responding to Eileen some more

see http://angelicpoker.blogspot.com/2010/02/thoughts-while-judging-poetry-5.html

Eileen is asking some questions about merit, awards, prizes, judgement, quality, grading. She's using a combination of two scales on the mss. she reads: letters (five point, though apparently recently expanded to six point) and checks (3 point).

She's also talking about giving the experience of reading the poetry primacy. Super.

But, what will the difference mean once she must choose from the winnowed wheat? I'm assuming she'll have about 15 mss. to read for the prize (4 from 25); judges who don't read them all read anywhere from 10 - 20. I think Eileen wll pick the one she thinkgs is the best, but -- the best why?

Now, usually we ask, the best how?

But between a few manuscripts, I'm assuming some will be very different from one another, and others will be similar to others in tone, scope, approach, use of source, relation to audience.

But in top secret conversations with judges, some will conclude: these are all worthy.

This one will help the press most. It is the best.

This one shares formal or subject concerns near and dear to my heart; it moved me more intellectually and emotionally than the others, and from a field of excellence, this one is the best *in my opinion.*

This is the most ambitious one; this poet could use the prize more than the others, etc., etc.

And I'm trying to reduce the more po-biz heavy slant I've had on this in the past (while I rarely enter contests, I won't enter them at all if I don't know who the judge is, except, from time to time, the nps). I think it is actually more ethical to say, ok, these are all ones I would publish. Rather than leave it to some sort of chance operation, I will choose among them with a motive.

Eileen Tabios (still on list?)

has a blog post I've been thinking about -- basically, why are many entrants of a poetry prize she is judging already winners of poetry prizes --

and it seems obvious that those are the people best able to see how valuable a poetry prize is, OR, are the least likely to have done the types of poetry community work and researching to know the presses and editors to submit over the transom

and I think part of my answer to that question is important because when I was thinking it, it occurred to me that -- dud -- of course a prize is better, because it gives people outside the specialty on a hiring committee, or grant committee, or whatever, a sense of peer review, a sense that this is work that is somehow "approved"

b/w the "I hate chapbooks" thing, then, self publishing is the *opposite* of prize-winning.

this solitary hill.

this hedgerow too holds most
of the horizon from me.
But as I sit and gaze,
space beyond that hedge,
my mind conjures
a silence more
than peace
until my heart
is all but daunted.
As I hear the wind rustle again in the foliage,
I compare this infinite silence to that whispered voice:
I recollect the Eternal,
long-dead seasons and the present season
alive, the sheer sure sound of it. And so
my thought drowns in its immensity:
shipwreck is a sweet thing on this ocean.

don't like the switch to shipwreck

Had I missed this before? Review of Chanteuse / Catatrice

http://www.slope.org/latestissue/criticism-commentary/theresa_carmody.html

http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Blandings-Builds-Dream-House/dp/0897332458

http://www.carygrant.net/reviews/blandings.html

Mr Blandings Builds his Dream House being a version of Thomas Hardy,

How I Built Myself a House

http://people.stfx.ca/rnemesva/Hardy/house.html

here in LA

here's another page from 291 with a teeny pic of a visual poem not by meyer and de zayas

these are all angles of the same close up

reading a women & ny modernism book, came across the collabs between Agndes Ernst Meyer and Marius de Zayas, especially encouraging this work from the journal 291 is so like the Adon Le Croix/ Man Ray collabs -- perhaps a different access point to visual poetry for me

New Poetry is discussing a bit the "41 moves"
http://htmlgiant.com/craft-notes/moves-in-contemporary-poetry/

Many of which are rhetorical figures. Like the one Matthea Harvey uses in her first book.

It is a fairly decent list of poets who are considered to be more
adventurous Americans, mostly teachers of poetry in well-known
programs, some MacArthur recipients, who are not associated with the
language poets , nor with experimental poets or innovative writing per
se (with exceptions). I.e., American poets with writing that DEPENDS on "moves." Their teaching often depends on quasi-formal assignments and "writing
exercises". Perhaps they are less familiar in some ways because they
already have a certain reputation.

Alice Fulton
Jack Gilbert
Heather McHugh
Lynn Emmanuel
Dean Young
Mary Jo Bang

Brenda Shaughnessy
Matthea Harvey
Jeffrey McDaniel are younger

Dorianne Laux is not adventurous in form or content

K. Silem Mohammed
C.D. Wright
Marjorie Welish
Harryette Mullen
Ron Sillman are more innovative

The more unfamiliar names are mostly names of Elisa's peers and
poetryfriends, many of whom have one book out on a small American
press.

Right, there are exceptions, as I mentioned. Welish and Wright, too.

Through I think Silliman relies on something akin to a move more than,
oh, Hejinian.

Are these lines dull because of the moves, or are the poets dull?
Well, one thing is that most of these moves are about lines; some are
rhetorical figures, others aren't. And the examples of compound nonce
words aren't; they're just two words run together.

And the example of illogical causation doesn't seem to be causation.
So does that make it illogical?

Here's a longer sample from the "illogical causation" poet:
http://www.typomag.com/issue06/mark.html



[the choice of
examples seems dulled, and based on a who's who in a part of a poetry scene
that, like all the others, thinks itself the centre of the universe.]

It's more ignorance coupled with enthusiasm, in my view. If one's map
isn't that detailed, it only includes the prize winners, the faculty,
the capitals.

Some of these people are notorious for some of these lines in
particular, or for using this grab bag of tricks, Harvey, Fulton,
Shaughnessy, Bang, in particular.

[what about "moves"]

I immediately thought of Libby Rifkin's _Career Moves_; her own career
got a big push when she happened to be researching at UC San Diego
during the pagemothers conference --

Of course, my sneaking suspicion for the past twenty years is that
free verse which relies on rhetoric, logical fluff ups, and a few
slippery workshop tricks is dead. I have been proven wrong. And my
work which is like this has been more difficult to get into print than
the other stuff. There is a key variation, which is a sort of
clotted, gothic, decorated style. And Cole Swensen's version of found
poetry, especially now she teaches at Iowa.

I am perhaps not proven wrong: the MFA culture has gotten larger and
more powerful, and this is the writing which "comes across" to the
converted, while not being "poet's poetry." I have been trying to get
rid of books again, and the ones selling are just exactly this type of
new work that's sort of dull.

reminds me of a cynical -- or was that just fun? -- take on the device Matthea Harvey used in her first book

JOHN PERLMAN


ROOM PRESS




















A-sallying forth begininings a
howl homes thru homelessness a
space of echo seeking echoes a
wayward castaway until ahead a
quavavering brilliance seems a
brutal spume of blazing eyes a
squall of incandescent flesh a
seething smile chattering at a
dazzling shattering of bones a
neveverever done a-wandering a
darkark furling sail adrift be
calmed

book from the book recs that came out of the Mary Daly obits was "Goddesses and the Divine Feminine" It is awfully silly that I am reading a book with this title, if you follow the POETICS listserv.

Anyway, in the preface, Rosemary Radford Reuther writes, "Feminists have no perfect option from some past tradition. This means that we can choose from some options..., or we can pursue new options by seeking to recover other ancient traditions."

HUH? REJECT THEM ALL. WHY PICK AND CHOOSE AMONG BAD APPLES.