I'll Take Jeopardy for $200

God blesses things, such as forgiveness, sashimi, & St Mark's Books. On a trip there, you can purchase an array of fine items. The poetry section overall was slacking a little, but other areas of the Mart delivered.



The Dialectics of Seeing: WB & the Arcades Project par Susan Buck-Morss, followed by Bruce Andrews' Co, which is collaborations with Yedda Morisson, Kim Rosenfield, Jessica Grim, Jesse Freeman & Barbara Cole.

These are followed by Denis Johnson's recent big one, Tree of Smoke, itself flanked by a Raymond Chandler compendium: The Lady in the Lake, The Little Sister, The Long Goodbye, & Playback:



They arrived adjacent to these: a dual work from Samuel R. Delany, Babel-17/Empire Star, & yet another WWII historo-espio-thriller from Alan Furst, Dark Voyage. Yeah, another one of them.



A few magazines:


Finally, a bit more poesie: New Shit from Lisa Jarnot, Night Scenes, rubbing spines with fresh Tao Lin spear Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy.


The Tao Lin is advertised as signed, but Tao does you one better, & draws you a little picture w/ a word or two, each one different. After checking them all out, I went with "Choad Deluxe":

A Book

In recent days arrived the final piece to the exquisite Cahiers du College de 'Pataphysique series. In the photo above, an authentic copy sits alongside a prepared facsimile. The true copy is the greenish, the false the bluish, wrapped.

The slim publication (tho certainly not the College's slimmest), titled Blanchissage, features three main items: an aphorism by Julien Torma on Jarry, an announcement from the College, & one of Jarry's laundry lists. The remainder of the issue features several ad announcements for re-subscribing to the College's next series, which would be the Dossiers.



On the left, Jarry's laundry list, a most precious note indeed. Facing that reproduction, an announcement: in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jarry's death, the College was to head underground, & cease all public activities. This wouldn't occur, however, until '75--a period of occultation that lasted a full quarter century, repealed in line with the symmetry of the millennium.

In pleasant fashion, the false copy I previously obtained contains an additional insert, while the original lacks any such ornamentation.

The message, to all subscribers, is simply "pay up!"

British Imperialists IN YOUR ASS (Still) Pt 1

Since times are hard (ha) & Nibiru is still a few years away, here's a couple more odds & ends. The first, the material claimed from the recent Caroline Bergvall/Mario Diaz de Leon event at the Hispanic Society of America.



This tasty chap--an especially fine production from well-known Belladonna Books--limits itself to 75 copies. Though, as can be seen below, the colophon announces them as all signed, which they are not (or, at least this copy; I did not examine the others).



If there are any of these treats left for sale, I most highly recommend the pick-up. I believe the people hawking them were the ones associated with Unnameable Books, the mecca of the Brooklyn book world.

A taste from early in the poem:

Hi all Im Alyson,
some people call me Al.
I'm many theyngs to many,
a few thyinge to some &
nothing but an irritant
to socialites and othire
glossing troglodytes
Just don't call me Alice
I dig conversation
but the only rabbit I ever liked
is rabbit in prunes of Agen
sauted in duck fat
or a conys in Hoggepotte.
It's been a long time, quod she,
some & six hundred.
Everything was different
yet pretty much the same.
Godabove ruled all
& the Franks the rest.
Womenfolk were owned ne trafficked
nor ghosted, and so were
most workfolk enserfed.
Sunsets were redder then,
legs a little shorter.
In my time I made my bed
a stretch a streowen
for many leien in hoo we did!

You can also catch Caroline reading on a recent episode of Estefan's Ceptuetics. In the half hour program she discusses some of the mechanics of the piece, which I shan't spoil. Also let's hope someone recorded the event with Mario Diaz de Leon--it was a dynamic collaboration.

Bonus pic of The Knight outside the Hispanic Society :




Note the gidouilles flanking the stairs leading to the Errant.

Hijinks of the Rreal: Roundup of the VVeek: Monday

One week ago today, Rob Fitterman read with Jen Bervin in a windowless Brooklyn artist's space. The reading was well hydrated, with choice Mexican brew, chilled white wine, lemonade & iced tea among the options. Yes, hydration is important.



The event was in celebration of the release of two books, Bervin's massively extravagant The Desert, along Fitterman's new trilogy from No Press featuring himself & Nayland Blake, a set of works sprung from the undry well of Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Also Rises, My Sun Also Rises, & Blake's Also Also Also Rises the Sun. Underpromoted & certainly not air-conditioned, the crowd nevertheless filled the room, & the readings were short but good.



Reading along with Rob were Nayland Blake & Steve Clay, publisher of Granary Books. They selected short concurrent chapters from each volume, & read each in succession--allowing the reader to elucidate, recall & compare the treatments given to each separate volume. From Rob, a distillation of Hemingway's text to the sentences beginning only with 'I' followed by a skewed autobiographical duplication. Steve read the Hemingway, Rob the Rob, & Nayland the Nayland--his third volume an especially minimal distillation encircling selected parts of speech--a hyperextension of Fitterman's original concept.

Having read the volumes in advance, tho I read them whole, one after another, instead of all three simultaneously, I noticed new structural commonalities beyond the more obvious ones, which made the reading quite pleasant, despite the obvious nuisance of the temperature.




Jen's reading was brief but just as striking. Chances are you are familiar with her Nets, minimal distillations of Shakespeare's Sonnets, since it is in it's fourth printing. Her new project, The Desert, is the application of a similar process, tho rendered on an infinitely larger scale--book & pricewise--Nets was $10, The Desert $4000.


Like her work in Nets, seen below, she does not simply use erasure as a technique to acquire new substance. Instead, she uses it to a voluminous extreme, which delivers incredibly minimal poems--only a handful of words per page. The immense casket of the remainder is always visible: in Nets, rather like a spider's web, in The Desert, more industrial & performative.

A pic of the affordable one:


A selected page of Nets:


Samples of The Desert are visible at the Granary site, linked above.

Roundup Pt 2.1: Hot Shots pt Deux Pt 2

Another yesterday arrival was Bill Pearlman's Inzorbital. At first glance this is an innocent-enough volume of poems put out by Duende in 1974, but the volume curates some interesting associations, to be explored below.




First, the book itself contains several interesting modifications. The envoy on the colophon "For Gus & Felice" is a good start to a good copy. This doesn't seem to be from either the stated 26 signed copies or the special 9 signed copies with an additional poem written in, but the inscription isn't bad, to say the least.



Where things get interesting is the back cover. I know absolutely nothing about graphology & it's uses, but there seems to be another inscription on the back cover in the same hand & pen. Of course, this could be featured on all copies of the book but my instinct is that it is unique. Very few letters from either selection are used in the same way in both sequences, but the capital G's from "Gus" & "Garden" seem rather unique & the lower-case t's throughout are dead on.


It's an interesting challenge to figure out exactly how to read this final, touching phrase, reminiscent perhaps of Melville's Army of Shadows:

I have decided
to Run before
the Shooting Starts.
You are invited
to the Spirit Garden
Opening Night --

Marilyn Kennedy

Then there is the name, Marilyn Kennedy, which could range from any number of real people to the humorous combination of Marilyn Monroe & JFK--Marilyn's would-be married name if she & JFK were to get hitched. The possibilities of what exactly all this indicates, if indeterminate, remains quite interesting. The phrase itself does not seem to appear anywhere via google.

VVhat attracted me to the Pearlman in the first place is that the front matter lists Inzorbital as issue 5 of Fervent Valley, a magazine that I had thought only had 4 numbers from Spring of '72 thru the Summer of '74. I thought I had completed the series a while ago, only to recently find out about this phantom 5th issue.




Fervent Valley issues 1, 2 & 3:



Fervent Valley, though technically short-lived, was as exciting & well-edited as any of the early 70s zines that are probably more famous. Each issue, including the fifth, inhabits a different size & style of binding. Issue one was edited by the conglomerate of Stephen Rodefer, Larry Goodell, Charlie Vermont, Bill Pearlman & Lenore Schwartz. Inside there is work from Allen Ginsberg, Ken Irby, Tom Clark, Bukowski, Fielding Dawson & Andrei Codrescu, along with the editors. Number 2 finds only Rodefer, Goodell & Pearlman at the helm but adds work by Burroughs, Lewis MacAdams & Summer Brenner along with another appearance from Bukowski & more work from the editors. By the time bright pink issue 3 rolls into town (Spring '73) Larry Goodell & Gus Blaisdell edit along with Lenore Schwartz (now) Goodell. Editors past & present are again represented but added to the mix are Tom McGrath, Tom Raworth & Larry Eigner. Removable artwork by Brian Leo is tipped into the rear, perhaps to get a fuller grasp of the piece, perhaps due to stapling oversight.

Issue 4:


The fourth issue features one of the better covers of the mimeograph era, designed by George Grosz. The issue is solely edited by Rodefer. The contents are perhaps the most star-laden. The issue is led by Charles Olson, followed shortly by a Frank O'Hara/Bill Berkson piece "Reverdy". Rodefer puts his own work between these two deceased heroes (Berkson is obviously alive) to round out the first three entries. Soon follow Phil Whalen, Anne Waldman, T.S. Eliot, Groucho Marx, Gregory Corso, Ford Madox Ford, Robert Creeley, Marcel "Duchamps", Michael McClure & Allen Ginsberg. Slightly less household contributors include names such as Valentino, (G) Young, Hirschman, Malanga, Mead, Leavitt, (S) Ortiz & the usual suspects of Rodefer, Goodell, Pearlman, Vermont.

Overall, issue four presents the best synthesis of editorial selection & jokiness to be seen in any of the issues of Fervent Valley, perhaps pointing to the editorial genius that informs Rodefer's Villon, issued a few years later.

* * *

The fun, however, is far from over. I cannot, at the moment, relocate where I read about the following dual-item. It was somewhere online digging through google searches of Rodefer, or perhaps somewhere else entirely. Surely there are other (potential) readers who might be able to square up the history, but I won't dally.

What follows below is both the official copy of the Winter-Spring 1969 double issue of the New Mexico Quarterly & the fugitive 'censored' mimeograph response, the New Mexico Quarter. Rodefer appears in both issues, "Susan's Stone Shoes" & "The Electrified World" in the official copy, "Ode to the University of New Mexico President and the Santa Fe Legislature" in the samizdat.


The verso of "The Quarter":


Without the details of the history to refer to, exactly what was censored from the main issue, & why, remains difficult to parse. For instance, the Michael McClure poem below, "Plume Ode," featuring the phrases "they spray from the dark cunt & cock" & "TO THE HUGE PICTURE OF CUNT AND FOOD" appears in both issues. One other McClure item, "On Beginning Romeo and Juliet" appears in the official number, while two others, "Hummingbird Ode" & "Me Raphael" surface in the censored copy. Interestingly, the most traditionally vulgar material in any of the McClure items was that listed above, from the poem appearing in both issues--seemingly not the reason for the season, so to speak. Along with Rodefer & McClure, Robert Creeley also appears in both numbers: "For A Valentine" in the friendly copy, "The Hole" in the after midnight version.



What we can learn in "General Editor" George Arms intro to what he describes as the last issue of NMQ (perhaps Rodefer killed it) is that the "special editor, Gene Frumkin, poet and teacher of creative writing at the University, has brought together a group of poems, stories, and critical essays that happily climax the long career of the magazine." Thus, the name of Stephen Rodefer is never attached in any of the issues to any sort of editorship. The 'censored' issue contains no editorial information whatsoever.

Things are partially illuminated by Rodefer's entry in the Quarter, "Ode to the University of New Mexico President and the Santa Fe Legislature." A closeup of the epigraph follows:



Here is the full poem, which you should be able to click on, as with many of my blog photos, in order to enlarge:



So I think it's safe to guess that this poem might be the crux of the whole issue. It would be hard to believe that the page excerpt from the last episode of Ulysses, part of Molly's glorious monologue, would have been cause for war in 1969--she jacks off a sailor into a handkerchief & keeps it. & it seems probable that Stephen retitled this work after the incident, whatever it was. But these are only some introductory details surrounding this interesting publication.

* * *

Bonus Pic: Robert Creeley's "The Hole" from the New Mexico Quarter:


You can hear Bob read this one thru the decades at PennSound, including twice in October of '66. It is clear that he thinks highly of the poem, from the fact that it shows up several times in several decades. Also, his placement of the work in his set list--once third to last, once last. At least one version seems to have another small page of text, making for yet another curious detail to today's explorations.

Roundup Pt 2: Hot Shots pt Deux Pt. 1

Just today several new things arrived, giving me pause in my daily vveekend roundup series, just launched. One of the headlining items was a package of vintage items from the generous Buck Downs.




It featured both excellent this & excellent that, including an 8 1/2 x 11 book Office Products, a 1995 issue of Washington Review (along with a promo postcard) & finally a white greeting card envelope which contained a 6-leaf chapbook handsewn into a greeting card called Full Spoon. Office Products is a 1991 publication, Full Spoon 1992.



The issue of Washington Review features a cover interview with Downs, Rod Smith, and Mark Wallace by Ross Taylor. The contents of the issue are interesting overall, featuring an early appearance of Rodrigo Toscano's "Circular No 7" from The Disparities & a review of Fitterman's early volume Ameresque, published by Buck Downs Books in 1994, all along with the feature interview.

Bonus Photo Inside: of Downs & Smith having a laugh at Mark Wallace's expense:



The Toscano:

* * *

Four years prior to the Washington Review feature, Office Products was released by joie d'beavre.


The inside back cover info tells us that 200 copies of el producto were produced in April of 1991.


The first poem in the book, "Form Letter" features a hot conceptual bop in a rarely seen style from Downs, couplets.




But Buck's true swagger is imminently concretized by just the second poem, "Blue Sort of Orange" which hails from a different time zone entirely...

Blue Sort of Orange

Candy Apple Taupe
skies of infinite dessert,
radio mayhem and bridges
caught flat-foot.
Live at the scene we turned
that TV on and it became
a little party all of its own.
The fire lynx sat twinkling
in his house of bushes
and slept.
.....................A puddled mile
of face and whine don't care,
nervous skies belly full
of sliding water lack. One fresh
dose of sink brings on this face
dozing from dreams, cool
noseful of sleep, dirt, and hands.
To get up ain't on the boat
any more, let out some little
bevy, passengers, and from
the crow perch serene
eye nest and sway.

* * *

The delectable Full Spoon was published by the same press, the elegantly-named joie d'beavre, only a year later, in '92. This amazing object predates several I've received from Buck, handmade items whose form inhabits whatever finds them, instead of the forceful organization of a behind-closed-doors production. Buck's tact produces works that return to the world instead of simply arriving in it.

This one is a greeting card featuring an image from Albert Pinkham Ryder's Children Playing with a Rabbit; inside, five pages of poems precede the signed colophon, signaling the edition size of 40, of which this is copy 10.

* * *

Basically current with the arrival of these items has come news that Buck has just made available many of his working notebooks on the p=o=d service Lulu. No fewer than 7 volumes are already available.

Hijinks of the Rreal: Roundup of the VVeek: Sunday

Earlier this vveek, I met Dirk Rountree & Jean Foos at steamy Dexter Sinister, which hosted a dual book release party for A Fair to Meddling Story and A Couple Thousand Short Films About Glenn Gould.


Downstairs, you could enjoy a freshly prepared gin+tonic while listening to records having to do with a Cory Arcangel/Paul Morley/Steven Bode/Dexter Sinister joint production titled A Couple Thousand Short Films About Glenn Gould. The music came from Cory Arcangel "who will play records mentioned in the text as JD SALINGER" and the book was on sale for an attractive $15.


The book sports all sorts of interesting features, including a unique tipped in photograph, the table of contents being listed on the back, and a zero printed in the corner of the first page. On the inside, Paul Morley's first, long section REPRODUCTION, comprises the main chunk of text, which makes an excessive & distinctive use of white space.




The Zero:


Inside the front cover:



Outside the back cover:


Meanwhile, upstairs, a different sort of thing was happening. Everyone was drenched in their own, but many looked on as a human played choppy piano while a large TV played video on the far side of the instrument. When we walked past to attain the back room, John Kerry was on the TV screen, giving a speech. This was the performance attached to the release of A Fair To Meddling Story by Ken Okiishi and Nick Mauss. The book was for sale in the back, & they had bottled water & Bud Heavy in big metal tubs, on ice.



I haven't taken the book out of the package, yet.