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POETRYETC  July 2011

POETRYETC July 2011

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Subject:

Re: Snap for Nam June Paik on his Birthday

From:

Barry Alpert <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc: poetry and poetics

Date:

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 19:48:05 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

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I'd use Doug's sense of uncertainty to argue against the quality of NAM JUNE PAIK DAY in comparison to my earlier diastic sonnet MY RICHARD ALPERT, which you can access here:

http://www.masthead.net.au/issue11/alpert.html

That was initially drafted while I was in an auditorium listening to the talk of a doppelganger, reasonably certain that there wouldn't be back-up access to a recording.  After starting with an attempt to write an acrostic sonnet and deciding that I probably succeeded in doing so, I decided to take a bigger chance and begin a diastic sonnet, knowing that such attempts often resulted in a failure to net 14 lines.  A much more risky writing performance than yesterday's relatively comfortable work with a transcribed interview from 1988.  Also, I now realize that that interview, originally published in Portuguese, may have been an early email interview, because the quality of Paik's language does not have the charm of his spoken language as I've encountered it.  So that I may have been processing already-processed language, instead of the  raw, improvised, informal artists' language I prefer to treat.  The fact that the artist/poet Eduardo Kac conducted the interview convinced me to work with it, especially since I had carved a text out of a talk by Kac I attended years ago.  Perhaps I should have searched for a tape-recorded interview, or worked with the language of Nam June Paik's nephew Ken Paik Hakuta, who turned up unexpectedly at yesterday's event, adding to the erotic angle he had initiated years earlier with his account of his uncle's uncertain behavior within the Clinton White House:

"In 1998, Nam June was invited to a state dinner at the Clinton White House, June of '98. Some of you will remember -- it's not that long ago -- that was the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Nam June was going, and he asked if I would go with him. I wheeled him into the White House, and these gigantic Marines took over from there. Nam June was very amused, I think. He was having a great time, talking to all the people. Then we got into to the receiving line. Nam June decided to show respect, I think, to the President, Mrs. Clinton and the other dignitaries there. He decided to get up from his wheelchair, get on his walker, and try to walk through the receiving line. The world press is across from the line at the state dinner. Tens and tens of cameras and video cameras, everything. So as Nam June is talking to President Clinton, and I'm standing right behind him, Nam June turns around and says to me, ‘Ken, I think my pants are falling down.’ True story here. And I said, ‘What?’ ‘My pants are falling!’ he says. I look down, and his pants are falling! They are completely down on the floor. And he has no underwear on! So I pick up his pants. I pull them up and I just hold them there. Now, Bill Clinton is such a cool president he still continued to have small talk with my uncle. I think they were talking about Chelsea, maybe, I don't know. A little bit down the line, I could see that Hillary was really not amused at all. She was ticked. But Bill Clinton was saying nothing. It was really quite amazing.

"After that interesting dinner, Nam June was inundated with phone calls, faxes, everything. All his friends around the world thought that was the best Fluxus performance in the world. Everybody wanted to know, including the press, whether it was an accident or whether it was a statement, because you have to remember, my uncle is in a wheelchair now, but he has a reputation for being a cultural terrorist. So I asked Nam June, ‘Did you drop your pants on purpose? Was it an act? Was it an artistic statement? A political statement?’ And he replied, ‘My pants dropped. That's all.’ He told me -- and this is very Nam June -- he said, ‘It really doesn't matter. It was a great event.’ He's just like that, totally unfazed. Was he embarrassed? No, of course not! And I think Bill Clinton was very cool about that, too. The press was so excited that somebody else's pants, not the president's, had dropped in the White House. They were so excited by that. It was the ultimate Fluxus event."


Barry



  On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 09:09:30 -0600, Douglas Barbour <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Who knows where we start? Or end?  it's that uncertainty that drives me on....
>
>Doug


>On 2011-07-21, at 3:37 AM, Tim Allen wrote:
>
>> I don't know what Andrew means here by 'true poem' - if there is such a thing then there must be something called an untrue poem too. And I have a well developed antipathy to poems which end up sounding wise - much better to my mind to start with wisdom and end up with delight.
>> 
>> Tim A.


>> 
>> On 21 Jul 2011, at 06:32, andrew burke wrote:
>> 
>>> I find games of poetry often lead to a 'true' poem - as
>>> the old folk-poet Frost once said, A poem begins in delight and ends in
>>> wisdom.

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