BURLY MAN

AN EXHALATION OF AMERICA


By now, several of my friends in poetry land have taken note of the blog-worthy occurrence of Charles Bernstein in Robert Pinsky's weekly "POET'S CHOICE" column in the WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD. Now, this truly is a memorable event, but there's one element that seems to have gone unremarked.

Pinsky writes of Charles Bernstein, "he means everything he says."

How do you suppose he knows that?

REPUBLICAN GRAMMATOLOGY continued

"ISRAEL MAY HAVE MISUSED CLUSTER BOMBS, U.S. SAYS"

duh . . . do ya think?

This is a headline in today's New York Times, reporting on official revelations that Israel may have used American supplied cluster bombs in civilian areas, in violation of the agreements under which Israel received the supplies in the first place. You may recall that, during the war on Lebanon last year, the Isaraeli Ambassador to the UN denied that IDF forces were using cluster bombs in Lebanon the same week that his government put in a request to the US for replacement supplies of the weapons. While the war was in progress, and while the ambassador was issuing his denials, international journalists on the ground in Lebanon reported seeing the American made munitions in civilian areas. After the war, a multitude of the dangerous unexploded weapons were found on the ground, and photographed.

but it's the grammar that catches my eye this morning --


In response to a question from a journalist, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department replied:

"There may likely could have been some violation."

TOO SAD

JAMES BROWN'S BODY LIES NOT

MOULDERING IN THE GRAVE

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Amina Baraka, Amiri Baraka and A.L. Nielsen

ALICE COLTRANE

ALICE COLTRANE

AUGUST 27, 1937 - JANUARY 12, 2007

ONE DAY I ASKED OF THE LORD ABOUT COMING HOME AT THE END OF MY LIFE. THE LORD SAID TO ME, "TURIYA, YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO COME HOME, YOU WILL BE HOME."

--ALICE COLTRANE, 1972

TWO POEMS

{as previously indicated, I have no photo of myself at the MLA "off site" reading -- So, here in lieu of photographic self-representation, are the two minutes worth of poetry I read in Philadelphia}

Hula Hoops


1

A dance that must be done
Describes two
Interlocked ellipses
Got to maintain
Uphold the hoop
It’s
The tips
Trembling
Whammo

2

Two describe a
Whirling möbius
The dancer bent double
Or else an armature
Amateur engine
Idling

3

Three leave
One limb free
Awkward still
Skips
The ground a
Beat




4

Or more’s
Solitary
Each a pit
Stacked
A dervish’s
Wobbly cell
Who is that
Condemned child
Inside those
Plastic haloes

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Untitled

Immortality
Seems so
Slight
A project


You’d think
We’d think

Something better


Of ourselves

OF REPUBLICAN GRAMMATOLOGY

It's been more than two decades now since I first began to notice a particularly odd politicization of syntax going on among Republican politicians. Thanks to the advent of television cameras in the U.S. Senate, I was witness to Robert Dole's many speeches, in the course of which he could be heard repeatedly speaking of the "Democrat Party." At first I thought he had simply misread his text, but then I heard him making use of this painfully truncated adjectival form in other contexts. Perhaps the most memorable came when Dole, someone who had campaigned as a wounded hero of the second World War, spoke of the "Democrat Wars" we had been in, starting with the one that he had fought in himself.

While I might at first have been tempted to chalk this up to Dole's poor grasp of standard English, I soon began to hear this same usage spreading throughout the Republican Party. By the millennium, it had gotten to the point that no conservative spokesperson appearing on television appeared capable of uttering the phrase "Democratic Party" or indeed of ever using the adjectival form of "Democrat" to modify any phrase at all. In his press conference following the 2006 elections, marked, after all, by Democratic victories, President Bush couldn't seem to get the syllable "ic" past his lips. He spoke of "Democrat leaders," "Democrat votes" and, as always, of the "Democrat Party."

By now, not only English teachers but journalists had begun to take notice. The WASHINGTON POST ran an editorial by Ruth Marcus that traced this grammatically incorrect locution, now so prevalent among those who would denounce political correctness, as far back as the Harding administration. Senator Joseph McCarthy, to bring things back to the Senate, was especially fond of this construction, using it, as the Columbia guide to Standard American Usage observes, to deny the Democratic Party any suggestion that it might actually "be democratic."

But what caught my attention in the wake of the election and of Marcus's editorial was a letter in response from one Robert Brantley. Brantley wrote to the POST to explain that Bush's use of such phrases as "Democrat Party" was not ungrammatical at all, but was, rather, a sign of the excellent education that George W. Bush had received during his years at Yale University.

Now, the Yale department of English has been accused of any number of horrors in recent times, but this is the first time I've ever seen them held responsible for President Bush's tenuous grasp of English syntax.

Brantley, setting the WASHINGTON POST stylists straight, explained that "it is incorrect to add an 'ic' which results in a word -- 'democratic' -- that has generic applicability to ideals that predate the Democrat Party by millennia."

I've been teaching English for a good while, but even I don't have all the prescriptive rules of grammar at my fingertips -- and so I maintain a fine little library of usage manuals, on and off line, that I consult when in doubt. Some of these manuals even include contributions from professors of English at Yale, and yet nowhere in the literature I have surveyed have I been able to locate any such rule as the one cited with such assurance by Robert Brantley in the President's defense.

On the other hand, surely any good student at Yale during the year's of George W. Bush's attendance would have learned in U.S. History courses that our Jeffersonian party, the oldest continuously existing national political party in America, began to call itself the "Democratic Republicans" back in the eighteenth century, well before the advent of the Republic Party we know and love today. And surely Robert Brantley would not want us to believe that our highly literate founding fathers were guilty of egregious violations of good usage.

Baraka/Spooky Remix

[photo/text remix contributed by Howard RambsyII]

SHOOT THE PIANO PLAYER,or MLA GROUP READING 2006 PART II

Brent Cunningham and Patrick Durgin consult on the rules for a double sestina

Kathy Lou Schultz

Lamont Steptoe

Laura Moriarty

Leevi Lehto

Linda Russo

Linh Dinh

Loren Goodman

Matthew Cooperman

Michael Tod Egerton

Nat Anderson

Nick Monfort

Norma Cole

Patrick Durgin

Rachel Blau DuPlessis

Ron Silliman

Susan Schultz

Timothy Yu

Tom Orange

Tracie Morris

Tyrone Williams
















Carla Harryman

Barrett Watten

____________________________________________________________________
Then, some four minutes into the six minutes of Walter Lew's allotted two minutes:

(not depicted: coats and smashed contents thereof beneath piano -- gracious benediction delivered by Yunte Huang)
____________________________________________________________________


The Heroic Remnant, or, Tieless in Gaza

MLA POETRY READING PART I

What began as a small "off campus" reading by innovative poets (and one critic) during the 1989 conference of the Modern Language Association has now grown to something like a floating BURNING MAN of verse. This year's gathering of the poets took place on Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square on Dec. 29. That first reading, organized by Rod Smith in D.C.'s Adams Morgan neighborhood, was a comparatively simple affair. This year's, undertaken by Bob Perelman and company, required sponsorship (thanks, University of Alabama Press) and even insurance (evidently somebody thought getting more than half a century of poets in one room represented a substantial risk). The poets read roughly, and roughly in alpha order by first name. Most were surprisingly good about staying within their two minute allowance. (I have the digital recording, and thus the evidence of who was naughty and who was nice.) I'm sorry I wasn't able to get photos of everybody. (Hey, I don't even have a photo of myself reading.) But here, roughly in order of their appearance, are the poets themselves.





THE LIST (with annotations by Ron Silliman)

Aaron Kunin

Adam Fieled


Sasha Steensen

Ron Silliman & Lamont Steptoe

Tom Devaney

Ben Friedlander in red -- Bill Howe in thought

Bob Perelman

Aaron Kunin, Hank Lazer & Joseph Donahue

Brent Cunningham phones in his performance

Brian Kim Stefans

Camille Martin

Cathy Eisenhower

Christian Bok

Eduardo Espino (Loren Goodman reading the translation)

Elaine Terranova

Ethel Rackin

Evie Shockley

Frank Sherlock







Hank Lazer

Maria Damon continues her epic serial work in progress

Herman Beavers

Jena Osman

Jennifer Scappetone

Joan Retallack

Caroline Bergvall

Johanna Drucker

John Wilkinson

Josh Schuster

The Insured