A great review of Now Showing by Ahadada author Jim Daniels has suddenly surfaced on the net waves like a whale bearing gifts. “Writer tries to find poetry in ordinary experiences” by Regis Bethe of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is viewable on-line; click here!
Recognition—albeit a bit belated—for one of our finest books. Also thanks to SPD for placing this title in your “Picks.”
I just discovered Nicolasound Radio on the incredible Live 365 internet radio site (www.live365.com). Use the search function on that site and it will take you to one of the most interesting collections of sound poetry, word art, poetry, fuxus, and envelope-pushing sonic experiments. Live 365 will require that you create a free account to listen, but it’s well worth the extra effort.
For more information go to: www.NICOLASOUND.com.
A host of interestiung artists, including Bruce Andrews, as well as your humble correspondent (under Glass Jesse), can be found on Nicolasound Radio on 24 hour rotation.
I climbed the mountain to Chijiwa Castle last week with Joel’s Poetry, the Ecology of the Soul (White Pine, 1983), now sadly O.O.P. and sat reading what he said about poetry while the clouds rolled over the mountains.
First contact was 1981–winning the Deep South Writers Contest for poetry. “This City” and “The Farrier” placed first and second. Joel was the judge.
Then Saturday night, Feb. 26th, 1984, Joel came to Woodland Pattern Books in Milwaukee. I’d been down and out with the flu for several days and still had a touch of it, but still went. This is what I wrote in my journal the next day:
“Saw Joel Oppenheimer last night. He appears to have aged ungracefully–is a lean gray old man who speaks hoarsely and seems to be suffering from a growth in his neck on the left side–or perhaps an enlarged thyroid or gland. He read well, though most of what he read seemed slight. He read his “House” poem [one of my favorites] and an impressive poem about an old lady shitting on the stairs. He also read some “Mother” poems that were interesting. He seemed genuinely likeable, very humane. I think that’s the key to his work. As Nemerov is to the intellect, so he and Levine are to the heart.
I didn’t stick around to talk to him because of my illness.”
Having lived with Joel’s poems another generation, and now approaching the “old man” status that I’d given Joel back then, I must say that his poems have increased in value for me.
I recall smiling and nodding at Joel after his reading had just finished and the applause was rattling on–and getting a smile back.
Another gift in the mailbox: Tony Trehy’s collection of prose poems titled 50 Heads (Apple Pie Editions, Manchester, 2007). This is a stylishly produced book with text justified on both right and left margins. Each framed text begins at 0 and ends at 1. Ron Silliman praises it highly and I can only echo. Only echo. Only echo.
An interesting read.
I believe we’ve presented contact information for Tony and Apple Pie editions elsewhere on this blog.
It seems that I was in error the other day, when I linked sound works from the critic, poet, avant-garde composer Ingvar Loco Nordin . Here are the corrected links (please check them out for context—they are excellent. Jesse provides some brief commentary below—from the orginial blog posting here. The errant post was titled: “Received and Recommended: The Goodie Bag”.
Korean Glass. Nicely done chime playing (glass?) accompanied by a South Korean talk radio broadcast at the end. This grounds the rather son-like chimes in the current political situation, especially if one doesn’t know what the broadcasters are saying. I’ll have one of my Korean students give it a listen and report back.
Brain Waves! Our favorite red-haired, sound poet/shamaness Hebriana Alainentalo mixes it up with Ingvar Loco Nordin with some out-of-this-world vocals.
Lagboekeri Volume One. Ingvar Loco Nordin takes us on a voyage through an aural landscape worthy of Rimbaud’s “Drunken Boat.” The cover of this CD shows the young Ingvar Loco Nordin sitting at the head of his class totally aware of his visionary powers.
We will consider Nordin’s Monster Drownage and what could be his masterwork—Erez—in a future posting.
Ingvar Loco Nordin is one of the most responsive critics of new sounds on the Internet. Visit his great website for more information. Click here.
As a sidenote, I recently discoverd a piece archived on NPR, about editorial mistakes in The New York Times. Apparently the longest length of time a correction was printed in the Times after the original piece ran was a whopping 49 years.
It corrected an editorial from the 1920s that argued that Goddard was wrong and rockets couldn’t operate in a vacuum. (Of course, the correction was printed two days after Apollo 11 was launched.)
Graceland Cemetery and surrounds is said to be one of the most actively haunted sites in America. Jesse
The Gravedigger.
A Chicago Reporter’s Visit To the Cemeteries.
Gravedigging a Healthy Vocation–Burying Alive–Chicago’s Twenty-Six Cemeteries–A Busy time–Work and Wages. How “Familiarity Breeds Contempt.”
A withered, bent and gnarled old man was digging leisurely away at a grave in Graceland cemetery. The old man was John Kane, the oldest active gravedigger in the United States. He is 65, and when he walks his back is at an angle of 45 degs. But there is a lot of life in old John Kane yet, and he may well live to complete his four score and over.
“I have buried a great many in my life–many thousands,” said the old man. “I’ve been here, a grave digger, making a good living at it, since 1860, when Graceland cemetery first started. I7ve never dug up any treasures, and I don7t suppose I ever shall. But I’ve earned my bread at it and provided for my family, and me and my boys used to do a great deal of hard work in this cemetery. It’s an old saying that grave digging is a healthy trade and that a grave digger lives longer than most other people. I don’t see exactly why it should be so, for one often digs up poisonous gases in removing bodies elsewhere. But it’s open air work, and it has to be done in all sorts of weather and at all seasons, and thus it makes a man tough and not liable to give in to small ailments.”
There has never been, as far as reliable data are at hand, a case of burying alive in Chicago cemeteries. It was rumored that there was, some time ago, such a case at Waldheim, the great “Friedhoff” (literally peace yard) of our German fellow citizens. But a visit paid there and diligent inquiry made failed to bring out any corroboration of the rumor. “That’s all bosh” said Theodore Harks, the superintendent of the German Lutheran cemetery, adjoining Graceland. “I have buried thousands and have opened many coffins years afterward, when the bodies, for some reason or other, had to be placed elsewhere. I have always found the bodies exactly in the same position in which they were laid to rest. All this talk of burying people alive is nonsense. It doesn’t happen, and folks might as well dismiss that fear from their minds.”
Graceland has the largest alien population of all Chicago’s twenty-six cemeteries. “If the 45,000 who lie there so quiet could rise up again, hale and hearty, what a population that would add to Lake View!” exclaimed the philosophizing car driver, as his car rattled on through the thinly settled tract surrounding Graceland. There are 5,000 buried in block 5 alone. Of the twenty-six cemeteries fourteen are Hebrew ones, all small, and only twelve are of fair sized or large dimensions. Graceland, however, with 100 acres of ground, Clavary and Rose Hill seventy-five each, and Waldheim with a territory of just about the same extent, together with Concordia and St. Boniface, hold just about the bulk of dead Chicagoans. Altogether probably some 150,000 are laid away in all these–a large number for a young city like ours. But there is room for another 300,000 in these burial grounds. In view of the large number buried, and of the hundreds that die every week, it may sound strange when it is said that there are altogether less than one hundred gravediggers employed at the twenty-six cemeteries.
The shovel, pick and spade, together with the strap to lower the coffin into the grave form the complete outfit of tools for the gravedigger. During the warm season it takes but an hour to dig a grave in ordinary soil, and of the regulation size, i.e. four and a half to five feet deep and about seven feet long. It is different in the winter time. The pickax is then necessary, and even with its help it takes from three to four hours to make the hole, with the frost often three feet deep in the ground. The busiest time for the gravediggers is the early spring, generally about the middle of April, when all the bodies that have been stored away in vaults during the winter are interred. At Graceland, for instance, as many as thirty-two a day have been buried. This is, of course, nothing in comparison to the dread periods of epidemics passed through during the last fifteen years–smallpox, diptheria, etc. Then there were days when 200 bodies were handed over in one day to the authorities of one cemetery alone for interment. During such times of stress extra help has, of course, to be employed.
It is a mistake to think that the gravedigger earns big wages. A regular monthly pay of $40, or $1.50 to $2 when hired and paid by the day, is about all these men receive for their hard work. But of course it does not require much skill nor much previous training to become a good gravedigger. Any one used to handling the spade or shovel, and able to dig a ditch or a square hole can do the work well. Of course, in addition to the digging of graves, these men have to do the sodding of the graves, and have to care besides for a large number of them after the planting, etc., has been done by the flourists and his assistants. One gravedigger, besides digging probably a daily average of two graves all the year round, has to mind a couple of hundred graves. the watering of the plants and turf, which is done with the hose, take up a large portion of his time.
It seems chests chock full of Spanish doubloons, old tumuli harboring the bones of a hero long dead and his golden ornaments as well, and all such buried treasures, are mighty scarece around these diggings here spoken of. Nothing of the kind ever has been found in Chicago cemeteries. That’s not to be wondered at, after all, because it’s all virgin soil. Not even ancient Indian weapons nor the skeletons of dogs or men have been found underground.
It is said that “familiarity breeds contempt.” It is therefore not to be wondered at that a grave digger, by dint of handling bodies all his life, becomes callous and looks upon the dead body of his fellow beings much in the same way in which a grocer looks upon a dead herring–that is, as a ware which must yield him so much profit. He tumbles the dead man in his narrow little house very unceremoniously into the grave, when there happens to be no near relatives about. What they ahte to do of all things is the digging out of a body for removal elsewhere. One cannot blame them, for the job is, to put it mildly, a disagreeable one. Many a man wouldn7t do it for any money. These men have to do it for a few dollars.–Chicago Herald.
Hey all, Jesse wanted me to pass along the info on this year’s edition of the MUTEK Festival— looks great, going down at the end of may in Montreal.
MUTEK 2007 brings to Montreal over one hundred artists. According to their site they offer astonishing showcases that will surely prove unique and sophisticated. Each of these talented explorers brings to the Festival their own brand of electronic music and digital creativity. Check them it all out here.
DIGI_SECTION PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES Thursday May 31 and Friday June 1 Presented by MOOG AUDIO
Returning with a new title this year, the professional segment of the festival offers an invigorating and incisive panel and workshop series that is dedicated to issues pertaining to electronic music and digital creativity. These activities will be organized jointly with the following partners: ROLAND, ABLETON, M-AUDIO, DIGIDESIGN and MODUL8. At HOTEL GODIN, EX-CENTRIS and the SOCIETY FOR ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY
PANEL 2 | SIDLEE PRESENTS PICTOPLASMA: CONTEMPORARY CHARACTER DESIGN AND ART THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 5PM | HOTEL GODIN – BAR GODIN | $7* Participants: Lars Denicke & Peter Thaler (Berlin)
PANEL 3 | VJING, LIVE CINEMA + BEYOND: BREAKING BARRIERS IN THE AUDIO/VISUAL DIVIDE FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 11AM | HOTEL GODIN - BAR GODIN | $7* Participants: Boris & Brecht Debackere (Brussels), Clinker (Edmonton), Randy Jones (Seattle), Semiconductor (London), Skoltz_Kolgen (Montreal) Moderator: TJ Norris (Portland)
PANEL 4 | WEB 2.0 AND THE GLOBAL MARKET: MYTHS, REALITIES AND VIRTUALITIES FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 2 PM | HOTEL GODIN - BAR GODIN | $7* Participants: Hasham Ahmad (Samurai.fm/Tokyo), Emily Griffin (Zune/Seattle), Ronny Krieger (Beatport/Berlin), Matt Laszuk (Iris Distribution/New York), Sam Valenti IV (Ghostly International/Ann Arbor) Moderator : Stacey Van Buskirk (MUTEK/Montreal)
DEMONSTRATIONS OF THE PRO TOOLS M-POWERED 7.3 SOFTWARE & TORQ DJ SOFTWARE THURSDAY MAY, 31 | AT 11AM, 2PM & 4PM | HOTEL GODIN - SALLE JARDIN | FREE PRESENTERS: Michel Dumont & Cristobal Urbina
MODUL8 WORKSHOPS (in French only):
ATELIER MODUL8 1 PRESENTATION DU LOGICIEL DE VJING MODUL8 THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 10AM | SAT | $20*
ATELIER MODUL8 2 TECHNIQUES AVANCEES MODUL8 THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 2PM | SAT | $20* PRESENTERS: Boris Edelstein & Matthias Grau (co creators of the software)
DIGIDESIGN WORKSHOPS:
PRESENTATION OF THE LATEST DIGIDESIGN INNOVATIONS IN MIXING AND MUSIC PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE PRO TOOLS ENVIRONMENT THURSDAY MAY, 31 & FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 10AM | EX-CENTRIS - FELLINI ROOM | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOPS & SHOWROOM:
ROLAND OPEN SHOWROOM THURSDAY MAY, 31 | 10AM - 5PM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOP 1 ROLAND RHYTHM EXPERIENCE - RHYTHM PROGRAMMING FOR ELECTRONIC MUSIC FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 10AM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOP 2 V-LINK - PERFORMANCE VIDEO FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 1PM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
ROLAND WORKSHOP 3 OLD SKOOL - NEW TOOLS FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 3.15PM | SALLE GODIN | FREE
PRESENTERS: Jeff Lyons & Adrian Marsi
ABLETON WORKSHOPS:
ABLETON WORKSHOP 1 MUSIC PRODUCTION WITH ABLETON LIVE: TIPS & TECHNIQUES FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 11AM | SAT | FREE
ABLETON WORKSHOP 2 MUSIC PERFORMANCE WITH ABLETON LIVE: TIPS & TECHNIQUES FRIDAY JUNE, 1 | 2PM | SAT | FREE
PRESENTERS: Matt Moldover & David Cross
NOTES: * Tickets available at the door only. Free for MUTEK_PASSPORT holders.
Unfortunately, Grey Wolf Press seems to be letting certain fine books go out of print. On Bread & Poetry captures the excitement of the San Francisco scene in 1964 and lets us listen in to a public conversation between Gary Snyder, Lew Welch and Philip Whalen.
Welch has the most interesting things to say about language of the three and even hails the beginnings of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E along with Whalen in a remakable passage on pg. 41:
Whalen: I mean the three of us are sitting here like we were embalmed or something–but I wanted to say. I made this list before I came…
Welch: OK.
Whalen:…to tell you all that we have successors, and this is very nice: that in New York there’s a magazine called C, edited by Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett, who are very inteersting young poets…
Welch: Good.
Whalen:…who don’t have that hard uptown sound. They’re doing a funny thing–they’re taking off from Gertrude Stein.
Welch: Yes, yes…
Whalen: Lorenzo Thomas is doing that.
Welch: That high wit thing…
***
Some other memorable bits:
Welch: Well, that’s the trouble there too. It takes me, really–well, it’s like gertrude Stein said, she said you may write only half an hour a day but you spend all day getting ready for that half hour….[Pg. 7]
Welch: And, you see, in our work, not just the three of us but there is a wonderfully large group of serious American poets now who are writing like we talk. And it’s nice how many people are delighted. They say, “Well, gee, that sounds just like the way you talk.”
Whalen: Other people say, “It isn’t a poem at all!”
Welch: And other people say: “It can’t be a poem–that sounds like talk.” This is what makes it exciting now from the standpoint of a literary movement and everything….[Pgs. 11-12]
***
Welch: Robert duncan gave me a very good phrase the other night. He said when you read a poem you “play the poem.” And this is very important to me. In a way, my style of reading out loud, performing a poem, is a very–is something I practice. I practice how I think the line should be played….You see, as you write the line you’re writing a movement, like a musician is writing a movement, or a dancer is dancing one….[Pg. 22]
***
Welch: but you see, I think. Well I know for a fact, just looking at Dryden or Pope, I know they were doing the same thing we are. It just, you know, the experience of writing for them was probably absolutely identical….They have something to say and they sit down and they sing it.
Snyder: Well, I think that Dryden and Pope are not very good examples for that.
Welch: I think Dryden is because his forms are very spon–uh, seem to me–there’s a nice roughness about some of his poetry that gives me the idea it was a very inspired work, that he really just blew like a jazz musician, like his “A Song for St. Cecilia’s Day,” for example…
Whalen: Yeah…
Welch:…are just gorgeous things.
Whalen: And the “Secular Masque,” for instance, is great. [Pg. 25]
***
Welch: I feel–in my work, they’re very closely connected. The kind of music I naturally think in is jazz music. And so the music that comes in my poetry–I sometimes deliberately try to write a poem that moves around like Monk’s music, if the subject matter, you know, connected with that kind of rhythm.
***
Snyder: Well, sure. Jazz is one of the revolutionary things of this century. Like Confucious said, “When you change the modes of the music, the society changes.” [Pg. 37]
I would like to welcome a new author to the Ahadada fold—Yoko Danno. We are excited to see her voice join our ranks; please join me, Jesse and our fellow Ahadadians in welcoming Yoko Danno to our community.
We’ve recently added her biography to our author page, check it out here. Yoko Danno was born, raised, and educated in Japan. She has been writing poetry solely in English for more than 35 years. In addition to being a poet, she is also a translator and the editor of the Ikuta Press in Kobe, Japan.
Work continues (and is accelerating) on the Kojiki! See Jesse’s notes about it here and here. This weekend, with Yoko Danno’s permission, we’ll post concept art for the cover and the illustrations contained therein.
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