Thursday, January 29, 2009
WHO ME?
There have certainly been more outrageous examples of self-blinding narcissism, but Kent Johnson’s continual rants about self-promotion by poets has to be one of the most ludicrous.
I have waited for years for someone, anyone, to call Kent on his nonsense, but no one seems up to it. So, I’ll do it. There is simply no greater self-promoter in the poetry world than Kent Johnson. He cannot go two sentences in a comments field, no matter what the topic is, and not refer back to something he’s written, something he’s about to write (which has got to be, by now, several hundred pages of unfulfilled “projects”), an interview about him, or administered by him, a poem he’s written, and what others are saying about it, or he’ll simply just quote himself and be done with it. On top of this unbelievable black hole of self, into which all others’ endeavors and thoughts become swallowed up, he enlists the stupid ruse of how incredibly and magnanimously anti-narcissist he is! You can view any of his comments on Silliman’s site, or anywhere, really, if one wants to waste one’s life on such things.
From his years ago complaint about the photos in APR being so large compared to the poems, all through the Yasusada prank, to the current dust-up with Flarf, his disingenuous pose as the cleanser of the Poetry World, while fluffing his own pillow in the process, is an act of acrobatic self-preening one will assuredly not encounter again in one’s lifetime. Kent has fashioned himself as the maverick, as the poetry outsider, as the whistleblower, while all along courting and encouraging his “enemies” to talk about him, and then, then!, talking about how wonderful those poets/writers are who do talk about him in a favorable light! Anyone with one half-awake eye can see it for it’s worth. Which is precisely the reason why I haven’t written about this before, so I wouldn’t have to be a part of the Kent Johnson Egomaniacal World Tour.
One minor, yet tell-tale, thing about the Yasusada thing that I’ve always loved is that Kent’s always remained the copyright holder of the book. No mention of creating a foundation for the book profits, or assisting Hiroshima-related causes, as one would assume, once one de-gooped one’s self from the layers of irony. That the copyright has been held firmly in Kent’s hand is really no surprise, though. It is exactly in keeping with his pursuit of having it both ways at once—posing as poetry’s Mr. Clean, while keeping his hand on the till.
*UPDATE (2-2-09, at 12:30 P.M. PST) Unable to post a comment here for some reason, this place with a much smaller readership, Kent Johnson decided it best to broadcast it (who'd have thunk!) on Silliman's site, the most highly trafficked poetry site probably in the U.S., and had this to say there about the royalty info:
"But here is my main concern with your post. You imply that I have been receiving financial gain from the two Yasusada books (a second book was published by Combo Press a couple or three years ago). This is not true, in the least. In fact, in the case of Doubled Flowering, ALL royalties from sales were designated, from the start, to the Hiroshima Radio Project, which for many years did a special program on August 6, carried on radio stations around the world. And ALL royalties from the second book were likewise directed (it says this in the book, in fact) to anti-nuclear causes."
**UPDATE (2-2-09, 1:03 P.M. PST) Many people believe, for good reason, that I do not allow comments on Esther Press. It seems like that is the case, but it actually isn't. You have to click on that orange pound sign, which will take you to the POST A COMMENT section. I don't know why it makes a person do this. If someone reading this knows how to change that feature, please let me know. My friend actually thought that I didn't allow it on purpose, jokingly (I think?) calling me an elitist snob--but the comments section has been available since the beginning.
There have certainly been more outrageous examples of self-blinding narcissism, but Kent Johnson’s continual rants about self-promotion by poets has to be one of the most ludicrous.
I have waited for years for someone, anyone, to call Kent on his nonsense, but no one seems up to it. So, I’ll do it. There is simply no greater self-promoter in the poetry world than Kent Johnson. He cannot go two sentences in a comments field, no matter what the topic is, and not refer back to something he’s written, something he’s about to write (which has got to be, by now, several hundred pages of unfulfilled “projects”), an interview about him, or administered by him, a poem he’s written, and what others are saying about it, or he’ll simply just quote himself and be done with it. On top of this unbelievable black hole of self, into which all others’ endeavors and thoughts become swallowed up, he enlists the stupid ruse of how incredibly and magnanimously anti-narcissist he is! You can view any of his comments on Silliman’s site, or anywhere, really, if one wants to waste one’s life on such things.
From his years ago complaint about the photos in APR being so large compared to the poems, all through the Yasusada prank, to the current dust-up with Flarf, his disingenuous pose as the cleanser of the Poetry World, while fluffing his own pillow in the process, is an act of acrobatic self-preening one will assuredly not encounter again in one’s lifetime. Kent has fashioned himself as the maverick, as the poetry outsider, as the whistleblower, while all along courting and encouraging his “enemies” to talk about him, and then, then!, talking about how wonderful those poets/writers are who do talk about him in a favorable light! Anyone with one half-awake eye can see it for it’s worth. Which is precisely the reason why I haven’t written about this before, so I wouldn’t have to be a part of the Kent Johnson Egomaniacal World Tour.
One minor, yet tell-tale, thing about the Yasusada thing that I’ve always loved is that Kent’s always remained the copyright holder of the book. No mention of creating a foundation for the book profits, or assisting Hiroshima-related causes, as one would assume, once one de-gooped one’s self from the layers of irony. That the copyright has been held firmly in Kent’s hand is really no surprise, though. It is exactly in keeping with his pursuit of having it both ways at once—posing as poetry’s Mr. Clean, while keeping his hand on the till.
*UPDATE (2-2-09, at 12:30 P.M. PST) Unable to post a comment here for some reason, this place with a much smaller readership, Kent Johnson decided it best to broadcast it (who'd have thunk!) on Silliman's site, the most highly trafficked poetry site probably in the U.S., and had this to say there about the royalty info:
"But here is my main concern with your post. You imply that I have been receiving financial gain from the two Yasusada books (a second book was published by Combo Press a couple or three years ago). This is not true, in the least. In fact, in the case of Doubled Flowering, ALL royalties from sales were designated, from the start, to the Hiroshima Radio Project, which for many years did a special program on August 6, carried on radio stations around the world. And ALL royalties from the second book were likewise directed (it says this in the book, in fact) to anti-nuclear causes."
**UPDATE (2-2-09, 1:03 P.M. PST) Many people believe, for good reason, that I do not allow comments on Esther Press. It seems like that is the case, but it actually isn't. You have to click on that orange pound sign, which will take you to the POST A COMMENT section. I don't know why it makes a person do this. If someone reading this knows how to change that feature, please let me know. My friend actually thought that I didn't allow it on purpose, jokingly (I think?) calling me an elitist snob--but the comments section has been available since the beginning.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
The movie Ghost Town should be removed from circulation. My previous inklings are now set in stone: The presence of Greg Kinnear in any movie will be the signal, alone, of a terribly toxic event. Sentimental goop.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Isabelle Baladine Howald
Secret of Breath
Translated from the French by Eléna Rivera
SERIE d'ECRITURE, No. 21
Burning Deck/Anyart
Providence
2004 (original publication) / 2008 (translation)
64 pages
Softcover, $14
Spare, open, with dream drama, and longing, hard to figure, and yet figured. Touching, isolative, embracing, distancing. Transmissions from the air, conversations seemingly unlocateable. Sentences, helium-filled, floating away. On page 18:
No longer pushing away the obsession.
Seeking. Like an exploration, slow, diligent, desperate,
looks, faces, bodies.
Repeating in front of this face and this body:
“There is something, there is something.”
*
Page 43:
What is this, tears?
Tell me, is it you who cries?
A little before leaving, knowing that I would never see him again,
I wiped a tear from his cheek; though he wasn’t crying.
She was alone and he was asleep, and something was crying.
*
As Howald says, “there is something.” And one is constantly transfigured, in reading the work, by the search, the investigation, for this something or multiple somethings. There appears to be a dialog between the narrator and an other, a male, though the other is lost, missing, or present—somewhere else—and not returning. Then, he is dead. The plot is miniscule, is emotional, is piercingly subtle.
I haven’t gone back and back and back to a book, picking it up for a little time, reading another little sequence, quite like I have with this book. This behavior of mine has been going on for a couple of months now.
“There is something.”
Perhaps one is trying to fill in the spaces with story, with a reason for the errancy, the threads of spacious meaning. What happened to her? To him? What am I missing? Am I not missing anything? Und so weiter.
Perhaps a war widow.
Page 37:
Breathing every other time,
with the other mouth’s breath
-- not even a kiss, I don’t even kiss you anymore, as if
sealed by the distance
no longer moves, the one
no longer moves, the other
*
Howald’s writing is evaporative. The writing is writing toward or into. The writing exteriorizes an interiority of nervousness, of hope, of loneliness, of documentary necessity.
Page 50:
“It’s nothing,” he says several times,
doubled over, prostrate,
his hands caught in mine.
It’s nothing that approaches.
*
Page 36:
He kept on asking for paper.
___________
Isabelle Baladine Howald
Eléna Rivera
Secret of Breath
Translated from the French by Eléna Rivera
SERIE d'ECRITURE, No. 21
Burning Deck/Anyart
Providence
2004 (original publication) / 2008 (translation)
64 pages
Softcover, $14
Spare, open, with dream drama, and longing, hard to figure, and yet figured. Touching, isolative, embracing, distancing. Transmissions from the air, conversations seemingly unlocateable. Sentences, helium-filled, floating away. On page 18:
No longer pushing away the obsession.
Seeking. Like an exploration, slow, diligent, desperate,
looks, faces, bodies.
Repeating in front of this face and this body:
“There is something, there is something.”
*
Page 43:
What is this, tears?
Tell me, is it you who cries?
A little before leaving, knowing that I would never see him again,
I wiped a tear from his cheek; though he wasn’t crying.
She was alone and he was asleep, and something was crying.
*
As Howald says, “there is something.” And one is constantly transfigured, in reading the work, by the search, the investigation, for this something or multiple somethings. There appears to be a dialog between the narrator and an other, a male, though the other is lost, missing, or present—somewhere else—and not returning. Then, he is dead. The plot is miniscule, is emotional, is piercingly subtle.
I haven’t gone back and back and back to a book, picking it up for a little time, reading another little sequence, quite like I have with this book. This behavior of mine has been going on for a couple of months now.
“There is something.”
Perhaps one is trying to fill in the spaces with story, with a reason for the errancy, the threads of spacious meaning. What happened to her? To him? What am I missing? Am I not missing anything? Und so weiter.
Perhaps a war widow.
Page 37:
Breathing every other time,
with the other mouth’s breath
-- not even a kiss, I don’t even kiss you anymore, as if
sealed by the distance
no longer moves, the one
no longer moves, the other
*
Howald’s writing is evaporative. The writing is writing toward or into. The writing exteriorizes an interiority of nervousness, of hope, of loneliness, of documentary necessity.
Page 50:
“It’s nothing,” he says several times,
doubled over, prostrate,
his hands caught in mine.
It’s nothing that approaches.
*
Page 36:
He kept on asking for paper.
___________
Isabelle Baladine Howald
Eléna Rivera
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
RECEIVED:
Paul Maliszewski, Fakers--Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders,The New Press, New York/London, 2009.
--Paul is a good friend of mine, and this his first book. It's a glorious investigation into the world of fakes (persons, places, and things).
Some reviews of the book online:
"Hocus Bogus" at Boston.com
Review at Time Out Chicago
"I Want the Truth! You Can't Handle the Truth!" at Buzzine.com
Paul will be reading at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC, on January 23, 2009. Info here.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
ISRAEL'S WAR CRIMES
by Richard Falk
(published at The Nation, December 29, 2008)
The Nation's Editor's Note: This statement was issued December 27 in response to Israel's attack in Gaza by Professor Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories and a longtime member of The Nation's editorial board.
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.
Those violations include:
• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.
Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.
Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on December 26.
The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.
I remind all Member States of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.
by Richard Falk
(published at The Nation, December 29, 2008)
The Nation's Editor's Note: This statement was issued December 27 in response to Israel's attack in Gaza by Professor Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Territories and a longtime member of The Nation's editorial board.
The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.
Those violations include:
• Collective punishment: The entire 1.5 million people who live in the crowded Gaza Strip are being punished for the actions of a few militants.
• Targeting civilians: The airstrikes were aimed at civilian areas in one of the most crowded stretches of land in the world, certainly the most densely populated area of the Middle East.
• Disproportionate military response: The airstrikes have not only destroyed every police and security office of Gaza's elected government, but have killed and injured hundreds of civilians; at least one strike reportedly hit groups of students attempting to find transportation home from the university.
Earlier Israeli actions, specifically the complete sealing off of entry and exit to and from the Gaza Strip, have led to severe shortages of medicine and fuel (as well as food), resulting in the inability of ambulances to respond to the injured, the inability of hospitals to adequately provide medicine or necessary equipment for the injured, and the inability of Gaza's besieged doctors and other medical workers to sufficiently treat the victims.
Certainly the rocket attacks against civilian targets in Israel are unlawful. But that illegality does not give rise to any Israeli right, neither as the Occupying Power nor as a sovereign state, to violate international humanitarian law and commit war crimes or crimes against humanity in its response. I note that Israel's escalating military assaults have not made Israeli civilians safer; to the contrary, the one Israeli killed today after the upsurge of Israeli violence is the first in over a year.
Israel has also ignored recent Hamas diplomatic initiatives to re-establish the truce or ceasefire since its expiration on December 26.
The Israeli airstrikes today, and the catastrophic human toll that they caused, challenge those countries that have been and remain complicit, either directly or indirectly, in Israel's violations of international law. That complicity includes those countries knowingly providing the military equipment including warplanes and missiles used in these illegal attacks, as well as those countries who have supported and participated in the siege of Gaza that itself has caused a humanitarian catastrophe.
I remind all Member States of the United Nations that the UN continues to be bound to an independent obligation to protect any civilian population facing massive violations of international humanitarian law--regardless of what country may be responsible for those violations. I call on all Member States, as well as officials and every relevant organ of the United Nations system, to move on an emergency basis not only to condemn Israel's serious violations, but to develop new approaches to providing real protection for the Palestinian people.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
If one wasn't aware before of how "in the tank" the major U.S. newspapers and other media are with U.S.-Israeli policies, this past week's atrocities in Gaza should help clear up any illusion. The major media sources are simply puppets of the State and its policies, hardly ever straying from the Official View. The silence at The New York Times, for instance, has been particularly ridiculous and damning, just for its ongoing erroneous self-love as this nation's paper of record. As noted by Greg Mitchell at The Huffington Post, they've managed just one editorial on the issue.
Paul Craig Roberts has a nice piece at Counterpunch on the silence, asking where has Western morality gone?
Paul Craig Roberts has a nice piece at Counterpunch on the silence, asking where has Western morality gone?
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Anne!
(on fire for weeks now) (click on older posts)
*
On the plane back from WI, I was seated next to a couple with two young daughters. The mother sat behind me. The father sat across the aisle from me in the same row. Their two daughters--ages 3 and 4, perhaps--were with the father, next to him. From the moment that we boarded to the moment that we left, it was just a continual litany of parenting techniques foisted on the poor daughters. And constant, agonizing nurturing. And I'm all for nurturing. Believe me. But there's a point! The father was doing it all. He sounded like a robot out of a Parenting 101 course. "Good Drinking, Zoey." "Good Drinking, Zoey." Or, "You are upset, Zoey." "Use your words, Zoey." "Use your words to explain why you are upset to me, so that we can understand one another." On and on. He was the most anxious parent I've ever been around.
*
McCaffery's Theory of Sediment is proving to be quite a ride so far. Soil sampling structure combined with linquistic patternings.
Greatly enjoyed Bernstein's sort of TV guide movie-of-the-week synopsis piece, which is untitled. Some gems:
Julie grows attached to an abandoned baby.
A man withers away after being exposed to a strange mist.
It's the dog pound for Roger when Jeannie turns him into a poodle.
(on fire for weeks now) (click on older posts)
*
On the plane back from WI, I was seated next to a couple with two young daughters. The mother sat behind me. The father sat across the aisle from me in the same row. Their two daughters--ages 3 and 4, perhaps--were with the father, next to him. From the moment that we boarded to the moment that we left, it was just a continual litany of parenting techniques foisted on the poor daughters. And constant, agonizing nurturing. And I'm all for nurturing. Believe me. But there's a point! The father was doing it all. He sounded like a robot out of a Parenting 101 course. "Good Drinking, Zoey." "Good Drinking, Zoey." Or, "You are upset, Zoey." "Use your words, Zoey." "Use your words to explain why you are upset to me, so that we can understand one another." On and on. He was the most anxious parent I've ever been around.
*
McCaffery's Theory of Sediment is proving to be quite a ride so far. Soil sampling structure combined with linquistic patternings.
Greatly enjoyed Bernstein's sort of TV guide movie-of-the-week synopsis piece, which is untitled. Some gems:
Julie grows attached to an abandoned baby.
A man withers away after being exposed to a strange mist.
It's the dog pound for Roger when Jeannie turns him into a poodle.
Murderous Israelis on rampage.
Israeli terror killing children:
Israeli handmaidens, the U.S., blames it all on those being bombed and killed and terrorized:
Israeli terror killing children:
Israeli handmaidens, the U.S., blames it all on those being bombed and killed and terrorized:
