The Chicago School of Poetics Scholarship Program Appeal Campaign

Poet and founder and director of The Chicago School of Poetics Francesco Levato, has asked me to spread the word about the School’s scholarship program appeal campaign, which I am very happy to do. He also mentioned to me that he and Larry Sawyer, the School’s co-director, have been teaching from Argotist Ebooks’ catalogue. This is great news, and shows great faith in the ebook format as a serious medium for the presentation and of poetry. This is what he says in his email:

"It's been a while since I last emailed, and I believe it was about teaching from Argotist Ebooks at the Chicago School of Poetics. Both I and my co-director Larry Sawyer have taught from your catalogue, and, of course, really appreciate the work you put out. I'm writing now to ask if you might consider helping us get the word out about a scholarship campaign we are nearing the end of for the School. We're trying to raise funds to offer full scholarships to poetry students in financial need. Do you have an email list you regularly send to where you might mention the campaign? If this is something you wouldn't be comfortable doing I completely understand".

Here are the full details of the campaign:

With your generous support, the Chicago School of Poetics will be offering full scholarships for Master Classes (with poets like Eileen Myles and Charles Bernstein) and regular 8-week courses for the 2013 school year. Just $10 can help students in need attend classes. Please donate at:

http://www.indiegogo.com/CSoPScholar

The campaign ends February 22nd.

"This is what a school truly should be—think of Black Mountain College—beyond all the boundaries & borders". (Ron Silliman)

The Chicago School of Poetics (CSoP) is an online and on-location school that offers compelling poetry classes without the MFA time commitment, pressure or price tag. With an emphasis on craft, instructors at the School focus on the merits of student writing on its own terms. It’s not the typical creative writing workshop! Courses offered at the School allow students to refine their work in a collaborative—not competitive—environment. We don’t teach creativity. Courses allow students to understand the writing process from the inside by observing firsthand how the instructors work in order to gain the critical distance necessary to write more resonant poetry. The School also offers genuine community. On-location courses offer valuable face-to-face contact and online courses offer valuable access to the vibrant community of Chicago poetry for anyone worldwide.

www.chicagoschoolofpoetics.com

Third Response to Ann Bogle

Since the following was posted, Ann has removed her blog posts that the links in the following post pointed to.

Ann Bogle has made a further false accusation about me in the comments thread of one of her recent blog posts regarding me:

http://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21023072&postID=8315023444307361429

She says (referring to the emails between her and myself that I posted in my first blog response to her initial accusation about me):

“Jeffrey Side posted emails he didn't write”.

If I didn’t write them, who did? Maybe she mistyped “he” for “I”, and the sentence should read:

“Jeffrey Side posted emails I didn't write”.

It so, then why did Ann, in the Otherstream Facebook group thread where I also posted the same emails in response to her accusing me there of having called her friend Bobbi Laurie “psychotic”, say:

“Bobbi knows about this correspondence that Jeff quotes here accurately”.

This comment can be found here:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/american-candid.html

It can also be found in the original Otherstream Facebook group thread, which will remain in that group as evidence, should Ann try to manipulate the reproduction of that thread she has posted on her blog. It is sad that Ann has had to recourse to a blatant lie about me.

She also goes on to say, somewhat incoherently, in the comments stream of her blog:

“Marc Vincenz and Jeffrey Side have censored using their positions as administrators of web groups. I don't have Bobbi's permission [I have her permission as of 4:29 p.m. today] to post the comment she wrote to me above that explains much that Jeffrey Side forgot to explain in his purple campaign.

Anny Ballardini instantly assumes that I did what Jeffrey Side alleges in the flame threads he started at Otherstream and at Argotist. He deleted half the proof of it, and I deleted my own comments from one thread that he said intruded, yet he claimed that he deleted my comments.”

Why she has decided to involve my friends Marc Vincenz and Anny Ballardini in this situation is unclear. Marc is not an administrator of any Facebook group that I am aware of, and if she is alluding to the Otherstream Facebook group, then she is mistaken, as he is not the administrator of that group, which is administered very fairly by my good friend Jake Berry. I administer The Argotist Online Facebook group, and make no apology for it.

I don’t know what Ann is referring to, in the second paragraph of the above quote from her, when she says that:

“[Jeffrey Side] deleted half the proof of it, and I deleted my own comments from one thread that he said intruded, yet he claimed that he deleted my comments.”

Perhaps she is referring to the thread in The Argotist Online Facebook group that she "highjacked" by using it to post links to her Fictionaut posts in, despite the thread being started by someone who was merely alerting the group to an essay he had just had published, and which had no bearing on Ann’s Fictionaut posts at all. I warned Ann not to do this, but she ignored me, and so I deleted that thread, and one other that she did the same thing in.

Ann then, in the comments stream of her blog, quotes from an email Bobbi Lurie recently sent her, which says:

“We should write story titled JEFF SIDE's BRAIN--the title of this email sounds appropriate--but why should we give jeff side any credence? who the hell is he? he is a nutso brit--i've met so many when i lived in england--they believe in false "remedies" more so even than americans...”

I won’t point out the irony of Bobbi calling me a “nutso brit”, even though I didn’t call her “psychotic”.

Ann then says in the comments stream:

“Bobbi, I fully understand what you're saying; it is a big issue with all of us, and women especially because men define women as nuts who have their own viewpoints.”

I, for one, would never define women as nuts, and most of the men I know who write poetry would not, either, so I don’t know why Ann is saying this.

Ann then quotes, again, from a recent email to her from Bobbi, who says:

“yes. ok. true enough. no shame in needing to be on morphine for pain from cancer (perhaps Jeff Side disagrees?). the fact that he won't answer me as to why he thinks i am psychotic. you can mention that i have been fighting so many things.”

Why Bobbi thinks I should disagree about her being on morphine for cancer is not clear. I have never suggested to anyone that they should stop taking morphine for pain relief. I wonder if Bobbi has read my blog posts, so far, regarding this whole situation. Had she done so, she would know that I never said she was “psychotic”. I urge her to read them.

Ann goes on to quote Bobbi as saying:

“if he freaked out over me having cancer...that sickens me. yes. "the morphine poems" you can post this as well--it's the cover for the book and if he wants to call it psychotic it was actually my rebellion against persona poems due to "poetess" woman who lied about having cancer, not only in her "persona" poems but in her bio, in her promotion of her book, in her recommending her book to cancer patients when she did not even research the disease she claimed to have. i begged her to write a statement about her "true" life. her answer "but if i told the truth: no one would believe me." she also placed her fake cancer poems in an anthology which specifically requested poems ONLY from cancer patients and their families. she also posted her fake cancer poems on a site meant ONLY for cancer patients and that place was specifically meant for cancer patients to express their ANGER about having cancer.”

I am not in the least “freaked out” about Bobbi having cancer. If my sending her a few links, in 2008, about alternative treatments has caused her so much anger towards me, I sincerely apologise for it.

Ann goes on to quote Bobbi as saying:

“so "the morphine poems" was based on these rules which i set down for myself (while on morphine, while in severe pain--and i dare Jeff Side to call such an endeavor while dealing with unbelievable pain and fear "psychotic"--i wonder if HE could have survived such an ordeal and i DARE him to answer me about this--he having the nerve to call me a name which condemns someone so utterly--he hasn't the courage even to answer my email to him requesting (in the most polite language) "why" he calls me such a diagnosis when he is not a medical professional or any other such thing”

Again, Bobbi can’t have read my blog posts, and Ann can’t have alerted her to them, otherwise this paragraph, by Bobbi, would not have been written. I should, also, mention that I didn’t receive an email from Bobbi regarding this. I don’t doubt she sent it; I just didn’t receive it. I have changed email addresses several times since I was last in correspondence with her.

Ann then comments:

“Side says he's defending his character as someone who wrote that her emails were increasingly psychotic not that she was and he dragged her name through the press to make his minor point.”

Ann can’t seem to understand that it is she and not me who has dragged Bobbi into this. Ann first brought up Bobbi’s name in the Otherstream Facebook group thread, accusing me of calling Bobbi “psychotic”, and then she contacted Bobbi and invited Bobbi to join in this “debate” online.

I really can’t understand Ann’s anger towards me, which seems out of all proportion to my having merely removed her from The Argotist Online Facebook group.

Second Response to Ann Bogle

Since the following was posted, Ann has removed her blog post that the link in the following post pointed to.

Here is Ann Bogle’s response to my blog post of Saturday 11 August 2012:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/jeffrey-side-and-american-candid.html

In that blog post I explain that I didn’t call Bobbi Lurie “psychotic”, as Ann had previously said I had done in an email to Ann, but had, rather, referred to Bobbi’s emails to me as becoming ‘more and more psychotic and confusing’, principally at the point at which Bobbi accused me in one email of trying to make her cancer worse. I think anyone accused of this would take such an accusation as not being consistent with reality, hence my use of the word “psychotic” in relation to this. The word “psychotic” means, by the way, in case Ann doesn’t know the definition of it, “being out of touch with reality”, and as Bobbi’s accusation that I was trying to make her cancer worse falls very much into this area, I felt justified in using that word. I did not say, I stress, that Bobbi, herself, was psychotic, but that what she was saying was.

Ann says in her response to my blog post that Bobbi has told her that Bobbi might seek legal advice regarding my use of the word “psychotic”. Ann says of Bobbi: ‘She says the word "psychotic" is incriminating even in defense against it. She emailed she could find a lawyer”. If one can’t refer to the word “psychotic” to defend oneself from the accusation that they had called someone it, then that would be very strange. I’m only going, though, by what Ann says Bobbi has said regarding this. I don’t know if Bobbi said it or not.

Ann also says in her response to my blog post that my blog post accuses Ann of incompetence and malicious gossip. I don’t think I do accuse her of the former but certainly of the latter, as the latter was, as is plain from my blog post, motivated by her anger at my removing her from The Argotist Online Facebook group. The malicious gossip in question, being her accusation that I called Bobbi “psychotic”, which she first mentioned in the Otherstream Facebook group and then in a post she made at Fictionaut, which has now been removed by a Fictionaut administrator as it was defamatory.

Ann then says in her response to my blog post:

‘Side sent Bobbi quack remedies for cancer, she told me, and that when she lived in London, she met many Brits who believed in false hope remedies such as those Side proposed to her.’

This is referring to the period when Bobbi and I were in communication with each other. I sent Bobbi various links to alternative cancer therapies. I wouldn’t characterise them as “quack” therapies, though, as most were being delivered by reputable hospitals and clinics.

Ann then says in her response to my blog post:

“In a message dated 8/12/2012 11:49:19 P.M. Central Daylight Time, bobbilurie@.com writes:

YES, JEFF SIDE'S BRAIN: DRINKING WATER WHILE STANDING ON YOUR HEAD AND SPEAKING IN HUNGARIAN IS NOT A CURE FOR CANCER, JEFF SIDE'S BRAIN...YOU'LL JUST MAKE MY CANCER WORSE...” [Block capitals not mine]

I have no idea if Bobbi did actually write this or not. If she did, then I would like to take the opportunity to say that I have not advised her to drink water while standing on her head and speaking Hungarian, which, of course, she knows full well is not true.

Response to Ann Bogle

Since the following was posted, Ann has removed her blog post that the link in the following post pointed to.

Ann Bogle, someone who I thought was a friend (or at the very least, a friendly acquaintance), has been spreading malicious gossip about me online, saying that I called her friend Bobbi Lurie “psychotic”. Here’s the link to it on her blog:

http://annbogle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/american-candid.html

You will need to scroll down the page to find her reference to Bobbi Laurie, so I’ll quote it: 

"Jeffrey Side, you had represented (though I might have wanted an editor in you besides) my e-chapbooks, so, for that career-related investment I had made with you, I failed to defend Bobbi Lurie more fully (by disassociating from you? retracting my e-books?) when you described her as psychotic in an email."

As can be seen, this is mostly incoherent, but her comment relating to Bobbi is quite clear. What Ann hasn’t done is to explain the context whereby I came to use that word in relation to Bobbi. Here is that context.

In late 2011, Ann, asked me to publish an ebook of Bobbi’s poetry. I told her that I would rather not do so, as Bobbi and I had, a few years previously, been in an email communication with each other that had started off amicably but for some reason on Bobbi’s part became what I can only describe as increasingly eccentric, incoherent and somewhat belligerent towards me, for no reason I was aware of. The culmination of this was an accusation she made towards me, saying that I was trying to make her cancer worse. Because of this, and because, by that time, I was so exasperated by the frequency and confusing nature of her emails, I called a halt to our communications.

When Ann asked me to publish Bobbi, I mentioned this state of affairs to her, saying that I would rather not have anything to do with Bobbi because of it. However, after Ann had explained to me that Bobbi had been going through a difficult period, I was moved to reconsider my refusal and agreed to publish her after all, but on condition that Ann, or her then literary associate, Marc Vincenz, be an email intermediary between Bobbi and myself, as I couldn’t cope with the thought of having to communicate with her again, to which Ann agreed. As things turned out, though, I heard no more from Ann about this, and assumed that Ann or Bobbi had changed their minds regarding publication. I later found out from Ann that the reason Bobbi had decided not to publish with me, after all, was because Ann had told her that I had said she was “psychotic” in one of my emails to Ann.

The following is the full email correspondence that Ann and I had regarding the publication of Bobbi’s ebook. As can be seen, Ann has taken the word “psychotic” very much out of its original context:

21 November 2011

Jeff,

I just got a note from my friend and one of my favorite writers, Bobbi Lurie. She's learned her first poetry collection has gone out of print, and she asked if I know anything about ebooks. What I know is that you publish them - amazing ones. Could I suggest that she contact you?

Best,

Ann

1 December 2011

Ann,

I've had dealings with Bobbi Lurie in the past, and to be frank it wasn't all that pleasant. Her email exchanges with me became more and more psychotic and confusing, and her tone and language were so belligerent towards me (at one point accusing me of trying to make her cancer worse - whatever that meant) that it would be a pain to have to deal with her again. Sorry for my negativity, and I appreciate your trying to help her out.

Best,

Jeff

1 December 2011

Jeff,

Thanks for letting me know of the experience you've had with Bobbi, as sad as it makes me to hear it. Marc Vincenz suggested he might be able to reissue her first book via Mad Hatters', but I haven't mentioned it to her yet, not wanting to get her hopes up and disappoint her in case Carol Novack withdraws funding from the press. Carol has cancer, too. I have had to make my way carefully with Bobbi myself, as I know her life circumstances have not been easy, and she becomes suddenly distrustful. The internet, especially, though she is a good writer there, sometimes even better than good, at times deluges her with confusion.

I'm sure there will be a place for her first book as an ebook.

Thanks for writing.

Best,

Ann

3 December 2011

Ann,

The only way I could consider doing an ebook for her is if you or Marc act as intermediaries for me. I'm very sorry Carol has cancer also.

I've attached an email I send to people who have cancer, advising them how to treat it using apricot kernels. Perhaps you could forward it to Carol and Bobbi.

Best,

Jeff

9 December 2011

Jeff,

Thanks. I'll pass on your file to Bobbi and Carol. Carol cannot read due to her brain cancer, but her assistant and friend, Douglas, can read it for her.

Bobbi is on the road for cancer treatment, but I heard from her, and she'd like to bring out the first book as an ebook with Argotist. I talked to Marc Vincenz, and he said that he and I can handle the details with her. Sound good? Let me know if there's anything we need to do first and when. Thanks so much, Jeff.

  

Best,

Ann

Ann initially accused me of calling Bobbi “psychotic” in the Otherstream Facebook group, after I had removed her from The Argotist Online Facebook group for ignoring my requests not to post things there that were not related to poetry. Here is how I announced to the other group members that I had removed her from it:

“I’ve had to remove Ann Bogle from the Argotist FB group, as she was relentless in her determination to carry on starting threads that were not poetry related, and also “hijacking” other threads by posting comments not related to the threads’ topic matter. I explained to her that the Argotist group was solely for discussion of poetry but she ignored me, and continued unrelentingly. I, therefore, had no choice but to remove her from the group.”

I assume Ann was so outraged at this, that she felt the need to vent her anger in the Otherstream Facebook group, and in doing so try to damage my character by representing falsely the Bobbi Lurie situation, as explained above.

For Ann to have done this is quite disturbing. She must have known the potential damage it could have caused to my character. It is especially disquieting considering the reason for it was fairly trivial: merely my removing her from a Facebook group.

Here is the Otherstream Facebook group exchange I had with Ann where she says I called Bobbi “psychotic”. As can be seen her posts are extremely incoherent and rambling, whether this is intentional on her part, I don’t know:

Ann Bogle:

You had represented (though I might have wanted an editor in you besides) my e-chapbooks, so, for that career-related investment I had made with you, I failed to defend Bobbi Lurie more fully (by disassociating from you? retracting my e-books?) when you described her as psychotic in an email. The links to my e-books are probably still working. Rachel Lisi designed the cover of one of them, and Daniel Harris gave ten illustrations. All I wanted to say, and you are avoiding the subject rather stupidly, is, and I said it in more than one place and way, your poetics collection of essay, responses, etc. and fight with Seth Abramson about it, did not name names in a way that might have been useful in considering or applying your arguments. Your cry that it went by not celebrated caused me to plunge in as a reader preparing to review your email correspondence, Other Voices, with Jake Berry. Jake, in turn, took a dip, a little swim, in my prosetics, and responded kindly. I am in your coral as a writer, and you are revoking my digressive strategies. It seems strange you represented my collections as e-books unless you were aligning yourself in another silent debate in poetry.

Jeffrey Side:

Ann, I was unaware that the links to your ebooks were not working. I will correct that. If I had intended to remove the actual ebooks I would not have left them as listed on the site. If that is what all your silliness is about, then you should have told me the links were inactive instead of causing trouble here. I assumed you were more mature than this.

Regarding my saying Bobbi Laurie was psychotic. I said her emails to me had become psychotic and confusing to me, much like your posts here have been.

Ann Bogle:

Define "psychotic" then. You are wildly evasive. Who knew you were wild? I wrote "distrustful" and you are not? I wrote "confusion" and you are not confused. Bobbi knows about this correspondence that Jeff quotes here accurately (it is plain that Jeff and I do not have day jobs), painstakingly, and ... okay, Princess Di ...

Shortly after this exchange, Marc Vincenz told me that Ann had now left the Otherstream Facebook group. I wish her no ill will, and hope she can resolve some of the issues she has with me.

Response to Seth Abramson

Here is a link to my response to Seth Abramson’s critique of my Introduction to The Argotist Online feature, The Academisation of Avant-Garde Poetry:

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Response%20to%20Seth%20Abramson.htm

The Academisation of Avant-Garde Poetry

Jake Berry’s essay, 'Poetry Wide Open: The Otherstream (Fragments In Motion)' deals with the issue of certain types of avant-garde poetry as not yet having found favour within the Academy, or with poetry publishers of academically “sanctioned” avant-garde poetry. The damaging aspects of this exclusion, and the concept of an “approved” versus an “unapproved” avant-garde poetry, are also examined in the essay. And these things could well be described as “the academisation of avant-garde poetry”.

Academic poetic output is operating to a healthy extent in the US, where university creative writing departments are flourishing. The University of Pennsylvania has its Kelly Writers House programme, its PennSound website and its Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, all sympathetic to academic avant-garde poetry. The University of Pennsylvania also edits Jacket2, an influential online poetics website, which was formerly called Jacket, and which was edited by the independent John Tranter before he passed it over to the university. And similar things are happening in the UK, with various institutions such as the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck University, and the Poetry and Poetics Research Group at the University of Edge Hill, both promoting academic avant-garde poetry.

Consequently, one could say that the term "avant-garde" has now, essentially, been appropriated by the Academy, and, as such, has become associated with the sort of poetic writing practices that could be fairly said to represent “establishment” poetry, to the extent that the historical resonances of the term “avant-garde” have become meaningless. In contrast, Bob Grumman’s term, “otherstream”, which Berry uses in his essay to describe poetry that is marginalised by the Academy, can be seen as a more apt replacement for the term “avant-garde”, which has now become obsolete as an appropriate description for poetry that isn’t anecdotal, descriptive or prose-like.

This Argotist Online feature presents Berry’s essay, the responses to it from poets and academics it was first shown to, and an interview with Berry where he addresses some of the criticisms voiced in these responses. Many poets and academics (including those most famously associated with Language Poetry) were approached for their responses but declined. Other poets and academics that had initially agreed to respond ultimately declined. I mention this not as criticism but merely to explain the absence of people who one would normally expect to have responded and taken part in such a discussion.

The feature can be found here:

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/The%20Academisation%20of%20Avant-Garde%20Poetry.htm

The New Ebook from Argotist Ebooks is 'Outside Voices: An Email Correspondence' by Jake Berry and Jeffrey Side

Description:

This 18-month transatlantic email correspondence between Jake Berry and Jeffrey Side ranges across and intertwines a variety of topics that include: poetry and music; film and TV; the changes in culture over the past few decades; the differences in regional U.S. and U.K. accents; the difficulty of reaching the famous in order to interview them; the songwriter as poet and vice versa.

Available as a free ebook here:

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/OUTSIDE%20VOICES.pdf

Full Argotist Ebooks catalogue here:

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Ebooks%20index.htm

Taking the Concept of Meaning-Making by Storm: A Review of Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes

There is a negative review of Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes (a long poem by Jake Berry and myself) in Jacket2 by Jacquilyn Weeks. I don’t mind the review, as I am fairly detached from the poetry I write. Besides, it’s good to have feedback whatever it is. Here is the review:

'Taking the Concept of Meaning-Making by Storm: A Review of Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes'

http://jacket2.org/reviews/taking-concept-meaning-making-storm

Bill Lavender who published the poem has written a response to the review, which can be found here:

https://jacket2.org/commentary/bill-lavender-responds-review-cyclones-high-northern-latitudes

Rachel Lisi 1970-2010

A dear friend of mine, Rachel Lisi, has passed away. I am deeply shocked and saddened. Rachel was one of the cover illustrators for Argotist Ebooks, and I’d known her since 2003. Over the years, she had been a true and loyal friend to me.

She was a great visual artist, with her photography and graphics, and also wrote poetry. Here is some of it:

http://www.argotistonline.co.uk/Lisi%20poems.htm

She was always friendly and upbeat, never complaining about anything. She was working on her third cover for Argotist Ebooks but was unable to continue due to her illness. Here are the two covers she did do:

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/closing-eyes-blazing-life/11599164

http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/solzhenitsyn-jukebox/12033095

Her website of artwork, photography and poems can be found here:

http://www.kundavega.com/

From her introduction to the site:

'My name is Rachel Lisi. This small corner of cyber space allows me to share different things with you. For some time I have been following the crafts of photography and poetry finding many hills and valleys along the way. I am still trying to find the right path, but surrendering to the guidance of the day and night and every turn of my imagination. As always, I continue to evolve and learn within this circle of creating.'

I have asked her family if it is ok if I do an ebook of her poems and artwork as a tribute.

Here is a photomontage of Rachel on YouTube:

Tribute To Rachel Anne Lisi

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D8xbL4R0CS34&h=2d4d7

Thank you Rachel for your friendship and generosity of spirit. I will miss you greatly.

Pirene's Fountain Feature

Pirene's Fountain has a feature on Jake Berry and myself:

http://www.pirenesfountain.com/folios/berry_side.html

My thanks to editor Ami Kaye for all the work she's put into this during the past year.

Interview with me at Fieralingue

I was pleased to be asked by Anny Ballardini to take part in a series of interviews with poetry publishers at Fieralingue:

http://www.fieralingue.it/corner.php?pa=printpage&pid=3461

Excerpt:

Q: Are there any parameters by which you understand the political correctness of a literary work? Could you please describe them? Could you give some examples based on the books you published?

A: I can’t really answer the question, as I don’t believe that poetry that thinks of itself as political is of any urgent relevance to the aesthetics of poetry, which has always been my main concern. I assume that some of those poets who write what they call political poetry hope it will have some interest philosophically, if nothing else. Few would expect it to bring about political change.

The failure of the high profile and well-supported political protest song “movement” in the USA in the 1960s should be an indication that if such a popular and internationally well-publicised mass movement as that failed, then certainly “political” poetry (avant-garde or otherwise) has little hope of success.

Q: With the general economic crisis that has hit not only the U.S.A., what is your forecast on the future of the book?

A: I think the future of printed books will be that they will still be available but for mainly archival purposes, and for collectors of beautiful objects. There may also be a market for them as gifts for special occasions such as weddings, christenings and other rights of passage celebrations. But as a utility, printed books will be used rarely when devises such as Kindle become as ubiquitous and as affordable as digital wristwatches.

Seven Poems in Fieralingue

My thanks to Anny Ballardini for publishing seven of my new poems in Fieralingue:

http://www.fieralingue.it/modules.php?name=Content&pa=list_pages_categories&cid=230

Published Email Correspondence

Otoliths have published Outside Voices: an email correspondence, which is a series of emails between poet Jake Berry and myself. It's available to purchase here:

http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/outside-voices-an-email-correspondence/12675463

Here is the publishers description:

‘This 18-month transatlantic email correspondence between Jake Berry and Jeffrey Side ranges across and intertwines a variety of topics that include: poetry and music; film and TV; the changes in culture over the past few decades; the differences in regional U.S. and U.K. accents; the difficulty of reaching the famous in order to interview them; the songwriter as poet and vice versa.’

Excerpts:

'I think we are nearing an end of game situation as far as the arts are concerned. By that, I mean everything that could be done in painting, music, poetry, film, song etc. has been done. All that seems to be going on now in each of these art forms is a repetition of achievements but rebranding them as "innovative." Painting is still feeding off Pollack or Rothko, and conceptual art is still milking the found object idea. Experimental classical music is still working with dissonance and atonal stuff. Mainstream poetry is still under the shadow of Wordsworth and Whitman; or if it is experimental, it is still operating under the fragmentation/collage aesthetic of early modernist poetry. Modern experimental film seems not to exist anymore (it is now video art) and mainstream film (since Spielberg) imitates the look and feel of German Expressionist cinema in the 1920s. In pop/rock (the two have become the same to me now) the musical sounds are not as innovative as they were with the early 1980s new wave stuff, with its space-age synth sound and robotic feel. What we have now is fourth rate Beatles/Doors/Stones wannabees on the one hand, and soul-based divas (Beyonce etc.) churning out substandard Tina Turner/Diana Ross/Donna Summer with “attitude” and an R&B base run. There is nothing very innovative being done anymore. Obviously, this is a caricature and not 100% accurate, but it illustrates a trend.' (Jeffrey Side)

'Yes, these days it is anathema to do anything that seems romantic. This is the horseshit of so-called postmodernism. Romanticism leads to Modernism and you must rebel against Modernism because, well, it’s old now and you have to do something new. It was Pound though that said "make it new." Poetry has painted itself into corners all over the place. The academic corner. The Beat/Hip corner. The exclusive avant-garde corner. The anecdotal narrative corner. The poetry slam, open mic corner. All of these are for a very limited audience. I heard Gore Vidal talking about the novel a couple of years ago. He lamented that the novel had gone the way of poetry, into obscurity. Many people would object saying no, there are more novels published every year than ever before. Yes, but have you read those novels? They aren’t Dickens, nowhere near it. They aren’t even Gore Vidal. It’s mostly pulp stuff.' (Jake Berry)

Two Poems in Jacket Magazine

I have two recent poems in Jacket Magazine:

http://www.jacketmagazine.com/40/side-2-poems.shtml

My thanks to Pam Brown.

Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes

Thanks to Bill Lavender of Lavender Ink books, a collaborative poem by Jake Berry and myself called Cyclones in High Northern Latitudes (with drawings and cover art by Rich Curtis) is now available as a book at Amazon.

More information about it can be found here:

http://lavenderink.org/cyclone/


Excerpt:

Her dignity
could not be effaced
by the quality
of her clothes.
I knew this
back near the border
when I was not satisfied.
I recommend highly
a new approach
to the situation.
Such was the time
spent together.
What could I offer her
that would not
betray her?
Money was cold comfort,
bleak as the weather.
There would be
half a smile
and polite rejection
and words
beneath her breath
in a language
not spoken since
a time
before words
were written.
All this
I tell you now.
A time
there was
when such
could not be broached.
Not even
by those
whose position
it was to assist.
Why do I
go on this way?

Two Poems at Todd Swift's Eyewear

Todd Swift has kindly included two of my poems in a recent profile of me at his Eyewear blog:

http://toddswift.blogspot.com/2010/03/featured-poet-jeffrey-side.html

Thanks, Todd.

Another Day for Kent Johnson

A new book by Kent Johnson is now available. It's called Day and is published by Blazevox. It has had some good reviews, including the following by Juliana Spahr:

'If the 836-pp. Day established Kenny Goldsmith as without a doubt the leading conceptual poet of his time, the 836-pp. Day by Kent Johnson may well be remembered for nudging the politics of Conceptual Poetry out of blithely affirmative, institutional framings, and into truly negational critical spaces'.

Commendation indeed, if Spahr had actually said it, but it is a fabrication by Johnson, in keeping with the parodic tone he sets for the book, for indeed, Johnson’s Day is an exact reproduction of Kenny Goldsmith’s “work” of the same name. I’ve put “work” in quotes because Goldsmith would readily agree that the work in question was not “created” by him in any authorial sense. He describes his working procedure for the book as follows:

‘I am spending my 39th year practicing uncreativity. On Friday, September 1, 2000, I began retyping the day's NEW YORK TIMES word for word, letter for letter, from the upper left hand corner to the lower right hand corner, page by page’.

http://www.geoffreyyoung.com/thefigures/day.html

His term for this procedure is “uncreative writing”, which is,

‘a constraint-based process; uncreativity as a creative practice. By typing page upon page, making no distinction between article, editorial and advertisement, disregarding all typographic and graphical treatments, Goldsmith levels the daily newspaper. DAY is a monument to the ephemeral, comprised of yesterday's news, a fleeting moment concretized, captured, then reframed into the discourse of literature’.

http://www.geoffreyyoung.com/thefigures/day.html

However, this arduous undertaking of retyping the whole newspaper is not all it appears to be, for he later contradicts himself by saying:

'But in capitalism, labor equals value. So certainly my project must have value, for if my time is worth an hourly wage, then I might be paid handsomely for this work. But the truth is that I've subverted this equation by OCR'ing [scanning] as much of the newspaper as I can'.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/uncreativity.html

Johnson’s appropriation of the “work”, therefore, can be seen as a logical extension of Goldsmith’s procedural stratagems, and perfectly within the ethical scope that Goldsmith has allowed for himself (and presumably others) in the publishing arena. Indeed, if Johnson, or anyone else, for that matter, had not done this, it could be argued, convincingly, that Goldsmith had proclaimed his aesthetic in vain.

However, such a compliment that Johnson has paid to Goldsmith’s aesthetic could be seen as something of a poisoned chalice, in that it has painted Goldsmith into a corner. For if he were to sue Johnson, he would be seen as something of a hypocrite, and thereby lose some artistic credibility. But if he doesn’t sue Johnson, he will leave his other “works” open to the same fate as has been visited on Day in this instance.

Of course, Goldsmith could have avoided such a dilemma by simply publishing the book anonymously, but that is, perhaps, too much a council of perfection that not even his aesthetic could countenance.

Incidentally, it could be said that Johnson’s appropriation of Goldsmith’s “work” is, perhaps, the more innovative and audacious act in comparison to Goldsmith’s “original” gesture, which, I think most will recognise, was based on an already established artistic precedent.

Day by Kent Johnson is priced at $30, plus shipping and handling. ($300 for each of ten numbered copies signed by the “Author”, no charge for shipping and handling.) All copies come with specially designed, affixed stickers (on cover, back cover, title page, spine, etc.) to impart authorship, copyright, blurbs, and co-production. It can be purchased at Blazevox:

http://www.blazevox.org/bk-kj4.htm

Is Stephen Burt’s “New Thing” all that New?

I have just seen an article by Stephen Burt called ‘The New Thing: The object lessons of recent American poetry’ in the Boston Review in which he says:

‘For much of the past decade, the most imitated new American poets were slippery, digressive, polyvocalic, creators of overlapping, colorful fragments. Their poems were avowedly personal, although they never retold the poets’ life stories (they did not tell stories at all); the poets used, or at least mentioned, difficult ideas, especially from continental philosophy, although they never laid out philosophical arguments (they did not lay out arguments at all). Nor did they describe concrete objects at length. Full of illogic, of associative leaps, their poems resembled dreams, performances, speeches, or pieces of music, and they were, in M.H. Abrams’s famous formulation, less mirror than lamp: the poets sought to project their own experiences, in sparkling bursts of voluble utterance. Their models, among older authors, were Emily Dickinson, John Berryman, John Ashbery, perhaps Frank O’Hara; some had studied (or studied with) Jorie Graham, and many had picked up devices from the Language writers of the West Coast. These poets were what I, eleven years ago, called “elliptical,” what other (sometimes hostile) observers called “New Lyric,” or “post-avant,” or “Third Way.” Their emblematic first book was Mark Levine’s Debt (1993), their emblematic magazine probably Fence (founded 1998); their bad poems were bad surrealism, random-seeming improvisations, or comic turns hoping only to hold an audience’

He then sees a move away from this sort of poetry to that typified by (among others) Devin Johnston, Jon Woodward and Alice James. He describes this as follows:

‘The poets of the New Thing observe scenes and people (not only, but also, themselves) with a self-subordinating concision, so much so that the term “minimalism” comes up in discussions of their work, though the false analogies to earlier movements can make the term misleading. The poets of the New Thing eschew sarcasm and tread lightly with ironies, and when they seem hard to pin down, it is because they leave space for interpretations to fit. Woodward’s Rain, with its five-word lines and five-line elegiac stanzas, makes a good example:

the slick
of rainwater converts each thing’s
outside to an image of
inside the only object without
a soul is the sun

So says one stanza; six pages on, another reads:

the tar they use to
fill the cracks shines orange
from the orange streetlights but
is blacker than the asphalt
which doesn’t shine

We may have to reread to see, amid these scenes, the grief (for Woodward’s dead friend Patrick) that guides the whole book.’

My apologies for being obtuse but how does this sort of poetry exemplify anything new? Granted, in contrast to the poetry that Burt sees as non-descriptive and elliptical it is different. Nevertheless, it is not historically new in the development of poetic writing since High Modernism. On the contrary, it seems merely to represent a style of poetic writing that has always been active in mainstream poetry, namely that which has always relied on an empiricist aesthetic in describing phenomena. Indeed, Burt seems to acknowledge this:

‘This turn among poets to reference, to concrete, real things, has parallels, if not contributory causes, in literary academia. By 2001 there were books, articles, and anthologies devoted to “thing theory,” showing how literary works depend on the structures and histories of the “solid objects” (Douglas Mao’s term) that they might depict.’

Therefore, it is curious that Burt sees this as novel. He adds:

‘Reference, brevity, self-restraint, attention outside the self, material objects as models, Williams and his heirs as predecessors, classical lyric and epigram as precedents: all these, together, constitute the New Thing.’

This statement could have been made at any point in history about mainstream empiricist poetry.

By the way, some of what I say in my article ‘Empirical and Non-Empirical Identifiers’ in Jacket magazine, may inform any discussion this blog entry fosters.

Has British Poetry Had Any Significance Since Wordsworth?

This may seem an outlandish question, but I think it has some force behind it. Of course, the influence of Wordsworth on contemporary British mainstream poetry need hardly be stressed, and I have written extensively about this elsewhere. It is because of this influence that most of the celebrated British poetry of the Twentieth Century tended towards mediocrity when compared to American poetry of the same period. Certainly, there will be individual lines or stanzas from British poetry that belie this statement, but generally, I believe, the statement to be accurate.

In my last blog entry, ‘Can There Ever Be Another High Modernism’, I suggested that since High Modernism poetic innovation has been slight. Nevertheless, what little of it there has been seems to have been the product of an American sensibility, the most acute example being, perhaps, Language Poetry. Indeed, the more I look at the poetry of the last century, the more I see it as having been predominantly the manifestation of this American sensibility, incarnated in American-born poets such as Eliot, Pound, Stein, Stevens, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Ashbery, Bernstein and others. The only exception to this American ascendancy was Joyce, who was Irish.

Even before the Twentieth Century, America was, for the most part, producing the better poets, such as Whitman, Dickinson and Poe. It is certainly true, one could argue, that from Poe to Eliot the influence of French poets such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine was very much present, but it was American poets rather than British poets who seem to have had the perceptiveness to see something of value in these French poets and appropriate it.

British poetry, conversely, has continued in the tradition of Wordsworthian empiricism and parochialism, largely antagonistic to any use of a poetic language that basis its effects on aspects other than descriptiveness and anecdotal confession. How long this will remain the case is uncertain.

Can There Ever Be Another High Modernism?

This post is developed from a comment I left on Adam Fieled’s blog Stoning the Devil, in relation to his 'Flarf Time' post which was his response to Nana Gordon’s 'Flarf: Memorable? Novel?' post on her blog. The exchange between Adam and Nada revolved around poetic value and cultural significance: Adam arguing that poetry should ideally be able to encompass these concepts, and Nada arguing (if I understand her position correctly) that such concerns were not necessarily applicable in evaluating poetry’s “worth”.

My own view is a position held between these two opposites. Whilst I accept that ultimately a poem’s emotional value cannot be objectively estimated outside of its personal significance to individual readers, I believe that each poem has within it a potential for historical significance by either moving poetic language forward or, as in the case of Ginsberg’s Howl, having a cultural impact largely independent of linguistic concerns. As is probably the case, very few poems written since the appearance of Howl have achieved anything near a national or international cultural significance.

But having said this, Flarf’s “frivolity” of approach is (if albeit depressing) perhaps apt for our times, as is its estimation of poetic “value”. Perhaps poetry should not be taken very seriously, at least not that which has been written during the past 50 years, or so. However, many poetic schools seem to take themselves very seriously. Perhaps, this is why such schools form in the first place. It is certainly a fact that, historically, many poets have written a particular style of poetry as a way of being accepted by one of these schools, if only to potentiate their publishing opportunities—poetic schools are more marketable than desperado poets are

Of course, alongside this state of affairs there arise the inevitable rivalries and poetic factions. Perhaps, I am mistaken, but the only exception to this seemed to be the relationship between the Beats, the New York School and the Black Mountain School. They seem to have got on very well together—at least from what I have gathered from reading biographies of Ginsberg and Kerouac.

As we know, poetry is not read much now. Consequently, poetry has become culturally insignificant. I read somewhere that if all the poets now writing vanished from the earth, their absence would not affect the culture one jot. I am afraid this may be true. This cannot be accurately said for practitioners of the other arts such as music, painting and film. They seem to now do for us what poetry used to do.

Of course, a similar state to that which is present regarding poetry now was present before High Modernism, as can be seen in the poetry anthologies of the first decade of the Twentieth Century. Nevertheless, I do not see an equivalent to High Modernism on the current poetic horizon—or at least not that which doesn’t involve a multi-media approach, which I think would not really count as a multi-media’s affects would rely more than on words alone. Although, I accept that a poetic sensibility can be expressed in most art forms to some extent, I think that what we have come to know as poetry—i.e. that which is read on the page or heard being spoken—would be lost in a multi-media approach.