I think we are in the same boat, Doug. Yet, I remain constantly surprised in the way that history comes back around to discover and bring back work that was originally obscured by what were 'back then' the big elephants in the room, and how those elephants turn back into pollywogs. This week, for example, I was delighted to be interviewed by a young American based Japanese born scholar. Her study and passion are American poets and novelists of color and the contexts from which they who emerged prominently in the '60's and 70's - back when I was publishing Momo's Press books and Shocks magazine. We met at the Bancroft Library where she had been combing the Press' archives acquired in the '90s. Among other writers of color and not, I was the publisher of the now prominent Filipino-American writer Jessica Hagedorn's first two books (poetry and a novel). Along with being critically intrigued with the writers we published, she was fascinated by the
character of the whole editorial project of putting writers of quite different backgrounds (ethnic, gender, sexual) under one roof as both a cultural statement, as well as the aesthetic dynamic of bringing together good, but different kinds of writing from each point of origin, most points of which were out to liberate/articulate repressed contents. It was a highly conflicted zone in which to edit, as well as provocative zone for much new writing. A great time to be an editor, tho "Shocks" as a name pretty much summed up the visceral experience of being in the middle of what were often collisions.
But in the not so grand conservative retreats of the decades since, much of this history has been obscured or ghettoized, etc. So it was a delight to meet with someone who was totally into resurrecting its value, etc. Like putting flesh back on what seemed to have become a devalued ghost of my past.
If not in cash fortunes, I will appreciate how the scholar's work may revive attention to the value and accomplishments of a time which fully embraced me and many of us.
But that was me more as editor. Attention to the writing and art will take time, as well, as the confidence that, at least, parts of it will be considered an important part of the fabric. I certainly am happy and driven to keep making it!
Stephen
--- On Fri, 7/22/11, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Snap for Nam June Paik on his Birthday
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Friday, July 22, 2011, 10:33 AM
Well, youre right, Stephen, about those few. And some others, but still:
I know I havent made much money & have no sense of a large readership I should therefore write for...
Do you?
Doug
On 2011-07-22, at 11:02 AM, Stephen Vincent wrote:
> "I guess poets, generally, still manage to escape (in the writing) most
> of that consumerist theology not so much by heroic choice as by the lack
> of 'business'..."
>
> Canadian or Alberta 'wry'!!
> But then there are (among Canadians) Christian Bok and Ann Carson and Michael Ondaatje and ..... who have done a great job of capturing global markets, as well as doing it - at least initially - by disturbing conventional consumer frames.
>
> I personally very much like Paik's installation television works. If everyone hung their tv set upside down at at angle from the ceiling, contemporary events might be seen for what they really are. Say start with the Murdock Family before the House of Uncommons.
>
>
> Stephen V
>
>
> Stephen V
>
> --- On Fri, 7/22/11, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: Snap for Nam June Paik on his Birthday
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Friday, July 22, 2011, 9:11 AM
>
> Or we at least move between, Dave.
>
> The thing is, each one of us has to find her or his own way to that motion. And sometimes, it seems that various formal pays help (at least they do me).
>
> I want to lessen the power of the lyric I (lie) in what I still want to be 'lyrical' poems. But I have also found poets who do otherwise & well. Or find ways to spread that I out & across a discourse that does much else (I just reviewed a really fine new book by Steven Ross Smith on my blog [& a few others in the past week]). Then there's the fact (I think I can use that term) than each of us finds her or his way to a poetic & an experimentation , some further 'ahead' than others.
>
> I guess poets, generally, still manage to escape (in the writing) most of that consumerist theology not so much by heroic choice as by the lack of 'business'...
>
> Doug
> On 2011-07-21, at 3:20 PM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
>
>> Well, yes, Doug, ex-Nineties Brit Art SUCKS, and bpNichol is an inventive,
>> enjoyable poet, MacLow ingenious and Cage was a forceful inventor BUT it
>> isn't enough, at its worst there's little difference in essence between this
>> formalism and 50s poets fiddling with their iambs. I think both Gnoetry,
>> with its divorce from selfhood and its automation of the avant-garde, and
>> oddly the poem as entertainment only, because aestheticism is no more than
>> high-class consumerism, are the ultimate dead ends of avant-formalism.
>> It may be that we begin nowhere and end so too, but in between we something.
>
> Douglas Barbour
> [log in to unmask]
>
> http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
> http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
>
> Latest books:
> Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> Wednesdays'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
>
> It is natural to speak of your own weaknesses so winsomely they will seem strengths, as if everyone else is inadequate if they do not have your inadequacies.
>
> William H. Gass
>
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/
http://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Latest books:
Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
Wednesdays'
http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
It is natural to speak of your own weaknesses so winsomely they will seem strengths, as if everyone else is inadequate if they do not have your inadequacies.
William H. Gass
|