There's a vital abunda sometimes arrogant taste to what Watten offers and 
then smiles and _FRAMES_ gathers most of it.  but that's very recently in 
the door. Barrett Watten's systematics are a coherent extension from Mac 
Low and his use of noun verb relation /lack of relation are a-proposals 
from Coolidge if not Kerouac's sentence.  remember the proximity of 
Silliman and Watten at one time (geographically the same house) and 
remember the street blaster sounds the low riders the flip charts.

first poem (MODE Z) reads:

Could we have those trees cleared out of the way?
And the houses, volcanoes, empires?  The natural
panorama is false, the shadows it casts ate so many
useless platitudes.  Everything is suspect. Even
clouds of the same sky are the same.  Close the door
is voluntary death.  There is one color, not any.

Prove to me now that you have finally undermined
your heroes.  In fits of distraction the walls cover
themselves with portraits.  Types are not men.  Admit
that your studies are over.  Limit yourself to your
memoirs.  Identify is only natural.  Now become
the person in your life.  Start writing autobiography.

if I've typed that correctly, (it first came out in the 1980 chapbook 
1-10) I reckon that's an indicator, that's a cool spindle in the drum 
machine before the liquid squid gets released.  I reckon Barrett can hear 
that sometimes mixing Coolidge on drums with what is it that the other 
guy's playing?  what?  well tell me your troubles about understating how 
to read this stuff, i just don't get it the difficulty.  now let's look 
at one of the best of one of the other bunches, Seamus Heaney, listen to 
this trap: (and I'm not going to quote the whole darn thing at you all 
(Mossbawn: Two Poems In Dedication, from _North_)

There was a sunlit absence.
The helmeted pump in the yard
heated its iron,
water honeyed

in the slung bucket
and the sun stood
like a griddle cooling
against the wall

of each long afternoon...

hold it there!  

the sun stood?  like what? and how shall we describe the afternoon?  a 
wall?
well, I don't get it not at all.   There's not a lot wrong with it, but 
why buy stuff like that to read?  well I thought it was supposed to 
elevate me. Hank Williams, but not when he's corn pop.

yeah _Spanner_  will put Kent Journal (singular) out in 98 (I think).  
It's partly because Eric Mottram published it whole as it is in an 
edition of 10 and so i reckon it's out and can thus be extended and so I 
asked for permission.  it is a scatter and it is a gather, and not a set 
of poems, or even one poem, some fragments.  so that will suit the faint 
hearted.  even if the references are inclusive, not a footnote in sight 
and not a bibliog either.  maybe an afterword on the killings at Kent 
State before Eric got there from some data Bill G turned up.

can you imagine what trauma connects Carla Harryman and Steve Benson and 
Barrett Watten as the same school of poetry!  San Francisco isn't the 
map, for some poets, it's the territory.  it's just amazing how poor the 
reading can be.  they are into the same movie by Abigail or that was a 
good hit from Guattari but very different writers and with very different 
poetics.

I've been looking at John Dennis (17th century) ready to play three-card 
brag at the Bishop's Palace  - some study on subliminal complexity in 
November, meantime, on the floor with a receding forethought i think it's 
a hellof a book from Peter Riley  _snow has settled_, a very bingo 
remaindered Andre Leroi-Gourhan _Gesture and Speech_, lousy on dates of 
cave art great on comprehension. and what about that excellent new James 
Joyce  all-he-sees, now Ulysses it now you don't.

in any case, I haven't finished reading _Flung Clear_ 
and speaking of which, allen fisher will be in New York in February.
mine's a double mustard on rye.
  


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