Hi,
     having been away in Burton (or gone) for a
short while I've come back with a suitable
period of 'silence' to find almost utter(ed)
silences on the list here in the wake of a
small flurry prompted by Drew's address to
the 'mail-base' (good thing he didn't forge
a typo out of that configuration).
Some posts and posters perform by generating
other mail, some perform by generating
silence. No perjorative. It varies, not all
posts are intended to facilitate discourse.

     The issues raised in that 'performance' of
Drew's  -  properly riddled with ironies  -
have concerned me on the rail tracks since.

     Firstly, what struck me as something I'd not
previously considered was, an implication, in
his post, of subscription to a list being in
itself an endorsement of sorts to the posts
appearing on that list. That unless a view
was engaged with it might appear to have been
silently sanctioned. That the rush of opinions
represented a false face of consencus. That
we are a 'false' community with collective
responsibility attributable from 'outside'
but denied and resisted from within. That all
are implicated in the post of each.

     Secondly he raises the issue of 'quality', with
the peak of an Adornian cap pushing forwards.

     Thirdly there is the issue of 'performance' and
of the contusions of public and private space
which emerges from concerns over ownership /
authorship / copyright / permissions.

     Those aren't the only things he flags up,
they're simply ones I can respond to here and now.

     Unless my server has selectively lotteried me
a scan, rather than my full compliment, of
messages in the interim, there has been no
discussion of John Wells' cogent point that:

'performance' is being raised 'as if the violence of (proper,?authorized)
publication of what is read (and?solopsistically spoken with) in silence is
unrelated to the violence of (time-based/embodied) performance.'

     So I'll suggest this again, more flatly. Drew's
post was itself a performance and is now recorded
and already reproduced as such, partaking (and I'm sure
he was complicit with the irony of knowing so) of the
violence of influence which is as present in all writing
and reading, once that circle is unbroken (with the implied
tongue of the silent reader  -
the reading of which continues liminally, long after
the book has been put down) as in voicings of 'liveness'
and so on with their aspersions of ontological imposition.

'Performance' is more wide-ranging and complex,
I would suggest, than the surface of Drew's complaint
might allow for.

As to the quality of posts on a list such as this,
which strikes me as being exactly 'about' poets and
poetry  -  poetics  -  this 'aboutness' has a salutary
variety.

-   the passing colloquial comment at the corner shop
as part (sometimes parcel) of an 'everyday' transaction

-   the flurry of opinion-forming exchange in the
conference corridor, or at the sideways nodding and
winking glances at the back of the hall

-   the gossip at the bar after a reading

-  straight up front bulletin board information
(and all that was excellent about Poetry Information)

-   poems and other writings

-   the carefully constructed intervention

-   the postcard or the quickly drawn bunch of rose
or gob of puke sent by fax

-   threads of discourse which quite frequently
converge from the cover of discreet subject headings

     Personally, although all posts do not give pleasure,
the mix does. Yes, there are attendant irritations  -
thankfully we don't all share the same enthusiasms or
humours or modes of address. Who would presume to
police it so? At what perimeter does the discussion
cease to be 'about poets and poetry'?

     In respect of the 'public' sphere then, presuming
that some do, can, or might from time to immemoriam
stumble into this combined garden, adventure playground,
lecture theatre, conference hall, Cash & Carry, bus stop
of a discussion forum among poet-writer broad contemporaries
i'd venture to suggest that conflations of opinions, wheat
from chaff (dependent on the taste and cereal preference)
will not be problematic. Nobody would suggest that by
attending a conference (the model which most fits this
kind of list perhaps) one is endorsing all that takes place.
The opposite is often closer to a truth.

     As to e-mail and ownership and copyright I have mixed
feelings. Basically, I take an anti-copyright SItuationist
view on that. Once it's said it's gone and anybody can
do whatever they like with it  -  yes, even sample it,
distort it and make me say something I never felt I'd
said.

     But I have already had an e-mail exchanged published
by the Kroker's, without permission and without credit
and mis-quoted in that published exchange.

     Running with the first sense of it all I'm not
complaining or making any fuss about that. That's
part or what will exponentially disperse.

     Perversely perhaps I'd never quote others
e-mail without a context and a credit.

     The trivia of poets is integral to poetry.
That sense of discussion in the thick of it, suddenly
turning away to make a cup of tea. That's the root
and the source  -  the route and the sauce.
The half-formed (or balked or baked) can be a sign
that drives us away from the tyrannies of 'quality'
with its attendant senses of purity, absolutes,
hegemonic judgement, 'high' versus 'low'.

     Give me the carnivalesque. Give me the list
in all its lewd, humane, tawdry, camp, exilerating,
thought-provoking, wrong-headed, wilful, cogent,
awkward, typo-bespoken, intended, playful, crystal-
gazing, reflective, maybe, informative, blah blah
gorgeous twisting fullsome engagements.

love and love
cris







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