http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/01/02/seattle_poetry_chain_6_crysta Comments On: Seattle Poetry Chain 6: Crystal Curry by Paul Constant en-us Copyright 2009 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:01 -0800 Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:00:00 -0800 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Hello friends,
I am new to this forum and I'm wondering if there is any non-chain poems published here?
I think the idea of chain poetry is interesting but I work on my own. Any suggestions?

Thank you,
RPWH
Posted by ronnie_porter_was_here]]> Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:56:01 -0800 The Stranger
What's funny is that most of you Assholes are the type who no-doubt would spend hours at your neighborhood art gallery "ooo"ing and "aaah"ing over "how fabulous" a painting of an angry red square on puce linoleum dotted with rotting pigmy orchids painted in black is. So much for appreciation of abstract eh...

Anyway - I thought the poem read deliciously furious. Not much internal rhyme or meter that your everyday structured piece would have, no doubt it was meant as a harsh assessment of today's reality perhaps... Ha! Perhaps the Poet was being a bit tounge-in-cheek, reading all of you CRITICs' tarot cards, expecting your horrid response to her piece as if an out-of-body de ja vu... The piece is reading you! Perhaps she is calling the lot of you Unkempt Haters SWINE, after having gazed deeply in to a crystal ball, lingering a laugh as she blows smoke in your face...

I absolutely hate to be presumptuous in thinking I understand this abstract poem --- Some of you apparently could never open your mind wide enough to appreciate it --- But I for one appreciate the Artist having at least taken a step from the mundane tedium of structured UGH that most of you Swine have embraced as "normal" poetry.

Would that I could spit on the lot of you, stepping off my pulpit only long enough to tell you that your disrespect is abominable. In order to respect the very essence of poetry, you must first start by respecting the Artist who dares share her interpretation reality with us.

Jacquii.
http://jpicforum.info/miscellaneous/i-kn…
Posted by Jacquii Cooke]]> Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:57:57 -0700 The Stranger Posted by cheater kid]]> Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:42:57 -0700 The Stranger
Just a reminder that we're accepting submissions to the 2009 Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Competition until February 15. Please help us spread the word to all Washington State poets.

The winner receives $500 and 15 copies of the winning book, published in Fall 2009, along with a Seattle reading. Finalists receive $50 and a reading. All entrants receive a copy of the winning chapbook.

Individual poems will be considered for inclusion in the next issue of Floating Bridge Review, to be published in Summer 2009. Part 1 of the next FBR will be edited by John Olsen and will contain work by Subtext writers. Part 2, "Pontoon," will contain only poems submitted to the chapbook contest. You'll find no better mix of WA state work in 2009: popular, populist, and, hell yeah, at times abstruse.

Find our submission guidelines at http://www.scn.org/floatingbridge/submit…. (Ignore the incorrect competition year in the header.) The entry fee is $12.

Former winners include Nancy Pagh, Holly Hughes, Annette Spaulding-Convy, Timothy Kelly, Michael Bonacci, Kelli Russell Agodon, Joseph Green, Chris Forhan, Molly Tenenbaum, Nance Van Winckel, Bart Baxter, Donna Waidtlow, and Joannie Kervran. Some of these books are still available via our website.

Paul, thanks for the poetry chain.

Posted by Devon Musgrave]]> Sun, 25 Jan 2009 11:46:47 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Just Here to Agree]]> Sun, 18 Jan 2009 11:31:27 -0800 The Stranger Posted by James Madison]]> Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:14:54 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Elizabeth]]> Fri, 09 Jan 2009 09:08:48 -0800 The Stranger
Some of your observations are so egregiously misguided I cannot let them go by while the comment section here continues to have some pertinence. 1, Ask any poet, they will tell you Wallace Stevens is a tremendous poet. Cognitively rich, linguistically exquisite, fiercely imaginative. His influence is immeasurable. You may not respond to him. Fine. But to say he is "not a poet?" Get real. As much as I also like Spicer, he is not the Pope of Poetry. Much of what he said comes from Mars.

2., John Olson's work has been translated into Spanish and Dutch and his novel about Rimbaud is being considered for translation into French by a French publisher. I would not call that provincial. And guess what, he also lives in Seattle. So much for your "no Seattle poetry carries across borders." I am sure there are more Seattle poets with a connection to Europe. Donna Stonecipher comes to mind. Maybe someone else can provide more names.

3. As for the U.S. being insular, would you consider Ezra Pound or T.S. Eliot insular? Bob Dylan? Allen Ginsberg? Edgar Allan Poe? Walt Whitman? Gertrude Stein? Gertrude Stein spent almost her entire life living in France.

4. It sounds like you have a very rich mind and a great receptivity to poetry. My guess is that you are also relatively young. There is a certain stuffed-shirt quality to Steven's writing, I will admit, but just under the surface, is a raging sensuality. And so much poetry it is on the verge of boiling over.







Posted by pixelwizard]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:38:11 -0800 The Stranger I will say this and be gone. Poetry Chains, whether they began with McSweeney's or before, are tired either way. It has nothing to do with Ms. Curry. I never said anything about her. I was asking you something. You see? YOU.
About promoting,... well, never mind.

Posted by nunya]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:04:05 -0800 The Stranger
So, let me get this straight: I was ripping off McSweeney's before, but now that I've pointed out they have a past before McSweeney's, poetry chains are "old, tried, tired, ancient and Boring"? Why don't you just admit that you hate everything I do because it's me doing it and leave Ms. Curry out of it? Stop being so fucking bitter. But thanks for driving the number of comments on my posts up!
Posted by Paul Constant]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:47:11 -0800 The Stranger
wallace stevens was a poet

you might not like his poems

but he was a poet


i.e. he MADE poems
Posted by Mickey O'Connor]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:36:38 -0800 The Stranger
http://ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2009/01/…

Some work by Crystal Curry
with a comments stream
that has broken out into warfare

right before his post about real warfare breaking out in Gaza...

The nobel secretary who just lost their job for commenting on the ongoing provincial obsession of American poetry is relevant to this here conflict:

"Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world," Engdahl said. "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature."

The American Poetry that follows you to Stockholm is not W. S. Merwin, and it sure as hell has nothing to do with Judith Roche's terrible salmon poems (Gary Snyder's a footnote to the more interesting New American poets, and no one anywhere has heard of Roethke outside of the UW English department - he's crap, the only people that read his poems knew him personally)

Actually, no Seattle poetry carries across borders - unless you count Vancouver (which you should, all the way back to the early sixties, the first major conference dealing with New American poetry was in Canada in 63 - also the Kootenay School's week-long Language Poetry festival in 85 was the first time those writers were ever offered major academic funding - most of them had never even met one another), in which case Robert Mittenthal and Nico are all there is to Seattle Poetry, just about.

My point, which I suppose I've spent too much time in making already, is that writing is something that stays with you, it doesn't start and end in some marginal place that you can consume/understand/experience/master ephemerally (I think this problem extends to Wallace Stevens myself - not a bad writer, but not a poet. "Stevens is the favorite poet of people who hate poetry" -Spicer "the more property you own, the more you write like Wallace Stevens" -Brian Kim Stefans).

Poems have more to do with visual works or architecture than any other form of writing - you pass through and around them more them watch them as in film, listen as in music, or even read them as you would a novel - the words only have order as an arbitrary (perhaps musical, but only superficial) rule, sense goes everywhere always.

(your Swedish pink slip is here: http://www.pw.org/content/nobel_secretar…
Posted by -w]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:53:49 -0800 The Stranger While I am here, I will ask where this poem rates on your Laugh-o-Meter? Would you and your hiptard friends make fun of it?
And what will you do when a Bus Poetry person gets ahold of the chain and passes it on to other Bus Poets? Will you then only be promoting "dumb, bad poetry"? I assume at that point you will not take any responsibility. Just asking.
And why are you determined to bring my name into this? That's my choice; not yours. You know who I am and I know who you are. Leave it at that. Or is this how these comments work?
Posted by nunya]]> Tue, 06 Jan 2009 08:51:06 -0800 The Stranger
And Crystal @ 31: You weren't mean-spirited at all; you were just right. Thanks.
Posted by Paul Constant]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:50:17 -0800 The Stranger
CC
Posted by Crystal]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 17:37:50 -0800 The Stranger Posted by nunya]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 16:14:13 -0800 The Stranger
You are doing good work, Mr. Constant!

You are a wonderful poet, Ms. Curry!

Sloggers with graduate degrees in poetry, we wipe our butts with your diplomas!
Posted by -w]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:55:14 -0800 The Stranger
L= spelled incorrect. There isnt a correct way to read. Or maybe there isn't really an incorrect way to read. Calm down and try to enjoy the world around you. We're all equals...

ps//I nominate Nico for the poet unpopulist??

What is wrong with y'all? The whole point is that Nick Licata & Frank Video's PP thing makes no sense -- or is that too much cents.


Posted by Franklin Nick]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:45:09 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Poesis on Lockdown]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:15:05 -0800 The Stranger Posted by nunya]]> Mon, 05 Jan 2009 08:25:56 -0800 The Stranger
Poetry (and fiction, too, for that matter) is about words (I totally agree, Pixelwizard--if that is your real name). Words arraigned. (Ahem.) But also one word following another, in this way creating a sort of chronology. I think poems do tell stories, they can't help it. The "plot" occurs as your eyes move from left to right, down, left to right, as the words get strung together. So I disagree about that part of CC's critique (telling stories), tho not the spirit of her critique, which I agree with. So the question becomes what kind of journey does the poem take you on? What kind of experience does it generate? How comfortable is it in taking this sort of action? Is it like a game? Is it attempting to push the conscious? Is it trying to amuse?

I suppose we all like a different signal to noise ratio. But what really gets my knickers in a twist is the fact that all the other art forms seem to not only be allowed but are expected to go in different directions. Rock bands do not just please but fuck with their audience. (Eg Sonic Youth.) Jazz went Free. Classical has gone abstract. That Cellist from the Seattle Symphony (forgive me for forgetting his name) has been lauded for his challenging programming, including Messiaen. The visual arts are commended for tampering with our consciousness. So why not the written word? That, my friends, is the real crime.

Poems (and all the arts, really) need to be judged on what they're trying to do. Sometimes they should be judged harshly. But not because they don't fit into a pre-prescribed paradigm. So, folks, give the work a shot before embarrassing yourselves. Do you really think CC's only motive is to show how smart she is? There's not a word in the poem that forces you to rush to the OED, or bone up on the Frankfurt School, or understand by what Derrida refers to as the difference between difference and differance. Nor does anyone need to drink any kool aid. If there's difficulty in this poem is relational between the words. And between the words and the reader. And the poem really does have some nice humor.

Finally, I nominate Nico for Poet Populist. Do I have a second?
Posted by Vel Crow]]> Sun, 04 Jan 2009 23:52:47 -0800 The Stranger
be patient.

no worries, it will reach you in due time. don’t forget this is a weekly feature. many many weeks to go.

what the Seattle poetry community needs is some cross-pollinating.

ive been to slams – even was a judge at last years wildcard slot at Tost.

ive been to readings at cheap wine and poetry, it’s about time, poetswest, open books, elliott bay books, arundel books, gallery 1412, rendezvous readings, library readings, some other stuff at the hug-o-house, etc - anywhere they happen – even go to readings where i know no one.

and that’s just in the last year. 20 years ago there were perhaps 3 places to hear readings in town.

i try to go to every new reading series that pops up.

why?

because I enjoy pain? yes & no.

it’s because I like hearing what Seattle poets are up to. i am both rewarded and frustrated by this. i look out for new poets doing something different.

at subtext, we rarely get young poets venturing out to explore what we’re doing. that’s too bad. tho not unexpected.

here’s something coming up on jan. 7th at subtext you could come to that you probably wont see/hear anywhere else. http://subtextreadingseries.blogspot.com…

i think that’s as moderate minded as I can get –

nico

Posted by megaphone]]> Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:46:45 -0800 The Stranger
The feedback here, for the most part, is general and abstract. When it is specific it is a plea for the poster's friends or acquaintances to be given space in this forum, or it is a defense of the work and an accurate attack on the dominant aesthetic (an aesthetic in which timidity and convention are rewarded,) or it is in Mickey's case an effort to expand the aesthetic of those who would criticize the poem and poet. You'll have to widen your field to appreciate the Subtext folks.

The Stranger gets kudos for realizing that the Poet Popularity contest does nothing to push the art ahead, and this is evidenced by the level of dialog here. Unfortunately The Stranger seems incapable of providing light, only heat. Can that change?

Crystal's critique is spot-on, the fangs only come out when the dominant aesthetic is threatened while the work remains sin duende. I wonder if Seattle deserves a more intelligent dialog, but for those afraid of anything innovative in poetry that will not happen, lest they re-evaluate their whole reason for writing, which remains socializing and reinforcement. This is why these Subtext poems scare them so. The need for socializing and reinforcement in art are two very weak attractor fields, not the kind which create lasting literature.

Posted by peN]]> Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:42:24 -0800 The Stranger Exactly my point. You're here defending poetry that you find "interesting", not talking about poetry where people can understand what you're trying to say. Why are you writing? What do you want to say/ show the world through your work? If no-one but your closest circle of friends can understand what you're doing, have you still succeeded? Am I just a philistine because I find your work pretentious crap? Looking at the list of poets whose work you like I'm surprised that you assemble such meaningless idiocy and then call it poetry.
But I guess that being able to say that you write poetry so elevated only the truly superior can even begin to understand the deeply embedded concepts now slantingly revealed in your daring new forms is worth it.
That no one else gives a shit about what you're doing, that poetry as a form of language is becoming a locked preserve in the public mind because they can't see what you did there-hope you like living on the pay outs from 100 copy print runs and NEH grants.

Posted by some of my best friends are poets]]> Sun, 04 Jan 2009 08:35:30 -0800 The Stranger
I would hope that these mamby-asses have heard of John Keats, here is his advice:

"...Negative capabitity, that is, when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." -John Keats

Wake up people he said this in 1817!



Posted by pinkslip]]> Sat, 03 Jan 2009 17:23:46 -0800 The Stranger