ELIZABETH JAMES, PIERRE JORIS,
TREVOR JOYCE, JACINTA LE PLASTRIER, SOPHIE LEVY, ALAN SONDHEIM,
HARRIET ZINNES

Theatre texts: DAVID BIRCUMSHAW and MARGARET CAMERON

Essays: SOPHIE LEVY on innovative lyric poetry by women, JACINTA LE
PLASTRIER on gender, JOHN KINSELLA on bioethics, RICHARD TOOP on the
controversy around US composer John Adams

Interviews: SLAWOMIR MROZEK by ARNI IBSEN and ABDELWAHAB MEDDEB by
FRANK BERBERICH, translated by PIERRE JORIS

Photographs:  JACQUELINE MITELMAN

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ISLAM AND ITS DISCONTENTS

Interview of Tunisian writer Abdelwabab Meddeb by Frank Berberich,
translated by Pierre Joris

"The one who claimed superiority or at least equality cannot grasp
the process that has led him to such weakness when faced with the
century-old opposite, enemy or adversary. ... Nietzsche himself
thought that the Islamic subject was a subject that belonged much
more to aristocratic morality, the morality of affirmation, which
glorifies the one who gives without trying to receive; while the
nature of resentment is to be in the position of the one who receives
but who does not have the means to give, the one who is not
affirmative. Thus the Islamic subject is no longer the man of the
"yes" that illuminates the world and creates a naturally hegemonic
being; from sovereign being he has become the man of the "no", the
one who refuses, who is no longer active but only re-active."


NO ONE BELIEVES PLAYS:  AN INTERVIEW WITH SLAWOMIR MROZEK, by Arni Ibsen

"I don't see myself in a context at all because I don't construct my
ego or my self-image. Absolutely not. I know that sounds untrue
because writers usually construct themselves very much in a literary
way, but that's part of the writer's energy. I don't do that. It's an
uninteresting part of the writer's life."


BONE: A MONOLOGUE FOR TWO, by David Bircumshaw

"I have often thought, Bone, of how you would survive without my
assistance. For I am a kindly man, Bone. I recall well how I rescued
you that day, when I used to walk, the last time I walked, when you
were blindly standing by the kerb, pitifully incapable of crossing.
We cannot all cross that road, Bone.  I, of course, have no need to
now. But you, Bone? No, not you."


KNOWLEDGE AND MELANCHOLY: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FICTION, by Margaret Cameron

"How do you think I have lived? You will not grant me autonomy.
Inert with depression, you insult me. I try to save this house. Oh
the persistent unhappy demands of my life! Anyone would consider
escape. Your instability compromises me. I am afraid of you. In your
house, my 'landlord', I am subject to you. I call witness: be my
guard! I am speaking of 'safe houses'. I cannot let this go
unattended. Your support is getting thin. I ration food. Your visits
brief as Christmas leave me poor. I savour luxuries you leave
everything breaking. You make me cry poor. "


ARE WE SPEAKING (OF) "THE NATURAL LANGUAGE OF MEN"? ANNE CARSON,
KATHLEEN FRASER, GRACE LAKE: INNOVATING LYRIC POETRY, by Sophie Levy

"In a sense, claiming the first person pronoun, as lyric does, is
always a mistake, as the poem works to throw off its disembodied 'I'.
This is especially striking in the work of experimental women writers
like Fraser, who knows that it is as hard to get 'I' into the
sentence as 'she,' when the 'I,' like Echo, is a She. Natural
language - the image in the water - is always shifting, depending on
the perspective from which it is seen. Sometimes the lyric 'I' has to
be disembodied in order to access ways of speaking of who we think we
are."


THE CASE FOR CONTROL, by Richard Toop

"Perhaps the most spectacular contribution to 'The Death of
Klinghoffer' debate came from an academic, Prof. Richard Taruskin, of
the University of California at Berkeley. Taruskin is, by general
consent, one of America's leading musicologists, and probably the
greatest living authority on Russian music. He is also known as a
robust controversialist. On December 9 2001, the New York Times
published a near 3000-word essay of his, entitled 'Music's Dangers
and the Case for Control'; in terms of setting the tone of future
arts discourse in America, it may prove to be as significant as
anything else he has written."


PLAGUES AND BIOETHICS, by John Kinsella

"Quarantine isn't just about keeping diseases out, protecting a
specific geography from physical contamination, but also about the
preservation of "home" values. It is about a mental and spiritual
"purity"."


ART AND GENDER: NOTES TOWARDS A POETIC, by Jacinta le Plastrier

"...the issue of gender - the nature of sexual and gender
separateness - is both too coarse and too polite for poetry - and, by
extension, in the context of this discussion, art.

"Too coarse, because poetry sings into being, which lives in the
mouth of life, in the mouth of death; a large mouth, too large for
such coarseness. Too polite, because poetry sings into being... a
mouth so large it simply annihilates such convention and restraint."

Masthead
arts, culture and politics

http://au.geocities.com/masthead_2/