John M. Bennett & Jim Leftwich
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Article 6
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Article 5
Sanjeev Sethi
At Random
(1)
If eyes are slit, it doesn’t mean one can’t see.
Balladmonger too has right to enter rink of
the well-heeled. Combating antinomes ensures
growth. Laughter reduces sexual fever. Any-
one interested in intendment of omnishambles?
Moral compass has no place in topsy-turviness.
(2)
There is comfort in familiarity of walls. They
have been with me for thirty years, longer than
my lovers. They have altered their incrust, not
feelings. Mure is like peeps in a pic: as good
as you want them to be.
Evaluations
Choices are forged by deficits in other kinships.
Hear yourself, astucious hearken their heart as
ratiocination fabricates wraps in weft of telluric
nods. Assuetude prods me to connect with a lot
of layouts to grok homes are inside us. Smooth
communication moonlights to eclipse mishaps.
In laughter I unmask poorly lit trials. Marigolds
lose their everydayness in sullied landscapes.
Resolution
Poltergeists in my mind are more menacing
than any inhabiting earthbound spaces. I
wish I could indite about silky evenings in
exquisite settings but the belt is blighted. To
be in sync with oneself or to key in for smiles
of loved ones? Ickiness is hard to erase: isn’t
new or nameless. Hymn at the etape is to
trudge vexatious terrain eager to seal it.
Master Plan
Sans levee one superintends freshets.
Growing up is gratuity without a John
Hancock. With run-down moiety new
moons rise. Some lunes go on without
desinence. Amid the mediocrity of my
medley I meet my cruciform by aiding
others reach order in their vacuities.
Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His poems are in venues around the world: The Broadkill Review, After the Pause, Chicago Record Magazine, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Former People, Unlikely Stories Mark V, The Piker Press, M58, A Restricted View From Under The Hedge, Bonnie’s Crew, The Pangolin Review, Strands Lit Sphere, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.
previous page     contents     next page
At Random
(1)
If eyes are slit, it doesn’t mean one can’t see.
Balladmonger too has right to enter rink of
the well-heeled. Combating antinomes ensures
growth. Laughter reduces sexual fever. Any-
one interested in intendment of omnishambles?
Moral compass has no place in topsy-turviness.
(2)
There is comfort in familiarity of walls. They
have been with me for thirty years, longer than
my lovers. They have altered their incrust, not
feelings. Mure is like peeps in a pic: as good
as you want them to be.
Evaluations
Choices are forged by deficits in other kinships.
Hear yourself, astucious hearken their heart as
ratiocination fabricates wraps in weft of telluric
nods. Assuetude prods me to connect with a lot
of layouts to grok homes are inside us. Smooth
communication moonlights to eclipse mishaps.
In laughter I unmask poorly lit trials. Marigolds
lose their everydayness in sullied landscapes.
Resolution
Poltergeists in my mind are more menacing
than any inhabiting earthbound spaces. I
wish I could indite about silky evenings in
exquisite settings but the belt is blighted. To
be in sync with oneself or to key in for smiles
of loved ones? Ickiness is hard to erase: isn’t
new or nameless. Hymn at the etape is to
trudge vexatious terrain eager to seal it.
Master Plan
Sans levee one superintends freshets.
Growing up is gratuity without a John
Hancock. With run-down moiety new
moons rise. Some lunes go on without
desinence. Amid the mediocrity of my
medley I meet my cruciform by aiding
others reach order in their vacuities.
Sanjeev Sethi is the author of three books of poetry. His poems are in venues around the world: The Broadkill Review, After the Pause, Chicago Record Magazine, Horror Sleaze and Trash, Former People, Unlikely Stories Mark V, The Piker Press, M58, A Restricted View From Under The Hedge, Bonnie’s Crew, The Pangolin Review, Strands Lit Sphere, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.
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Article 4
Michael Minassian
EMPTY FRAMES
Strolling through
the museum we gawked
at the empty frames
hanging on the walls,
even the exhibition
labels gone.
In the sculpture garden
muddy footprints led away
from broken pedestals.
The windows glazed with rain
could not fill in the blanks
even though I approached
them from many angles.
“The empty frames will remain
that way,” the curator told me,
“until all the stolen paintings
are returned, and the statues
from the garden welded back
on their bases, the cards
typed and replaced in their holders
and the glass cases filled.”
It was then that I noticed
she was naked, wearing only
an empty lanyard
swinging slightly
between her breasts
as she walked down the corridor,
her reflection bouncing
off the polished tiles
until she disappeared
into the wing of the gallery
next door, her bare feet
noiseless on the cold marble floor
MUSEUM EXHIBIT
Birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs –
or is it the other way around?
feathers and a long
corridor from the past –
like a puff of smoke
a cloud appears against
a sea-green wall:
this before the invention
of the photograph –
images emerge from the ceiling:
flying lizards, toads, a recipe
for witches’ brew,
three Scottish maidens
combing hair, feasting
on a pilot’s thumb
a diorama of a human heart
still beating long after dark.
Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online magazine. His chapbooks include poetry: The Arboriculturist (2010) and photography: Around the Bend (2017).
For more information: https://michaelminassian.com.
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EMPTY FRAMES
Strolling through
the museum we gawked
at the empty frames
hanging on the walls,
even the exhibition
labels gone.
In the sculpture garden
muddy footprints led away
from broken pedestals.
The windows glazed with rain
could not fill in the blanks
even though I approached
them from many angles.
“The empty frames will remain
that way,” the curator told me,
“until all the stolen paintings
are returned, and the statues
from the garden welded back
on their bases, the cards
typed and replaced in their holders
and the glass cases filled.”
It was then that I noticed
she was naked, wearing only
an empty lanyard
swinging slightly
between her breasts
as she walked down the corridor,
her reflection bouncing
off the polished tiles
until she disappeared
into the wing of the gallery
next door, her bare feet
noiseless on the cold marble floor
MUSEUM EXHIBIT
Birds are the ancestors of dinosaurs –
or is it the other way around?
feathers and a long
corridor from the past –
like a puff of smoke
a cloud appears against
a sea-green wall:
this before the invention
of the photograph –
images emerge from the ceiling:
flying lizards, toads, a recipe
for witches’ brew,
three Scottish maidens
combing hair, feasting
on a pilot’s thumb
a diorama of a human heart
still beating long after dark.
Michael Minassian is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online magazine. His chapbooks include poetry: The Arboriculturist (2010) and photography: Around the Bend (2017).
For more information: https://michaelminassian.com.
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Article 3
Andrew K. Peterson
Andrew K. Peterson is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently Anonymous Bouquet (Spuyten Duyvil, 2015). His 2017 chapbook The Big Game Is Every Night was mailed to the White House alongside other publications from Moria Books’ politically-based Locofo Chaps series as collective gesture against the current administration. He edits the online lit journal summer stock, and lives in Boston.
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You’ll Know When You Get There
what does the journey teach
the question of
what does satori shroud
the question of
what did i forget to pack
the question of
                                             universal consciousness
                              a loud fart inna breadbasket
                                                            bigger than
                                                            a breadbasket
space between whoever they are, wherever
they need to go and who they do go with
the worm moon bells make sad watchers sew
dog-eyed corsages to dance partners’ wrists
mid-hoedown while puddles ring doseydows
the price tag strung to a stringless harp
melodies               still lift               in silent offering
there’s no question of that :: the melodies
still lift no question of
LOKA               realm or abode
Poem for a Disappearing Roommate
for Nathan Child
The mad old monk has abandoned
Your star that looks like a poker game
One prong on its lock turns white
Lone rock on the lawn boo forever
You’re so beautiful it’s starting to rain
in the Appalachians, we plant a champion
living tomb, in the soon green ground
The sum, for mouths, of these wishes
You don’t need to see anything out
to seek anything out of the ordinary.
Today is not an attempt at misrepresentation.
Anchors must still be built with skill.
Nobody just doing things where they’re going
who knows they’re not where they are.
Mountains belong to people who love them.
That you’ve succeeded in putting them there.
Here’s to embarrassment even lonelier than snow
When dawn dawns on me and on
dreams of the ottoman cloud empire’s incline
should I call today loneliness, lucidity or
black roses for a blue lady fancy pants
The word I forgot just now – yes
With joist the truth of endless articulation
Knocked back to the zipper of the shadows
if you try fighting magic with logic
a beautiful thing spreads beauty all around
if you risk facing your captors alone
a friend comes over to the house,
if you think a page’s the disguise
a mountain is banjo muscle, nothing but
oceans beyond us the distance you imagine
if you decide it’s too risky, turn
from the bridge which is seldom free.
leaves, all the dirt in the furrows,
the river of song: seek them for
the question. Still with some unforeseeable break
in the frost of the last chrysanthemum
for its own sake, for going on
a suit put down to the ground,
a favor for which to be forever
Hormone
a costume swirls
kittens yawn and attack
cinema dipped tide
scheming with city heat
brawling
hinged sores moan
smoked amber + black fig
across this winter skid
dissolves,
wisp erred
an as yet not
co-authored milk asleep on
midnight’s
achromatic knife
star-encrusted shell
               glissando
                              slow gull
Gold in Skeleton
chord orchid
‘s lone skid
in orchard cherried
suffers of thought –
               o curl
               my yurt for
               a honeycomb
               intuit –
a force devoured
meat of cold rain
struggling the rippled-
out lightning twist
               along the mystic
in 6/8 time steeps
what i forget
moves the sun
above your hospice
gives through
snow’s skylight melt
its grace, grace
i thank to know
thank the thanks
the goodbyes
the have-been-knowns
Never Be Royals
The road from Providence is lit with many perils
Bouncing oceans, burning from new moons
Old stars mixing with snow and indiscreet
Leaning, my faulty debutante flair, pale and fault-
Less loose roost and more abandoned rope
Of the snake lady, her diamonds bright fires
In marshmallow clover bustling fancy
Free among trifles reefs glistening
Riffs Lou Reed Stole     i.e. The Black Angel’s Death Song
From Getz and Gilberto Vivo Sohando
Countering faults with offerings
The road to Providence is lit with petty morals
At the limit this too timid limb Priestess
Who knows no compromise, the skull and rose
Are equals, line august roads along these low low lands
Revelation
“I had a thought that I could change” – Doug + Jean Carn
Ok here comes grief
winter, the metaphor,
fails , egg-hued
mulberry and brown
Winter, the distant bodied
wolf’s claw blue
displaced, fails
& did feel regret,
               & did burn
sweetgrass, salt sage
As an asking
The birch shell upfalling
through cloud-sheaths
welled upon the rainblown sea
Cutting through attachments
a whirlwind’s impossible hymn –
The silence inside me
is named               Unfolds
from a wreathed galaxy
poppied to the take :
touch-chosen
laughing
kelp ring
in the teeth of a rose-bladed rudder
Andrew K. Peterson is the author of three full-length poetry collections, most recently Anonymous Bouquet (Spuyten Duyvil, 2015). His 2017 chapbook The Big Game Is Every Night was mailed to the White House alongside other publications from Moria Books’ politically-based Locofo Chaps series as collective gesture against the current administration. He edits the online lit journal summer stock, and lives in Boston.
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Article 2
Hugh Behm-Steinberg
From an end is the towards to
By picking and when doing it can’t start being
like a plant you knotted when it was young it
grows up with a knot so it takes longer to think.
they line them up and make them apologize.
Being plastic they’re too permanent to feel
sorry to get buried to release you, lids, parts
do what you love you have to keep doing
your war keeps replacing your other war, keeps
replacing your house with another war your kids
play with green army men they’re all you
   ф
Has coming out of become the world around her
so cornered the bare limbs radial and splintering
a cathedral in every pocket just in case a bird
needs to live it up on you they can so it’s great
it’s going to be so great it’s going to keep on going
when there are no policies. You’re on the coast
trim your reeds even the custodians think about planting
tables you know they do that in Canada overturning with all
the dioramas you want to look you want to look at them all
you want to keep looking at them all.
   ф
The finished knowing them, the dark none of us
the slanting shallows, the business of circuits
spinning harder don’t leap from experience
into the safer ghost, the safer ghost, the safer ghost.
The central point where both hurt. The field
over time the longstanding cooling the perfect
building that is perfect because
it doesn’t have a door so you don’t have to
leave you don’t want to leave. Some of that
is shooting some of that is just going by.
   ф
Using the money to mouse on that feeling.
Sit in a warm room now words come out how
will you feed them; they’re venerable in their
unravelings. Keeping track of weather stowed
away some advice is to forget gravity good
forces orbits recorded all the same it’s harder
of course it’s harder it keeps getting harder
every day is the it of burning, is an aide to
it might hurt you even more you need a mouse
to bite through the mice don’t work for you.
Hugh Behm-Steinberg is the author of Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press), as well as three Dusie chapbooks, Sorcery, Good Morning! and The Sound of Music. He's a steward in the Adjunct Faculty Union at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where for ten years he edited the journal Eleven Eleven.
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From an end is the towards to
By picking and when doing it can’t start being
like a plant you knotted when it was young it
grows up with a knot so it takes longer to think.
they line them up and make them apologize.
Being plastic they’re too permanent to feel
sorry to get buried to release you, lids, parts
do what you love you have to keep doing
your war keeps replacing your other war, keeps
replacing your house with another war your kids
play with green army men they’re all you
   ф
Has coming out of become the world around her
so cornered the bare limbs radial and splintering
a cathedral in every pocket just in case a bird
needs to live it up on you they can so it’s great
it’s going to be so great it’s going to keep on going
when there are no policies. You’re on the coast
trim your reeds even the custodians think about planting
tables you know they do that in Canada overturning with all
the dioramas you want to look you want to look at them all
you want to keep looking at them all.
   ф
The finished knowing them, the dark none of us
the slanting shallows, the business of circuits
spinning harder don’t leap from experience
into the safer ghost, the safer ghost, the safer ghost.
The central point where both hurt. The field
over time the longstanding cooling the perfect
building that is perfect because
it doesn’t have a door so you don’t have to
leave you don’t want to leave. Some of that
is shooting some of that is just going by.
   ф
Using the money to mouse on that feeling.
Sit in a warm room now words come out how
will you feed them; they’re venerable in their
unravelings. Keeping track of weather stowed
away some advice is to forget gravity good
forces orbits recorded all the same it’s harder
of course it’s harder it keeps getting harder
every day is the it of burning, is an aide to
it might hurt you even more you need a mouse
to bite through the mice don’t work for you.
Hugh Behm-Steinberg is the author of Shy Green Fields (No Tell Books) and The Opposite of Work (JackLeg Press), as well as three Dusie chapbooks, Sorcery, Good Morning! and The Sound of Music. He's a steward in the Adjunct Faculty Union at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where for ten years he edited the journal Eleven Eleven.
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Article 12
Alberto Vitacchio
60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part I
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60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part I
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Article 11
Alberto Vitacchio
60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part II
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60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part II
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Article 10
Alberto Vitacchio
60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part III
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60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part III
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Article 9
Alberto Vitacchio
60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part IV
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Alberto Vitacchio was born in 1942 in Torino where he still lives. He has always written poetry and published in many magazines in Italy and abroad. During the 80’s he began working on Visual Poetry and, at the same time, started doing performances usually with Carla Bertola, working on the idea of “Stagepoetry actions”. He performed widely in Italy and different countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Ireland, Serbia, Brasil, Mexico, Cuba, Latvia, Canada.
During the 80’s he also started to work on Sound Poetry and Visual Poetry. He personally produces and mixes his works and has also done sound installations. In Visual Poetry he usually works on collages following a personal technique obtaining color from the surface of paper, a procedure he calls “pulling up”; recently he is using blowing up from fragments passing through photos and then laser copies. He also works on Artist’s Books. He has taken part in many exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Since 1978 he is co-editor of the International Poetry Magazine Offerta Speciale which is devoted to visual and research poetry.
This new work ‘AsEmIc’ is based on the idea of fragmentations of alphabet letters that are also subsequently transformed and reworked.
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60 AsEmIc Pieces: Part IV
Alberto Vitacchio was born in 1942 in Torino where he still lives. He has always written poetry and published in many magazines in Italy and abroad. During the 80’s he began working on Visual Poetry and, at the same time, started doing performances usually with Carla Bertola, working on the idea of “Stagepoetry actions”. He performed widely in Italy and different countries: France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Ireland, Serbia, Brasil, Mexico, Cuba, Latvia, Canada.
During the 80’s he also started to work on Sound Poetry and Visual Poetry. He personally produces and mixes his works and has also done sound installations. In Visual Poetry he usually works on collages following a personal technique obtaining color from the surface of paper, a procedure he calls “pulling up”; recently he is using blowing up from fragments passing through photos and then laser copies. He also works on Artist’s Books. He has taken part in many exhibitions in Italy and abroad. Since 1978 he is co-editor of the International Poetry Magazine Offerta Speciale which is devoted to visual and research poetry.
This new work ‘AsEmIc’ is based on the idea of fragmentations of alphabet letters that are also subsequently transformed and reworked.
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Article 8
J.J. Campbell
contempt
hello
to the
beautiful
woman
that just
walked
in
you
almost
cracked
a smile
when
you
looked
at me
that’s
the kind
of contempt
that tells
me i’m
in love
wasted countless years
i think of the
abused child
still trapped
inside of me
i have wasted
countless years
playing what if
it never turns
out any better
that’s the
saddest line
of them all
J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently to The Beatnik Cowboy, Yellow Mama, Live Nude Poems, Horror Sleaze Trash and In Between Hangovers. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights.
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contempt
hello
to the
beautiful
woman
that just
walked
in
you
almost
cracked
a smile
when
you
looked
at me
that’s
the kind
of contempt
that tells
me i’m
in love
wasted countless years
i think of the
abused child
still trapped
inside of me
i have wasted
countless years
playing what if
it never turns
out any better
that’s the
saddest line
of them all
J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) is old enough to know better. He's been widely published over the years, most recently to The Beatnik Cowboy, Yellow Mama, Live Nude Poems, Horror Sleaze Trash and In Between Hangovers. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights.
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Article 7
David Greenslade
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David Greenslade
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from
David Greenslade
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Article 6
Demosthenes Agrafiotis
Japanese Variations
caw, caw
early in the morning
is Tokyo waking up?
by the grace of moon
emergency exit.
    *
white bodies
brown nipples
young people lather up
twisting and turning
sweat, sweat
ah! Japanese bath houses!
    *
lost
by the difference
lost
to the difference
white, bleached-white
beyond, difference
beyond beyond, differance
similarity
universal?
               Translated by Angelos Sakkis
Demosthenes Agrafiotis is active in the fields of poetry/painting/photography/intermedia/ installations and their interactions, with books of poetry and essays, and exhibitions of photography, paintings, drawings and installations, in both Greece and abroad. He has a special interest for the relations between art and new technologies, for multimedia or intermedia projects and also for performances.
His essays are dedicated to analysis of different forms of art as cultural phenomenon. He has participated in different type of artistic activities: publications, small press initiatives and mail - art / alternative - action art projects.
His anthology-formatted magazine ‘Clinamen’ (1980-90), co-published by Erato Publications in Athens (1991-94), has been active for over a decade as an amalgam of Greek poetry and art with work from Europe, Asia and America. 7 artists books were published based on 'Clinamen' (1980-1995). After 1996, ‘Clinamen’ is centered on production of artists books (18). 'Clinamen' on the web (2001-).
www.dagrafiotis.com
www.crisiology.org
www.lensculture.com/demosthenes-agrafiotis
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caw, caw
early in the morning
is Tokyo waking up?
by the grace of moon
emergency exit.
    *
white bodies
brown nipples
young people lather up
twisting and turning
sweat, sweat
ah! Japanese bath houses!
    *
lost
by the difference
lost
to the difference
white, bleached-white
beyond, difference
beyond beyond, differance
similarity
universal?
               Translated by Angelos Sakkis
Demosthenes Agrafiotis is active in the fields of poetry/painting/photography/intermedia/ installations and their interactions, with books of poetry and essays, and exhibitions of photography, paintings, drawings and installations, in both Greece and abroad. He has a special interest for the relations between art and new technologies, for multimedia or intermedia projects and also for performances.
His essays are dedicated to analysis of different forms of art as cultural phenomenon. He has participated in different type of artistic activities: publications, small press initiatives and mail - art / alternative - action art projects.
His anthology-formatted magazine ‘Clinamen’ (1980-90), co-published by Erato Publications in Athens (1991-94), has been active for over a decade as an amalgam of Greek poetry and art with work from Europe, Asia and America. 7 artists books were published based on 'Clinamen' (1980-1995). After 1996, ‘Clinamen’ is centered on production of artists books (18). 'Clinamen' on the web (2001-).
www.dagrafiotis.com
www.crisiology.org
www.lensculture.com/demosthenes-agrafiotis
↧
Article 5
Jim Leftwich
Some Notes, Expositions, & Other Things on Works by John M. Bennett (1)
The Peel&The Peel Peeled
by John M. Bennett
anabasis / Luna Bisonte Prods 2004
The size of the first poem in The Peel makes me think of a sonnet. I count the lines. There are 13. The poem is not a sonnet, not even a postmodern sonnet (not even a post-Berrigan sonnet). But the eye sees the size and says, hmm, could be a sonnet, so we begin with that idea as a frame, no matter if it fits or not. Maybe it will turn out to be a love poem of some sort (cf. Ted Berrigan's reversal of the Olson/Creeley axiom: content is never more than an extension of form). So, if similar in appearance to a sonnet, then perhaps similar in sound to a love poem (and similar in sense to the shape of the sounds).
The first word is a fragment, "bort". Sense aborted at the outset. But "bort" is also a noun, not in frequent use of late, which means "small, granular, opaque diamonds, used as an abrasive in cutting tools". So maybe we are working with both of these definitions. In the (not necessarily so sullen) art and craft of the poem, culling and cutting, exercised in broad daylight (it is 3:01 on a Friday afternoon, and the wind is howling outside my window).
Lines one and two:
bort a "float" a drain king
"blinkage" wreath your spinner at the
I notice the 'o's: ort, oat, our.
Noticing the 'o's makes me notice the small words lurking inside larger words: ort in bort; oat in float; our in your.
I notice "in": drain, king, spinner.
Rain in drain, kin in king, spin and inner in spinner.
Link and ink and age in blinkage.
Cumulatively, consecutively, disjunctively, in fits and starts (star arts, tar), as layerings and juxtapositions, one way and/or another we will read all of these possibilities, all of this latent potential (hidden in plain view on the surface of the poem):
bort or ort a float oat a drain rain king kin
blinkage link ink age wreath your our spinner spin inner at the
Lines three and four provide more of the similar:
comb flood the truss drinkage ,room
!b lot the prANTS foam ,desk melting
The 'o's, ongoing: omb, ood, oom, ot, oam.
Drinkage: drink, rink, ink, age.
Blot lot.
Prants are traditional names for historical districts in British India. Nonlinear semantics, inevitable encyclopedic context, nomadic reading.
The ants prance, prance and foam. Their desk melting on the beach.
Lines five and six:
on the beach ah groan knob
blazing !urn my leaks my blundered
O's: on, oan, ob.
on the he beach each ah groan roan an knob
!urn... therefore... turn, learn, earn...
blazing !urn turn learn earn my leaks my blundered under red.
Lines seven and eight:
rack sack face swirling nOMbre //blizzard//breath
urned like olives .dust brink ,stung
rack sack face ace swirling whirling nombre om hombre blizzard lizard breath
urned earned like olives lives .dust us brink in rink ink ,stung tongue
Lines nine and ten:
crawl the slobbered beach braying "like
a" pool yr pants' R gazing
crawl raw awl the he slobbered lob red beach each braying ray "like
a" pool yr pants' ants R are (rare) gazing
Lines eleven and twelve:
.the turd combed thin the congregation
blinking on a stool, streaming glass
Look at the 't's, and listen while you look: th, tu, th, th, ti, to.
tur, thi, tio, too.
the he turd combed om bed thin in the he congregation on greg at on.
blinking ink linking king
in on a stool tool
streaming ream am glass lass ass.
Line thirteen:
:yr face is floating )long spring
your face ace is floating oat at long on spring in ring
The Peel Peeled is made up of extraction poems, poems extracted from The Peel, the first one being:
truss
,knob
blazing stool
Truss is the fourth word in the third line; knob is the last word in the fifth line; blazing is the first word in the sixth line; and stool is the fourth word in the twelfth line. In search of an extraction pattern, let's look at the second poem in The Peel, and compare the second poem in The Peel Peeled:
sot dust
oily habits left
stammer
Sot is the first word in the fourth line; dust is the last word in the sixth line; oily is the fourth word in the tenth line; habits left stammer is most of the last line (for hot habits left to stammer).
Here is the extraction poem and pattern for poem six in The Peel:
tube flag your
ass dryer
crawling
Tube is the first word in line seven; flag is the last word in line seven; ass is the next to last word in line eight; dryer is the last word in the poem; crawling is the fourth word in line one.
So far I do not detect a clear, consistent pattern. Perhaps we need a larger sample but for the moment I am going to risk the idea that the words in the "peeled" versions of these poems are chosen not by any counting system but rather by a system (we might say anti-system) of looking and listening.
These "peeled" poems have the feel of modified haiku, similar to Jack Kerouac's notion of an American haiku: "The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different I don't think American Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop." (These “peeled” poems also remind me a bit of the hicucu form, which I invented in 2014 and which Bennett has explored extensively.*)
Twelve of the "peeled" versions also exist as visual poems and are included at the end of the anabasis / Luna Bisonte Prods edition. Each one is written in Bennett's scrawl calligraphy, and is framed by stamped and smear-stamped letters. The covers reproduce two of the "peeled" visual poems in color, with the text of the poems in black and the letteral frames in red. The smear-stamping technique on the front cover makes the red frame appear to be in flames. On the back cover a slightly less frenetic smear-stamping gives the impression of a bleeding frame. The back cover poem is:
bugs and stool
snapping in the wind
reformatted for the vispo presentation as:
*taken from the textimagepoem blogzine, where it was posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2014:
A Hicucu has three lines. Each line has three syllables. Each syllable has an unspecified number of mutagens, or letters.
Hicucu, ancient Gaia sex-monster teeth-dance-ritual celebration of springdeath wherein we eat our shadows and drink their bloodless blood. Low Theory meets Frenetic Romanticism in an alley behind the shuttered churchbrothel. Anything goes, but not much of it, within very tight constraints. This/It is A Post-Asemic poetics of Pagan Anarchism. It is Less Than Useless, No Doubt destined for the Trashpo Bins of History (don't fuck with history).
jim leftwich
05.07.2014
March 2, 2018
_______________________________________
The Peel Peeled Like a Cortex Peel Ladder Peeling Lures
transmutations of The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures
by John M. Bennett & Carlos Henderson
Luna Bisonte Prods 2005
1 & 2
truss bragging eros bandaged hernia
,knob ,peroxide ,barbecue
blazing stool banking quills in llamas bane of flame
sot dust pulverized boring chin per chances pending due
oily habits left sequin sedan lost habits of our ancestors the habits of scented grass
stammer tartar mudra I beg you
cage foam fuming the jaguar eye-cumin of the spirit
peeled like trance peeled ladders coma rapt with camaraderie
rump spooling sea-olives lasting negligence confessions of fire
"leach my toast""lick the armies of plain tostada""livid variations of enduring pain"
3 & 4
meat cloud nubile with cameo the chair nimbus
"washing hats""the larvae are somber""essential sorcerers tour the chapel"
tube flag your turban bandit canoe tones draping and fond
ass dryer cicada door decal the griffon is a paper devil
crawling at the gate as a chute
roof clock a nonreligious technoid surly trout of time
waves holes vaguely fateful
-- hole -- eros ajar -- the video
fork couch aura bean buttons
chilling escalator of antic fries on the sun deaf king
basement dome cup puling deals satanic dome of saucy souls
5 & 6
gallant gall bardo gale lard
milk pore parade of leeches boat of lakes
mouth gash breaded couch enchilada deboned impala court of deserts
lung mist nebulous deep pulmonary fatigue
meter medium door quick my sure
cogitation thrum lumber bard cog ignition messy pensive bombardments
"heaving""oleander""grand and foul"
mildew wind vent toad mojo vented roulette
heaping phone telepathic phoneme monotony plain as a telephone
the french-fry blooms the paper fritters florets less fright fluorescent
shrugged ham dreaming and jamming the sea encouraged lost home rosy damages renting epaulets from the monster of cool
rug ,hat tape eats ,somber retro napping aprons ,chap pew
7 & 8
elbow code cord
,mirror ,eye-peels ,my roar
tumba spray plume of tomb cumulative caves
gnats plunge my lost blue jeans seam submerged their petite mosquitoes mere redolent visits
rot pagination the page in a coin lode pod rodeo desk best cellar
"poop""cake""cake"
beach ,gland ,page player ,gondola ,pegging plagiarist ,gladiator ,gape
"shiny rash""rose dada brillo ant""echo chewing clarity"
sinkhole diaper ,yr penal dealer honda hard-on ,you link coil purple crux ,toy
leg swirling plea maze are ammonia to course of apples
9 & 10
pizzle ,ear bowl ping gap ,yes cud dollar ladle oriole poison pee ,is a cruel pouring oriole
runny bed camera mock you header lit pearl mortal view
"barbituration""barbed bit yr ration""Barbie touring quests"
donut foam the eyes puma dead or nuts dropping
fridge peeled heal a door peel a door eel-glance
)knock shirt )camp mister gallops )marshmallow chemistry is
tooth dance yr bail dentist too dancer dented ,tap
loomed brush rat seeping pillow rates of insomnia brusque dents the rats nine relevant pasts
,speed ,velcro indents ,vital fitness
urn and luggage puma if equality burns at bagpipes
lake lagging lack
roof techno-sauce lemming meme-trout
11 & 12
slugs , desks ,ash baby sofas ,eye-critters ,askew lime aces ,secret tares ,ardent carbon
fade seed van Essene sieve vanquished
"oil""acetate""hull of spiders"
bugs and stool "a bitch of tablature" the beast of bean sausage
snapping in the wind seek as queen in eel vintage fats signs avant
phone cloud ruby delta leaf no discounts by telephone
wave oily vagrants
cleaner limping in a door the ill net toes bent
folded dirt terror double ladder teach a terrier
rooming ,itch assist insists ,combing zone robots ,fig urine nation
cash storm legless tormented by dinosaurs sinning pie masks moon tournament : jeans past the sun
huffed "page""paginated" Buddhas intimate "page"
13 & 14
pallid wasp carré a vispo pallet carrier armored mare-cage carrion
unfolding in the coffee destabilized/disobedient in the cafe jewels lisp dancing moon cafe
ovulation toilet indoor road ovation toil letters dead intestine
,temple ,tempo low ,temp plea
chug gland tracing gondola ass tragic trapeze pier pouring the sun pays spires
trousered hoover the apartment talons ado aspiring real avenue of moon-pants alone i attend
scoured bed spinnage gyro dealer came fire-gazing the tourniquet of monday at fair imbroglio
"cloys""impales lagging gear""knees past longer songs"
flocked like nude congressional grenades comb nude desks the odor of a comma is nothing new
t rash bask aura dance or park
cloud gummer dance bail the pomegranate new blades dancing scent of collated less
15 & 16
couch ,flies divided ,Moscow divided ,much has blue
,cough faucet's ,giraffe toss i do postal essence hex pulsed
neck ghost delicious plectrum cello jam aloof kook co-pay
grunting puzzle romp pecan bees queue grunge one puzzling choir
bloom magneticon magnetic icon floor curds total flurry
shirt act burning acts toad communists enlightened my cheese in the valley of the ruse
spotty flack crotch intrepid pie mask critical of verses public broom perfume
gnat jejune insecticide
against the spit skull contraption lake kale verse inescapable contrails mortal crapshoot
mer mar lame ermine mannikin
lathered lung ramp rampage of enjambed pumpkins jet lava in the chamber of lords
lago bunny cone jitters lake local aces lake
17 & 18
sandwich shifter the eyes viaduct sandwich hell a pair of lions moon sandwich death
dung rabbit cone jello esteemed coil my moon petty lapping rabbit
soughing sea sauce surging avoid the base
eye word dropping out pale abacus ego seeking fury the moth-coils whoring combat
pan impactor imp actor desuming satin nap past dim pacts poles leaping on par with we
burp ,doggy regular dole ,coma periodic rot ,same dog on the chin
Spammy Cage spam in situ Spa Sausalito Celtic
blinking seeping Atlanta on some knoll
ants home is rigged the furnace missing set in tenement parking romaine
yr trousers cloud rubies detusk pantaloons Mayakovsky touring a billion turbulent ants dirt becoming soup
dit whirling dirt sea are ammonia grand poems dancing on the sun "nuanced in pants alone"
"grown""invest in do""map peripheral raisin"
19 & 20
ltongue* weenies suit traders' linguini salt chicken sestina i eat with gravy meat treason
Eleguá correction core direction delta Guam blank costumes cork erection
HAM jam on manager of merging glue
crown salad dumpster basket eros deck ornery and salacious lacking crayons the dune-king petty trout batting
lengua cross the tongue-czar cruising quit angular vectors' cat
a road Uncle Amino Acid will trap verse the rest of London
comb yr face wheel pee in a jar too rude to care coffer errata ruseroute derecharger
sock calcium chat us set
mud lode debut
knob periscope lily barbed cliché
roast as sad of rotting ties in the broach
boiled flags band of rascal herbivores the draperies are on leave
)"menudo"( )"triple"( )with "tripping" seas(
cutely salads ,slab in a salad as guano in pita ,losing knee meat racquet pass the salad ,to the horizon
horizonte whoring zone dancing in Dallas
21 & 22
adder ,brain ,trunk scale era ,cereal broke ,basil cavalier ,cerise view ,bedroom
wheels swirl the sea in linear motion lasts until Tuesday these routes are turbulent lion meat coming from the desk of futility
air fair dancing lair
sinking door word pale labyrinth punting the hurdle parole in the port of bells curls
femur lemur just quacks ox
gushing orb botany marmalade mottled
pond charcoal criticality
,tape ,centennial ,Mars
_____________________________________
*the spelling “ltongue” is present only in The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures and should be taken as a typo. In The Peel and The Peel Peeled (anabasis / Luna Bisonte Prods edition, 2004) it appears in both the original poem and in the “peeled” version as “tongue”.
March 2, 2018
_____________________________________
Postscript:
email exchange between Bennett & Leftwich 03.03.2018
JMB: as i just told my brother, who doesn't understand what i do in my writing:
a poet i know is writing a series of essays on many of my books, using a "critical (analytical) approach" that is the first one I've seen that actually works for my stuff. people have tried all kinds of other established approaches, but they never quite seem to get to the heart of the matter
so it's a delight to read what you're doing!
couple comments on The Peel etc:
you're right; the Peeled section was not done by counting anything: it was a reading of (or "listening" to, as you so well put it) an essence of the poem. i've been doing kind of the same thing just recently, by inserting those Haynaku (Eileen Tabios turned me on to the form, which is three lines of 1, 2, & 3 words) in longer poems. Yr Hicucu is a similar form, which i continue to enjoy as well.
The "ltongue" you refer to at the end of yr essay, probably was (i don't remember) a typo, but it's a good one - and i would like it kept - that "lt" or "LT" is a extremely tongued word and perfect there, eh?
Also, that whole last section of your recreation, if a new edition of the tri-lingual edition of The Peel Peeled is ever done, should be included. for a cuadri-lingual edition!
Carlos Henderson, by the way, is an excellent Peruvian poet, who also knows French, obviously, and his French versions are rewritings similar in approach to what you've done. (So the new edition would include The Peel, The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures, &Cortex Peel.)
My own Spanish versions are more like "translations" - haw!, forgive me!
ovoid o void,
john
JL: i'll keep this and add it as a postscript
i agree about that 'l', it should stay
i did fix one thing in an email from yesterday i think, where Mailer Leaves Ham had become Mailer Leaves Him
thanks for sending that note to your brother, i appreciate it. i am enjoying this a lot, and it's good to know that you are too.
i think i understand a lot of what you do as a poet, but obviously it means a lot more for you to say so than it does for me to say so.
thanks John.
Pee Text
by John M. Bennett
small chapbook project, 2007
Let's say our first attempt to read the poem entitled "Pee Text" is an attempt to read it left to right, top to bottom. As we read the first stanza we become increasingly frustrated with what happens semantically across the central gap. "Me" to "the", "loose" to "b", "sha" to "e", "cag" to "pe", "lo" to ",page", "in" to "at". What are we, as readers, supposed to do with any of that? Personally, I decide fairly quickly that the left to right, top to bottom reading route is a failure for this poem. I take a quick look at reading in columns, down the left column, back to top-right, then down the right side.
shade sol der ,me
yr s hunt loose
t the sing le sha
intent ion floating
un dulation ,cag
,time to coughing ,lo
the floor raging in
the lightbulb fire
b yr throat outside
e the shotgun mist
toward the b ridge lost in s
pe nd ant gr ease
,page of s cowling a
at comb bus ted
I can enjoy this kind of noisic chaos, but I suspect this poem of having more than just that to offer.
I remember some Bennett poems from the nineties, inside-out poems I think he called them, my memory is a little fuzzy on this (my memory is a little fuzzy on a lot of things from approximately 25 years ago), but I do recall specifically that the first word of the poem "rhymed" with the last word, and that pattern held through the poem (the first word in the second line "rhymed" with the last word in the penultimate line, etc.), so I decide to look at the first half of the first line here and see how it matches up with the last half of the last line:
Stanza two works exactly the same way.
The best way to contextualize the existence of a book like Pee Text is to think of the history of the mimeograph revolution, which begins in the conscientious objectors' camps in Oregon during World War II, evolves through the secret location (383 E. 10th St, Lower East Side, NYC) of Ed Sanders' Peace Eye bookstore (where Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts was published in the early sixties), morphs into the punk and zine subcultures of the late-seventies and eighties, begins to take advantage of email in the mid-nineties (with emailed "magazines" of experimental poetry like Jake Berry's Electronic Experioddica, my Juxta/Electronic, and Tom Taylor's Vision Project), moves on to blogzines beginning in the early 00s (Peter Ganick's experiential-experimental literature, my Textimagepoem, Berry's 9th Street Laboratories, Bennett's The John M. Bennett Poetry Blog, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's nonlinear poetry, textual conjectures, and self-similar writing -- and many many others not quite so close to my own poetical neighborhood), and around that same time begins to take advantage of print-on-demand services with the appearance of POD presses devoted to experimental poetry like Ganick's Blue Lion Books and Kervinen's eIghT-pAGE pREss.
The publication of Pee Text and the other chapbooks in the small chapbook project was part of a parallel development in the mid-00s, a resistance against the idea, and the actuality, of digitizing all micro-press publishing endeavors as a way of cutting costs, which had become a necessity for many micro-press publishers, myself included. Ganick's solution to this complex problem was to publish in extremely small editions, with numbers normally associated with tlps, broadsides, and subcultural ephemera. However, because of the quality of Ganick's publications, of which Pee Text is one of the highest examples, these micro-press chapbooks have not disappeared entirely into inaccessible archival collections. They sit on our shelves mixed in with the entire range of experimental poetry publications.
The small chapbook project (scp) was an imprint used by Peter Ganick for a few years in the mid-to-late 00s, roughly from 2005 to 2008. The first four titles published by scp were by Ganick himself:
we walk sleepily forward (2005);
mainstay (2005);
sailing in six/four (2005);
and
eminence: treble clef (2005).
Requests for submissions required manuscripts to be between 20 and 44 pages in 5.5" x 8.5" format.
Peter published several of my chapbooks during those years:
art bang (2006);
gathering the clock --parts 1 and 2, in two volumes (2007);
shrimp teeth (2007);
and
short sorties (2008).
SCP also published two chapbooks by John M. Bennett:
Shoulder Cream (2006);
and
Pee Text (2007).
SCP publications were very streamlined, minimalist productions. Title and author's name at the top of the "cover" page (and in the case of Pee Text, date of publication as well), with the contents of the book beginning about four spaces down. With some scp publications, Pee Text being one of them, the contents would end on the "back cover", followed by copyright information and the address for the press. On some scp publications the number of copies printed was included on the back cover (eg.; 22 for Shoulder Cream; 21 for Art Bang). This information was not included for Pee Text, but my recollection is that all scp editions were expected to be in the 20 - 25 copies range.
In the world of poetry in general and experimental poetry in particular terms like small press and micro-press are defined very loosely, so we might think of Ganick's earlier press, Potes & Poets as a small press operation and small chapbook project as a micro-press publisher. In this context Bennett's Lost and Found Times magazine and Luna Bisonte Prods might be thought of as small press (though some of their activities, like the publication of tlps and broadsides, suggest a very strong affiliation with the world of micro-press publication), and Olchar Lindsann's mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press and In-Appropriate-d Press zine might be seen as micro-press. In my own publishing experience, Juxta magazine could be seen as a small press operation for its first three issues (issues 1 - 3, 500 copies, perfect bound), changing to micro-press for the rest of its 10-issue run (issues 4 -- comb-bound -- and 5/6 -- spiral-bound, 100 copies; issues 7 - 10 -- side stapled, copies to contributors only). Xtant was a micro-press operation from its inception. TLPress was started so I would have an imprint for the tlps I was making circa. 2010. It is as micro- as it gets. It has expanded a little, but not very much in the ensuing eight years. Now there are some pdf publications under the tlpress imprint, there are some broadsides and bookmarks, and there are even some one-off chapbooks. In any case, what prompts all of these considerations tonight is my appreciation of Peter Ganick's micro-press imprint, small chapbook project, which was active 10 years or so ago, and which has left a disproportionately large footprint in my world, and in the worlds of some of my closest associates.
Then, for closers, parse the final line: "rising faucet trains brains rains its eye in on you".
Now, decide for yourself, exactly what kind of flood have you been treated and/or subjected to? Crashing down the stairway like a fester hat kissed with bomb.
____________________________________________
Postscript
email exchange between Bennett & Leftwich 03.02.2018
JMB: this is delightful, i think you're maybe the only person i know of who actually figured out the structure of those poems - and i love the opening passage in which you try different de-puzzling ideas, until you hit the right one. Ha! wonderful - and as i said, this kind of thing is a development out of that inside-out stuff in Mailer Leaves Ham, sort of the same idea but twisted further or again inside out - inside out of the inside out, or something.
good summary of micro/small press activity as well. my own micro-press stuff started - at least after my childhood stuff - with access to a ditto machine when i was in grad school at UCLA in the mid-1960's - those spirit-master copies in pale blue, that faded to nothing if left in the sun. i still have copies of that stuff in a dusty cubbyhole pile under my desk... or perhaps in the back of a closet downstairs...
JL: when i showed olchar and the guys how it worked the first question i got was how long did it take you to figure that out. well, it didn't really take all that long for this particular book, because i had learned some of your methods and forms from earlier books. i had an idea of what to look for.
i think maybe i should add this as a postscript too. there are little bits and pieces of info in our email exchanges that might not be readily available anywhere else.
JMB: yeah, good idea to add these bits
March 01/02. 2018
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Some Notes, Expositions, & Other Things on Works by John M. Bennett (1)
The Peel&The Peel Peeled
by John M. Bennett
anabasis / Luna Bisonte Prods 2004
The size of the first poem in The Peel makes me think of a sonnet. I count the lines. There are 13. The poem is not a sonnet, not even a postmodern sonnet (not even a post-Berrigan sonnet). But the eye sees the size and says, hmm, could be a sonnet, so we begin with that idea as a frame, no matter if it fits or not. Maybe it will turn out to be a love poem of some sort (cf. Ted Berrigan's reversal of the Olson/Creeley axiom: content is never more than an extension of form). So, if similar in appearance to a sonnet, then perhaps similar in sound to a love poem (and similar in sense to the shape of the sounds).
The first word is a fragment, "bort". Sense aborted at the outset. But "bort" is also a noun, not in frequent use of late, which means "small, granular, opaque diamonds, used as an abrasive in cutting tools". So maybe we are working with both of these definitions. In the (not necessarily so sullen) art and craft of the poem, culling and cutting, exercised in broad daylight (it is 3:01 on a Friday afternoon, and the wind is howling outside my window).
Lines one and two:
bort a "float" a drain king
"blinkage" wreath your spinner at the
I notice the 'o's: ort, oat, our.
Noticing the 'o's makes me notice the small words lurking inside larger words: ort in bort; oat in float; our in your.
I notice "in": drain, king, spinner.
Rain in drain, kin in king, spin and inner in spinner.
Link and ink and age in blinkage.
Cumulatively, consecutively, disjunctively, in fits and starts (star arts, tar), as layerings and juxtapositions, one way and/or another we will read all of these possibilities, all of this latent potential (hidden in plain view on the surface of the poem):
bort or ort a float oat a drain rain king kin
blinkage link ink age wreath your our spinner spin inner at the
Lines three and four provide more of the similar:
comb flood the truss drinkage ,room
!b lot the prANTS foam ,desk melting
The 'o's, ongoing: omb, ood, oom, ot, oam.
Drinkage: drink, rink, ink, age.
Blot lot.
Prants are traditional names for historical districts in British India. Nonlinear semantics, inevitable encyclopedic context, nomadic reading.
The ants prance, prance and foam. Their desk melting on the beach.
Lines five and six:
on the beach ah groan knob
blazing !urn my leaks my blundered
O's: on, oan, ob.
on the he beach each ah groan roan an knob
!urn... therefore... turn, learn, earn...
blazing !urn turn learn earn my leaks my blundered under red.
Lines seven and eight:
rack sack face swirling nOMbre //blizzard//breath
urned like olives .dust brink ,stung
rack sack face ace swirling whirling nombre om hombre blizzard lizard breath
urned earned like olives lives .dust us brink in rink ink ,stung tongue
Lines nine and ten:
crawl the slobbered beach braying "like
a" pool yr pants' R gazing
crawl raw awl the he slobbered lob red beach each braying ray "like
a" pool yr pants' ants R are (rare) gazing
Lines eleven and twelve:
.the turd combed thin the congregation
blinking on a stool, streaming glass
Look at the 't's, and listen while you look: th, tu, th, th, ti, to.
tur, thi, tio, too.
the he turd combed om bed thin in the he congregation on greg at on.
blinking ink linking king
in on a stool tool
streaming ream am glass lass ass.
Line thirteen:
:yr face is floating )long spring
your face ace is floating oat at long on spring in ring
The Peel Peeled is made up of extraction poems, poems extracted from The Peel, the first one being:
truss
,knob
blazing stool
Truss is the fourth word in the third line; knob is the last word in the fifth line; blazing is the first word in the sixth line; and stool is the fourth word in the twelfth line. In search of an extraction pattern, let's look at the second poem in The Peel, and compare the second poem in The Peel Peeled:
sot dust
oily habits left
stammer
Sot is the first word in the fourth line; dust is the last word in the sixth line; oily is the fourth word in the tenth line; habits left stammer is most of the last line (for hot habits left to stammer).
Here is the extraction poem and pattern for poem six in The Peel:
tube flag your
ass dryer
crawling
Tube is the first word in line seven; flag is the last word in line seven; ass is the next to last word in line eight; dryer is the last word in the poem; crawling is the fourth word in line one.
So far I do not detect a clear, consistent pattern. Perhaps we need a larger sample but for the moment I am going to risk the idea that the words in the "peeled" versions of these poems are chosen not by any counting system but rather by a system (we might say anti-system) of looking and listening.
These "peeled" poems have the feel of modified haiku, similar to Jack Kerouac's notion of an American haiku: "The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different I don't think American Haikus (short three-line poems intended to be completely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop." (These “peeled” poems also remind me a bit of the hicucu form, which I invented in 2014 and which Bennett has explored extensively.*)
Twelve of the "peeled" versions also exist as visual poems and are included at the end of the anabasis / Luna Bisonte Prods edition. Each one is written in Bennett's scrawl calligraphy, and is framed by stamped and smear-stamped letters. The covers reproduce two of the "peeled" visual poems in color, with the text of the poems in black and the letteral frames in red. The smear-stamping technique on the front cover makes the red frame appear to be in flames. On the back cover a slightly less frenetic smear-stamping gives the impression of a bleeding frame. The back cover poem is:
bugs and stool
snapping in the wind
reformatted for the vispo presentation as:
___________________________________________
bugs and
stool
snapping
in the wind
The frame rhymes with bugs:
a line of 'T's along the top
a line of smear-stamped 'U's down each side
a line of 'G's along the bottom, with one large 'S' two-'G's in:
TUGS.
Using some of the processes and procedures discussed in this text, I wrote a transmutation of all of
the poems in The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures. I read each line
across the two pages noted in the section titles, translating the three versions of each line
into one line. For example
truss braguero bandage herniaire
became
truss bragging eros bandaged hernia
I used that method throughout the book to create my transmutations.
*taken from the textimagepoem blogzine, where it was posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2014:
A Hicucu has three lines. Each line has three syllables. Each syllable has an unspecified number of mutagens, or letters.
Hicucu, ancient Gaia sex-monster teeth-dance-ritual celebration of springdeath wherein we eat our shadows and drink their bloodless blood. Low Theory meets Frenetic Romanticism in an alley behind the shuttered churchbrothel. Anything goes, but not much of it, within very tight constraints. This/It is A Post-Asemic poetics of Pagan Anarchism. It is Less Than Useless, No Doubt destined for the Trashpo Bins of History (don't fuck with history).
jim leftwich
05.07.2014
March 2, 2018
_______________________________________
The Peel Peeled Like a Cortex Peel Ladder Peeling Lures
transmutations of The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures
by John M. Bennett & Carlos Henderson
Luna Bisonte Prods 2005
1 & 2
truss bragging eros bandaged hernia
,knob ,peroxide ,barbecue
blazing stool banking quills in llamas bane of flame
sot dust pulverized boring chin per chances pending due
oily habits left sequin sedan lost habits of our ancestors the habits of scented grass
stammer tartar mudra I beg you
cage foam fuming the jaguar eye-cumin of the spirit
peeled like trance peeled ladders coma rapt with camaraderie
rump spooling sea-olives lasting negligence confessions of fire
"leach my toast""lick the armies of plain tostada""livid variations of enduring pain"
3 & 4
meat cloud nubile with cameo the chair nimbus
"washing hats""the larvae are somber""essential sorcerers tour the chapel"
tube flag your turban bandit canoe tones draping and fond
ass dryer cicada door decal the griffon is a paper devil
crawling at the gate as a chute
roof clock a nonreligious technoid surly trout of time
waves holes vaguely fateful
-- hole -- eros ajar -- the video
fork couch aura bean buttons
chilling escalator of antic fries on the sun deaf king
basement dome cup puling deals satanic dome of saucy souls
5 & 6
gallant gall bardo gale lard
milk pore parade of leeches boat of lakes
mouth gash breaded couch enchilada deboned impala court of deserts
lung mist nebulous deep pulmonary fatigue
meter medium door quick my sure
cogitation thrum lumber bard cog ignition messy pensive bombardments
"heaving""oleander""grand and foul"
mildew wind vent toad mojo vented roulette
heaping phone telepathic phoneme monotony plain as a telephone
the french-fry blooms the paper fritters florets less fright fluorescent
shrugged ham dreaming and jamming the sea encouraged lost home rosy damages renting epaulets from the monster of cool
rug ,hat tape eats ,somber retro napping aprons ,chap pew
7 & 8
elbow code cord
,mirror ,eye-peels ,my roar
tumba spray plume of tomb cumulative caves
gnats plunge my lost blue jeans seam submerged their petite mosquitoes mere redolent visits
rot pagination the page in a coin lode pod rodeo desk best cellar
"poop""cake""cake"
beach ,gland ,page player ,gondola ,pegging plagiarist ,gladiator ,gape
"shiny rash""rose dada brillo ant""echo chewing clarity"
sinkhole diaper ,yr penal dealer honda hard-on ,you link coil purple crux ,toy
leg swirling plea maze are ammonia to course of apples
9 & 10
pizzle ,ear bowl ping gap ,yes cud dollar ladle oriole poison pee ,is a cruel pouring oriole
runny bed camera mock you header lit pearl mortal view
"barbituration""barbed bit yr ration""Barbie touring quests"
donut foam the eyes puma dead or nuts dropping
fridge peeled heal a door peel a door eel-glance
)knock shirt )camp mister gallops )marshmallow chemistry is
tooth dance yr bail dentist too dancer dented ,tap
loomed brush rat seeping pillow rates of insomnia brusque dents the rats nine relevant pasts
,speed ,velcro indents ,vital fitness
urn and luggage puma if equality burns at bagpipes
lake lagging lack
roof techno-sauce lemming meme-trout
11 & 12
slugs , desks ,ash baby sofas ,eye-critters ,askew lime aces ,secret tares ,ardent carbon
fade seed van Essene sieve vanquished
"oil""acetate""hull of spiders"
bugs and stool "a bitch of tablature" the beast of bean sausage
snapping in the wind seek as queen in eel vintage fats signs avant
phone cloud ruby delta leaf no discounts by telephone
wave oily vagrants
cleaner limping in a door the ill net toes bent
folded dirt terror double ladder teach a terrier
rooming ,itch assist insists ,combing zone robots ,fig urine nation
cash storm legless tormented by dinosaurs sinning pie masks moon tournament : jeans past the sun
huffed "page""paginated" Buddhas intimate "page"
13 & 14
pallid wasp carré a vispo pallet carrier armored mare-cage carrion
unfolding in the coffee destabilized/disobedient in the cafe jewels lisp dancing moon cafe
ovulation toilet indoor road ovation toil letters dead intestine
,temple ,tempo low ,temp plea
chug gland tracing gondola ass tragic trapeze pier pouring the sun pays spires
trousered hoover the apartment talons ado aspiring real avenue of moon-pants alone i attend
scoured bed spinnage gyro dealer came fire-gazing the tourniquet of monday at fair imbroglio
"cloys""impales lagging gear""knees past longer songs"
flocked like nude congressional grenades comb nude desks the odor of a comma is nothing new
t rash bask aura dance or park
cloud gummer dance bail the pomegranate new blades dancing scent of collated less
15 & 16
couch ,flies divided ,Moscow divided ,much has blue
,cough faucet's ,giraffe toss i do postal essence hex pulsed
neck ghost delicious plectrum cello jam aloof kook co-pay
grunting puzzle romp pecan bees queue grunge one puzzling choir
bloom magneticon magnetic icon floor curds total flurry
shirt act burning acts toad communists enlightened my cheese in the valley of the ruse
spotty flack crotch intrepid pie mask critical of verses public broom perfume
gnat jejune insecticide
against the spit skull contraption lake kale verse inescapable contrails mortal crapshoot
mer mar lame ermine mannikin
lathered lung ramp rampage of enjambed pumpkins jet lava in the chamber of lords
lago bunny cone jitters lake local aces lake
17 & 18
sandwich shifter the eyes viaduct sandwich hell a pair of lions moon sandwich death
dung rabbit cone jello esteemed coil my moon petty lapping rabbit
soughing sea sauce surging avoid the base
eye word dropping out pale abacus ego seeking fury the moth-coils whoring combat
pan impactor imp actor desuming satin nap past dim pacts poles leaping on par with we
burp ,doggy regular dole ,coma periodic rot ,same dog on the chin
Spammy Cage spam in situ Spa Sausalito Celtic
blinking seeping Atlanta on some knoll
ants home is rigged the furnace missing set in tenement parking romaine
yr trousers cloud rubies detusk pantaloons Mayakovsky touring a billion turbulent ants dirt becoming soup
dit whirling dirt sea are ammonia grand poems dancing on the sun "nuanced in pants alone"
"grown""invest in do""map peripheral raisin"
19 & 20
ltongue* weenies suit traders' linguini salt chicken sestina i eat with gravy meat treason
Eleguá correction core direction delta Guam blank costumes cork erection
HAM jam on manager of merging glue
crown salad dumpster basket eros deck ornery and salacious lacking crayons the dune-king petty trout batting
lengua cross the tongue-czar cruising quit angular vectors' cat
a road Uncle Amino Acid will trap verse the rest of London
comb yr face wheel pee in a jar too rude to care coffer errata ruseroute derecharger
sock calcium chat us set
mud lode debut
knob periscope lily barbed cliché
roast as sad of rotting ties in the broach
boiled flags band of rascal herbivores the draperies are on leave
)"menudo"( )"triple"( )with "tripping" seas(
cutely salads ,slab in a salad as guano in pita ,losing knee meat racquet pass the salad ,to the horizon
horizonte whoring zone dancing in Dallas
21 & 22
adder ,brain ,trunk scale era ,cereal broke ,basil cavalier ,cerise view ,bedroom
wheels swirl the sea in linear motion lasts until Tuesday these routes are turbulent lion meat coming from the desk of futility
air fair dancing lair
sinking door word pale labyrinth punting the hurdle parole in the port of bells curls
femur lemur just quacks ox
gushing orb botany marmalade mottled
pond charcoal criticality
,tape ,centennial ,Mars
_____________________________________
*the spelling “ltongue” is present only in The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures and should be taken as a typo. In The Peel and The Peel Peeled (anabasis / Luna Bisonte Prods edition, 2004) it appears in both the original poem and in the “peeled” version as “tongue”.
March 2, 2018
_____________________________________
Postscript:
email exchange between Bennett & Leftwich 03.03.2018
JMB: as i just told my brother, who doesn't understand what i do in my writing:
a poet i know is writing a series of essays on many of my books, using a "critical (analytical) approach" that is the first one I've seen that actually works for my stuff. people have tried all kinds of other established approaches, but they never quite seem to get to the heart of the matter
so it's a delight to read what you're doing!
couple comments on The Peel etc:
you're right; the Peeled section was not done by counting anything: it was a reading of (or "listening" to, as you so well put it) an essence of the poem. i've been doing kind of the same thing just recently, by inserting those Haynaku (Eileen Tabios turned me on to the form, which is three lines of 1, 2, & 3 words) in longer poems. Yr Hicucu is a similar form, which i continue to enjoy as well.
The "ltongue" you refer to at the end of yr essay, probably was (i don't remember) a typo, but it's a good one - and i would like it kept - that "lt" or "LT" is a extremely tongued word and perfect there, eh?
Also, that whole last section of your recreation, if a new edition of the tri-lingual edition of The Peel Peeled is ever done, should be included. for a cuadri-lingual edition!
Carlos Henderson, by the way, is an excellent Peruvian poet, who also knows French, obviously, and his French versions are rewritings similar in approach to what you've done. (So the new edition would include The Peel, The Peel Peeled, La Corteza Pelada, Pelures, &Cortex Peel.)
My own Spanish versions are more like "translations" - haw!, forgive me!
ovoid o void,
john
JL: i'll keep this and add it as a postscript
i agree about that 'l', it should stay
i did fix one thing in an email from yesterday i think, where Mailer Leaves Ham had become Mailer Leaves Him
thanks for sending that note to your brother, i appreciate it. i am enjoying this a lot, and it's good to know that you are too.
i think i understand a lot of what you do as a poet, but obviously it means a lot more for you to say so than it does for me to say so.
thanks John.
Pee Text
by John M. Bennett
small chapbook project, 2007
Pee Text
shade sol der ,me the lightbulb fire
yr s hunt loose b yr throat outside
t the sing le sha e the shotgun mist
intent ion floating toward the b ridge lost in s
un dulation ,cag pe nd ant gr ease
,time to coughing ,lo ,page of s cowling a
the floor raging in at comb bus ted
.the camper like a r inkwell fulla urine
per drooling soldier allowed .dip the nest
,dropped an blanch to yr "woods" the l
,sp read across ,the sough creep ,the buzzing
lantern d rifts in ed ,knocking talking
azy sword sw stepped an f layed
inside yr face y bloat business ,sot ham
Let's say our first attempt to read the poem entitled "Pee Text" is an attempt to read it left to right, top to bottom. As we read the first stanza we become increasingly frustrated with what happens semantically across the central gap. "Me" to "the", "loose" to "b", "sha" to "e", "cag" to "pe", "lo" to ",page", "in" to "at". What are we, as readers, supposed to do with any of that? Personally, I decide fairly quickly that the left to right, top to bottom reading route is a failure for this poem. I take a quick look at reading in columns, down the left column, back to top-right, then down the right side.
shade sol der ,me
yr s hunt loose
t the sing le sha
intent ion floating
un dulation ,cag
,time to coughing ,lo
the floor raging in
the lightbulb fire
b yr throat outside
e the shotgun mist
toward the b ridge lost in s
pe nd ant gr ease
,page of s cowling a
at comb bus ted
I can enjoy this kind of noisic chaos, but I suspect this poem of having more than just that to offer.
I remember some Bennett poems from the nineties, inside-out poems I think he called them, my memory is a little fuzzy on this (my memory is a little fuzzy on a lot of things from approximately 25 years ago), but I do recall specifically that the first word of the poem "rhymed" with the last word, and that pattern held through the poem (the first word in the second line "rhymed" with the last word in the penultimate line, etc.), so I decide to look at the first half of the first line here and see how it matches up with the last half of the last line:
There is a recognizable, functional syntax here, albeit destabilized -- gapped in multiple ways. Discontinuity has a complex relationship to dis-contiguity. We read forward, left to right, intention floating toward the bridge, and then we start over, intent, intent ion -- floating toward the -- bridge, bridge and ridge, ridge after bridge, ridge just beyond the bridge -- lost in -- sun, lost in the sun, the sun undulation, undulation as a kind of duration...
shade sol der ,me bloat business ,sot ham
That is not helpful.
"Shade" to "ham", first word to last word, is also not helpful.
What about first word of first stanza to last word of first stanza?
"Shade" to "ted".
Also not helpful.
However, I do glimpse something promising when looking at first line, first column,
first stanza in relation to last line, second column, first stanza:
shade sol der ,me at comb bus ted
Close the gap and we have the word "meat". What happens if we continue looking at this pattern?
Line two:
yr s hunt loose ,page of s cowling a
Hmm. Maybe we are not onto anything at all.
Line three:
t the sing le sha pe nd ant gr ease
Shape!
Is this mere coincidence? How likely is that?
Line five:
un dulation ,cag e the shotgun mist
Cage.
Line six:
,time to coughing ,lo b yr throat outside
Lob.
And line seven:
the floor raging in the lightbulb fire
All of which results in the following as stanza one:
shade sol der ,me at comb bus ted
yr s hunt loose ,page of s cowling a
t the sing le sha pe nd ant gr ease
intent ion floating toward the b ridge lost in s
un dulation ,cag e the shotgun mist
,time to coughing ,lo b yr throat outside
the floor raging in the lightbulb fire
Stanza two works exactly the same way.
The best way to contextualize the existence of a book like Pee Text is to think of the history of the mimeograph revolution, which begins in the conscientious objectors' camps in Oregon during World War II, evolves through the secret location (383 E. 10th St, Lower East Side, NYC) of Ed Sanders' Peace Eye bookstore (where Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts was published in the early sixties), morphs into the punk and zine subcultures of the late-seventies and eighties, begins to take advantage of email in the mid-nineties (with emailed "magazines" of experimental poetry like Jake Berry's Electronic Experioddica, my Juxta/Electronic, and Tom Taylor's Vision Project), moves on to blogzines beginning in the early 00s (Peter Ganick's experiential-experimental literature, my Textimagepoem, Berry's 9th Street Laboratories, Bennett's The John M. Bennett Poetry Blog, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's nonlinear poetry, textual conjectures, and self-similar writing -- and many many others not quite so close to my own poetical neighborhood), and around that same time begins to take advantage of print-on-demand services with the appearance of POD presses devoted to experimental poetry like Ganick's Blue Lion Books and Kervinen's eIghT-pAGE pREss.
The publication of Pee Text and the other chapbooks in the small chapbook project was part of a parallel development in the mid-00s, a resistance against the idea, and the actuality, of digitizing all micro-press publishing endeavors as a way of cutting costs, which had become a necessity for many micro-press publishers, myself included. Ganick's solution to this complex problem was to publish in extremely small editions, with numbers normally associated with tlps, broadsides, and subcultural ephemera. However, because of the quality of Ganick's publications, of which Pee Text is one of the highest examples, these micro-press chapbooks have not disappeared entirely into inaccessible archival collections. They sit on our shelves mixed in with the entire range of experimental poetry publications.
The small chapbook project (scp) was an imprint used by Peter Ganick for a few years in the mid-to-late 00s, roughly from 2005 to 2008. The first four titles published by scp were by Ganick himself:
we walk sleepily forward (2005);
mainstay (2005);
sailing in six/four (2005);
and
eminence: treble clef (2005).
Requests for submissions required manuscripts to be between 20 and 44 pages in 5.5" x 8.5" format.
Peter published several of my chapbooks during those years:
art bang (2006);
gathering the clock --parts 1 and 2, in two volumes (2007);
shrimp teeth (2007);
and
short sorties (2008).
SCP also published two chapbooks by John M. Bennett:
Shoulder Cream (2006);
and
Pee Text (2007).
SCP publications were very streamlined, minimalist productions. Title and author's name at the top of the "cover" page (and in the case of Pee Text, date of publication as well), with the contents of the book beginning about four spaces down. With some scp publications, Pee Text being one of them, the contents would end on the "back cover", followed by copyright information and the address for the press. On some scp publications the number of copies printed was included on the back cover (eg.; 22 for Shoulder Cream; 21 for Art Bang). This information was not included for Pee Text, but my recollection is that all scp editions were expected to be in the 20 - 25 copies range.
In the world of poetry in general and experimental poetry in particular terms like small press and micro-press are defined very loosely, so we might think of Ganick's earlier press, Potes & Poets as a small press operation and small chapbook project as a micro-press publisher. In this context Bennett's Lost and Found Times magazine and Luna Bisonte Prods might be thought of as small press (though some of their activities, like the publication of tlps and broadsides, suggest a very strong affiliation with the world of micro-press publication), and Olchar Lindsann's mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press and In-Appropriate-d Press zine might be seen as micro-press. In my own publishing experience, Juxta magazine could be seen as a small press operation for its first three issues (issues 1 - 3, 500 copies, perfect bound), changing to micro-press for the rest of its 10-issue run (issues 4 -- comb-bound -- and 5/6 -- spiral-bound, 100 copies; issues 7 - 10 -- side stapled, copies to contributors only). Xtant was a micro-press operation from its inception. TLPress was started so I would have an imprint for the tlps I was making circa. 2010. It is as micro- as it gets. It has expanded a little, but not very much in the ensuing eight years. Now there are some pdf publications under the tlpress imprint, there are some broadsides and bookmarks, and there are even some one-off chapbooks. In any case, what prompts all of these considerations tonight is my appreciation of Peter Ganick's micro-press imprint, small chapbook project, which was active 10 years or so ago, and which has left a disproportionately large footprint in my world, and in the worlds of some of my closest associates.
For starters here, reading across the gap between stanzas, I find myself piecing together portions of words distributed over three very different intrusions of emptiness, of space: 1) the central gap in the line, which allows the word "aged" to occur more slowly than might normally be the case; 2) the extra spaces distributed within this letterstring, which permits us to read with clarity and certainty "porch" and "chum", along with "poor", so arriving at "poor porch chum" with hardly a stretch at all; and 3) the line separating the stanzas which gives us, slowly, not as one thought flowing into another, but as two distinct thoughts, "poor porch chum" followed by "poor porch chum chumped".
Pee Text
Stanza two:
.the camper like a bloat business ,sot ham
per drooling soldier stepped an f layed
,dropped an blanch ed ,knocking talking
,sp read across ,the sough creep ,the buzzing
lantern d rifts in to yr "woods" the l
azy sword sw allowed .dip the nest
inside yr face y r inkwell fulla urine
the buzzing lantern drifts into yr woods the lazy sword swallowed...
the buzzing lantern drifts rifts into yr woods the lazy sword allowed…
I see also "the lazys words wallowed". Even though it isn't written, the eye in collusion with the mind will read it.
sot ham hamper ... per drooling soldier ... stepped and flayed layed
Faced with this variety of a writing-against-itself, we read against our readings,
start and stop, piece the same portions together in multiple combinations, add a letter
here, drop a letter there, read back and forth as if a single sequence of letters,
or of words, was layered, as if we were reading a kind of overprinting, as if an
imbricate text -- which already presents us with the extreme difficulty of not
actually existing -- were something we could recombine in an improvised reading process.
The poem on the back cover / last page, "The flood", uses the same form, with a
couple of added twists.
The flood
puzz led all the l ed yr por c h um
roat the screwdex lat g starts ,massed of
x crashing d own t r doll blisters she
fester hat kissed with bomb . yr boat holes y
r ought laughs y he stairway like a
dding ,clusters ,do her in yr steam bo
mot or mountings ag anguid hum ping th
ped guesstrion ,tan ns its eye n on you
spoon whirls doub an mild ew a ris
er knickknacks cr tumble an the breath
con tent tab le ading toward the bled room w
here there's the s acking "dream" my
"of nations" .gas ting w hat yr f lust
ing fauce t b rai k dribbling ,porque
I can't resist this configuration, which otherwise in all probability will not exist
anywhere, ever:
puzz , porque
puzz led all the l
roat the screwdex lat
x crashing d own t
fester hat kissed with
r ought laughs y
dding ,clusters ,do
mot or mountings ag
ed yr por c h um
g starts ,massed of
r doll blisters she
bomb . yr boat holes y
he stairway like a
her in yr steam bo
anguid hum ping th
ped guesstrion ,tan
spoon whirls doub
er knickknacks cr
con tent tab le ading
here there's the s
"of nations" .gas
ing fauce t b rai
ns its eye n on you
an mild ew a ris
tumble an the breath
toward the bled room w
acking "dream" my
ting w hat yr f lust
k dribbling ,porque
The flood
puzz led all the l anguid hum ping th
roat the screwdex lat her in yr steam bo
x crashing d own t he stairway like a
fester hat kissed with bomb . yr boat holes y
r ought laughs y r doll blisters she
dding ,clusters ,do g starts ,massed of
mot or mountings ag ed yr por c h um
ped guesstrion ,tan k dribbling ,porque
spoon whirls doub ting w hat yr f lust
er knickknacks cr acking "dream" my
con tent tab le ading toward the bled room w
here there's the s tumble an the breath
"of nations" .gas an mild ew a ris
ing fauce t b rai ns its eye n on you
Then, for closers, parse the final line: "rising faucet trains brains rains its eye in on you".
Now, decide for yourself, exactly what kind of flood have you been treated and/or subjected to? Crashing down the stairway like a fester hat kissed with bomb.
____________________________________________
Postscript
email exchange between Bennett & Leftwich 03.02.2018
JMB: this is delightful, i think you're maybe the only person i know of who actually figured out the structure of those poems - and i love the opening passage in which you try different de-puzzling ideas, until you hit the right one. Ha! wonderful - and as i said, this kind of thing is a development out of that inside-out stuff in Mailer Leaves Ham, sort of the same idea but twisted further or again inside out - inside out of the inside out, or something.
good summary of micro/small press activity as well. my own micro-press stuff started - at least after my childhood stuff - with access to a ditto machine when i was in grad school at UCLA in the mid-1960's - those spirit-master copies in pale blue, that faded to nothing if left in the sun. i still have copies of that stuff in a dusty cubbyhole pile under my desk... or perhaps in the back of a closet downstairs...
JL: when i showed olchar and the guys how it worked the first question i got was how long did it take you to figure that out. well, it didn't really take all that long for this particular book, because i had learned some of your methods and forms from earlier books. i had an idea of what to look for.
i think maybe i should add this as a postscript too. there are little bits and pieces of info in our email exchanges that might not be readily available anywhere else.
JMB: yeah, good idea to add these bits
March 01/02. 2018
↧
↧
Article 4
Jim Leftwich
Some Notes, Expositions, & Other Things on Works by John M. Bennett (2)
NO BOY
by John M. Bennett
Laughing Bear Press, 1985
The first time I visited John's house, during the 2002 Avant Writing Symposium, he took me upstairs to his office and the first thing I remember seeing was a small banner or a bumper sticker on the wall that said I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE. A few months earlier George W. Bush had given the commencement address at The Ohio State University, where the Avant Writing Symposium was being held, and where John was employed as founding curator of the avant writing archival collection. Some of the graduating students were less than thrilled by the presence of Mr. Bush. They threatened to turn their backs on him while he spoke. The university in turn threatened to deny them their diplomas. On the day of Bush's address there were snipers positioned on the roofs of buildings near the stadium where he was speaking. It was less than a year after 9/11. The days were strange and getting stranger.
Today it is 16 years later, and I am reading a chapbook that was published 17 years earlier, in 1985. The book is entitled NO BOY and it was published in Denver by Laughing Bear Press, 33 years ago. 33 years before that Jack Kerouac was in Denver, hanging out at El Chapultepec bar (named after a large park in Mexico City, the ancient seat of Aztec emperors), listening to jazz. He and his friends would get high in the parking lot, then go in and listen. There was never a cover, and you didn't have to buy anything. It was perfect for Kerouac and his friends: just the kind of entertainment they liked, and also the kind they could afford.
When I think of folks announcing that they vote I usually think of slogans like I'M THE NRA AND I VOTE or I'M THE MORAL MAJORITY AND I VOTE or I'M PRO-LIFE AND I VOTE, right-wing threats to any reasonable notion of why democracy in general and electoral politics in particular might be important. The slogan I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE is a mockery of the usual jingoist assertions. One way of thinking about anarchism is to imagine it as a logical extension of the idea of participatory democracy.
I think of No Boy as an anarchic spirit, quite likely one with a strong streak of Beat rebelliousness in his background. The first poem in the NO BOY chapbook reads, in its entirety, as follows:
Exit
Hat on skull
hand on belt
shoe rising over the sill
Hooray! No Boy escapes, out the window and into the world. The second poem in this adventure introduces us to Yes-Boy ("Yes-Boy Looks For No"). Yes-Boy is sitting in a parked car, watching No Boy on a fire escape. Yes-Boy gets off from work and watches No Boy "chainsaw a mattress" on TV. In the last stanza Yes-Boy is opening his car door, "standing in the clear cold wind". That clear cold wind might be anywhere: Columbus, Ohio; Lowell, Massachusetts; New York City; Denver; Chicago; St. Louis; Roanoke, Virginia. Wherever it is, it isn't far from The Road.
No Boy digs a hole in the yard and finds a stone.
He goes into a grocery store in a trance, looks out a window at a cloudless sky.
In poem five (of seventeen total in this chapbook), he murders the boss.
I / was standing on the highway with bits of / siding between my teeth
he was / standing in the driveway with the / carburning thoughts behind him
shrinking up his nose he / hears the phone ringing at the office the
terminals droning in the sudden silence
In poem six he is dressed as "The Preest". He saw pulsing foreheads strewn on a / parkinglot. "My hands are mirrors" he said to the dawn / and wriggled his fingers in front of his eyes.
In the poem entitled No Boy, the character No Boy is wandering through the nightmarish hallucination of Columbus:
I walked behind the empty discount store saw
a rusty trashburner, a bin of
flaking tires, a giant compactor with
GOD and REFUSE COLUMBUS on the side I
stared out at the ragged woods behind the place,
heaps of rubble, splintered trees and
thought of shopping carts stuffed with
lawnmower wheels buried beneath the mud where I stood
I tried to leave, my feet were stuck...
That is exactly how I remember 1985. I was in San Francisco. Reagan was in The White House. Our government was in Central America, trading guns for cocaine, fighting against freedom, justice and human dignity. I don't know how any of us survived the 1980s.
"Ripening of Meat" is the next poem:
He opens the door a
car screeches away in the street he
picks up some wrappings and
walks to a bare spot behind the garage
"What's it say?" he thinks,
staring at the reeking signs and blotches
He is reading the trash as if doing so is a method of divination. There have been times in my life when I have been certain that reading the trash is a method of divination. I knew how to do it, and I did it on a daily basis. What's it say, we say, asking the trash itself, asking the world, the cosmos, asking ourselves. At first we are surprised when we get an answer. Later, we don't even need to ask. Eventually, the trash is asking us. We write poems to help the world understand itself.
So many of these lines end where you would least expect them to. They often end with prepositions, articles, and pronouns. I imagine Robert Creeley reading them, with a full stop at the end of each line. There is a nice, noisy, disjunctive music in what I hear. Drive, he said. No-Boy wakes up with chicken intestines in his mouth. I see a thick black word pushing out its mouth, shiny from the light behind me. His feet are wet his hands are burnt.
Poem #13 is entitled "No Sax":
No Sax
He was jerking the giblet bag out of the
chicken he was blowing into the
neckhole he was thinking it was a
saxophone, sqwakings blast past flapping shreds of skin;
cloud of scissors floats around his feet a
sound no sound is hissing through his ears
"It's the note, the note" he says
pulsing his fingers on the glistening back
I think of late Coltrane, Interstellar Space, of Albert Ayler playing marches and spirituals, of Frank Wright in Europe, of Brotzmann's "Machine Gun". It's the note, the note. Pharoah Sanders, The Healing Song. Coltrane, A Love Supreme. Ayler, Music Is The Healing Force of The Universe. It's the middle of the 1980s. The Cold War is at its worst. We march from one end of the city to the other to protest mutually assured destruction. As if anyone is listening... The whole world is not watching. Margaret Thatcher is telling us, there is no alternative. The unions have been busted and the bullshit that is Reaganomics is just beginning to trickle down onto our heads. Why shouldn't we be thinking of Captain Beefheart, Big Eyed Beans From Venus?... Mister Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long (lunar, looming, leaning) note, and let it float. (Note at Home Page Replica -- many people argue for looming or leaning or something else here, but since Bill Harkleroad's book about the Magic Band is called "Lunar Notes", it's a safe guess to assume the correct phrase is "lunar".)
from "Dying No-Boy"
He's yawning, wishing for sleep, to
drift above the parkinglot, his
skin surrounded by another's skin
undulating slowly in the thick tongues of air
from "Night Shopping"
The parkinglot the
wall of light a
few dark heads drift above the
glinting carroofs
Of the seventeen poems here at least eleven mention either parkinglots, cars, highways, or streets, and several mention more than one of those things. So, what is this book about? A guy who hates the 80s, the American death-machine of the 1980s, who feels trapped in the American death-trap of the midwest, of Columbus, Ohio, a microcosm of Death Incorporated, middle-American style, who wants desperately to escape, who dreams of being on the road to anywhere but where he is, but whose cars are stuck in parking lots. His brain is filled with big, surrealist ideas. He wants to Be... An-Ar-Key, but instead he's doing some late-night shopping, searching through the discount store, passing walls of clocks guns wigs antiperspirants.
On the lake, No Boy stands with his hammer in his pants [...] he cocks back his hammer and whips it over the waves [...] he closes his eyes and he's in the
basement in front of a puddle, sees in it
nails clotted with linty cobwebs and the
toe of his greasy shoe, he lies down next to it
puts his cheek on the cool still edge
"hundreds of hats" he sees "They're
floating on the peak of the lake"
And No Boy is floating with them. And we, for an hour or two, have been floating with him. The ghost of Margaret Thatcher can go fuck itself. There has always been an alternative.
03.03.2018
____________________________________
Postscript
email between Bennett and Leftwich, 03.03.2018
JMB: jim, this is very moving, reading this; you make the book seem vivid and real, a book i haven't looked at in years, it's like opening a door
No Boy is what I was trying to write when i wrote Found Objects, that early book from 1973 (do you have a copy?)
Thanks for bringing no boy back to me
o void o void o void,
john
JL: the 80s were difficult for me, were difficult for a lot of us i think. by 1986 i had pretty much had enough. then i met Sue and she kind of kept me going for a few years when i'm really not sure what might have happened without her. No Boy is a great 1980s American book of poems. No Boy the character is too fiercely imaginative to be entirely despondent.
there was a song in the early 80s, you might remember it, by a group called PIL (Public Image Ltd), which was led by the former front man for the Sex Pistols, John Lydon/Johnny Rotten. part of the chorus was "anger is an energy". it was a notion worth knowing back then, for better and for worse.
reading No Boy allowed me to write about some things that i probably wouldn't have gotten around to writing about while reading, for example, rOlling COMBers. or any of your most recent books.
i like the book, enjoyed reading it last night, and appreciate the things it gave me to think about.
i haven't seen Found Objects, and of course i would love to see it.
JMB: will have to get you a copy, i think i still have a few
no: wait, Found Objects was the book of cutup/collage poems in a box - of that i have no copies. (my memory is overwhelmed) I was thinking of WHITE SCREEN, 1976 - has series of poems about highways and shopping centers, and such. Do you have that one? It's sort of squarish, softbound, b/w illus. on cover. i may have copies of it
yeah, the 1980's: i still had a lot of anger then - from a divorce, from loosing professor job (which turned out to be a good thing in the long run, long story), etc. but it was also the time i got together with cathy, which was wonderful, and still is
I don't remember that song, tho i did listen to the Sex Pistols quite a bit. oh yes.
SM EAR
V. 10 No. 26, 2002
edited / compiled by John M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods
Bennett had this to say in 2017, for the Luna Bisonte Prods listing at the "from a secret location" website: "The name Luna Bisonte Prods came about in 1974 and became the portal through which I continued making small books, chapbooks, cards, labels, and other products, using rubber stamps, collage, photocopiers, and found materials. In 1975 the journal Lost & Found Times was born, which continued through 2005. Since that time in the mid-1970s, LBP has published or released thousands of broadsides, TLPs (“Tacky Little Pamphlets”), objects, one-of-a-kind books, chapbooks, artist’s books, Lost & Found Times and some other shorter-lived serials, audio and video works, print edition books, print-on-demand books, tons of mail art, and numerous stunts, gags, and performances."
Contributors to SM EAR:
Thomas L. Taylor
John M. Bennett
Scott Helmes
Reed Altemus
Al Ackerman
Diane Bertrand
That is a hefty lineup for such an apparently ephemeral publication. SM EAR is a tlp zine consisting of one sheet of copy paper (the one I have is blue) folded in half vertically, producing a 5.5" x 8.5" 4-page pamphlet.
The front cover / page 1 consists of the title -- SM EAR -- at the top, written in Bennett's distinctive calligraphic hand and smeared with a finger while still wet, followed by a collaborative visual poem entitled SMEAR by Taylor, Bennett and Helmes. The title, in all caps, is centered, as is the textual component of the poem -- written by Taylor -- beneath it.
SMEAR
Lorts, dulcimer, mento (ascribe
I'd asided
Nix no meer pinto
nor hummus
afforded lynx
Between the date -- 2002 -- and the title of the poem, approximately at the right margin, is a toilet-paper-roll-on-a-wall-hanger stamp, also slightly smeared. This is almost certainly one of Bennett's contributions.
Following the line "Nix no meer pinto" are two splotches of tiny, unreadable type, one of them right-aligned. I think these were contributed by Helmes, but I can't be entirely certain. Beneath the second type-splotch and above the line "nor hummus" are the words "smell ear", written in Bennett's calligraphy. A thin rectangular frame encloses everything described in this paragraph.
Just below the frame is what appears to be a small rectangular stamp. A final line of text appears, backward, at the bottom of the rectangle. This looks like it might have been a found object used as a stamp (possibly one of those faux credit cards that come as advertisements in the mail). A large black blot of ink covers most of what was stamped. I think this stamp and the ink blot were contributed by Helmes, but I can't be entirely certain. Calligraphic tendrils branch out from the ink blot (most likely contributed by Bennett).
The piece is signed by Tom 3/12/02 + jmb 3/6/02 + scott -- maybe 12 vi 02.
Upon opening the zine we find, spread across the tops of pages two and three, a poem by Bennett entitled "Lacks sure" followed by three variations (hacks) by Reed Altemus ("Ladder pus"; "Numb dripping"; and "Port a").
The title "Ladder pus" is taken from the end of Bennett's poem, the last three lines of which are as follows:
licks the singer's tall pus
ladder combine draws the foam
teaser, yr blinked convection snack
Line one of "Ladder pus" begins with the first two words of line eleven of "Lacks sure" ("wring that") followed by the first two words of line twenty-two (:flapping in").
Both poems have thirty lines.
Line two of "Ladder pus" begins with the last two words of line fifteen in "Lacks sure" ("sandwich heaving") followed by the first three words from line twenty-six of "Lacks sure" ("a port while"), written in reverse order ("while, port a").
The variations continue in this fashion. The title for "Numb dripping" comes from the first word of line seventeen and the last word of line sixteen:
heaving, sandwich blood's wreath, dripping
numb the kings' leakage onna
The first line "that bowl spiral ah plato" comes from three words in the middle of line twenty, in reverse order
salt spiral bowl that rings
plus the first two words of line four, in their original order
ah plato humo stony nostril.
The title for "Port a" returns to line twenty-six of "Lacks sure"
a port while, keep a
and extracts the first two words, keeping their original order.
I am not sure exactly what Altemus is doing here as far as his arithmetic or pattern-imposition (and recognition) is concerned, but whatever it is it results in very successful new poems, with very strong echoes of Bennett, of course (since it it Bennett's vocabulary that is being used for all of these poems), but also something else, a distinctive residue, let's say, of the decisions being made by Altemus. These poems work as collaborations. They are not poems written by Bennett, and neither are they poems written entirely by Altemus. A "third mind" is in play here, and the results are radically open, expansively resonant, and intimately mutagenic poems.
William Burroughs, from First Recordings, in The Third Mind (1978): Any so-called officer who tells you that dreams are illusions that you should put aside is asking you to abandon cover and invite disastrous defeat. It is precisely in the dream area that we can not-know the enemy. Always remember you are dealing with a parasitic organism that exists only in the damage it can cause you. When you are able to not-know the enemy, the enemy is not there. The act of not-knowing requires, like all disappearing acts, a stage; a theater of operations. Since our theater is under constant attack it must be constantly shifted and re-created.
JMB, from John M. Bennett’s Response to Jake Berry’s Poetry Wide Open: The Otherstream (Fragments In Motion) (2011): Poetry that persists, that is read, and read very differently through succeeding generations, always has its origins on the outsides of contemporary cultural institutions. For the poet to perceive and experience the world, and to re-experience it in her/his art, she/he has to work outside those institutions.
Along the bottom of pages two and three of SM EAR are an Ackerman hack of some Bennett poems, and a related set of instructions from The Blaster for "a big performance week".
The hack (of poems from 5.1 & 5.2 -- presumably of 2002) is entitled "Bike's Shabby Without". It consists of seven lines, lettered A through G. Each line begins with the phrase "Bike's shabby without":
A. -- Bike's shabby without the next son of a bitch they send out here.
G. -- Bike's shabby without that old moocher glow or creeping shrill or both.
The instructions are as follows:
At the start of each day [of your big performance week], pick -- using chance or obsessive deliberation -- one of the seven "Bike's Shabby Without" versions (A, B, C, etc) listed above and write it on your arm to be flaunted and vocalized in conjunction with each day's "Theme" as indicated below:
Thurs. -- Interfering With Co-Workers
Mon. -- Muttering On The Way to Work
JMB, from his Cervena Barva Press Interview, 2006 -- I should say that when I perform my poetry, I am a somewhat different person than the person who wrote it. I was an actor in my youth, and the poems become roles that I inhabit.
Reading the last lines of the four poems in the upper section of pages two and three, I arrive at the following Bennett -- Altemus -- Leftwich collaboration:
teaser, yr blinked convection snack
a port while, yr blinked convection
licks tall pus wreath, blood blood's
tall the plato, draws ah foam
Reading the first lines of these four poems backwards, I arrive at the following Bennett -- Altemus -- Leftwich collaboration:
salt spiral tall the pus
plato ah spiral bowl that
in flapping that, wring
teaser, blinks convection
snack yr sure lacks
One more:
nor gun pants flapping in
dripping convection blinks
ream floating was spreading fish
leashed spreading fish
The upper section of the back cover / page four is occupied by a John M. Bennett & Diane Bertrand collaboration. In my experience collaborations with Diane resulted when I would send her an envelope of mail art -- usually visual poems, but sometimes print-outs of textual poems -- and she would add to some items and send them back. With the collab printed in SM EAR it looks like Bennet probably sent her a poem (this poem:
P
raise
or t
arp o
whir
l bo
ne
--dated 7.1.98)
and she added to it and returned it in 2000. She has added some grasses in front of a darkened area to create an illusion of depth, which makes John's poem appear to be floating (perhaps alongside a blackbird or two) in the deep blue sky.
Below the Bennett / Bertrand collab is another Ackerman hack of some Bennett poems.
MASTER ROCK DRINK (from 5.1, 5.8)
a protrusion: crawled to be
in sect that cut words in half
from Interview With William Burroughs (1966)
Conrad Knickerbocker: What do cut-ups offer the reader that conventional narrative doesn't? BURROUGHS: Any narrative passage or any passage, say, of poetic images is subject to any number of variations, all of which may be interesting and valid in their own right. A page of Rimbaud cut up and rearranged will give you quite new images. Rimbaud images—real Rimbaud images—but new ones.
I think the words "crav""vied"
meaning to unfound cherry wood
are "crawled" cut in half
                                             (that's enough of that)
Our notion of what is ephemeral and what is not has changed in recent decades. When, in the mid-nineties, I was publishing Juxta/Electronic as an email zine in conjunction with the print edition of Juxta (though not, in any instances, publishing any of the same items in both publications), almost everyone I corresponded with assumed that the email zine was ephemeral, that it would land in the inboxes of contributors and their associates, and then disappear, quickly and completely, forever. But the email zine was archived as it was produced by the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY-Buffalo, and it has just recently been given a new home (a new url) at the U-Penn site.
In 1995 I published a Bennett book entitled FALLS STILL. The poems in it have the "split title" format that he used in many publications from that time period (including Blind On The Temple -- LBP 1993, Clown Door -- Marshall Creek Press 1997, Infused -- LBP 1995, and Book Classification -- LBP tlp 1993). I think for most folks it has been easier to access FALLS STILL for the past 23 years than it has been to find copies of these other "split title" publications. The problem has been, and remains, that very few people know that FALLS STILL even exists. I sent John the link to it yesterday and he had all but forgotten about it, and had no idea that it was still accessible.
So: what kind of publication is dangerously ephemeral these days? What kind of publication is in danger of disappearing completely? The last envelope I got from John had this copy of SM EAR in it. It is a pleasure to consider, a treasure to have and hold. A quick search indicates that Google has no knowledge of its existence. Or, perhaps Google has decided that I don't need to know of its existence, and so has eliminated it from my search results. Twenty-five years ago, and earlier, the way we came upon this kind of publication was most often by finding it in our mailbox, mailed to us by its author or its publisher (who were frequently the same person). Well, it's 2018, and that's the way I got my copy of SM EAR. And that's a good part of why I am writing about it at all.
I will close this meditation with a "conversation" I found online. It is not a publication, or even in a publication. But it is writing, written by people whose writings are more often than not either published or archived or both. In the case of this, however, its very existence is in the hands of enormous corporations who will decide, based solely on considerations of profitability, whether or not anyone should ever have access to it at all.
I think this text, and many many more very much like it, are in danger of disappearing completely, forever. Relatively speaking, publications like SM EAR would seem to be in very little danger of disappearing. Get in touch with John and ask him. Maybe he'll send you a copy.
Meanwhile, I will save for you some thoughts on what to do with a wadded-up sheet of paper.
From ThE/ CuT-UP/ TecHNiQUE/, a Mail Art group found on the International Union of Mail-Artists website
Comment by Richard Canard on March 20, 2016 at 8:00pm
20.03.16 Dare Miss Noma, ...Like millions & millions of other folk, I have waded up a sheet of paper a thousand times & given it a non-thoughtful toss into the trash. Is John M. Bennett the first artist to actually find poetry in "a ball of printed paper"& proclaim its potential??? ...well, he does seem to have been doing that sort of thing all along.
Comment by Richard Canard on March 20, 2016 at 9:27pm
20.03.16 Dare Miss Noma & Mister Carl Baker, ...apparently I still yet have difficulty in expressing myself clearly. What I was attempting to say was the fact that I never saw the same aesthetic possibilities that JMB seemed to recognize. John M. Bennett has indeed been around a long time & his efforts have (in my opinion) enriched the arena of visual poetry. Richard
Comment by John M. Bennett on March 21, 2016 at 12:44am
Not the first; Jim Leftwich has been taping down crunched-up wads of paper for some years now
[...]
Comment by John M. Bennett on March 30, 2016 at 2:17am
the avant-garde is really another tradition, the term isn't accurate. it's an alter-garde or other-garde!
03.03.2018
_________________________________________________
Postscript
email from Bennett to Leftwich, 03.04.2018
excellent and fascinating, your detailed account of what's in SM EAR makes me want to do more SM EARS or some such thing - glad you brought up Burroughs' ideas - WSB was someone i read in the early 1960's - Naked Lunch and the cut-up trilogy - the latter books i didn't fully understand, but was fascinated and felt there was something very important going on in them/with them. Now of course he makes a LOT of sense, and, i've said this before, the cut-up texts have a very particular sound/rhythm/diction/sense to them, and much of my writing is with that sound/etc., i don't have to physically "cut-up" anything. Just write that way. WSB affected me more than I knew...
Also glad to see those comments from Richard C, which I don't recall seeing before. Have known him in the mail for years...
Instruction Book
by John. M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006
epigraph from the copyright page
"Instructions burning in the corner."
John M. Bennett, Image Standards, 1975
The first two poems in the book are straight, as in they are written to be read left to right, top to bottom. Each poem has seven numbered lines, and neither poem has any punctuation. The syntax is distorted at times, as in line 6 from How To Singe ("Climb your meat and wallet"), in which "wallet" is offered as a verb, or in line 5 of How To Drip ("Shore your grasp and buttock"), where we are given "buttock" as a verb. At least our experience during a first reading would indicate these readings (having been set-up by the structure of lines one and two).
Here is How To Singe, the first poem in the book, in its entirety (page 5):
1) Taste your shadow in the soup
2) Cage your neck and run
3) Fry your tube and listen
4) Drop your bee and towel
5) Say your foot and chisel
6) Climb your meat and wallet
7) Age your pocket in the ladder
Structurally, lines 1 and 7 are identical: verb -- second person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase.
Structurally, lines 2 and 3 are identical: verb -- second person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- verb.
Structurally, lines 4, 5 and 6 are identical: verb -- second person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- noun and/or verb rabbit/duck word. "Towel" and "chisel" are used in standard grammatical configurations as both nouns and verbs. Drop your bee and towel your feet. Say your foot and chisel a stone. But "wallet" is different. Wallet is not normally used as a verb. So, is line 6 a one-off, structurally, in the poem, i.e.: climb your meat and climb your wallet? Or, is line 6 structurally identical to line 2, where "wallet" is a verb meaning "poison the flowerbed" (as intimated in Ackerman's introduction). Enallage is more important than analogy when reading this kind of poem.
Grammar is a set of rules that explain and guide how words are used in a language. A grammar book, like Basic English Grammar, is essentially a book of instructions. From the outset, Bennett's Instruction Book looks very much like a Not-So-Basic English (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Nahuatl?) Grammar, or Anti-Grammar.
John Cage: Syntax, according to Norman [Norman O. Brown], is the arrangement of the army. As we move away from it, we demilitarize language. The demilitarization of language is conducted in many ways: a single language is pulverized; the boundaries between two or more languages are crossed; elements not strictly linguistic (graphic, musical) are introduced; etc.
Bennett and Cage are at times moving along on parallel paths, seemingly headed in the same direction.
The third poem in the book, How To Coffee, introduces words-spelled-backwards as a radical artifice for readers to negotiate. Line 1: Jerk your lens in the rorrim (= mirror). The last word in each line of How To Coffee is written backwards (licnep = pencil; ymotcenmos = somnectomy = "the act of cutting out" + "sleep"; anut = tuna; rettij = jitter; redloc = colder; sehsa = ashes). In order to fully appreciate just how destabilized this language is, a reader must become an active listener, and in the process of learning how to listen to these mirrorwords, a reader would benefit greatly from listening to Bennett read them.
In the fourth poem, How To Spansion, the third word is written backwards: e.g., 5) Rinse your egaggul and mister; or line 3) Fry your epahs and tubal. The third word in all of the lines so far has always been a noun. Here, once the mirrorwords are deciphered, the words are, as expected, shown to be nouns again (luggage; shape), but as written, as mirrorwords, we can have no clear idea concerning what part of speech they might be. With no semantic clues whatsoever, these letterstrings or vocables would float in a "no grammar zone", adrift in a linguistic space bereft of denotation and connotation, were it not for the expectations established by the structure of the preceding poems.
The lack of semantic and grammatical stability liberates the reader from traditional constraints of meaning-building. Personally, I am inclined to playfully improvise across the letter-space of these mirrorwords:
Rinse your ego egg gag gulp and mister
Drape your eel lute supper and spin (your elutsup = pustule)
Spansion, via expansion, etymologically from ex- ‘out’ + pandere ‘to spread.’ Spreading (the strawberry jelly of) meaning across the (slightly burnt wheat toast of) text.
Consider also, line 4) Clomp your ria and sumpage.
If the word "sump", which many of us know from the term "sump pump", means "a depression in the floor of a mine or basement in which water collects," then "sumpage" would refer to that which is collected in the depression.
Walk with a heavy tread, in your own air, in your own space, gathering, pooling, in the basement of your brain, all that enters through your whole sensorium, into you consciousness, and below. "Your ria" plus your "sumpage" (your sumpage, and that which you have sumpaged), is what Olson wrote of as proprioception:
PROPRIOCEPTION the cavity of the body,
in which the organs are slung: the viscera, or
interoceptive, the old ‘psychology’ of feeling,
the heart; of desire, the liver; of sympathy, the
‘bowels’; of courage—the kidney etc—gall,
and, later,
PROPRIOCEPTION: the data of depth sensibility/the ‘body’ of us as
object which spontaneously or of its own order
produces experience of, ‘depth’ Viz
SENSIBILITY WITHIN THE ORGANISM
BY MOVEMENT OF ITS OWN TISSUES
Bennett and Olson are at times moving along on parallel paths, seemingly headed in the same direction.
On the next page (page 7), in How To Funnel, the first word of each line is backwards.
7) Knird your hack and aguacate
---Drink your hack and (translated from the Spanish) avocado
(also advocate, watercate)
Drink your hack and advocate
Drink your hack and watercate
I notice, on page 9, in How To Dump, that the adverb phrases ending lines 1 and 7 have been slightly altered, from phrases beginning with "in" to phrases beginning with "through". The most obvious thing this alters is the sound of the lines, but it also subtlety changes the "energy" of the poem, removing the stasis of "in" and replacing it with the ongoingness of "through". I am reminded again of Olson, how to get the energy of the poem from the author to the poem, and then from the poem to the reader (the poet will have many ways of doing this). I am also reminded of Burroughs invoking our need to abolish the verb "to be".
Also in How To Dump, the distribution of mirrorwords is irregular (last word in the first line; middle -- 3rd -- word in lines 2 through 6; no mirrorwords in line 7). Among our instructions as readers are reminders not to trust our expectations. Expectations are not established in these poems in order to be satisfied, they are set-up in order to be undermined.
Here is How To Thought, from page 9, in its entirety:
1) Dung his lirtson in the speeding
2) Slag his fork and elbuod
3) Gauge his esoon and salad
4) Find his knilb and cubit
5) Fore his kcar and nibble
6) Pine his whoosh and ihsus
7) Dang his noitacirbul in the clusters
Line 1: word 3 is backwards
Line 2: the last word is backwards
Line 3: word 3 is backwards
Line 4: word 3 is backwards
Line 5: word 3 is backwards
Line 1: the last word is backwards
Line 7: word 3 is backwards
How To Thought (in itself a textbook example of enallage) might be interpreted as a way of telling us, as readers, not to expect our past patterns of thinking to be reliable ways of engaging what is presently before us.
Every time we read a poem by John M. Bennett we find ourselves encouraged, if not compelled, to think in unfamiliar patterns. Something might remind us in some way of Olson, but the poems themselves certainly do not remind us of Olson at all. Something might make us think of John Cage, but the poems themselves do not look or sound like Cage. Something might make us remember Marjorie Perloff's term "radical artifice", but the more we think about it the less applicable it seems to Bennett. Even the writing of William Burroughs, with which Bennett has some close connections, neither looks nor sounds like any of Bennett's poems.
One thing to consider when reading Bennett is his lifelong interest in the Spanish and Portuguese avant-gardes. Not only does this interest shift his focus away from the American and English traditions is poetry, it also gives a secondary position to the most influential members of the twentieth century European avant gardes. While Bennett is certainly familiar with all of the historical avant gardes, his primary influences have not been -- to line-up only the most familiar of the usual suspects -- Marinetti, Tzara and/or Breton. In the brief text entitled "A Kind of Aesthetic" which he appended to Mailer Leaves Ham, Bennett says that writing poetry has always been for him a means to an end, that end being changing the language of poetry and thereby changing consciousness itself. "In order to leave 'poetry' behind," he writes, "in order to stop thinking about it, I've had to learn it and write it so much that I've found that the basic nature of language has changed."
Change language, and you change not only the content of thought, but the patterns of thinking within and about that content. You change not only the dots available to be connected, but the pathways, the routes, through which those connections might be made. Bennett continues: "Simply put, I wanted to change language from an instrument of socialization (or, at worst, of institutional control), into a vehicle for liberation, for growth of consciousness and responsibility."
Structure of How To Towel, on page 10
Line 1: noun/verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- verb
Line 2: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 3: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 4: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 5: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 6: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 7: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- gerund
Structure of How To Not, on page 10
Lines 1 through 7: noun -- preposition -- noun -- adjective phrase
Ok, enough of that. Only people who are professional instructors of grammar should require themselves to do that kind of analysis.
On pages twelve and thirteen we find variations on the structure of the title:
How Was Ham
which might be a question asked after someone has either followed or failed to follow a set of instructions
How You Glans
which may be a description of how you ekohc and knob
How He Itch
which is an invitation to misreading (How he dump your Jack and Ginsberg = Kcaj & Grebsnig), and an evocation of empathy for uneasiness (How he jowls your pen and temple)
How We Spatter
a confession to scattershooting obedience (lodge your numen in the cornflake -- that is, the ekalfnroc)
On page 23, in the poem entitled How To Meatball, the final adverb phrase of lines 1 and 7 has been truncated, and the central noun in the grammatical structure has been forced into the role of adjective:
1) Ekal your corner shadow
7) Tae your slugfest drainhole
All of these grammatical tricks, mirrored spellings, and generally slippery, banana-peel semantics are not simply games the poet plays to entertain a literate and/or literary potential readership. I think Bennett has long since abandoned any hope of gaining the attention of English majors. Bennett wants his readers to train themselves to think differently, using his poems as part of their training manual. He is finally not all that interested in the potentially infinite twists-and-turns of grammatical structures. After all, everyone already knows that colorless green ideas sleep furiously. But not everyone knows
coil or less lest green e'en ideas as deaths sleep leap furiously fur us sly.
OK. That's one way to meatball. There are many others.
In How To How To, on page 25, we find yet another formal shift:
Line 1: Glop hat and ekalf your puddle
Line 7: Shot spat and ekac your middle
Lines 2 through 6 are of the "verb your noun and verb" model.
So, given this very resonant title, what are we to make of the rhyming first and last lines?
Glop hat and flake your puddle
Shot spat and cake your middle
glop -- shot
hat -- spat
and flake -- and cake
your puddle -- your middle
The two lines collapse onto one another. They insist on their presence to your attention. They empty themselves into the swarming void of your mind as utterly emptied signifiers. Denotations serve no purpose here -- other than as echoes, shadows, distant memories of a set of discarded expectations. The process of meaning-building, collaborative or otherwise, is thwarted at its outset. There is a music here, naked, fiercely insistent, hammered into our skulls: we are not permitted to mistake it for anything else. Look at the title again: How To How To. It is, in itself, an even more exact rhyme than that of lines 1 and 7. It is so exact, in fact, that we might be forgiven if we choose to think of it as something other than a rhyme. But in it, Bennett is explaining, quite succinctly, one of the central tenets of his poetics.
I take a short break, make a few bag texts. Bag texts are a kind of visual poem that I started making on the trip home from the 2002 avant writing symposium at OSU. Tonight I did some late-night grocery shopping at Kroger, so I had some Kroger bags to work with. I should say play with: after all, what I'm doing is tearing up plastic bags and taping the scraps to index cards and sheets of copy paper. When the bags are ripped apart the writing on them stretches and breaks. I'm looking at one right now and it looks like it might possibly read:
"yr fooTs
drip"
I can't find anything very close to that on an intact Kroger bag. Another one reads:
esi
ow p
And another:
loaa
V
I am beginning to find messages in these scraps, something nuanced, nearly invisible, having to do with the loa (sometimes referred to as "invisibles), and perhaps with love.
How To Think, on page 26, seems on its surface to say, I am not going to tell you how to think.
However, the poems say wildly, flapping us with a sideways glance, I am going to tell you not to think of an elephant: do not think of how to think.
Now that you are unable to think of anything else, what exactly are you thinking? And more importantly, how exactly are you thinking whatever it is that you are thinking? Are you drying your eyebrow in the sink? Are you flapping your favors in the sink? Have you already decided that this is the kitchen sink. This is the poem of everything but the kitchen sink, plus the kitchen sink.
Line 7: Fly your minding in the sink.
You will be expected to teach yourself how to think. This poem is part of the training manual. This Instruction Book is part of the training manual. By now you will have gotten the idea, but you still have to choose to accept its basic premise. And then you have to follow its meandering instructions.
The next poem after How To Think is How To Use. It says, perhaps too clearly and too close:
1) Use dunk and pile
2) Use plenty and norm
3) Use roof and steam
4) Use ruckus and door
5) Use hole and troop
6) Use map and tremble
7) Use throat and double
8) Use bind and sender
9) Use pits and mountain
One thing to notice here: there are no backwards words.
Another thing: there are two more lines than in the standard form (there are a couple of other, earlier, poems in the book with more than 7 lines).
I suggest too clearly and too close because we have been trained so far in this book to give a place of diminished importance to the meanings of single words, and to the meanings of words in sequence.
How To Use, however, is concerned with being clear, and with telling us what to do, an attitude if you will which some of us might be inclined to take personally.
Use plenty and norm, it tells us. Does that hit close to home? Do what you will with every word there, but norm will still mean norm.
Use ruckus and door, it tells me. I don't want to hear it. I have specific memories, and I am beyond that kind of thing. I am reminded of Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil, a book I read in high school: The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.'
Use map and tremble, it says. Yes, I know. On a good day, yes.
These are highly subjective instructions, and will be interpreted associationally, but it is hard to imagine them being read closely without being taken personally. This poem is about you, no matter who you are, and it has not entered any kind of popularity contest. It cares too much to care about whether or not it is liked.
If How To Use is intentionally too clear for comfort, then What To Od (page 63) is too bend and crow your bullets barn from bowling. We protest -- but I already know what to do! The poem is not persuaded by our protestations. We do not threaten anything that it cares about. It stands before us, like a tank, and stares us down.
Bend and tuop your cowing wind--
I will neither bend nor pout, cows notwithstanding in the wind--
and emarf your pooling whine and--
first pout, pout backwards, and now frame my pooling whine?
I have no pooling wine, nor puling whine--
worc your finding lung and emoc--
crow is only here because cow was here earlier--
emoc, a slant-mirror of worc--
your pancake shat and emit your--
tahs and time your--
emit omits admit--
bullets know and krof your dollop--
fork your pollod--
we know tahw to do--
bam and ekorts your flinger dump--
stroke your flinger--
(that sounds like sound advice)--
and emaf your custard ring and--
fame your dratsuc gnir--
from your dust send and tnuom
your bowing--
that, all ludic beyondsense aside, sounds like very sage advice
from your dust send and mount your bowing
It makes me think of Philip Whalen, but I can't remember why. It's not the Sourdough Mountain poem, or Further Notice. Not his handwritten visual poems. I open the Collected Poems online and look around a little. After a while I come to Minor Moralia.
This is on page 261:
1 Law: Raise your hand
2 Law: Move your feet
3 Law: Listen
4 Law: Don't commit suicide
INSTRUCTIONS AND COMMENTARIES
Everybody's telling you
1. "Nothing you (one person) can do will make the slightest
difference." Follow Law 1: use hand to write me.
2. "You cannot escape." Follow Law 2: use feet, to convey
you out of town.
3. "The mass communications media are in the hands of
liars." Follow Law 3: Listen to me or any other poet.
4. "The world as we know it is about to be destroyed." Follow
Law 4: suicide means you have been played for a sap by a
two-year-old idiot child and also means that you believe in
and approve everything the newspapers say -- I believe you
know better.
Further instructions will be forthcoming.
Use these now, under pain of being something else,
21:vii:59
As with Olson, and Cage, and Burroughs, and everyone else who comes to mind when I am reading Bennett, this snippet from Whalen actually has very little to do with Bennett, and has everything to do with the idea of a poem as a mirror.
Instruction Book is 117 pages long, with the first poems appearing on page five. On page 70, the poems change drastically, in appearance and in sound, becoming sparse, haiku-like, quasi-lyric poems, for the most part centered on the page. This form predominates throughout most of the rest of the book. Here is How Ot Fold, complete, from page 79:
pmuj ti out
thguob your ekaf
shack hcnerd
rebmalc it
And here is How To Reppoh, in its entirety, from page 81:
dnilb your wodniw
gas
The haiku form lends itself readily to koan-like utterances. Poems like these lyrical instructions have more than a little in common with the notion of the zen slap, that moment when we are suddenly jarred into an unexpected awareness. When we "translate" the backwards words into normative English we sometimes experience a sense of increased electricity leaping among the synapses:
jump it out
bought your fake
shack drench
clamber it
_____________
blind your window
sag
This is one of my favorites (you can translate it for yourself):
What To Bard
trihs bals "against the light"
mool wham
and rinse
The word "hint" has a somewhat surprising etymology -- early 17th century (in the sense ‘occasion, opportunity’): apparently from obsolete hent ‘grasp, get hold of,’ from Old English hentan, of Germanic origin; related to hunt. The basic notion is ‘something that may be taken advantage of.’ But once we consider it for a moment we can detect a lingering trace of "something that may be taken advantage of" in the current definition. On page 105 of the Instruction Book we find a poem entitled How To Hint. The first thing we notice is that none of the words in the title are spelled backwards. That in itself is a hint concerning how we are to approach this poem. However, it is only a hint, as we quickly discover upon entering into our reading:
1) Shape the wodahs in your egaggul
2) Stop the ocof at your suna
3) Stun the aicsaf next your ekortsyek
4) Spill the elpmet for your xobllip
5) Sop the tunhguod through your noihsuc
6) Spork the ecikcap out your yhpargoib
7) Split the efinkkaets off your kcottub
Stop the ocof at your suna. Even though I understand Bernadette Dorn's dictum, that the violence of the oppressed is qualitatively different from the violence of the oppressor, I am still unwilling to advocate violence as a solution, if only because violence is a very significant part of the problem, and if successful it will only train another generation to believe in the efficacy of violence as a means of getting what it wants, thus perpetuating the problem in the hands of a new leadership. We continue with the project, the dream, the aspiration towards a new kind of education, as old as thinking itself, yet a new kind of thinking, consciousness perhaps enlightened in the poetry of the zen slap, moving from one section of the training manual to another, life itself a kind of ongoing research, in and around the poem, poetry and related matters, life itself, once we have opened the book of life and are open to it, a training manual in all of its aspects, where consciousness changes language and a changed language changes consciousness, while everyone is called as always, to change life and transform the world.
Page 113:
Rock Bug
blind my arm
hot medals
dice 'n dust
03.04/05/2018
__________________________________________
Postscript
email exchange between Bennett and Leftwich, 03.05.2018
JMB: well let's see if i can get down my notes on this between dashes to the toilet:
first, a couple typos i happened to notice:
p. 4, 2nd parag. starting Every time we read a poem by...: you have "Some might makes us think..." should be "make"
4th page from end, top of page, first line has "What to Od" - is that a typo? maybe not
First page, the epigraph should have no comma, and should read: "Instructions burning in the corner".
ok, enough of that,
Very intriguing the idea of demilitarizing language. hard to do in our world today, but it's what must be worked toward. Language as control: i think i have a chapbook or TLP with that title: Control. Control by releasing control within a form or process. which is decontrol.
Enallage - hah! never heard that term before. it's very much something i do a lot, as do you.
I'm glad you pointed out my focus/background in Iberian literatures, as opposed to Anglo-American. I would also add that French lit has been a big part of my literary world. Not that I'm completely ignorant of my "own" language and lit, which i studied in school, and even wrote an honors thesis on Wallace Stevens. But i have to say that though in college i was hanging around other poets, going to readings, taking classes, i found most of what i was reading kinda boring, and was slowly moving out of that world, moving much faster as soon as i started discovering french and spanish-language poets
"the attention of English majors" - yes, rather a waste of time trying to get that. even more so the attention of english professors! However, in the past few years, a few english majors have come forward with interest in what i do, and in what others of us in this sub-culture do. about time!
These poems from yr ripped and stretched plastic bags are great! "yr fooTs/drip" - really beautiful. I've liked what you do with those bags for some time, actually - stretch-outs as a form of cut-up!
this Instruction Book started when I wrote up a few performance scores for FluxFest, and they kept on going. they of course are impossible to perform (perhaps) except in the mind or voice. Yr essay on the book is really amazing, it highlights things in the book I haven't paid much attention to, things that now seem important. it's given the book a whole new life for me - thank you! It's a book to be read, more than a book to be performed or read out loud.
It's also a book, like almost all of mine, in which i've worked out a way of using language that then gets incorporated and transformed in the next book, or next style of writing i do. these Instructions get churned into the next phase; much like the Dream Inexplanations (also a Fluxus project) are now growling around in the poems i'm writing today. i suppose this means greater and greater complexity. which is fine with me; after all, what i'm trying to do, one of the things i'm trying to do, is say everything all at once, contain the world in a few lines of written/read/spoken language
on that note of supreme arrogance,
i'll go on void onvoid o void
john
JL: thanks for all of this. obviously it needs to be added as a postscript.
"What to Od” is on page 63 of the book.
i don't have anything at all against arrogance when it's accurate, and i'm guessing that you don't either.
i'm glad you're willing to say that kind of thing.
previous page     contents     next page
Some Notes, Expositions, & Other Things on Works by John M. Bennett (2)
NO BOY
by John M. Bennett
Laughing Bear Press, 1985
The first time I visited John's house, during the 2002 Avant Writing Symposium, he took me upstairs to his office and the first thing I remember seeing was a small banner or a bumper sticker on the wall that said I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE. A few months earlier George W. Bush had given the commencement address at The Ohio State University, where the Avant Writing Symposium was being held, and where John was employed as founding curator of the avant writing archival collection. Some of the graduating students were less than thrilled by the presence of Mr. Bush. They threatened to turn their backs on him while he spoke. The university in turn threatened to deny them their diplomas. On the day of Bush's address there were snipers positioned on the roofs of buildings near the stadium where he was speaking. It was less than a year after 9/11. The days were strange and getting stranger.
Today it is 16 years later, and I am reading a chapbook that was published 17 years earlier, in 1985. The book is entitled NO BOY and it was published in Denver by Laughing Bear Press, 33 years ago. 33 years before that Jack Kerouac was in Denver, hanging out at El Chapultepec bar (named after a large park in Mexico City, the ancient seat of Aztec emperors), listening to jazz. He and his friends would get high in the parking lot, then go in and listen. There was never a cover, and you didn't have to buy anything. It was perfect for Kerouac and his friends: just the kind of entertainment they liked, and also the kind they could afford.
When I think of folks announcing that they vote I usually think of slogans like I'M THE NRA AND I VOTE or I'M THE MORAL MAJORITY AND I VOTE or I'M PRO-LIFE AND I VOTE, right-wing threats to any reasonable notion of why democracy in general and electoral politics in particular might be important. The slogan I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE is a mockery of the usual jingoist assertions. One way of thinking about anarchism is to imagine it as a logical extension of the idea of participatory democracy.
I think of No Boy as an anarchic spirit, quite likely one with a strong streak of Beat rebelliousness in his background. The first poem in the NO BOY chapbook reads, in its entirety, as follows:
Exit
Hat on skull
hand on belt
shoe rising over the sill
Hooray! No Boy escapes, out the window and into the world. The second poem in this adventure introduces us to Yes-Boy ("Yes-Boy Looks For No"). Yes-Boy is sitting in a parked car, watching No Boy on a fire escape. Yes-Boy gets off from work and watches No Boy "chainsaw a mattress" on TV. In the last stanza Yes-Boy is opening his car door, "standing in the clear cold wind". That clear cold wind might be anywhere: Columbus, Ohio; Lowell, Massachusetts; New York City; Denver; Chicago; St. Louis; Roanoke, Virginia. Wherever it is, it isn't far from The Road.
No Boy digs a hole in the yard and finds a stone.
He goes into a grocery store in a trance, looks out a window at a cloudless sky.
In poem five (of seventeen total in this chapbook), he murders the boss.
I / was standing on the highway with bits of / siding between my teeth
he was / standing in the driveway with the / carburning thoughts behind him
shrinking up his nose he / hears the phone ringing at the office the
terminals droning in the sudden silence
In poem six he is dressed as "The Preest". He saw pulsing foreheads strewn on a / parkinglot. "My hands are mirrors" he said to the dawn / and wriggled his fingers in front of his eyes.
In the poem entitled No Boy, the character No Boy is wandering through the nightmarish hallucination of Columbus:
I walked behind the empty discount store saw
a rusty trashburner, a bin of
flaking tires, a giant compactor with
GOD and REFUSE COLUMBUS on the side I
stared out at the ragged woods behind the place,
heaps of rubble, splintered trees and
thought of shopping carts stuffed with
lawnmower wheels buried beneath the mud where I stood
I tried to leave, my feet were stuck...
That is exactly how I remember 1985. I was in San Francisco. Reagan was in The White House. Our government was in Central America, trading guns for cocaine, fighting against freedom, justice and human dignity. I don't know how any of us survived the 1980s.
"Ripening of Meat" is the next poem:
He opens the door a
car screeches away in the street he
picks up some wrappings and
walks to a bare spot behind the garage
"What's it say?" he thinks,
staring at the reeking signs and blotches
He is reading the trash as if doing so is a method of divination. There have been times in my life when I have been certain that reading the trash is a method of divination. I knew how to do it, and I did it on a daily basis. What's it say, we say, asking the trash itself, asking the world, the cosmos, asking ourselves. At first we are surprised when we get an answer. Later, we don't even need to ask. Eventually, the trash is asking us. We write poems to help the world understand itself.
So many of these lines end where you would least expect them to. They often end with prepositions, articles, and pronouns. I imagine Robert Creeley reading them, with a full stop at the end of each line. There is a nice, noisy, disjunctive music in what I hear. Drive, he said. No-Boy wakes up with chicken intestines in his mouth. I see a thick black word pushing out its mouth, shiny from the light behind me. His feet are wet his hands are burnt.
Poem #13 is entitled "No Sax":
No Sax
He was jerking the giblet bag out of the
chicken he was blowing into the
neckhole he was thinking it was a
saxophone, sqwakings blast past flapping shreds of skin;
cloud of scissors floats around his feet a
sound no sound is hissing through his ears
"It's the note, the note" he says
pulsing his fingers on the glistening back
I think of late Coltrane, Interstellar Space, of Albert Ayler playing marches and spirituals, of Frank Wright in Europe, of Brotzmann's "Machine Gun". It's the note, the note. Pharoah Sanders, The Healing Song. Coltrane, A Love Supreme. Ayler, Music Is The Healing Force of The Universe. It's the middle of the 1980s. The Cold War is at its worst. We march from one end of the city to the other to protest mutually assured destruction. As if anyone is listening... The whole world is not watching. Margaret Thatcher is telling us, there is no alternative. The unions have been busted and the bullshit that is Reaganomics is just beginning to trickle down onto our heads. Why shouldn't we be thinking of Captain Beefheart, Big Eyed Beans From Venus?... Mister Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long (lunar, looming, leaning) note, and let it float. (Note at Home Page Replica -- many people argue for looming or leaning or something else here, but since Bill Harkleroad's book about the Magic Band is called "Lunar Notes", it's a safe guess to assume the correct phrase is "lunar".)
from "Dying No-Boy"
He's yawning, wishing for sleep, to
drift above the parkinglot, his
skin surrounded by another's skin
undulating slowly in the thick tongues of air
from "Night Shopping"
The parkinglot the
wall of light a
few dark heads drift above the
glinting carroofs
Of the seventeen poems here at least eleven mention either parkinglots, cars, highways, or streets, and several mention more than one of those things. So, what is this book about? A guy who hates the 80s, the American death-machine of the 1980s, who feels trapped in the American death-trap of the midwest, of Columbus, Ohio, a microcosm of Death Incorporated, middle-American style, who wants desperately to escape, who dreams of being on the road to anywhere but where he is, but whose cars are stuck in parking lots. His brain is filled with big, surrealist ideas. He wants to Be... An-Ar-Key, but instead he's doing some late-night shopping, searching through the discount store, passing walls of clocks guns wigs antiperspirants.
On the lake, No Boy stands with his hammer in his pants [...] he cocks back his hammer and whips it over the waves [...] he closes his eyes and he's in the
basement in front of a puddle, sees in it
nails clotted with linty cobwebs and the
toe of his greasy shoe, he lies down next to it
puts his cheek on the cool still edge
"hundreds of hats" he sees "They're
floating on the peak of the lake"
And No Boy is floating with them. And we, for an hour or two, have been floating with him. The ghost of Margaret Thatcher can go fuck itself. There has always been an alternative.
03.03.2018
____________________________________
Postscript
email between Bennett and Leftwich, 03.03.2018
JMB: jim, this is very moving, reading this; you make the book seem vivid and real, a book i haven't looked at in years, it's like opening a door
No Boy is what I was trying to write when i wrote Found Objects, that early book from 1973 (do you have a copy?)
Thanks for bringing no boy back to me
o void o void o void,
john
JL: the 80s were difficult for me, were difficult for a lot of us i think. by 1986 i had pretty much had enough. then i met Sue and she kind of kept me going for a few years when i'm really not sure what might have happened without her. No Boy is a great 1980s American book of poems. No Boy the character is too fiercely imaginative to be entirely despondent.
there was a song in the early 80s, you might remember it, by a group called PIL (Public Image Ltd), which was led by the former front man for the Sex Pistols, John Lydon/Johnny Rotten. part of the chorus was "anger is an energy". it was a notion worth knowing back then, for better and for worse.
reading No Boy allowed me to write about some things that i probably wouldn't have gotten around to writing about while reading, for example, rOlling COMBers. or any of your most recent books.
i like the book, enjoyed reading it last night, and appreciate the things it gave me to think about.
i haven't seen Found Objects, and of course i would love to see it.
JMB: will have to get you a copy, i think i still have a few
no: wait, Found Objects was the book of cutup/collage poems in a box - of that i have no copies. (my memory is overwhelmed) I was thinking of WHITE SCREEN, 1976 - has series of poems about highways and shopping centers, and such. Do you have that one? It's sort of squarish, softbound, b/w illus. on cover. i may have copies of it
yeah, the 1980's: i still had a lot of anger then - from a divorce, from loosing professor job (which turned out to be a good thing in the long run, long story), etc. but it was also the time i got together with cathy, which was wonderful, and still is
I don't remember that song, tho i did listen to the Sex Pistols quite a bit. oh yes.
SM EAR
V. 10 No. 26, 2002
edited / compiled by John M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods
Bennett had this to say in 2017, for the Luna Bisonte Prods listing at the "from a secret location" website: "The name Luna Bisonte Prods came about in 1974 and became the portal through which I continued making small books, chapbooks, cards, labels, and other products, using rubber stamps, collage, photocopiers, and found materials. In 1975 the journal Lost & Found Times was born, which continued through 2005. Since that time in the mid-1970s, LBP has published or released thousands of broadsides, TLPs (“Tacky Little Pamphlets”), objects, one-of-a-kind books, chapbooks, artist’s books, Lost & Found Times and some other shorter-lived serials, audio and video works, print edition books, print-on-demand books, tons of mail art, and numerous stunts, gags, and performances."
Contributors to SM EAR:
Thomas L. Taylor
John M. Bennett
Scott Helmes
Reed Altemus
Al Ackerman
Diane Bertrand
That is a hefty lineup for such an apparently ephemeral publication. SM EAR is a tlp zine consisting of one sheet of copy paper (the one I have is blue) folded in half vertically, producing a 5.5" x 8.5" 4-page pamphlet.
The front cover / page 1 consists of the title -- SM EAR -- at the top, written in Bennett's distinctive calligraphic hand and smeared with a finger while still wet, followed by a collaborative visual poem entitled SMEAR by Taylor, Bennett and Helmes. The title, in all caps, is centered, as is the textual component of the poem -- written by Taylor -- beneath it.
SMEAR
Lorts, dulcimer, mento (ascribe
I'd asided
Nix no meer pinto
nor hummus
afforded lynx
Between the date -- 2002 -- and the title of the poem, approximately at the right margin, is a toilet-paper-roll-on-a-wall-hanger stamp, also slightly smeared. This is almost certainly one of Bennett's contributions.
Following the line "Nix no meer pinto" are two splotches of tiny, unreadable type, one of them right-aligned. I think these were contributed by Helmes, but I can't be entirely certain. Beneath the second type-splotch and above the line "nor hummus" are the words "smell ear", written in Bennett's calligraphy. A thin rectangular frame encloses everything described in this paragraph.
Just below the frame is what appears to be a small rectangular stamp. A final line of text appears, backward, at the bottom of the rectangle. This looks like it might have been a found object used as a stamp (possibly one of those faux credit cards that come as advertisements in the mail). A large black blot of ink covers most of what was stamped. I think this stamp and the ink blot were contributed by Helmes, but I can't be entirely certain. Calligraphic tendrils branch out from the ink blot (most likely contributed by Bennett).
The piece is signed by Tom 3/12/02 + jmb 3/6/02 + scott -- maybe 12 vi 02.
Upon opening the zine we find, spread across the tops of pages two and three, a poem by Bennett entitled "Lacks sure" followed by three variations (hacks) by Reed Altemus ("Ladder pus"; "Numb dripping"; and "Port a").
The title "Ladder pus" is taken from the end of Bennett's poem, the last three lines of which are as follows:
licks the singer's tall pus
ladder combine draws the foam
teaser, yr blinked convection snack
Line one of "Ladder pus" begins with the first two words of line eleven of "Lacks sure" ("wring that") followed by the first two words of line twenty-two (:flapping in").
Both poems have thirty lines.
Line two of "Ladder pus" begins with the last two words of line fifteen in "Lacks sure" ("sandwich heaving") followed by the first three words from line twenty-six of "Lacks sure" ("a port while"), written in reverse order ("while, port a").
The variations continue in this fashion. The title for "Numb dripping" comes from the first word of line seventeen and the last word of line sixteen:
heaving, sandwich blood's wreath, dripping
numb the kings' leakage onna
The first line "that bowl spiral ah plato" comes from three words in the middle of line twenty, in reverse order
salt spiral bowl that rings
plus the first two words of line four, in their original order
ah plato humo stony nostril.
The title for "Port a" returns to line twenty-six of "Lacks sure"
a port while, keep a
and extracts the first two words, keeping their original order.
I am not sure exactly what Altemus is doing here as far as his arithmetic or pattern-imposition (and recognition) is concerned, but whatever it is it results in very successful new poems, with very strong echoes of Bennett, of course (since it it Bennett's vocabulary that is being used for all of these poems), but also something else, a distinctive residue, let's say, of the decisions being made by Altemus. These poems work as collaborations. They are not poems written by Bennett, and neither are they poems written entirely by Altemus. A "third mind" is in play here, and the results are radically open, expansively resonant, and intimately mutagenic poems.
William Burroughs, from First Recordings, in The Third Mind (1978): Any so-called officer who tells you that dreams are illusions that you should put aside is asking you to abandon cover and invite disastrous defeat. It is precisely in the dream area that we can not-know the enemy. Always remember you are dealing with a parasitic organism that exists only in the damage it can cause you. When you are able to not-know the enemy, the enemy is not there. The act of not-knowing requires, like all disappearing acts, a stage; a theater of operations. Since our theater is under constant attack it must be constantly shifted and re-created.
JMB, from John M. Bennett’s Response to Jake Berry’s Poetry Wide Open: The Otherstream (Fragments In Motion) (2011): Poetry that persists, that is read, and read very differently through succeeding generations, always has its origins on the outsides of contemporary cultural institutions. For the poet to perceive and experience the world, and to re-experience it in her/his art, she/he has to work outside those institutions.
Along the bottom of pages two and three of SM EAR are an Ackerman hack of some Bennett poems, and a related set of instructions from The Blaster for "a big performance week".
The hack (of poems from 5.1 & 5.2 -- presumably of 2002) is entitled "Bike's Shabby Without". It consists of seven lines, lettered A through G. Each line begins with the phrase "Bike's shabby without":
A. -- Bike's shabby without the next son of a bitch they send out here.
G. -- Bike's shabby without that old moocher glow or creeping shrill or both.
The instructions are as follows:
At the start of each day [of your big performance week], pick -- using chance or obsessive deliberation -- one of the seven "Bike's Shabby Without" versions (A, B, C, etc) listed above and write it on your arm to be flaunted and vocalized in conjunction with each day's "Theme" as indicated below:
Thurs. -- Interfering With Co-Workers
Mon. -- Muttering On The Way to Work
JMB, from his Cervena Barva Press Interview, 2006 -- I should say that when I perform my poetry, I am a somewhat different person than the person who wrote it. I was an actor in my youth, and the poems become roles that I inhabit.
Reading the last lines of the four poems in the upper section of pages two and three, I arrive at the following Bennett -- Altemus -- Leftwich collaboration:
teaser, yr blinked convection snack
a port while, yr blinked convection
licks tall pus wreath, blood blood's
tall the plato, draws ah foam
Reading the first lines of these four poems backwards, I arrive at the following Bennett -- Altemus -- Leftwich collaboration:
salt spiral tall the pus
plato ah spiral bowl that
in flapping that, wring
teaser, blinks convection
snack yr sure lacks
One more:
nor gun pants flapping in
dripping convection blinks
ream floating was spreading fish
leashed spreading fish
The upper section of the back cover / page four is occupied by a John M. Bennett & Diane Bertrand collaboration. In my experience collaborations with Diane resulted when I would send her an envelope of mail art -- usually visual poems, but sometimes print-outs of textual poems -- and she would add to some items and send them back. With the collab printed in SM EAR it looks like Bennet probably sent her a poem (this poem:
P
raise
or t
arp o
whir
l bo
ne
--dated 7.1.98)
and she added to it and returned it in 2000. She has added some grasses in front of a darkened area to create an illusion of depth, which makes John's poem appear to be floating (perhaps alongside a blackbird or two) in the deep blue sky.
Below the Bennett / Bertrand collab is another Ackerman hack of some Bennett poems.
MASTER ROCK DRINK (from 5.1, 5.8)
a protrusion: crawled to be
in sect that cut words in half
from Interview With William Burroughs (1966)
Conrad Knickerbocker: What do cut-ups offer the reader that conventional narrative doesn't? BURROUGHS: Any narrative passage or any passage, say, of poetic images is subject to any number of variations, all of which may be interesting and valid in their own right. A page of Rimbaud cut up and rearranged will give you quite new images. Rimbaud images—real Rimbaud images—but new ones.
I think the words "crav""vied"
meaning to unfound cherry wood
are "crawled" cut in half
                                             (that's enough of that)
Our notion of what is ephemeral and what is not has changed in recent decades. When, in the mid-nineties, I was publishing Juxta/Electronic as an email zine in conjunction with the print edition of Juxta (though not, in any instances, publishing any of the same items in both publications), almost everyone I corresponded with assumed that the email zine was ephemeral, that it would land in the inboxes of contributors and their associates, and then disappear, quickly and completely, forever. But the email zine was archived as it was produced by the Electronic Poetry Center at SUNY-Buffalo, and it has just recently been given a new home (a new url) at the U-Penn site.
In 1995 I published a Bennett book entitled FALLS STILL. The poems in it have the "split title" format that he used in many publications from that time period (including Blind On The Temple -- LBP 1993, Clown Door -- Marshall Creek Press 1997, Infused -- LBP 1995, and Book Classification -- LBP tlp 1993). I think for most folks it has been easier to access FALLS STILL for the past 23 years than it has been to find copies of these other "split title" publications. The problem has been, and remains, that very few people know that FALLS STILL even exists. I sent John the link to it yesterday and he had all but forgotten about it, and had no idea that it was still accessible.
So: what kind of publication is dangerously ephemeral these days? What kind of publication is in danger of disappearing completely? The last envelope I got from John had this copy of SM EAR in it. It is a pleasure to consider, a treasure to have and hold. A quick search indicates that Google has no knowledge of its existence. Or, perhaps Google has decided that I don't need to know of its existence, and so has eliminated it from my search results. Twenty-five years ago, and earlier, the way we came upon this kind of publication was most often by finding it in our mailbox, mailed to us by its author or its publisher (who were frequently the same person). Well, it's 2018, and that's the way I got my copy of SM EAR. And that's a good part of why I am writing about it at all.
I will close this meditation with a "conversation" I found online. It is not a publication, or even in a publication. But it is writing, written by people whose writings are more often than not either published or archived or both. In the case of this, however, its very existence is in the hands of enormous corporations who will decide, based solely on considerations of profitability, whether or not anyone should ever have access to it at all.
I think this text, and many many more very much like it, are in danger of disappearing completely, forever. Relatively speaking, publications like SM EAR would seem to be in very little danger of disappearing. Get in touch with John and ask him. Maybe he'll send you a copy.
Meanwhile, I will save for you some thoughts on what to do with a wadded-up sheet of paper.
From ThE/ CuT-UP/ TecHNiQUE/, a Mail Art group found on the International Union of Mail-Artists website
Comment by Richard Canard on March 20, 2016 at 8:00pm
20.03.16 Dare Miss Noma, ...Like millions & millions of other folk, I have waded up a sheet of paper a thousand times & given it a non-thoughtful toss into the trash. Is John M. Bennett the first artist to actually find poetry in "a ball of printed paper"& proclaim its potential??? ...well, he does seem to have been doing that sort of thing all along.
Comment by Richard Canard on March 20, 2016 at 9:27pm
20.03.16 Dare Miss Noma & Mister Carl Baker, ...apparently I still yet have difficulty in expressing myself clearly. What I was attempting to say was the fact that I never saw the same aesthetic possibilities that JMB seemed to recognize. John M. Bennett has indeed been around a long time & his efforts have (in my opinion) enriched the arena of visual poetry. Richard
Comment by John M. Bennett on March 21, 2016 at 12:44am
Not the first; Jim Leftwich has been taping down crunched-up wads of paper for some years now
[...]
Comment by John M. Bennett on March 30, 2016 at 2:17am
the avant-garde is really another tradition, the term isn't accurate. it's an alter-garde or other-garde!
03.03.2018
_________________________________________________
Postscript
email from Bennett to Leftwich, 03.04.2018
excellent and fascinating, your detailed account of what's in SM EAR makes me want to do more SM EARS or some such thing - glad you brought up Burroughs' ideas - WSB was someone i read in the early 1960's - Naked Lunch and the cut-up trilogy - the latter books i didn't fully understand, but was fascinated and felt there was something very important going on in them/with them. Now of course he makes a LOT of sense, and, i've said this before, the cut-up texts have a very particular sound/rhythm/diction/sense to them, and much of my writing is with that sound/etc., i don't have to physically "cut-up" anything. Just write that way. WSB affected me more than I knew...
Also glad to see those comments from Richard C, which I don't recall seeing before. Have known him in the mail for years...
Instruction Book
by John. M. Bennett
Luna Bisonte Prods, 2006
epigraph from the copyright page
"Instructions burning in the corner."
John M. Bennett, Image Standards, 1975
The first two poems in the book are straight, as in they are written to be read left to right, top to bottom. Each poem has seven numbered lines, and neither poem has any punctuation. The syntax is distorted at times, as in line 6 from How To Singe ("Climb your meat and wallet"), in which "wallet" is offered as a verb, or in line 5 of How To Drip ("Shore your grasp and buttock"), where we are given "buttock" as a verb. At least our experience during a first reading would indicate these readings (having been set-up by the structure of lines one and two).
Here is How To Singe, the first poem in the book, in its entirety (page 5):
1) Taste your shadow in the soup
2) Cage your neck and run
3) Fry your tube and listen
4) Drop your bee and towel
5) Say your foot and chisel
6) Climb your meat and wallet
7) Age your pocket in the ladder
Structurally, lines 1 and 7 are identical: verb -- second person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase.
Structurally, lines 2 and 3 are identical: verb -- second person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- verb.
Structurally, lines 4, 5 and 6 are identical: verb -- second person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- noun and/or verb rabbit/duck word. "Towel" and "chisel" are used in standard grammatical configurations as both nouns and verbs. Drop your bee and towel your feet. Say your foot and chisel a stone. But "wallet" is different. Wallet is not normally used as a verb. So, is line 6 a one-off, structurally, in the poem, i.e.: climb your meat and climb your wallet? Or, is line 6 structurally identical to line 2, where "wallet" is a verb meaning "poison the flowerbed" (as intimated in Ackerman's introduction). Enallage is more important than analogy when reading this kind of poem.
Grammar is a set of rules that explain and guide how words are used in a language. A grammar book, like Basic English Grammar, is essentially a book of instructions. From the outset, Bennett's Instruction Book looks very much like a Not-So-Basic English (Spanish, French, Portuguese and Nahuatl?) Grammar, or Anti-Grammar.
John Cage: Syntax, according to Norman [Norman O. Brown], is the arrangement of the army. As we move away from it, we demilitarize language. The demilitarization of language is conducted in many ways: a single language is pulverized; the boundaries between two or more languages are crossed; elements not strictly linguistic (graphic, musical) are introduced; etc.
Bennett and Cage are at times moving along on parallel paths, seemingly headed in the same direction.
The third poem in the book, How To Coffee, introduces words-spelled-backwards as a radical artifice for readers to negotiate. Line 1: Jerk your lens in the rorrim (= mirror). The last word in each line of How To Coffee is written backwards (licnep = pencil; ymotcenmos = somnectomy = "the act of cutting out" + "sleep"; anut = tuna; rettij = jitter; redloc = colder; sehsa = ashes). In order to fully appreciate just how destabilized this language is, a reader must become an active listener, and in the process of learning how to listen to these mirrorwords, a reader would benefit greatly from listening to Bennett read them.
In the fourth poem, How To Spansion, the third word is written backwards: e.g., 5) Rinse your egaggul and mister; or line 3) Fry your epahs and tubal. The third word in all of the lines so far has always been a noun. Here, once the mirrorwords are deciphered, the words are, as expected, shown to be nouns again (luggage; shape), but as written, as mirrorwords, we can have no clear idea concerning what part of speech they might be. With no semantic clues whatsoever, these letterstrings or vocables would float in a "no grammar zone", adrift in a linguistic space bereft of denotation and connotation, were it not for the expectations established by the structure of the preceding poems.
The lack of semantic and grammatical stability liberates the reader from traditional constraints of meaning-building. Personally, I am inclined to playfully improvise across the letter-space of these mirrorwords:
Rinse your ego egg gag gulp and mister
Drape your eel lute supper and spin (your elutsup = pustule)
Spansion, via expansion, etymologically from ex- ‘out’ + pandere ‘to spread.’ Spreading (the strawberry jelly of) meaning across the (slightly burnt wheat toast of) text.
Consider also, line 4) Clomp your ria and sumpage.
If the word "sump", which many of us know from the term "sump pump", means "a depression in the floor of a mine or basement in which water collects," then "sumpage" would refer to that which is collected in the depression.
Walk with a heavy tread, in your own air, in your own space, gathering, pooling, in the basement of your brain, all that enters through your whole sensorium, into you consciousness, and below. "Your ria" plus your "sumpage" (your sumpage, and that which you have sumpaged), is what Olson wrote of as proprioception:
PROPRIOCEPTION the cavity of the body,
in which the organs are slung: the viscera, or
interoceptive, the old ‘psychology’ of feeling,
the heart; of desire, the liver; of sympathy, the
‘bowels’; of courage—the kidney etc—gall,
and, later,
PROPRIOCEPTION: the data of depth sensibility/the ‘body’ of us as
object which spontaneously or of its own order
produces experience of, ‘depth’ Viz
SENSIBILITY WITHIN THE ORGANISM
BY MOVEMENT OF ITS OWN TISSUES
Bennett and Olson are at times moving along on parallel paths, seemingly headed in the same direction.
On the next page (page 7), in How To Funnel, the first word of each line is backwards.
7) Knird your hack and aguacate
---Drink your hack and (translated from the Spanish) avocado
(also advocate, watercate)
Drink your hack and advocate
Drink your hack and watercate
I notice, on page 9, in How To Dump, that the adverb phrases ending lines 1 and 7 have been slightly altered, from phrases beginning with "in" to phrases beginning with "through". The most obvious thing this alters is the sound of the lines, but it also subtlety changes the "energy" of the poem, removing the stasis of "in" and replacing it with the ongoingness of "through". I am reminded again of Olson, how to get the energy of the poem from the author to the poem, and then from the poem to the reader (the poet will have many ways of doing this). I am also reminded of Burroughs invoking our need to abolish the verb "to be".
Also in How To Dump, the distribution of mirrorwords is irregular (last word in the first line; middle -- 3rd -- word in lines 2 through 6; no mirrorwords in line 7). Among our instructions as readers are reminders not to trust our expectations. Expectations are not established in these poems in order to be satisfied, they are set-up in order to be undermined.
Here is How To Thought, from page 9, in its entirety:
1) Dung his lirtson in the speeding
2) Slag his fork and elbuod
3) Gauge his esoon and salad
4) Find his knilb and cubit
5) Fore his kcar and nibble
6) Pine his whoosh and ihsus
7) Dang his noitacirbul in the clusters
Line 1: word 3 is backwards
Line 2: the last word is backwards
Line 3: word 3 is backwards
Line 4: word 3 is backwards
Line 5: word 3 is backwards
Line 1: the last word is backwards
Line 7: word 3 is backwards
How To Thought (in itself a textbook example of enallage) might be interpreted as a way of telling us, as readers, not to expect our past patterns of thinking to be reliable ways of engaging what is presently before us.
Every time we read a poem by John M. Bennett we find ourselves encouraged, if not compelled, to think in unfamiliar patterns. Something might remind us in some way of Olson, but the poems themselves certainly do not remind us of Olson at all. Something might make us think of John Cage, but the poems themselves do not look or sound like Cage. Something might make us remember Marjorie Perloff's term "radical artifice", but the more we think about it the less applicable it seems to Bennett. Even the writing of William Burroughs, with which Bennett has some close connections, neither looks nor sounds like any of Bennett's poems.
One thing to consider when reading Bennett is his lifelong interest in the Spanish and Portuguese avant-gardes. Not only does this interest shift his focus away from the American and English traditions is poetry, it also gives a secondary position to the most influential members of the twentieth century European avant gardes. While Bennett is certainly familiar with all of the historical avant gardes, his primary influences have not been -- to line-up only the most familiar of the usual suspects -- Marinetti, Tzara and/or Breton. In the brief text entitled "A Kind of Aesthetic" which he appended to Mailer Leaves Ham, Bennett says that writing poetry has always been for him a means to an end, that end being changing the language of poetry and thereby changing consciousness itself. "In order to leave 'poetry' behind," he writes, "in order to stop thinking about it, I've had to learn it and write it so much that I've found that the basic nature of language has changed."
Change language, and you change not only the content of thought, but the patterns of thinking within and about that content. You change not only the dots available to be connected, but the pathways, the routes, through which those connections might be made. Bennett continues: "Simply put, I wanted to change language from an instrument of socialization (or, at worst, of institutional control), into a vehicle for liberation, for growth of consciousness and responsibility."
Structure of How To Towel, on page 10
Line 1: noun/verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- verb
Line 2: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 3: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 4: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 5: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 6: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- adverb phrase
Line 7: verb -- third person possessive determiner -- noun -- conjunction -- gerund
Structure of How To Not, on page 10
Lines 1 through 7: noun -- preposition -- noun -- adjective phrase
Ok, enough of that. Only people who are professional instructors of grammar should require themselves to do that kind of analysis.
On pages twelve and thirteen we find variations on the structure of the title:
How Was Ham
which might be a question asked after someone has either followed or failed to follow a set of instructions
How You Glans
which may be a description of how you ekohc and knob
How He Itch
which is an invitation to misreading (How he dump your Jack and Ginsberg = Kcaj & Grebsnig), and an evocation of empathy for uneasiness (How he jowls your pen and temple)
How We Spatter
a confession to scattershooting obedience (lodge your numen in the cornflake -- that is, the ekalfnroc)
On page 23, in the poem entitled How To Meatball, the final adverb phrase of lines 1 and 7 has been truncated, and the central noun in the grammatical structure has been forced into the role of adjective:
1) Ekal your corner shadow
7) Tae your slugfest drainhole
All of these grammatical tricks, mirrored spellings, and generally slippery, banana-peel semantics are not simply games the poet plays to entertain a literate and/or literary potential readership. I think Bennett has long since abandoned any hope of gaining the attention of English majors. Bennett wants his readers to train themselves to think differently, using his poems as part of their training manual. He is finally not all that interested in the potentially infinite twists-and-turns of grammatical structures. After all, everyone already knows that colorless green ideas sleep furiously. But not everyone knows
coil or less lest green e'en ideas as deaths sleep leap furiously fur us sly.
OK. That's one way to meatball. There are many others.
In How To How To, on page 25, we find yet another formal shift:
Line 1: Glop hat and ekalf your puddle
Line 7: Shot spat and ekac your middle
Lines 2 through 6 are of the "verb your noun and verb" model.
So, given this very resonant title, what are we to make of the rhyming first and last lines?
Glop hat and flake your puddle
Shot spat and cake your middle
glop -- shot
hat -- spat
and flake -- and cake
your puddle -- your middle
The two lines collapse onto one another. They insist on their presence to your attention. They empty themselves into the swarming void of your mind as utterly emptied signifiers. Denotations serve no purpose here -- other than as echoes, shadows, distant memories of a set of discarded expectations. The process of meaning-building, collaborative or otherwise, is thwarted at its outset. There is a music here, naked, fiercely insistent, hammered into our skulls: we are not permitted to mistake it for anything else. Look at the title again: How To How To. It is, in itself, an even more exact rhyme than that of lines 1 and 7. It is so exact, in fact, that we might be forgiven if we choose to think of it as something other than a rhyme. But in it, Bennett is explaining, quite succinctly, one of the central tenets of his poetics.
I take a short break, make a few bag texts. Bag texts are a kind of visual poem that I started making on the trip home from the 2002 avant writing symposium at OSU. Tonight I did some late-night grocery shopping at Kroger, so I had some Kroger bags to work with. I should say play with: after all, what I'm doing is tearing up plastic bags and taping the scraps to index cards and sheets of copy paper. When the bags are ripped apart the writing on them stretches and breaks. I'm looking at one right now and it looks like it might possibly read:
"yr fooTs
drip"
I can't find anything very close to that on an intact Kroger bag. Another one reads:
esi
ow p
And another:
loaa
V
I am beginning to find messages in these scraps, something nuanced, nearly invisible, having to do with the loa (sometimes referred to as "invisibles), and perhaps with love.
How To Think, on page 26, seems on its surface to say, I am not going to tell you how to think.
However, the poems say wildly, flapping us with a sideways glance, I am going to tell you not to think of an elephant: do not think of how to think.
Now that you are unable to think of anything else, what exactly are you thinking? And more importantly, how exactly are you thinking whatever it is that you are thinking? Are you drying your eyebrow in the sink? Are you flapping your favors in the sink? Have you already decided that this is the kitchen sink. This is the poem of everything but the kitchen sink, plus the kitchen sink.
Line 7: Fly your minding in the sink.
You will be expected to teach yourself how to think. This poem is part of the training manual. This Instruction Book is part of the training manual. By now you will have gotten the idea, but you still have to choose to accept its basic premise. And then you have to follow its meandering instructions.
The next poem after How To Think is How To Use. It says, perhaps too clearly and too close:
1) Use dunk and pile
2) Use plenty and norm
3) Use roof and steam
4) Use ruckus and door
5) Use hole and troop
6) Use map and tremble
7) Use throat and double
8) Use bind and sender
9) Use pits and mountain
One thing to notice here: there are no backwards words.
Another thing: there are two more lines than in the standard form (there are a couple of other, earlier, poems in the book with more than 7 lines).
I suggest too clearly and too close because we have been trained so far in this book to give a place of diminished importance to the meanings of single words, and to the meanings of words in sequence.
How To Use, however, is concerned with being clear, and with telling us what to do, an attitude if you will which some of us might be inclined to take personally.
Use plenty and norm, it tells us. Does that hit close to home? Do what you will with every word there, but norm will still mean norm.
Use ruckus and door, it tells me. I don't want to hear it. I have specific memories, and I am beyond that kind of thing. I am reminded of Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil, a book I read in high school: The consequences of our actions take hold of us, quite indifferent to our claim that meanwhile we have 'improved.'
Use map and tremble, it says. Yes, I know. On a good day, yes.
These are highly subjective instructions, and will be interpreted associationally, but it is hard to imagine them being read closely without being taken personally. This poem is about you, no matter who you are, and it has not entered any kind of popularity contest. It cares too much to care about whether or not it is liked.
If How To Use is intentionally too clear for comfort, then What To Od (page 63) is too bend and crow your bullets barn from bowling. We protest -- but I already know what to do! The poem is not persuaded by our protestations. We do not threaten anything that it cares about. It stands before us, like a tank, and stares us down.
Bend and tuop your cowing wind--
I will neither bend nor pout, cows notwithstanding in the wind--
and emarf your pooling whine and--
first pout, pout backwards, and now frame my pooling whine?
I have no pooling wine, nor puling whine--
worc your finding lung and emoc--
crow is only here because cow was here earlier--
emoc, a slant-mirror of worc--
your pancake shat and emit your--
tahs and time your--
emit omits admit--
bullets know and krof your dollop--
fork your pollod--
we know tahw to do--
bam and ekorts your flinger dump--
stroke your flinger--
(that sounds like sound advice)--
and emaf your custard ring and--
fame your dratsuc gnir--
from your dust send and tnuom
your bowing--
that, all ludic beyondsense aside, sounds like very sage advice
from your dust send and mount your bowing
It makes me think of Philip Whalen, but I can't remember why. It's not the Sourdough Mountain poem, or Further Notice. Not his handwritten visual poems. I open the Collected Poems online and look around a little. After a while I come to Minor Moralia.
This is on page 261:
1 Law: Raise your hand
2 Law: Move your feet
3 Law: Listen
4 Law: Don't commit suicide
INSTRUCTIONS AND COMMENTARIES
Everybody's telling you
1. "Nothing you (one person) can do will make the slightest
difference." Follow Law 1: use hand to write me.
2. "You cannot escape." Follow Law 2: use feet, to convey
you out of town.
3. "The mass communications media are in the hands of
liars." Follow Law 3: Listen to me or any other poet.
4. "The world as we know it is about to be destroyed." Follow
Law 4: suicide means you have been played for a sap by a
two-year-old idiot child and also means that you believe in
and approve everything the newspapers say -- I believe you
know better.
Further instructions will be forthcoming.
Use these now, under pain of being something else,
21:vii:59
As with Olson, and Cage, and Burroughs, and everyone else who comes to mind when I am reading Bennett, this snippet from Whalen actually has very little to do with Bennett, and has everything to do with the idea of a poem as a mirror.
Instruction Book is 117 pages long, with the first poems appearing on page five. On page 70, the poems change drastically, in appearance and in sound, becoming sparse, haiku-like, quasi-lyric poems, for the most part centered on the page. This form predominates throughout most of the rest of the book. Here is How Ot Fold, complete, from page 79:
pmuj ti out
thguob your ekaf
shack hcnerd
rebmalc it
And here is How To Reppoh, in its entirety, from page 81:
dnilb your wodniw
gas
The haiku form lends itself readily to koan-like utterances. Poems like these lyrical instructions have more than a little in common with the notion of the zen slap, that moment when we are suddenly jarred into an unexpected awareness. When we "translate" the backwards words into normative English we sometimes experience a sense of increased electricity leaping among the synapses:
jump it out
bought your fake
shack drench
clamber it
_____________
blind your window
sag
This is one of my favorites (you can translate it for yourself):
What To Bard
trihs bals "against the light"
mool wham
and rinse
The word "hint" has a somewhat surprising etymology -- early 17th century (in the sense ‘occasion, opportunity’): apparently from obsolete hent ‘grasp, get hold of,’ from Old English hentan, of Germanic origin; related to hunt. The basic notion is ‘something that may be taken advantage of.’ But once we consider it for a moment we can detect a lingering trace of "something that may be taken advantage of" in the current definition. On page 105 of the Instruction Book we find a poem entitled How To Hint. The first thing we notice is that none of the words in the title are spelled backwards. That in itself is a hint concerning how we are to approach this poem. However, it is only a hint, as we quickly discover upon entering into our reading:
1) Shape the wodahs in your egaggul
2) Stop the ocof at your suna
3) Stun the aicsaf next your ekortsyek
4) Spill the elpmet for your xobllip
5) Sop the tunhguod through your noihsuc
6) Spork the ecikcap out your yhpargoib
7) Split the efinkkaets off your kcottub
Stop the ocof at your suna. Even though I understand Bernadette Dorn's dictum, that the violence of the oppressed is qualitatively different from the violence of the oppressor, I am still unwilling to advocate violence as a solution, if only because violence is a very significant part of the problem, and if successful it will only train another generation to believe in the efficacy of violence as a means of getting what it wants, thus perpetuating the problem in the hands of a new leadership. We continue with the project, the dream, the aspiration towards a new kind of education, as old as thinking itself, yet a new kind of thinking, consciousness perhaps enlightened in the poetry of the zen slap, moving from one section of the training manual to another, life itself a kind of ongoing research, in and around the poem, poetry and related matters, life itself, once we have opened the book of life and are open to it, a training manual in all of its aspects, where consciousness changes language and a changed language changes consciousness, while everyone is called as always, to change life and transform the world.
Page 113:
blind my arm
hot medals
dice 'n dust
03.04/05/2018
__________________________________________
Postscript
email exchange between Bennett and Leftwich, 03.05.2018
JMB: well let's see if i can get down my notes on this between dashes to the toilet:
first, a couple typos i happened to notice:
p. 4, 2nd parag. starting Every time we read a poem by...: you have "Some might makes us think..." should be "make"
4th page from end, top of page, first line has "What to Od" - is that a typo? maybe not
First page, the epigraph should have no comma, and should read: "Instructions burning in the corner".
ok, enough of that,
Very intriguing the idea of demilitarizing language. hard to do in our world today, but it's what must be worked toward. Language as control: i think i have a chapbook or TLP with that title: Control. Control by releasing control within a form or process. which is decontrol.
Enallage - hah! never heard that term before. it's very much something i do a lot, as do you.
I'm glad you pointed out my focus/background in Iberian literatures, as opposed to Anglo-American. I would also add that French lit has been a big part of my literary world. Not that I'm completely ignorant of my "own" language and lit, which i studied in school, and even wrote an honors thesis on Wallace Stevens. But i have to say that though in college i was hanging around other poets, going to readings, taking classes, i found most of what i was reading kinda boring, and was slowly moving out of that world, moving much faster as soon as i started discovering french and spanish-language poets
"the attention of English majors" - yes, rather a waste of time trying to get that. even more so the attention of english professors! However, in the past few years, a few english majors have come forward with interest in what i do, and in what others of us in this sub-culture do. about time!
These poems from yr ripped and stretched plastic bags are great! "yr fooTs/drip" - really beautiful. I've liked what you do with those bags for some time, actually - stretch-outs as a form of cut-up!
this Instruction Book started when I wrote up a few performance scores for FluxFest, and they kept on going. they of course are impossible to perform (perhaps) except in the mind or voice. Yr essay on the book is really amazing, it highlights things in the book I haven't paid much attention to, things that now seem important. it's given the book a whole new life for me - thank you! It's a book to be read, more than a book to be performed or read out loud.
It's also a book, like almost all of mine, in which i've worked out a way of using language that then gets incorporated and transformed in the next book, or next style of writing i do. these Instructions get churned into the next phase; much like the Dream Inexplanations (also a Fluxus project) are now growling around in the poems i'm writing today. i suppose this means greater and greater complexity. which is fine with me; after all, what i'm trying to do, one of the things i'm trying to do, is say everything all at once, contain the world in a few lines of written/read/spoken language
on that note of supreme arrogance,
i'll go on void onvoid o void
john
JL: thanks for all of this. obviously it needs to be added as a postscript.
"What to Od” is on page 63 of the book.
i don't have anything at all against arrogance when it's accurate, and i'm guessing that you don't either.
i'm glad you're willing to say that kind of thing.
↧
Article 3
Richard Kostelanetz
MINIMALS
Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Webster’s Dictionary of American Authors, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, NNDB.com, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, among other distinguished directories. distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives unemployed in New York, where he was born, from time to time applying for an appropriate university position.
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MINIMALS: A TEXT FOR ANY NUMBER OF PERFORMERS [PRODUCTION NOTE: print 5 X 8, landscape, with one to a page, large type, common face, centered, using two lines if necessary, paginated; set instructions at least 14 pt. no more than 5” wide.] [p. 4] Copyright c 2018 by Richard Kostelanetz For the composer Terry Riley (known since 1966) [p 5] INSTRUCTIONS As an initial performer begins speaking the first aphorism slowly, clearly enunciating each word, a second performer recites the second, a third does the third, etc., for as many performers agreeing to participate. Each performer repeats his or her aphorism until tiring of it, at which point he or she moves ahead to the next. Whenever a speaker hears his current words spoken by someone else, that should prompt the latter speaker to move ahead. Once all speakers finish the final aphorism, the performance ends. This text may be abridged and reordered by the performers. It may also be printed in a printed program or projected onto a screen. If MINIMALS opens a concert program, consider repeating this entire piece at the end with an entirely different group of people. | Enunciate clearly and slowly. Skyward infinitely extend yourself. Never lose real money. Thoughtfully initiate considerate seduction. Wash yourself, good luck. Beneficence breeds bountiful booty. Be a skeptical student. Excellence everyone ultimately respects. Cleanse out your mouth. Accurate arithmetic never lies. Aspire to invisible humility. Love whoever lacks lovers. Reward beggars, rob crooks. Leap into freezing lakes. Stand tall for truth. Rush not to judgments. Appear impregnable to foes. |
Ostentatiously whirl your wigs. For wagers race Chihuahuas. Inflate your sagging ego. Make love, not war. Defaults don’t court. Only tanks defeat tanks. Environment eventually overrules heredity. Lying expedites successful loving. Let's advocate 100% unemployment. More friendly friends befriend. Repeal poisons with palliatives. Only mistakes generate wisdom. Expand your mind voluminously. Admire inferiors, exploit superiors. Be awash with cash. Relish your lover's loving. Atop a ladder perch. | Disturb not hornets' nests. Ring ropes enclose boxing. Sexual intercourse facilitates acquaintance. None of your business. Unexpected opportunities don’t dismiss. Strong writing isn't forgotten. Fighters get knocked down. Swim until you sink. Imagine yourself pleasurably seduced. Through hoops basketballs go. Don't inspire anyone's revenge. Insanity’s nobody’s pleasure. Jump until you can’t. Love surfaces as surprise. Don’t eat what’s inedible. Before violence lie down Unravel obscure conundrums. |
Promptly arrest all plagiarism. Sympathize with erotic insufficiency. Remove belly-button lint assiduously. Imagine only lofty fantasies. Arise self-purposed daily. No secret’s secret forever. Speak with classiest diction. Aim for lofty recognitions. Lose gamblers eventually do. Soap eviscerates body filth. Loving keeps you young. You can’t hide forever. Aspire to be unbelievable. Rest assured of nothing. Exhale foul emotions. Awake to generous surprises. Cultivate cunning diplomatic skills. | Shower several times daily. Differently do lovers love. Nuggets of wisdom digest. Imagine high and wide. Build a counterclockwise clock. Alabaster outlasts plywood. Run up extravagant debts. Lost souls never engage. Spin in a circle. Multiply more than rabbits. Support saints among us. Master life’s musical instruments. Read books over newspapers. Manage your resources skillfully. Pick up stray pennies. Classify your lovers’ sentiments. Time’s your only “money.” |
Focus everyone’s attention. Creeps creep creepily. Believe in generous gods. Epitomize excellence wherever possible. Excavate life’s residues. The wisest fool wins. Regurgitate flattery from others. Sprint away from fire. Kisses sweeter than wine. Understandably misunderstand conundrums. Fantasize about move stars. Duck, run for cover. Food fattens, alcohol kills. Dive only into water. Enjoy sitting on toilets. Love yourself before others. Never mispronounce “February.” | If confused, solicit advice. Acknowledge constraints in advance. Practice “night-life” by day. Sell your possessions. Read only sagacious literature. Swim with sharks. Distribute one’s affections evenly. Sexual abstinence teaches nothing. Shoot the moon. Seduction obviates quarreling. Rewire your brain’s circuits. Allow yourself chocolate occasionally. Sex is rarely bad. Invest in yourself initially. Fly exclusively in airplanes. Wave all patriotic flags. Crash through thin walls. |
Confessed sins require absolution. Only misfortune inspires wisdom. Fruits make better cakes. Retire early while alive. Befuddle one’s antagonists. Don’t enrage your family. Reveal your secrets reluctantly. Eschew questionable explanations. Bells get everyone’s attention. Empty pockets before crime. Get potential benefactors inebriated. Effervescent lectures stupefy. Repel poisons with pests. Watch yourself piss forever. Make love, not war. Identify paths through mazes. Don’t build “dream houses.” Much less is more. | Eat healthy, live longer. Trap mice with cats. Rent a retired fire-engine. Bestow beneficence on others. Discipline your lousy lovers. Be lovely before “beautiful.” Run with the swiftest. Wrangle horses, not men. Thrilling surprises await you. Discontents inspire higher ambitions. Cure ills with sunshine. Avoid perverse entanglements. Recognize your deepest faults. Eat healthy, nutritious foods. Don’t peddle your integrity. Sleep all you need. Truths eventually defeat lies. Money can’t buy love. |
Individual entries on Richard Kostelanetz appear in Contemporary Poets, Contemporary Novelists, Postmodern Fiction, Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, A Reader’s Guide to Twentieth-Century Writers, the Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature, Webster’s Dictionary of American Authors, The HarperCollins Reader’s Encyclopedia of American Literature, NNDB.com, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, among other distinguished directories. distinguished directories. Otherwise, he survives unemployed in New York, where he was born, from time to time applying for an appropriate university position.
↧
Article 2
Michael Prihoda
remembering
symmetry,
commitment
to an
equivalent
storyline.
a gathering
of Alzheimer’s,
the towers
took on a
plywood morale.
their lives
suggested
they write
about
remembering.
in silence
the first response:
adhesive language,
struggling into runoff.
the crossing narratives
of themselves
after this happened.
a convergence, an
intimacy of physical detail
missing.
their prayer of authority
affected as if characters
and authors wished in silence.
downdraft
throwaway identities misspelled.
slit the envelope in the presence
of a cell phone.
hopefully
hopefully
my god
awe in lotus position
haiku on the floor after
missing her train.
she was accustomed:
terminals, intersections,
a downdraft of evidence.
theater
traffic edged toward
the green structure,
a business of viaduct,
a performance suspended.
people fell, jumped,
dangling terraces,
shouting at the puppetry
of a body’s last breath.
the single falling theater.
compilation
he found detachment morbidly remote.
from the briefcase, an imitation of pockets,
no guide in the compilation of money.
Michael Prihoda is a teacher, editor, and poet living in the Midwest. He writes: "These poems are redacted from Don DeLillo's Falling Man."
previous page     contents     next page
remembering
symmetry,
commitment
to an
equivalent
storyline.
a gathering
of Alzheimer’s,
the towers
took on a
plywood morale.
their lives
suggested
they write
about
remembering.
in silence
the first response:
adhesive language,
struggling into runoff.
the crossing narratives
of themselves
after this happened.
a convergence, an
intimacy of physical detail
missing.
their prayer of authority
affected as if characters
and authors wished in silence.
downdraft
throwaway identities misspelled.
slit the envelope in the presence
of a cell phone.
hopefully
hopefully
my god
awe in lotus position
haiku on the floor after
missing her train.
she was accustomed:
terminals, intersections,
a downdraft of evidence.
theater
traffic edged toward
the green structure,
a business of viaduct,
a performance suspended.
people fell, jumped,
dangling terraces,
shouting at the puppetry
of a body’s last breath.
the single falling theater.
compilation
he found detachment morbidly remote.
from the briefcase, an imitation of pockets,
no guide in the compilation of money.
Michael Prihoda is a teacher, editor, and poet living in the Midwest. He writes: "These poems are redacted from Don DeLillo's Falling Man."
↧
Article 3
Jim Leftwich
Some Notes, Expositions, & Other Things on Works by John M. Bennett (1)
NO BOY
by John M. Bennett
Laughing Bear Press, 1985
The first time I visited John's house, during the 2002 Avant Writing Symposium, he took me upstairs to his office and the first thing I remember seeing was a small banner or a bumper sticker on the wall that said I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE. A few months earlier George W. Bush had given the commencement address at The Ohio State University, where the Avant Writing Symposium was being held, and where John was employed as founding curator of the avant writing archival collection. Some of the graduating students were less than thrilled by the presence of Mr. Bush. They threatened to turn their backs on him while he spoke. The university in turn threatened to deny them their diplomas. On the day of Bush's address there were snipers positioned on the roofs of buildings near the stadium where he was speaking. It was less than a year after 9/11. The days were strange and getting stranger.
Today it is 16 years later, and I am reading a chapbook that was published 17 years earlier, in 1985. The book is entitled NO BOY and it was published in Denver by Laughing Bear Press, 33 years ago. 33 years before that Jack Kerouac was in Denver, hanging out at El Chapultepec bar (named after a large park in Mexico City, the ancient seat of Aztec emperors), listening to jazz. He and his friends would get high in the parking lot, then go in and listen. There was never a cover, and you didn't have to buy anything. It was perfect for Kerouac and his friends: just the kind of entertainment they liked, and also the kind they could afford.
When I think of folks announcing that they vote I usually think of slogans like I'M THE NRA AND I VOTE or I'M THE MORAL MAJORITY AND I VOTE or I'M PRO-LIFE AND I VOTE, right-wing threats to any reasonable notion of why democracy in general and electoral politics in particular might be important. The slogan I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE is a mockery of the usual jingoist assertions. One way of thinking about anarchism is to imagine it as a logical extension of the idea of participatory democracy.
I think of No Boy as an anarchic spirit, quite likely one with a strong streak of Beat rebelliousness in his background. The first poem in the NO BOY chapbook reads, in its entirety, as follows:
Exit
Hat on skull
hand on belt
shoe rising over the sill
Hooray! No Boy escapes, out the window and into the world. The second poem in this adventure introduces us to Yes-Boy ("Yes-Boy Looks For No"). Yes-Boy is sitting in a parked car, watching No Boy on a fire escape. Yes-Boy gets off from work and watches No Boy "chainsaw a mattress" on TV. In the last stanza Yes-Boy is opening his car door, "standing in the clear cold wind". That clear cold wind might be anywhere: Columbus, Ohio; Lowell, Massachusetts; New York City; Denver; Chicago; St. Louis; Roanoke, Virginia. Wherever it is, it isn't far from The Road.
No Boy digs a hole in the yard and finds a stone.
He goes into a grocery store in a trance, looks out a window at a cloudless sky.
In poem five (of seventeen total in this chapbook), he murders the boss.
I / was standing on the highway with bits of / siding between my teeth
he was / standing in the driveway with the / carburning thoughts behind him
shrinking up his nose he / hears the phone ringing at the office the
terminals droning in the sudden silence
In poem six he is dressed as "The Preest". He saw pulsing foreheads strewn on a / parkinglot. "My hands are mirrors" he said to the dawn / and wriggled his fingers in front of his eyes.
In the poem entitled No Boy, the character No Boy is wandering through the nightmarish hallucination of Columbus:
I walked behind the empty discount store saw
a rusty trashburner, a bin of
flaking tires, a giant compactor with
GOD and REFUSE COLUMBUS on the side I
stared out at the ragged woods behind the place,
heaps of rubble, splintered trees and
thought of shopping carts stuffed with
lawnmower wheels buried beneath the mud where I stood
I tried to leave, my feet were stuck...
That is exactly how I remember 1985. I was in San Francisco. Reagan was in The White House. Our government was in Central America, trading guns for cocaine, fighting against freedom, justice and human dignity. I don't know how any of us survived the 1980s.
"Ripening of Meat" is the next poem:
He opens the door a
car screeches away in the street he
picks up some wrappings and
walks to a bare spot behind the garage
"What's it say?" he thinks,
staring at the reeking signs and blotches
He is reading the trash as if doing so is a method of divination. There have been times in my life when I have been certain that reading the trash is a method of divination. I knew how to do it, and I did it on a daily basis. What's it say, we say, asking the trash itself, asking the world, the cosmos, asking ourselves. At first we are surprised when we get an answer. Later, we don't even need to ask. Eventually, the trash is asking us. We write poems to help the world understand itself.
So many of these lines end where you would least expect them to. They often end with prepositions, articles, and pronouns. I imagine Robert Creeley reading them, with a full stop at the end of each line. There is a nice, noisy, disjunctive music in what I hear. Drive, he said. No-Boy wakes up with chicken intestines in his mouth. I see a thick black word pushing out its mouth, shiny from the light behind me. His feet are wet his hands are burnt.
Poem #13 is entitled "No Sax":
No Sax
He was jerking the giblet bag out of the
chicken he was blowing into the
neckhole he was thinking it was a
saxophone, sqwakings blast past flapping shreds of skin;
cloud of scissors floats around his feet a
sound no sound is hissing through his ears
"It's the note, the note" he says
pulsing his fingers on the glistening back
I think of late Coltrane, Interstellar Space, of Albert Ayler playing marches and spirituals, of Frank Wright in Europe, of Brotzmann's "Machine Gun". It's the note, the note. Pharoah Sanders, The Healing Song. Coltrane, A Love Supreme. Ayler, Music Is The Healing Force of The Universe. It's the middle of the 1980s. The Cold War is at its worst. We march from one end of the city to the other to protest mutually assured destruction. As if anyone is listening... The whole world is not watching. Margaret Thatcher is telling us, there is no alternative. The unions have been busted and the bullshit that is Reaganomics is just beginning to trickle down onto our heads. Why shouldn't we be thinking of Captain Beefheart, Big Eyed Beans From Venus?... Mister Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long (lunar, looming, leaning) note, and let it float. (Note at Home Page Replica -- many people argue for looming or leaning or something else here, but since Bill Harkleroad's book about the Magic Band is called "Lunar Notes", it's a safe guess to assume the correct phrase is "lunar".)
from "Dying No-Boy"
He's yawning, wishing for sleep, to
drift above the parkinglot, his
skin surrounded by another's skin
undulating slowly in the thick tongues of air
from "Night Shopping"
The parkinglot the
wall of light a
few dark heads drift above the
glinting carroofs
Of the seventeen poems here at least eleven mention either parkinglots, cars, highways, or streets, and several mention more than one of those things. So, what is this book about? A guy who hates the 80s, the American death-machine of the 1980s, who feels trapped in the American death-trap of the midwest, of Columbus, Ohio, a microcosm of Death Incorporated, middle-American style, who wants desperately to escape, who dreams of being on the road to anywhere but where he is, but whose cars are stuck in parking lots. His brain is filled with big, surrealist ideas. He wants to Be... An-Ar-Key, but instead he's doing some late-night shopping, searching through the discount store, passing walls of clocks guns wigs antiperspirants.
On the lake, No Boy stands with his hammer in his pants [...] he cocks back his hammer and whips it over the waves [...] he closes his eyes and he's in the
basement in front of a puddle, sees in it
nails clotted with linty cobwebs and the
toe of his greasy shoe, he lies down next to it
puts his cheek on the cool still edge
"hundreds of hats" he sees "They're
floating on the peak of the lake"
And No Boy is floating with them. And we, for an hour or two, have been floating with him. The ghost of Margaret Thatcher can go fuck itself. There has always been an alternative.
03.03.2018
____________________________________
Postscript
email between Bennett and Leftwich, 03.03.2018
JMB: jim, this is very moving, reading this; you make the book seem vivid and real, a book i haven't looked at in years, it's like opening a door
No Boy is what I was trying to write when i wrote Found Objects, that early book from 1973 (do you have a copy?)
Thanks for bringing no boy back to me
o void o void o void,
john
JL: the 80s were difficult for me, were difficult for a lot of us i think. by 1986 i had pretty much had enough. then i met Sue and she kind of kept me going for a few years when i'm really not sure what might have happened without her. No Boy is a great 1980s American book of poems. No Boy the character is too fiercely imaginative to be entirely despondent.
there was a song in the early 80s, you might remember it, by a group called PIL (Public Image Ltd), which was led by the former front man for the Sex Pistols, John Lydon/Johnny Rotten. part of the chorus was "anger is an energy". it was a notion worth knowing back then, for better and for worse.
reading No Boy allowed me to write about some things that i probably wouldn't have gotten around to writing about while reading, for example, rOlling COMBers. or any of your most recent books.
i like the book, enjoyed reading it last night, and appreciate the things it gave me to think about.
i haven't seen Found Objects, and of course i would love to see it.
JMB: will have to get you a copy, i think i still have a few
no: wait, Found Objects was the book of cutup/collage poems in a box - of that i have no copies. (my memory is overwhelmed) I was thinking of WHITE SCREEN, 1976 - has series of poems about highways and shopping centers, and such. Do you have that one? It's sort of squarish, softbound, b/w illus. on cover. i may have copies of it
yeah, the 1980's: i still had a lot of anger then - from a divorce, from loosing professor job (which turned out to be a good thing in the long run, long story), etc. but it was also the time i got together with cathy, which was wonderful, and still is
I don't remember that song, tho i did listen to the Sex Pistols quite a bit. oh yes.
Pee Text
by John M. Bennett
small chapbook project, 2007
Let's say our first attempt to read the poem entitled "Pee Text" is an attempt to read it left to right, top to bottom. As we read the first stanza we become increasingly frustrated with what happens semantically across the central gap. "Me" to "the", "loose" to "b", "sha" to "e", "cag" to "pe", "lo" to ",page", "in" to "at". What are we, as readers, supposed to do with any of that? Personally, I decide fairly quickly that the left to right, top to bottom reading route is a failure for this poem. I take a quick look at reading in columns, down the left column, back to top-right, then down the right side.
shade sol der ,me
yr s hunt loose
t the sing le sha
intent ion floating
un dulation ,cag
,time to coughing ,lo
the floor raging in
the lightbulb fire
b yr throat outside
e the shotgun mist
toward the b ridge lost in s
pe nd ant gr ease
,page of s cowling a
at comb bus ted
I can enjoy this kind of noisic chaos, but I suspect this poem of having more than just that to offer.
I remember some Bennett poems from the nineties, inside-out poems I think he called them, my memory is a little fuzzy on this (my memory is a little fuzzy on a lot of things from approximately 25 years ago), but I do recall specifically that the first word of the poem "rhymed" with the last word, and that pattern held through the poem (the first word in the second line "rhymed" with the last word in the penultimate line, etc.), so I decide to look at the first half of the first line here and see how it matches up with the last half of the last line:
Stanza two works exactly the same way.
The best way to contextualize the existence of a book like Pee Text is to think of the history of the mimeograph revolution, which begins in the conscientious objectors' camps in Oregon during World War II, evolves through the secret location (383 E. 10th St, Lower East Side, NYC) of Ed Sanders' Peace Eye bookstore (where Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts was published in the early sixties), morphs into the punk and zine subcultures of the late-seventies and eighties, begins to take advantage of email in the mid-nineties (with emailed "magazines" of experimental poetry like Jake Berry's Electronic Experioddica, my Juxta/Electronic, and Tom Taylor's Vision Project), moves on to blogzines beginning in the early 00s (Peter Ganick's experiential-experimental literature, my Textimagepoem, Berry's 9th Street Laboratories, Bennett's The John M. Bennett Poetry Blog, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's nonlinear poetry, textual conjectures, and self-similar writing -- and many many others not quite so close to my own poetical neighborhood), and around that same time begins to take advantage of print-on-demand services with the appearance of POD presses devoted to experimental poetry like Ganick's Blue Lion Books and Kervinen's eIghT-pAGE pREss.
The publication of Pee Text and the other chapbooks in the small chapbook project was part of a parallel development in the mid-00s, a resistance against the idea, and the actuality, of digitizing all micro-press publishing endeavors as a way of cutting costs, which had become a necessity for many micro-press publishers, myself included. Ganick's solution to this complex problem was to publish in extremely small editions, with numbers normally associated with tlps, broadsides, and subcultural ephemera. However, because of the quality of Ganick's publications, of which Pee Text is one of the highest examples, these micro-press chapbooks have not disappeared entirely into inaccessible archival collections. They sit on our shelves mixed in with the entire range of experimental poetry publications.
The small chapbook project (scp) was an imprint used by Peter Ganick for a few years in the mid-to-late 00s, roughly from 2005 to 2008. The first four titles published by scp were by Ganick himself:
we walk sleepily forward (2005);
mainstay (2005);
sailing in six/four (2005);
and
eminence: treble clef (2005).
Requests for submissions required manuscripts to be between 20 and 44 pages in 5.5" x 8.5" format.
Peter published several of my chapbooks during those years:
art bang (2006);
gathering the clock --parts 1 and 2, in two volumes (2007);
shrimp teeth (2007);
and
short sorties (2008).
SCP also published two chapbooks by John M. Bennett:
Shoulder Cream (2006);
and
Pee Text (2007).
SCP publications were very streamlined, minimalist productions. Title and author's name at the top of the "cover" page (and in the case of Pee Text, date of publication as well), with the contents of the book beginning about four spaces down. With some scp publications, Pee Text being one of them, the contents would end on the "back cover", followed by copyright information and the address for the press. On some scp publications the number of copies printed was included on the back cover (eg.; 22 for Shoulder Cream; 21 for Art Bang). This information was not included for Pee Text, but my recollection is that all scp editions were expected to be in the 20 - 25 copies range.
In the world of poetry in general and experimental poetry in particular terms like small press and micro-press are defined very loosely, so we might think of Ganick's earlier press, Potes & Poets as a small press operation and small chapbook project as a micro-press publisher. In this context Bennett's Lost and Found Times magazine and Luna Bisonte Prods might be thought of as small press (though some of their activities, like the publication of tlps and broadsides, suggest a very strong affiliation with the world of micro-press publication), and Olchar Lindsann's mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press and In-Appropriate-d Press zine might be seen as micro-press. In my own publishing experience, Juxta magazine could be seen as a small press operation for its first three issues (issues 1 - 3, 500 copies, perfect bound), changing to micro-press for the rest of its 10-issue run (issues 4 -- comb-bound -- and 5/6 -- spiral-bound, 100 copies; issues 7 - 10 -- side stapled, copies to contributors only). Xtant was a micro-press operation from its inception. TLPress was started so I would have an imprint for the tlps I was making circa. 2010. It is as micro- as it gets. It has expanded a little, but not very much in the ensuing eight years. Now there are some pdf publications under the tlpress imprint, there are some broadsides and bookmarks, and there are even some one-off chapbooks. In any case, what prompts all of these considerations tonight is my appreciation of Peter Ganick's micro-press imprint, small chapbook project, which was active 10 years or so ago, and which has left a disproportionately large footprint in my world, and in the worlds of some of my closest associates.
Then, for closers, parse the final line: "rising faucet trains brains rains its eye in on you".
Now, decide for yourself, exactly what kind of flood have you been treated and/or subjected to? Crashing down the stairway like a fester hat kissed with bomb.
____________________________________________
Postscript
email exchange between Bennett & Leftwich 03.02.2018
JMB: this is delightful, i think you're maybe the only person i know of who actually figured out the structure of those poems - and i love the opening passage in which you try different de-puzzling ideas, until you hit the right one. Ha! wonderful - and as i said, this kind of thing is a development out of that inside-out stuff in Mailer Leaves Ham, sort of the same idea but twisted further or again inside out - inside out of the inside out, or something.
good summary of micro/small press activity as well. my own micro-press stuff started - at least after my childhood stuff - with access to a ditto machine when i was in grad school at UCLA in the mid-1960's - those spirit-master copies in pale blue, that faded to nothing if left in the sun. i still have copies of that stuff in a dusty cubbyhole pile under my desk... or perhaps in the back of a closet downstairs...
JL: when i showed olchar and the guys how it worked the first question i got was how long did it take you to figure that out. well, it didn't really take all that long for this particular book, because i had learned some of your methods and forms from earlier books. i had an idea of what to look for.
i think maybe i should add this as a postscript too. there are little bits and pieces of info in our email exchanges that might not be readily available anywhere else.
JMB: yeah, good idea to add these bits
March 01/02. 2018
previous page     contents     next page
Some Notes, Expositions, & Other Things on Works by John M. Bennett (1)
NO BOY
by John M. Bennett
Laughing Bear Press, 1985
The first time I visited John's house, during the 2002 Avant Writing Symposium, he took me upstairs to his office and the first thing I remember seeing was a small banner or a bumper sticker on the wall that said I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE. A few months earlier George W. Bush had given the commencement address at The Ohio State University, where the Avant Writing Symposium was being held, and where John was employed as founding curator of the avant writing archival collection. Some of the graduating students were less than thrilled by the presence of Mr. Bush. They threatened to turn their backs on him while he spoke. The university in turn threatened to deny them their diplomas. On the day of Bush's address there were snipers positioned on the roofs of buildings near the stadium where he was speaking. It was less than a year after 9/11. The days were strange and getting stranger.
Today it is 16 years later, and I am reading a chapbook that was published 17 years earlier, in 1985. The book is entitled NO BOY and it was published in Denver by Laughing Bear Press, 33 years ago. 33 years before that Jack Kerouac was in Denver, hanging out at El Chapultepec bar (named after a large park in Mexico City, the ancient seat of Aztec emperors), listening to jazz. He and his friends would get high in the parking lot, then go in and listen. There was never a cover, and you didn't have to buy anything. It was perfect for Kerouac and his friends: just the kind of entertainment they liked, and also the kind they could afford.
When I think of folks announcing that they vote I usually think of slogans like I'M THE NRA AND I VOTE or I'M THE MORAL MAJORITY AND I VOTE or I'M PRO-LIFE AND I VOTE, right-wing threats to any reasonable notion of why democracy in general and electoral politics in particular might be important. The slogan I'M AN ANARCHIST AND I VOTE is a mockery of the usual jingoist assertions. One way of thinking about anarchism is to imagine it as a logical extension of the idea of participatory democracy.
I think of No Boy as an anarchic spirit, quite likely one with a strong streak of Beat rebelliousness in his background. The first poem in the NO BOY chapbook reads, in its entirety, as follows:
Exit
Hat on skull
hand on belt
shoe rising over the sill
Hooray! No Boy escapes, out the window and into the world. The second poem in this adventure introduces us to Yes-Boy ("Yes-Boy Looks For No"). Yes-Boy is sitting in a parked car, watching No Boy on a fire escape. Yes-Boy gets off from work and watches No Boy "chainsaw a mattress" on TV. In the last stanza Yes-Boy is opening his car door, "standing in the clear cold wind". That clear cold wind might be anywhere: Columbus, Ohio; Lowell, Massachusetts; New York City; Denver; Chicago; St. Louis; Roanoke, Virginia. Wherever it is, it isn't far from The Road.
No Boy digs a hole in the yard and finds a stone.
He goes into a grocery store in a trance, looks out a window at a cloudless sky.
In poem five (of seventeen total in this chapbook), he murders the boss.
I / was standing on the highway with bits of / siding between my teeth
he was / standing in the driveway with the / carburning thoughts behind him
shrinking up his nose he / hears the phone ringing at the office the
terminals droning in the sudden silence
In poem six he is dressed as "The Preest". He saw pulsing foreheads strewn on a / parkinglot. "My hands are mirrors" he said to the dawn / and wriggled his fingers in front of his eyes.
In the poem entitled No Boy, the character No Boy is wandering through the nightmarish hallucination of Columbus:
I walked behind the empty discount store saw
a rusty trashburner, a bin of
flaking tires, a giant compactor with
GOD and REFUSE COLUMBUS on the side I
stared out at the ragged woods behind the place,
heaps of rubble, splintered trees and
thought of shopping carts stuffed with
lawnmower wheels buried beneath the mud where I stood
I tried to leave, my feet were stuck...
That is exactly how I remember 1985. I was in San Francisco. Reagan was in The White House. Our government was in Central America, trading guns for cocaine, fighting against freedom, justice and human dignity. I don't know how any of us survived the 1980s.
"Ripening of Meat" is the next poem:
He opens the door a
car screeches away in the street he
picks up some wrappings and
walks to a bare spot behind the garage
"What's it say?" he thinks,
staring at the reeking signs and blotches
He is reading the trash as if doing so is a method of divination. There have been times in my life when I have been certain that reading the trash is a method of divination. I knew how to do it, and I did it on a daily basis. What's it say, we say, asking the trash itself, asking the world, the cosmos, asking ourselves. At first we are surprised when we get an answer. Later, we don't even need to ask. Eventually, the trash is asking us. We write poems to help the world understand itself.
So many of these lines end where you would least expect them to. They often end with prepositions, articles, and pronouns. I imagine Robert Creeley reading them, with a full stop at the end of each line. There is a nice, noisy, disjunctive music in what I hear. Drive, he said. No-Boy wakes up with chicken intestines in his mouth. I see a thick black word pushing out its mouth, shiny from the light behind me. His feet are wet his hands are burnt.
Poem #13 is entitled "No Sax":
No Sax
He was jerking the giblet bag out of the
chicken he was blowing into the
neckhole he was thinking it was a
saxophone, sqwakings blast past flapping shreds of skin;
cloud of scissors floats around his feet a
sound no sound is hissing through his ears
"It's the note, the note" he says
pulsing his fingers on the glistening back
I think of late Coltrane, Interstellar Space, of Albert Ayler playing marches and spirituals, of Frank Wright in Europe, of Brotzmann's "Machine Gun". It's the note, the note. Pharoah Sanders, The Healing Song. Coltrane, A Love Supreme. Ayler, Music Is The Healing Force of The Universe. It's the middle of the 1980s. The Cold War is at its worst. We march from one end of the city to the other to protest mutually assured destruction. As if anyone is listening... The whole world is not watching. Margaret Thatcher is telling us, there is no alternative. The unions have been busted and the bullshit that is Reaganomics is just beginning to trickle down onto our heads. Why shouldn't we be thinking of Captain Beefheart, Big Eyed Beans From Venus?... Mister Zoot Horn Rollo, hit that long (lunar, looming, leaning) note, and let it float. (Note at Home Page Replica -- many people argue for looming or leaning or something else here, but since Bill Harkleroad's book about the Magic Band is called "Lunar Notes", it's a safe guess to assume the correct phrase is "lunar".)
from "Dying No-Boy"
He's yawning, wishing for sleep, to
drift above the parkinglot, his
skin surrounded by another's skin
undulating slowly in the thick tongues of air
from "Night Shopping"
The parkinglot the
wall of light a
few dark heads drift above the
glinting carroofs
Of the seventeen poems here at least eleven mention either parkinglots, cars, highways, or streets, and several mention more than one of those things. So, what is this book about? A guy who hates the 80s, the American death-machine of the 1980s, who feels trapped in the American death-trap of the midwest, of Columbus, Ohio, a microcosm of Death Incorporated, middle-American style, who wants desperately to escape, who dreams of being on the road to anywhere but where he is, but whose cars are stuck in parking lots. His brain is filled with big, surrealist ideas. He wants to Be... An-Ar-Key, but instead he's doing some late-night shopping, searching through the discount store, passing walls of clocks guns wigs antiperspirants.
On the lake, No Boy stands with his hammer in his pants [...] he cocks back his hammer and whips it over the waves [...] he closes his eyes and he's in the
basement in front of a puddle, sees in it
nails clotted with linty cobwebs and the
toe of his greasy shoe, he lies down next to it
puts his cheek on the cool still edge
"hundreds of hats" he sees "They're
floating on the peak of the lake"
And No Boy is floating with them. And we, for an hour or two, have been floating with him. The ghost of Margaret Thatcher can go fuck itself. There has always been an alternative.
03.03.2018
____________________________________
Postscript
email between Bennett and Leftwich, 03.03.2018
JMB: jim, this is very moving, reading this; you make the book seem vivid and real, a book i haven't looked at in years, it's like opening a door
No Boy is what I was trying to write when i wrote Found Objects, that early book from 1973 (do you have a copy?)
Thanks for bringing no boy back to me
o void o void o void,
john
JL: the 80s were difficult for me, were difficult for a lot of us i think. by 1986 i had pretty much had enough. then i met Sue and she kind of kept me going for a few years when i'm really not sure what might have happened without her. No Boy is a great 1980s American book of poems. No Boy the character is too fiercely imaginative to be entirely despondent.
there was a song in the early 80s, you might remember it, by a group called PIL (Public Image Ltd), which was led by the former front man for the Sex Pistols, John Lydon/Johnny Rotten. part of the chorus was "anger is an energy". it was a notion worth knowing back then, for better and for worse.
reading No Boy allowed me to write about some things that i probably wouldn't have gotten around to writing about while reading, for example, rOlling COMBers. or any of your most recent books.
i like the book, enjoyed reading it last night, and appreciate the things it gave me to think about.
i haven't seen Found Objects, and of course i would love to see it.
JMB: will have to get you a copy, i think i still have a few
no: wait, Found Objects was the book of cutup/collage poems in a box - of that i have no copies. (my memory is overwhelmed) I was thinking of WHITE SCREEN, 1976 - has series of poems about highways and shopping centers, and such. Do you have that one? It's sort of squarish, softbound, b/w illus. on cover. i may have copies of it
yeah, the 1980's: i still had a lot of anger then - from a divorce, from loosing professor job (which turned out to be a good thing in the long run, long story), etc. but it was also the time i got together with cathy, which was wonderful, and still is
I don't remember that song, tho i did listen to the Sex Pistols quite a bit. oh yes.
Pee Text
by John M. Bennett
small chapbook project, 2007
Pee Text
shade sol der ,me the lightbulb fire
yr s hunt loose b yr throat outside
t the sing le sha e the shotgun mist
intent ion floating toward the b ridge lost in s
un dulation ,cag pe nd ant gr ease
,time to coughing ,lo ,page of s cowling a
the floor raging in at comb bus ted
.the camper like a r inkwell fulla urine
per drooling soldier allowed .dip the nest
,dropped an blanch to yr "woods" the l
,sp read across ,the sough creep ,the buzzing
lantern d rifts in ed ,knocking talking
azy sword sw stepped an f layed
inside yr face y bloat business ,sot ham
Let's say our first attempt to read the poem entitled "Pee Text" is an attempt to read it left to right, top to bottom. As we read the first stanza we become increasingly frustrated with what happens semantically across the central gap. "Me" to "the", "loose" to "b", "sha" to "e", "cag" to "pe", "lo" to ",page", "in" to "at". What are we, as readers, supposed to do with any of that? Personally, I decide fairly quickly that the left to right, top to bottom reading route is a failure for this poem. I take a quick look at reading in columns, down the left column, back to top-right, then down the right side.
shade sol der ,me
yr s hunt loose
t the sing le sha
intent ion floating
un dulation ,cag
,time to coughing ,lo
the floor raging in
the lightbulb fire
b yr throat outside
e the shotgun mist
toward the b ridge lost in s
pe nd ant gr ease
,page of s cowling a
at comb bus ted
I can enjoy this kind of noisic chaos, but I suspect this poem of having more than just that to offer.
I remember some Bennett poems from the nineties, inside-out poems I think he called them, my memory is a little fuzzy on this (my memory is a little fuzzy on a lot of things from approximately 25 years ago), but I do recall specifically that the first word of the poem "rhymed" with the last word, and that pattern held through the poem (the first word in the second line "rhymed" with the last word in the penultimate line, etc.), so I decide to look at the first half of the first line here and see how it matches up with the last half of the last line:
There is a recognizable, functional syntax here, albeit destabilized -- gapped in multiple ways. Discontinuity has a complex relationship to dis-contiguity. We read forward, left to right, intention floating toward the bridge, and then we start over, intent, intent ion -- floating toward the -- bridge, bridge and ridge, ridge after bridge, ridge just beyond the bridge -- lost in -- sun, lost in the sun, the sun undulation, undulation as a kind of duration...
shade sol der ,me bloat business ,sot ham
That is not helpful.
"Shade" to "ham", first word to last word, is also not helpful.
What about first word of first stanza to last word of first stanza?
"Shade" to "ted".
Also not helpful.
However, I do glimpse something promising when looking at first line, first column,
first stanza in relation to last line, second column, first stanza:
shade sol der ,me at comb bus ted
Close the gap and we have the word "meat". What happens if we continue looking at this pattern?
Line two:
yr s hunt loose ,page of s cowling a
Hmm. Maybe we are not onto anything at all.
Line three:
t the sing le sha pe nd ant gr ease
Shape!
Is this mere coincidence? How likely is that?
Line five:
un dulation ,cag e the shotgun mist
Cage.
Line six:
,time to coughing ,lo b yr throat outside
Lob.
And line seven:
the floor raging in the lightbulb fire
All of which results in the following as stanza one:
shade sol der ,me at comb bus ted
yr s hunt loose ,page of s cowling a
t the sing le sha pe nd ant gr ease
intent ion floating toward the b ridge lost in s
un dulation ,cag e the shotgun mist
,time to coughing ,lo b yr throat outside
the floor raging in the lightbulb fire
Stanza two works exactly the same way.
The best way to contextualize the existence of a book like Pee Text is to think of the history of the mimeograph revolution, which begins in the conscientious objectors' camps in Oregon during World War II, evolves through the secret location (383 E. 10th St, Lower East Side, NYC) of Ed Sanders' Peace Eye bookstore (where Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts was published in the early sixties), morphs into the punk and zine subcultures of the late-seventies and eighties, begins to take advantage of email in the mid-nineties (with emailed "magazines" of experimental poetry like Jake Berry's Electronic Experioddica, my Juxta/Electronic, and Tom Taylor's Vision Project), moves on to blogzines beginning in the early 00s (Peter Ganick's experiential-experimental literature, my Textimagepoem, Berry's 9th Street Laboratories, Bennett's The John M. Bennett Poetry Blog, Jukka-Pekka Kervinen's nonlinear poetry, textual conjectures, and self-similar writing -- and many many others not quite so close to my own poetical neighborhood), and around that same time begins to take advantage of print-on-demand services with the appearance of POD presses devoted to experimental poetry like Ganick's Blue Lion Books and Kervinen's eIghT-pAGE pREss.
The publication of Pee Text and the other chapbooks in the small chapbook project was part of a parallel development in the mid-00s, a resistance against the idea, and the actuality, of digitizing all micro-press publishing endeavors as a way of cutting costs, which had become a necessity for many micro-press publishers, myself included. Ganick's solution to this complex problem was to publish in extremely small editions, with numbers normally associated with tlps, broadsides, and subcultural ephemera. However, because of the quality of Ganick's publications, of which Pee Text is one of the highest examples, these micro-press chapbooks have not disappeared entirely into inaccessible archival collections. They sit on our shelves mixed in with the entire range of experimental poetry publications.
The small chapbook project (scp) was an imprint used by Peter Ganick for a few years in the mid-to-late 00s, roughly from 2005 to 2008. The first four titles published by scp were by Ganick himself:
we walk sleepily forward (2005);
mainstay (2005);
sailing in six/four (2005);
and
eminence: treble clef (2005).
Requests for submissions required manuscripts to be between 20 and 44 pages in 5.5" x 8.5" format.
Peter published several of my chapbooks during those years:
art bang (2006);
gathering the clock --parts 1 and 2, in two volumes (2007);
shrimp teeth (2007);
and
short sorties (2008).
SCP also published two chapbooks by John M. Bennett:
Shoulder Cream (2006);
and
Pee Text (2007).
SCP publications were very streamlined, minimalist productions. Title and author's name at the top of the "cover" page (and in the case of Pee Text, date of publication as well), with the contents of the book beginning about four spaces down. With some scp publications, Pee Text being one of them, the contents would end on the "back cover", followed by copyright information and the address for the press. On some scp publications the number of copies printed was included on the back cover (eg.; 22 for Shoulder Cream; 21 for Art Bang). This information was not included for Pee Text, but my recollection is that all scp editions were expected to be in the 20 - 25 copies range.
In the world of poetry in general and experimental poetry in particular terms like small press and micro-press are defined very loosely, so we might think of Ganick's earlier press, Potes & Poets as a small press operation and small chapbook project as a micro-press publisher. In this context Bennett's Lost and Found Times magazine and Luna Bisonte Prods might be thought of as small press (though some of their activities, like the publication of tlps and broadsides, suggest a very strong affiliation with the world of micro-press publication), and Olchar Lindsann's mOnocle-Lash Anti-Press and In-Appropriate-d Press zine might be seen as micro-press. In my own publishing experience, Juxta magazine could be seen as a small press operation for its first three issues (issues 1 - 3, 500 copies, perfect bound), changing to micro-press for the rest of its 10-issue run (issues 4 -- comb-bound -- and 5/6 -- spiral-bound, 100 copies; issues 7 - 10 -- side stapled, copies to contributors only). Xtant was a micro-press operation from its inception. TLPress was started so I would have an imprint for the tlps I was making circa. 2010. It is as micro- as it gets. It has expanded a little, but not very much in the ensuing eight years. Now there are some pdf publications under the tlpress imprint, there are some broadsides and bookmarks, and there are even some one-off chapbooks. In any case, what prompts all of these considerations tonight is my appreciation of Peter Ganick's micro-press imprint, small chapbook project, which was active 10 years or so ago, and which has left a disproportionately large footprint in my world, and in the worlds of some of my closest associates.
For starters here, reading across the gap between stanzas, I find myself piecing together portions of words distributed over three very different intrusions of emptiness, of space: 1) the central gap in the line, which allows the word "aged" to occur more slowly than might normally be the case; 2) the extra spaces distributed within this letterstring, which permits us to read with clarity and certainty "porch" and "chum", along with "poor", so arriving at "poor porch chum" with hardly a stretch at all; and 3) the line separating the stanzas which gives us, slowly, not as one thought flowing into another, but as two distinct thoughts, "poor porch chum" followed by "poor porch chum chumped".
Pee Text
Stanza two:
.the camper like a bloat business ,sot ham
per drooling soldier stepped an f layed
,dropped an blanch ed ,knocking talking
,sp read across ,the sough creep ,the buzzing
lantern d rifts in to yr "woods" the l
azy sword sw allowed .dip the nest
inside yr face y r inkwell fulla urine
the buzzing lantern drifts into yr woods the lazy sword swallowed...
the buzzing lantern drifts rifts into yr woods the lazy sword allowed…
I see also "the lazys words wallowed". Even though it isn't written, the eye in collusion with the mind will read it.
sot ham hamper ... per drooling soldier ... stepped and flayed layed
Faced with this variety of a writing-against-itself, we read against our readings,
start and stop, piece the same portions together in multiple combinations, add a letter
here, drop a letter there, read back and forth as if a single sequence of letters,
or of words, was layered, as if we were reading a kind of overprinting, as if an
imbricate text -- which already presents us with the extreme difficulty of not
actually existing -- were something we could recombine in an improvised reading process.
The poem on the back cover / last page, "The flood", uses the same form, with a
couple of added twists.
The flood
puzz led all the l ed yr por c h um
roat the screwdex lat g starts ,massed of
x crashing d own t r doll blisters she
fester hat kissed with bomb . yr boat holes y
r ought laughs y he stairway like a
dding ,clusters ,do her in yr steam bo
mot or mountings ag anguid hum ping th
ped guesstrion ,tan ns its eye n on you
spoon whirls doub an mild ew a ris
er knickknacks cr tumble an the breath
con tent tab le ading toward the bled room w
here there's the s acking "dream" my
"of nations" .gas ting w hat yr f lust
ing fauce t b rai k dribbling ,porque
I can't resist this configuration, which otherwise in all probability will not exist
anywhere, ever:
puzz , porque
puzz led all the l
roat the screwdex lat
x crashing d own t
fester hat kissed with
r ought laughs y
dding ,clusters ,do
mot or mountings ag
ed yr por c h um
g starts ,massed of
r doll blisters she
bomb . yr boat holes y
he stairway like a
her in yr steam bo
anguid hum ping th
ped guesstrion ,tan
spoon whirls doub
er knickknacks cr
con tent tab le ading
here there's the s
"of nations" .gas
ing fauce t b rai
ns its eye n on you
an mild ew a ris
tumble an the breath
toward the bled room w
acking "dream" my
ting w hat yr f lust
k dribbling ,porque
The flood
puzz led all the l anguid hum ping th
roat the screwdex lat her in yr steam bo
x crashing d own t he stairway like a
fester hat kissed with bomb . yr boat holes y
r ought laughs y r doll blisters she
dding ,clusters ,do g starts ,massed of
mot or mountings ag ed yr por c h um
ped guesstrion ,tan k dribbling ,porque
spoon whirls doub ting w hat yr f lust
er knickknacks cr acking "dream" my
con tent tab le ading toward the bled room w
here there's the s tumble an the breath
"of nations" .gas an mild ew a ris
ing fauce t b rai ns its eye n on you
Then, for closers, parse the final line: "rising faucet trains brains rains its eye in on you".
Now, decide for yourself, exactly what kind of flood have you been treated and/or subjected to? Crashing down the stairway like a fester hat kissed with bomb.
____________________________________________
Postscript
email exchange between Bennett & Leftwich 03.02.2018
JMB: this is delightful, i think you're maybe the only person i know of who actually figured out the structure of those poems - and i love the opening passage in which you try different de-puzzling ideas, until you hit the right one. Ha! wonderful - and as i said, this kind of thing is a development out of that inside-out stuff in Mailer Leaves Ham, sort of the same idea but twisted further or again inside out - inside out of the inside out, or something.
good summary of micro/small press activity as well. my own micro-press stuff started - at least after my childhood stuff - with access to a ditto machine when i was in grad school at UCLA in the mid-1960's - those spirit-master copies in pale blue, that faded to nothing if left in the sun. i still have copies of that stuff in a dusty cubbyhole pile under my desk... or perhaps in the back of a closet downstairs...
JL: when i showed olchar and the guys how it worked the first question i got was how long did it take you to figure that out. well, it didn't really take all that long for this particular book, because i had learned some of your methods and forms from earlier books. i had an idea of what to look for.
i think maybe i should add this as a postscript too. there are little bits and pieces of info in our email exchanges that might not be readily available anywhere else.
JMB: yeah, good idea to add these bits
March 01/02. 2018
↧
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Article 2
Jim Leftwich
Jim Leftwich is a poet and essayist who lives in Roanoke, VA, USA. he is the author of Six Months Aint No Sentence Books 1 -187 (Differx Hosting@Box, 2011 - 2016), and three volumes of essays entitled Rascible & Kempt Vols. 1 - 3 (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016-2017). Since 2008 he has been involved in organizing and/or documenting mail art, sound poetry, visual poetry and noise events in Roanoke.
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familiar lightning
familiar
pinchers,
(U-N)written
bean
beaten
been
light
ten stain,
steps
was was was was was was
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logical expressionist century
subject to its own thoughts
p pm maopmomn oaoi nionie
map in the afternoon, oasis
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used t o
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soften the cosmos
familiar September
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newspaper
images
imagine
bubbles,
quibbles
with the comic strips
"thoughts"
on
skates
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reflection in the mudfield mirror
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prophetic
Chicago
longtime
architectural succotash
arc era radial pronoun
annotations in likewise Hawaii
nor solely
elbows
arranged in chairs
patterns on torso/linoleum //-tooled
the long twentieth century
a long wait
the long ball
long tall
long time
the long nineteen sixties
long jump
a long walk
longhouse
the longboats
longing
geometric circles, circling
the small scale resemblance
of a snail
up his sleeve, like a stone
mold it, but
circular strangers
("they look familiar")
highly industrial rectangles
"the highly rectangular industries
have a story to tell"
along, frequently
they tie
into the tooled
into the long
angles
they into them
returning -- What?
respectfully,
to the English Motel,
floor wages
-- outdoors,
with the Romantic
lions,
sticks, longerally
longer, generally,
than rocks
longer allies.
mentions terrain.
ing. walks.
sticks gently
long.
walking, longing.
carved. marks
engaged in
the light. the
light
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like archaic
carvings
on sticks &
stones.
lightning.
that's how it starts. tape
needs closing
episode theatric, percolates.
evidence is arranged
into the fumes
of its own history.
prime his, its
chart depends, bent styles
became the day.
during morse code loot lotus
lit lottery and
lost us,
became chart prime
of its own fumes.
evidence is arranged
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and ne
clo
episode
theatric
evider
arp
his e
his eye
its s
s
C
th
da
couth-da
couth da day
Abraham Diane Morris, 1986
Michael Louise Fred, 1970
microtonal extensions
Th
Ti
Mus
edut
1999
Music on a
(1969)
Sma
Syste
Cl
19
small systemic church of the rarefied serpent
S
tripar
timpan
timparn
sour acoustic medallion
1977-powered;
This U and performa electric
the thin shirt, a personal pronoun.
for voice at waves, 1962.
sustained
relations
typically
composing
them.
02.13.2018
Jim Leftwich is a poet and essayist who lives in Roanoke, VA, USA. he is the author of Six Months Aint No Sentence Books 1 -187 (Differx Hosting@Box, 2011 - 2016), and three volumes of essays entitled Rascible & Kempt Vols. 1 - 3 (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016-2017). Since 2008 he has been involved in organizing and/or documenting mail art, sound poetry, visual poetry and noise events in Roanoke.
↧
Article 3
Carlyle Baker
![]()
grip
![]()
object
![]()
wax1
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wax2
Carlyle Baker is living and working while attending to the plastic arts.
he is well known as the man behind the mask,
he is currently working on fresh new material
that may or may not be released.
other background noise is available at emptymirrorbooks.com, the covers and interior illustrations to Daniel f Bradley's 27 canadian sailcraft, and in the 2018 Wayzgoose anthology.
previous page     contents     next page
Carlyle Baker is living and working while attending to the plastic arts.
he is well known as the man behind the mask,
he is currently working on fresh new material
that may or may not be released.
other background noise is available at emptymirrorbooks.com, the covers and interior illustrations to Daniel f Bradley's 27 canadian sailcraft, and in the 2018 Wayzgoose anthology.
↧
Article 2
Adam Fieled
Architecture and Levitation
The subliminal nature of architecture—
demonstrating, for the human brain, what
space is, how it might be saturated, without always
obtruding upon our consciousness— as I
drove around King of Prussia on those
brooding semester breaks, a subtle sense of
enchantment grew, hinged to what my
future might hold, as one who writes. King
of Prussia Mall, Tower Records, random
commercial strips with record stores, restaurants,
even the bus station where I was claimed
at the inception of the break, were all planned &
executed to manifest a sense of levitation,
& left my brain somewhere in the world Other, forever—
South Street
The girls Chris & I used to drive down
to South Street— Erica, Nicole, Dominique—
rights/privileges extended to us as Seniors—
I see now that, as usual, the glitter/grime of
South Street at night (Tower Records big red/
yellow sign shone as a talisman, consecrating us)
hid something darker, deeper, deadened
against our polite passes. As to what
world we might’ve woken to had we
known the truth then— I remember
bluster, braggadocio (who had who on back seats),
I also remember the suave sense we had
that these girls, callow as they were, were ours.
We could’ve used a brain-scanner, or a noose.
Russian Roulette
She should’ve been a redhead, I thought,
as she drew the blinds, locked the red wine
in the cabinet, drained her glass, & bounced
into bed— not precisely the Don Juana of
her postures, more like a vision of Pre-Raphaelite
schizophrenia, as one reads in Victorian novels.
Writing this, after ten years, it seems dulcet,
peaceful, rather than a plunge into a life or death
game of Russian Roulette, which is what it was
for us. The book I’d just published sat on the
living room sofa, as if there could be any other
reason for all this, the wine, the bullets; what I
put into her was another kind of book. The full
dome effect, for her, caused a thousand suicides.
Hit or Miss
As the world between her legs tightened around
her, what she saw in bed with me was stark: okra,
stamens, roots, all that in nature coalesces in erect
growth; and a shadow father bent, then erect, then
bent again, perverse from amassing wealth in a world
whose submissiveness poisons him. Beneath the sultry,
wooded surface, what I saw was a semi-frightened
animal, along for an all-night ride (gruesomeness of
4 a.m. New Hampshire sun), knife thusly thrusting
into the backs of everyone around her, managing
to have stamina enough against constraint to take
what she was taking. The mattress thumped: above,
an angel was unable to conceal laughter, understanding
it was all in the script, including the garish sun’s leer.
Birthday
She can’t believe this: no one’s taking her out.
She specifically hinted to all these guys: hey, it’s
my birthday this weekend, why don’t we do some
thing? The thing is, the mirror beams back to her
exquisite, dazzling perfection: silky red hair, bright
green eyes, big tits, all wrapped in a smile that says
everything these guys want to hear. So, she strips
for herself. She’s amazed at how well the parts fit
together: the tiny bit of flab on her stomach (that
guys love), the way her legs move, white of them
next to black panties, how each time she purses
her lips she gives herself an orgasm just from how
sexy she is. But the thing wrong is just that no one
calls anymore, all these guys don’t call. Her body
(of course, no duh) doesn’t exist unless there’s a
guy looking at it. She has candy hearts left over
from Valentines Day, takes a bunch to munch as
she steps over to the window, hoping some guy
notices her topless form hovering over Race Street.
Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. His latest book is The Posit Trilogy (Argotist E-Books, 2017). Forthcoming this summer from Eratio Editions is The White Album (2nd Edition). A second edition of Equations (Blue & Yellow Dog Press, 2011) also appeared this year.
previous page     contents     next page
Architecture and Levitation
The subliminal nature of architecture—
demonstrating, for the human brain, what
space is, how it might be saturated, without always
obtruding upon our consciousness— as I
drove around King of Prussia on those
brooding semester breaks, a subtle sense of
enchantment grew, hinged to what my
future might hold, as one who writes. King
of Prussia Mall, Tower Records, random
commercial strips with record stores, restaurants,
even the bus station where I was claimed
at the inception of the break, were all planned &
executed to manifest a sense of levitation,
& left my brain somewhere in the world Other, forever—
South Street
The girls Chris & I used to drive down
to South Street— Erica, Nicole, Dominique—
rights/privileges extended to us as Seniors—
I see now that, as usual, the glitter/grime of
South Street at night (Tower Records big red/
yellow sign shone as a talisman, consecrating us)
hid something darker, deeper, deadened
against our polite passes. As to what
world we might’ve woken to had we
known the truth then— I remember
bluster, braggadocio (who had who on back seats),
I also remember the suave sense we had
that these girls, callow as they were, were ours.
We could’ve used a brain-scanner, or a noose.
Russian Roulette
She should’ve been a redhead, I thought,
as she drew the blinds, locked the red wine
in the cabinet, drained her glass, & bounced
into bed— not precisely the Don Juana of
her postures, more like a vision of Pre-Raphaelite
schizophrenia, as one reads in Victorian novels.
Writing this, after ten years, it seems dulcet,
peaceful, rather than a plunge into a life or death
game of Russian Roulette, which is what it was
for us. The book I’d just published sat on the
living room sofa, as if there could be any other
reason for all this, the wine, the bullets; what I
put into her was another kind of book. The full
dome effect, for her, caused a thousand suicides.
Hit or Miss
As the world between her legs tightened around
her, what she saw in bed with me was stark: okra,
stamens, roots, all that in nature coalesces in erect
growth; and a shadow father bent, then erect, then
bent again, perverse from amassing wealth in a world
whose submissiveness poisons him. Beneath the sultry,
wooded surface, what I saw was a semi-frightened
animal, along for an all-night ride (gruesomeness of
4 a.m. New Hampshire sun), knife thusly thrusting
into the backs of everyone around her, managing
to have stamina enough against constraint to take
what she was taking. The mattress thumped: above,
an angel was unable to conceal laughter, understanding
it was all in the script, including the garish sun’s leer.
Birthday
She can’t believe this: no one’s taking her out.
She specifically hinted to all these guys: hey, it’s
my birthday this weekend, why don’t we do some
thing? The thing is, the mirror beams back to her
exquisite, dazzling perfection: silky red hair, bright
green eyes, big tits, all wrapped in a smile that says
everything these guys want to hear. So, she strips
for herself. She’s amazed at how well the parts fit
together: the tiny bit of flab on her stomach (that
guys love), the way her legs move, white of them
next to black panties, how each time she purses
her lips she gives herself an orgasm just from how
sexy she is. But the thing wrong is just that no one
calls anymore, all these guys don’t call. Her body
(of course, no duh) doesn’t exist unless there’s a
guy looking at it. She has candy hearts left over
from Valentines Day, takes a bunch to munch as
she steps over to the window, hoping some guy
notices her topless form hovering over Race Street.
Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. His latest book is The Posit Trilogy (Argotist E-Books, 2017). Forthcoming this summer from Eratio Editions is The White Album (2nd Edition). A second edition of Equations (Blue & Yellow Dog Press, 2011) also appeared this year.
↧