Upcoming at The Poetry Project: our spring 2012 workshop descriptions have been posted and are listed below. Spring workshops will be lead by Susan Mills, Will Edmiston, Matvei Yankelevich and Ariana Reines.
Oppression and Redemption Songs – Ariana Reines
TUESDAYS / 5 SESSIONS / BEGINS MARCH 20 (REGISTER)
We are going to write poems whose origins are sites of trauma, catastrophe, loss, forsakenness, terror, and sorrow. That means writing poems that may speak of enormities like war or geological catastrophe, or even a sense of nameless and mute malaise, the tiniest most inexpressible lack, the windiest most overwhelming horror-- but we will do so by proceeding from our ownmost trauma zones, and we must be both specific and precise with ourselves. That is the rule. This does not mean that the poems we write must be lyric or romantic or even expressionistic poems, necessarily-- on the contrary, we will experiment rigorously with the rapture of structure and form, and are free to make writings that do not exclude even the most highly refined procedures upon and within the plasticity of the word. We are free even to write ecstatically. But the rule is that we begin where it hurts. This is how poetry becomes the substance of transformation, a force whose origin's truth-- an aporia-- a misery-- becomes, when we write, the motor of a power that really can defy the world-- as it always has. This is what poetry is for. Even if redemption, in the end, can only be a song, well, a song is a lot, and a song can do it. We can do it too. We will write together, nourished on readings from The Book of Job, Louise Labe, Eileen Myles, Raul Zurita, Rainer Maria Rilke, Tomaz Salamun, John Donne, John Clare, John Keats, William Blake, Amiri Baraka, kari edwards, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Bill Knott, Georges Bataille, Claudia Rankine, Osip Mandelstam, Antonin Artaud, Huey P. Newton, Paul Celan, Walt Whitman, Aime Cesaire, Sylvia Plath, Anne Carson, Bob Marley, Shakespeare.
/
Maybe it's some other Bill Knott. Or a misprint. In any case, I doubt my name has ever before appeared on a list between Ginsberg and Bataille.
"[T]rauma, catastrophe, loss, forsakenness, terror, and sorrow" . . . hunh?—but my poems are so silly and goofy!—for example,
Craig Morgan Teicher in Publishers Weekly when he wants to insult Chelsey Minnis concludes his review by tarring her with me:
"Petulant, clever, sometimes funny, sometimes irritatingly flippant, Minnis's poems will inspire questions as to whether this work qualifies as poetry at all, though some readers — fans of, say, Bill Knott, at his silliest — may find much to like."
/
My poetry—which, according to Teicher, doesn't even qualify as poetry—can't be taken seriously.
(Seriously.)
///
från Lyrikvännen 2/72:
Död
Innan jag somnar lägger jag händerna i kors på bröstet.
De ska lägga mina händer så.
Det kommer att se ut som om jag flög in i mig själv.
*
Sömn
Vi stryker längs den andra, osynliga månen.
Dess grottor kommer fram och hämtar in oss.
*
*
All these rock'n'rollers propped up by publicists and the media with the honorific title of "poet":
how many times have you read or heard, 'Oh yeah, he/she's not just a singer-songwriter, he/she's a real poet.'
Oh yeah, well make Joni Dylan and all those other supposed "poets" actually live on the monthly average paycheck budget of even the most successful poem-writing poet,
and see how how many days before they start screaming
"No, no! I'm not a poet, I'm a popstar! Gimme back my limo! Bring back my maid chauffeur bodyguard cook! where's my PA?!"
//
*
Rich poets like Louse Glukk and Friedrich Seedle and Russle Edsin
don't give their poetry away free, you have to pay cash buy their books,
but me,
me living month to month on Social Security checks,
I'm supposed to give mine away free?
///
Of course I HAVE to give mine away free, because nobody will buy the damn things.
/
a footnote to my post from a couple weeks ago: http://knottprosepo.blogspot.com/2011/07/uh-this-first-poem.html
*
I imagine the hierarchs at Poetry Magazine were disappointed that their attempt to assassinate me in 1972 failed,
which is why thirtythree years later they hired the lit-rump Meghan O'Rourke to give it another try—
And this time they succeeded.
Their second murder plot did me in:
after this latter "review" appeared in 2005,
I had to retire from my teaching position,
I lost what little professional standing and esteem I had in the poetry world, all of its venues have blacklisted me,
and since then I have been forced to self-publish my books thanks to the poisoning of my reputation with everyone in the legitimate poetry-publishing field—
No doubt the despots at Poetry Magazine have rejoiced these past 6 years over my decline;
how they must relish my downfall and the final ruination of my career:
to know that their vendetta against me has triumphed in the end,
to know that their vicious attacks have finally finished me off.
*
And their hired assassin, Agent Double O'Rourke? Well, following this
termination-with-extreme-prejudice,
The Paris Review appointed her as an editor.
If anyone reading this is looking for a scheme to boost their career in PoBiz,
I recommend kicking my corpse around: look at what it did for her.
///
