Dear Jesse,
You addressed your message to me "and all" so I am sending this back via the
list in the belief that is what you wanted.
That's quite a link you make. I take it that the sequence you refer to is
D.A.N. and the anthology W.S.U.C.
I take it too that the several professors haven't actually *read, although I
am willing to believe some even might have been amused if they had, WSUC. It
doesn't necessarily take much to amuse some people. However, they would have
had some clue, had they read it, as to what is going on in D.A.N..
I can't see that the pamphlets are particularly highly-priced and in terms
of their production, are wonderfully produced.
The charge of bad reproduction appears to refer to one of Bob Cobbing's
variations on one of mine and I am pretty sure both that he intended exactly
the level of distortion he obtained and that he reproduced the result
extremely well. I give him extremely demanding images quite often and he
gives me back almost exact copies even though the images go way outside
anything the copier manufacturers anticipated.
It is an odd defence of the work to associate it with "the search for
Adamic, Angelic or Universal languages". That just isn't in it. It's a silly
idea.
Nevertheless, I am glad that D.A.N.s have reached Japan, and WSUC, and am
grateful for your effort in effecting that. Perhaps one day they will be
read with understanding.
L
*
- original message -
|Dear L and all:
|I find your note rather amusing because of a meeting I just had with our
|library committee here at the Japanese college where I work. Something I
|hadn't expected cropped up: there were questions about the series of
|collaborative pamphlets I had purchased featuring you and Bob Cobbing. The
|anthology of course, passed muster--it looks like a book, although several
|of the professors were amused at the content. The pamphlets though, in
|terms of production, and price, brought some mutters about misuse of
|research funds, but the real questions had to do with content: how could
|badly reproduced photographs of rope, unidentifiable things in sand, and
|torn up and fading texts, be remotely considered poetry? Now imagine, L,
|several of these smiling professors were well-known experts in Japanese
|literature, familiar also with Bitish and American lit.--(we get TLS, and
|other English language pubs. here) and very educated folk. Imagine too, me
|with my "mental laziness"--your endearing terms-- taking up for all things
|Uptonian! It was a blast. When I said that these "texts" were somehow
|voiced, they looked at me in disbelief. (And had I not witnessed Bob
|Cobbing doing just that years ago in the U.S. I too may have doubted!)
|
| Finally, I assured them that these pamphlets were the result of the work
of
|two serious "sound poets," and that I would fit these booklets in to a
|long-term project on the search for Adamic, Angelic or Universal languages,
|where they will, truthfully, be given a footnote That seemed to satisfy
|them, and they stopped urging that the pamphlets be returned, though I'm
|sure that your comment about cold fusion and poetry most probably would
have
|fit the mood of that meeting of Japanese dons. (By the way, cold fusion
was
|a bit of a tax write-off here in Japan for Mitusbishi--I think--during the
|bubble. Now we hear no more of it, or at least I haven't.)
|
|A final note: A great site for concrete and sound poetry--and one open for
|submissions is Ubu.web at http:www.ubuweb.com/contemp.html
|
|Two people who are missing and should be included at that site: Bob
Cobbing
|and Lawrence Upton, as well as other sound and concrete poets on this list.
|Alaric Summer, too. Check them out. All best, Jesse Glass.
|>
|>
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