Tom Orange

Posted in Past Guests  |  Tagged N-S

Conceptual poet, poetry scholar, and experimental musician Tom Orange has taught literature and writing at Vanderbilt, Georgetown and The George Washington Universities and now lives in Northeast Ohio, where he is active in the arts scene and local food movement. He recently released a book-length study of Clark Coolidge as a central figure between New American and Language poetries. His chapbook of conceptual prose, American Dialectics, was released in 2008. His recent and forthcoming work can be found in Aquaduck, Boog City, English Studies in Canada, The I.E. Reader, Typo, Wheelhouse, and 1913: A Journal of Forms.

from Course Description

 
TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM

Take a newspaper.

Take some scissors.

Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.

Cut out the article.

Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article
and put them all in a bag.

Shake gently.

Next take out each cutting one after the other.

Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.

The poem will resemble you.

And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming
sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.

Example:

when dogs cross the air in a diamond like ideas and the appendix of
the meninx tells the time of the alarm programme (the title is mine)
prices they are yesterday suitable next pictures/ appreciate the dream
era of the eyes/ pompously that to recite the gospel sort darkens/
group apotheosis imagine said he fatality power of colours/ carved
flies (in the theatre) flabbergasted reality a delight/ spectator all
to effort of the no more 10 to 12/ during divagation twirls descends
pressure/ render some mad single-file flesh on a monstrous crushing
stage/ celebrate but their 160 adherents in steps on put on my
nacreous/ sumptuous of land bananas sustained illuminate/ joy ask
together almost/ of has the a such that the invoked visions/ some
sings latter laughs/ exits situation disappears describes she 25 dance
bows/ dissimulated the whole of it isn’t was/ magnificent has the band
better light whose lavishness stage music-halls me/ reappears
following instant moves live/ business he didn’t has lent/ manner
words come these people

Links

• “Scratching the ’70s: The Uncollected Clark Coolidge.” thoughtmesh. 23 June 2008.
• “Arrangement and Density: A Context for Early Clark Coolidge.” Jacket. April 2001.

Media

Societies of American Poetry: Dissenting Practices | February 21, 2003
Field Work