2004 – 2005 Readings and Talks

The Sound of the Text

November 10, 2004

Seminar 5:30 PM | 462 ICC
Reading 8:00 PM | ICC 115

She She And She

—Charles Amirkhanian


Read more about Charles Amirkhanian

Ursonate

—Jaap Blonk


Read more about Jaap Blonk

Poetic Language and the Real?

February 3, 2005

Seminar 5:30 PM | ICC 462
Reading 8:00 PM | ICC Auditorium

From The Woman Who Could Read The Minds Of Dogs

—Leslie Scalapino

Suppose I was thinking something, say, not knowing I was thinking it
one day when I saw this dog before a house on the sidewalk,   he
not really sidling toward me,   but more like loping sideways?
Well, his tongue was lolling. And he was whining the way human heads
loll forward in sleep and whinny   Something so hesitant and low
More so, because it was a nasal sound, a neigh, the way
we neigh, not thinking, when we are nervously mimicking a horse.
So I mimicked him, the dog, right back. Really I was being flippant
by pretending to gallop like that ; and all the while not moving,
and letting my tongue slip forward between my lips, really laughing.


Read more about Leslie Scalapino

From What[The Flower Sermon]

 Ron Silliman

The flower sermon:
critique is like a swoon
but with a step increase,
the awkward daughter who grows
to join the NBA. All we want
(ever wanted) was to be on that
mailing list, parties at which slim caterers
offer red, yellow, black caviar
spilling off the triangular crackers
while off on the bay
rainbow-striped sails dip and bob and
twist. The woman in the yellow raincoat sits
on a bench at the edge of the schoolyard
while two small children race
across the asphalt plaza. Too many books
sail the moth. A tooth that’s lost
while flossing. A short line
makes for anxious music. Not breath
but civilization. The president
of Muzak himself says
that humming along constitutes time theft.
First snow in the Sierras = cold showers here.
The east is past. Margin of terror. The left
is where you feel it (dragging the eyes back
contra naturum). We’re just in it for the honey. Spackling paste
edits nails in wall when painted. Elbows,
shoulders jammed together on the bus.
At each transfer point, glimpse how lives
weave past. A woman with an interesting book
in her purse which I pretend not to see.

Continue reading “What [The Flower Sermon]” at Poets.org.


Read more about Ron Silliman

Digital Poetics: The Cultural Response 

March 3, 2005