2002 – 2003 Readings and Talks
Will Alexander and Michael Palmer
Vanguards in American Letters
March 20, 2003
Seminar 5:30 PM | 462 ICC
Reading 8:00 PM | ICC Auditorium
The Pointless Nether Plow
— Will Alexander
It is farming in an inclement sun system
like a powerless nether beast
fallen amidst random stellar debris
fruit changes form
light then quavers across distorted mural relics
the farmer then living as a clarified adder
his land forms compressed
his wheat suspended & flaring
his unstable forms
carving his soil with volcanic blue seeds
—
Read more about Will Alexander
Prose 31
— Michael Palmer
The Logic of Contradictions
A logical principle is said to be an empty
or formal proposition because it can add
nothing to the premises of the argument it
governs. This leads to the logic of contra-
dictions. It is an anacoluthon to say that
a proposition is impossible because it is
self-contradictory. (It is also ambiguous.)
The definition of the possible as that which
in a given state of information (real or
pretended) we do not know not to be true
conceals another anacoluthon.
David Antin and John Yau
Talking Poetics, Naming Identities
November 5, 2002
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC Galleria
Reading 8:00 PM | ICC Auditorium
Real Estate
— David Antin
while i believe that what i’m doing depends essentially upon
   the event here  going here coming here and  making
 what my idea of what a poem is  or  making my idea of
  what a valuable talk is  if thats what poetry is  there is a
life problem  a kind of running down of ones life  i may
  not be facing it very gravely now  although  when i came
   to california  i started running on the beaches  they have
beaches and you can run on them  and i twisted an ankle
    while running on the beach  and it took a damned long
  time for my ankle to heal  and having played football and
baseball at various times in my childhood i always healed very
 quickly and this was the damnably longest healing that ever
Continue reading “Real Estate.”
Confessions Of A Recycled Shopping Bag
— John Yau
I used to be a plastic bottle
I used to be scads of masticated wattle
I used to be epic spittle, aka septic piddle
I used to be a pleasant colleague
I used to be a radiant ingredient
I used to be a purple polyethylene pony
I used to be a phony upload project
I used to be a stony blue inhalant
I used to be a family-size turquoise bottle
I used to be a domesticated pink bubble
I used to be a pleasant red colleague
I used to be a beaming cobalt emollient
I used to be a convenient chartreuse antidepressant
Charles Bernstein and Erica Hunt
Oppositionality as Social Value
October 17, 2002
Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC Galleria
Reading 8:00 PM | ICC Auditorium
In A Restless World Like This Is
— Charles Bernstein
Not long ago, or maybe I dreamt it
Or made it up, or have suddenly lost
Track of its train in the hocus pocus
Of the dissolving days; no, if I bend
The turn around the corner, come at it
From all three sides at once, or bounce the ball
Against all manner of bleary-eyed fortune
Tellers—well, you can see for yourselves there’s
Nothing up my sleeves, or notice even
Rocks occasionally break if enough
Pressure is applied. As far as you go
In one direction, all the further you’ll
Have to go on before the way back has
Become totally indivisible.
—
Read more about Charles Bernstein
What I Know Now
— Erica Hunt
procrastination is a signal
to attend to the scent
earth unhinges,
to fall into the step
desire ungrids,
to write in blue ink and commit
to gesture
a map
match unknown
to its incognito.
I know now
when you think
the weather’s turning
it is inner
demarcation,
unstopped heart moves
stones as if clouds blown
across the sky, unstopped
eyes notice food lines’ length
unstopped attention notes
pavements filled with sleepers,
how the brutal war startles
even statues into panic,
losing the power to wake up
the future, its urgent
recovery.
I know now
to vote for sense
even if the tongue
risks blisters
through direct speech,
threatens barbwire,
to commit to motion always
my Black woman body’s
a spice cabinet,
a space ship,
my thick vessel
a perfect work.