What Kind of Times Are These


There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill
and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows
near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted
who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled
this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,
our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,
its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods
meeting the unmarked strip of light—
ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:
I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you
anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these
to have you listen at all, it's necessary
to talk about trees.

--Adrienne Rich

I am very ambivalent regarding self-education platforms in artist communities that serve to consolidate rather than extend knowledge by encouraging a small group of (often highly educated) people to share their knowledge with one another. I’m also frustrated by the fact that such projects often fail to engage the active discourse of critical pedagogy, and that they are uninterested in the history of learning outside of the classroom. I wish that these projects were ambitious enough to consider the implications of their work for education theory and generous enough to join a larger conversation.

In contrast to these, I’m very inspired in the work of Huong Ngo, an artist who has investigated education theory to inform her own practice as a professor and seeks to build upon existing models for alternative education. Book Club was also influenced by the open reading and facilitated conversation model of 16 Beaver, a group that is consistently attentive to the relationship between art, education, and empowerment. For many years, I have followed the work of Shaina Anand, and I am hugely supportive of her collaborative project, pad.ma. From the perspective of display, two projects that Jamal and I considered as we developed “Alpha’s Bet” were “I Wish It Were True,” a VHS archive by Leslie Hewitt and William Cordova, and the e-flux initiated Martha Rosler Library.

- From a conversation with Steffani Jemison, opening an exhibit at the New Museum in NYC.

What's Houston Like?

So many arty/hipstery people who have never been to Houston give me a sad or confused face whenever I say I am from Houston (and that I like it).  They tell me they like Austin or mention something about driving through on the 10 from one place to another. Or they say something about how much it sucks or how they Bushes or Rick Perry or how backwards and conservative it must be.

So this post is for all those people. Days like this I am impressed and happy with Houston.  Perfect weather and chock full of events.




11am - Ctrl Art Create at Heights Theater (with incredible letterpressers from the Workhorse Printmakers)


2pm - Public Poetry Reading Series Downtown at Discovery Green







and a birthday party for a special friend.

The next person who asks me if I like Houston, I am going to mention this day of politically-charged, aesthetically wild art and words and events.  This city is full of life and energy.

Xoxo from the Third Coast.

It is indeed becoming more and more difficult, even senseless, for me to write an official English. And more and more my own language appears to me like a veil that must be torn apart in order to get at the things (or the Nothingness) behind it. ... As we cannot eliminate language all at once, we should at least leave nothing undone that might contribute to its falling into disrepute. To bore one hole after another in it, until what lurks behind it – be it something or nothing – begins to seep through; I cannot imagine a higher goal for a writer today. Or is literature alone to remain behind in the old lazy ways that have been so long ago abandoned by music and painting? Is there something paralysingly holy in the vicious nature of the word that is not found in the elements of the other arts? Is there any reason why that terrible materiality of the word surface should not be capable of being dissolved, like for example the sound surface, torn by enormous pauses, of Beethoven's seventh Symphony, so that through whole pages we can perceive nothing but a path of sounds suspended in giddy heights, linking unfathomable abysses of silence? ... ... At first it can only be a matter of somehow finding a method by which we can represent this mocking attitude towards the word, through words. In this dissonance between the means and their use it will perhaps become possible to feel a whisper of that final music or that silence that underlies All. - Samuel Beckett

New Orleans Reading!

New Orleans
17 Poets Literary and Performance Series
SPECIAL EVENT: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25
Join us for a reception 7-8pm prior to the reading
Readings begin at 8pm, NOLA Time with complimentary wine and snacks
 Poets Jen Hofer, Andy Young, and John Pluecker

Jen Hofer is a Los Angeles-based poet, translator, interpreter, teacher, knitter, book-maker, public letter-writer, and urban cyclist. Her most recent books are the homemade chapbook Lead & Tether(Dusie Kollektiv, 2011); Ivory Black, a translation of Negro marfil by Myriam Moscona (Les Figues Press, 2011); a series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press, 2009);sexoPUROsexoVELOZ and Septiembre, a translation from Dolores Dorantes by Dolores Dorantes (Counterpath Press and Kenning Editions, 2008); The Route, a collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos, 2008); and lip wolf, a translation of lobo de labio by Laura Solórzano (Action Books, 2007).Recent poems and translations have appeared in Aufgabe, Mandorla, Or, out of nothing, TRY and with+stand. She teaches at CalArts, Goddard College, and Otis College, and works nationally and locally as a social justice interpreter through antenna, a language justice collaborative. Her installation titled “Uncovering: A Quilted Poem Made from Donated and Foraged Materials from Wendover, Utah” will be on view at the Center for Land Use Interpretation in Utah starting in November 2011. 

John Pluecker is a writer, interpreter, translator and teacher. His work is informed by experimental poetics, radical aesthetics and cross-border cultural production and has appeared in journals and magazines in the U.S. and Mexico, including the Rio Grande Review, Picnic, Third Text, Animal Shelter and Literal. He has published more than five books in translation from the Spanish, including essays by a leading Mexican feminist, short stories from Ciudad Juárez and a police detective novel. There are two chapbooks of his work, Routes into Texas (DIY, 2010) and Undone (Dusie Kollektiv, 2011).

Andy Young is the co-editor of Meena Magazine, a bilingual Arabic-English literary journal, and teaches Creative Writing at New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. Her work was recently featured on National Public Radio’s “The World” and published in Best New Poets 2009 (University of Virginia Press),Callaloo, Guernica, and Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia & Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co). She has published two chapbooks, All Fires the Fire (Faulkner House Books) and mine (Lavender Ink), and has been awarded the Faulkner Festival’s Marble Faun Poetry Award, a Louisiana Division of the Arts Fellowship, a Surdna Artist-Teacher Fellowship, and writing residencies at the Santa Fe Arts Institute and the Vermont Studio Center. She was an invited guest to poetry festivals in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Her work has also appeared in electronic music, buses in Santa Fe, flamenco productions, jewelry designs by Jeanine Payer, and a tattoo parlor in Berlin.

The most annoying habit certain Korean academics have is the way they plough through a 200-page translation that took you years to finish then triumphantly emerge crying that they have found a mistake. They see no merit in the 199 pages without a mistake, and have nothing to say about them, but they are comforted by finding proof that foreigners cannot possibly understand Korean perfectly. The mistake might be that you have called the sky "blue" when the Korean word also can mean "green," it does not matter.

- Brother Anthony (a.k.a. An Sonjae)  in an interview here at Asymptote Journal.



Ocupemos Tijuana: "Somos el 99%, los sin nada, estamos indignados con este sistema que promueve la explotación, la desigualdad, la discriminación y la violencia de género. El 1% de grandes ricos no debe estar por encima de todo el pueblo". Detenidos por la policía durante la madrugada del día 18 de octubre.

The Occupy Tijuana Movement was shut down by the police this morning.  The police moved in and removed the participants from a median in the main financial/commercial district of the city, arresting all involved.

 

Oh, What a Difference 31 Years Makes




George Bush calling for legal status for all undocumented workers - "honest, decent, good, strong people." And Bush saying, "I dont want to see six and eight year old kids being made totally uneducated and made to feel like they're living outside the law." And then Ronald Reagan calling for opening the border both ways.

Never thought I would say this, but Bush and Reagan are right!

Afternoon with the Little Red Leaves Textile Series

What does a tiny series of books make.  A tiny series of books made of strings and textiles.  What could a tiny series of enclothed feelings make in the world.  How could anyone look at them without seeing their smallness, but also the love and care for each.

One of the authors in the series, Mairéad Byrne, has a bio that says she was "born into her father's library in Dublin, the fifth of eight chapbooks" and these little books feel this way too, born slowly and growing more numerous over time, finding homes on shelves.  Their homes outsourced all around the globe.


Like, for example, A Reading: Birds by Beverly Dahlen. The fact of the two poems in the book.  The first one a poem by Dahlen that spans over the course of several pages and thinks about birds, about doves, about how we think about or see or look at or say birds.  How do the words say the "cranes" or the "tule fog" or "sparrows" or all the other "mythical creatures" gathered.  How did we learn the names of all these birds.  Who did the teaching of what is a "robin" and what is a "sparrow."  Who would "mother them."

The end of Dahlen's poem is jarring, dwelling in "how miserable is this imitation:" "the mourning doves' hoo-hoo-hoo."  And there is something that is felt to be lost, something that has seemed to escape from the book, what was lost in the dove's call becoming those marks on the page.  But then moving on, the realization as Dahlen includes an endnote with "the story of the mourning dove as told by the Yurok people of northwestern California."  And suddenly, going back in time to these first words, this first writing or human singing of the song of the mourning dove, the miserableness of the imitation of the hoo-hoo-hoo is deepened, added to, made more profound and somehow the echoing of this new imitation thickens the previous attempt: "Wee...poo...poo."

And then Lucky by Mairéad Byrne with illustrations by Abigail Lingford.  This one is orange and red and green and black and all kinds of colors irrecognizable to this colorblind eye and, when opened, reveals a more colorblind friendly field of black polka dots (that aren't actually black I think) and yes I do feel lucky, like lucky is what I feel like to have such a beautiful little object in my hand.  And suddenly I am making rugs and observing centipedes and lap-tops together for the first time.  And then the eye is popping out through a series of Figures, scientific illustrations of how an eye comes to protrude and then exude from the eye-socket and it's weird and beautiful.


And in a rush, I think I don't need to fix up my house, I can just set up the floodlights.  I'm told I "can rent them fairly cheap or even invest in a set."  And with those floodlights I'll never have to worry about my ramshackly house again.  Yes!  And I never saw a more thorough meditation on an unexpected "Heap of Snow" in the back of a pick-up truck than the one found here.  Ever.  At the end of the book, Byrne comments on "anything on which smaller things feed" and she reminds me I'm thinking about these little books.

What do these little books feed on.

Holes punched out and made to run a course around the text:


Tiny windows with tiny microscopic slides slid through the carefully sized gaps, creating tiny new poems: collaborations between book-maker and poet:


And I've figured out what these tiny books feed on.  You should too.

Oh, El Paso

Just saw this article on El Paso and their domestic partner controversy.  Some right-wing preacher launched a crusade to unseat the mayor and two council members, because they approved domestic partner health benefits in the city.

My favorite part is this:

Of the 150 city employees who were subsequently notified that they would lose benefits for dependents, 19 were in domestic partnerships, including 2 who are gay. The cost to the city of providing benefits to the partners of those 19 was about $34,000 a year, Mr. Cook said. Among those also losing their benefits, he said, were foster children, retirees and disabled relatives cared for by city employees. 

So, let's be clear: because of two (two!) gay domestic partnerships, an entire movement was launched that eventually won its goal!  The result: they succeeded at denying health benefits to the two gays and also to straight domestic partners, foster kids, old folks and the disabled.

Wow, that's really family values.

(Sorry for the sarcasm, but it's the only emotional response I can muster today.)


¡Lectura de
YAhora Reading!

&Now * ¿Y Ahora? * ¡Ya es hora! * What now? * Now is the time! * And how!
(La versión en español sigue abajo.)

Open Call: all are welcome
¡YAhora: A Reading and Listening Adventure!
Sunday, October 16, 2011 at 1pm
El Grafógrafo, Pasaje Rodríguez
Tijuana, Baja California  

Co-curated/uncurated by Jen Hofer and John Pluecker and co-sponsored by the bookstore and café El Grafógrafo and cog·nate binational arts collective, YAhora will take place one day after the &Now festival ends. &Now will be held on the campus of UC San Diego in La Jolla, approximately 30 miles away from Mexico. YAhora invites you to traverse the border, ignore the border, contemplate the border, read poetry to the border, perform or de-perform the border, and enjoy the mixing of cultures, languages and experiences that the Tijuana-San Diego Metropolitan Zone invites.

YAhora is an opportunity for writers who have come to &Now from all over the U.S. and beyond and fellow writers in Tijuana to connect, to converse, and to learn about each other’s works and worlds. We intend this event as a way for folks who have attended &Now to engage with the literary and cultural community of the larger binational region, and as an opportunity for writers from Tijuana and Baja California Norte who can’t attend &Now to experience some of the amazing writers who will be at the festival.

This invitation is being extended to all participants in the &Now festival as well as to writers in Tijuana and beyond. Anyone/everyone is welcome to read. You are invited to read in the language of your choice—whatever that language may be. We will not provide on-site translation (of written work) or interpretation (of spoken word) at the event. If you would like to translate some of your work (into English or Spanish especially) prior to the event, we encourage you to find independent ways to do that. As always, we also encourage non-translated, cacophonous and joyful multilingualism wherever and whenever possible.

The reading will be held in the Pasaje Rodríguez in Downtown Tijuana. The Pasaje is one of many alleyways in Tijuana's central area that were previously dedicated to the sale of tourist souvenirs and Mexican curios to visitors.  However, over the last ten years, beginning after 9/11 and continuing with the violence associated with the so-called "War on Drugs," the number of tourists in Tijuana has declined dramatically. Pasaje Rodríguez is one of a number of local spaces that have been reclaimed by artists, writers and culture-makers for public art, gallery spaces, cafés, bookstores, thrift shops and more.

If you would like to participate, please email John Pluecker at plujo7@gmail.com.  The length of the readings/performances (probably 1-10 minutes) will depend on how many people sign up. RSVP for reader-participants is required by October 7, 2011.

HOW TO GET FROM LA JOLLA TO THE BORDER:
Unfortunately, Sunday bus service from La Jolla to downtown San Diego is not good.  The one bus (#30) that makes the trip takes a long route that takes over an hour.  However, once you get to central San Diego, the trolley will take you from downtown San Diego to the border in about an hour.  

If you are driving, you will drive south on the 5 to San Ysidro.  Take Exit 1A toward Camino de la Plaza.  Park at one of the many parking lots located in the area. Most cost $15/day and it is an easy trek across by foot and into downtown.  If you are not familiar with driving in Tijuana, we would recommend you do not drive across the border.  It is much easier to get to downtown Tijuana on foot or by cab then in a car.

Walk across the border.  After you cross, you have two options.  You can walk to your right, across the Tijuana River and into downtown (about 20 minute walk).  Or you can take one of the many taxis available in the area.  Take one of the taxis downtown to the Pasaje Rodriguez.  The Pasaje is located on Avenida Revolución between 3rd and 4th Streets.  It is an alleyway located immediately beside the Caliente Casino on Revolución.

+

¡Lectura de
YAhora Reading!
&Now * ¿Y Ahora? * ¡Ya es hora! * ¿Ahora qué? * ¡Ya es el momento! * ¡Como ya!

Convocatoria abierta: tod@s bienvenid@s
¡YAhora: Una aventura del leer y escuchar!
El domingo, 16 de october de 2011 a la 1pm
El Grafógrafo, Pasaje Rodríguez
Tijuana, Baja California  

Co-curado/no-curado por Jen Hofer y John Pluecker y co-patrocinado por la libreria y café El Grafógrafo y el colectivo de arte binacional cog·nate, YAhora se llevará a cabo un día después de que termine el festival de &Now.  La sede de &Now será en el campus de la Universidad de California San Diego en La Jolla, a casi 50 kilometros de México.  YAhora te invita a cruzar la frontera, no hacerle caso a la frontera, contemplar la frontera, leer poesía a la frontera, hacer un performance o un des-performance de la frontera y disfrutar de la mezcla de culturas, idiomas y experiencias que se propicia en la zona metropolitana de Tijuana-San Diego.

YAhora es una oportunidad para que l@s escritores que hayan venido de todas partes del EEUU y más allá establezcan contactos con escritores de Tijuana para que platiquen y aprendan de las obras y los mundos de los demás.  Queremos que este evento sea una manera por la que l@s participantes de &Now puedan entablar una conversación con la comunidad literaria y cultural de la región binacional y una oportunidad para que l@s escritores de Tijuana y Baja California que no puedan asistir a &Now conozcan a l@s escritores maravillos@s que estarán en el festival.

Esta invitación se extiende a tod@s l@s participantes del festival &Now y de la misma manera a escritores de Tijuana y más allá.  Se da la bienvenida a cualquier persona y a tod@s a que lean.  Te invitamos a leer en el idioma de tu elección-cualquiera que sea ese idioma.  No vamos a proporcionar traducción (de obra escrita) en situ ni interpretación (de la palabra hablada) en el evento.  Si quisieras traducir tu texto (especialmente al inglés o al español) antes del evento, te alentamos a encontrar maneras independientes de hacerlo. También, como siempre, apoyamos el multilingüismo no-traducido, cacofónico y gozoso donde quiera y cuando sea.

La lectura se llevará a cabo en el Pasaje Rodríguez en el centro de Tijuana. El Pasaje es un callejón entre muchos en la zona central de Tijuana que antes se usaba para vender souvenirs turísticos y curiosidades mexicanas a los visitantes. Sin embargo, durante los últimos 10 años, empezando después del 11 de septiembre y siguiendo con la violencia asociada con la llamada “Guerra contra las Drogas”, el número de turistas en Tijuana ha disminuído dramáticamente. El Pasaje Rodríguez es uno de varios espacios locales que han sido reclamados por artistas, escritores y creadores de cultura para el arte público, espacios de galería, cafés, librerías, tiendas de segunda y más.

Si quisieras participar, por favor comunícate por email con John Pluecker a plujo7@gmail.com. El tiempo de cada lectura/performance (probablemente entre 1 y 10 minutos) dependerá de cuánta gente se inscribe para participar. Se requiere el RSVP de lectores-participantes antes del 7 de octubre de 2011.

CÓMO LLEGAR DE LA JOLLA A LA FRONTERA:
Desgraciadamente, hay escaso servicio de camión desde La Jolla hacia el centro de San Diego los domingos. El único camión (#30) que hace ese camino toma una ruta larga que dura más de una hora. Sin embargo, una vez que llegues al centro de San Diego, el trolley te llevará del centro a la frontera en más o menos una hora.

Si vienes manejando, irás hacia el sur en la carretera 5 a San Ysidro. Toma la salida 1A hacia Camino de la Plaza. Estaciónate en uno de los muchos estacionamientos ubicados en la zona. La mayoría cobran $15/día y es una caminata fácil para cruzar la frontera y llegar al centro de Tijuana. Si no estás acostumbrad@ a manejar en Tijuana, recomendamos que no cruces la frontera manejando. Es mucho más fácil llegar al centro de Tijuana cruzando a pie o en taxi que en un coche.

Cruza la frontera caminando. Después de cruzar, tienes dos opciones. Puedes caminar hacia la derecha, cruzando el Río de Tijuana hacia el centro (una caminata de aproximadamente 20 minutos). O puedes tomar un taxi de los muchos que se encuentran en la zona. Toma el taxi al centro, al Pasaje Rodríguez. El Pasaje se ubica en Avenida Revolución entre la 3a y la 4a calle. Es un callejón ubicado inmediatamente al lado del Casino Caliente sobre Avenida Revolución. 

A really great anonymous review of Jonathan Safran Foer's book Tree of Codes at HTMLGiant made by excising words from Michael Faber’s review of Tree of Codes in The Guardian.

 Did everyone already see how in an article in the Guardian, Jonathan Safran Foer disparages "conceptual work" and "exercises" and "concrete poetry?" Seems incredible he could do this and still, at the same time, he publishes a cut-up version of The Street of Crocodiles. Sorry, but how is this sleight of hand possible? He says:

I had thought of trying the technique with the dictionary, the encyclopedia, the phone book, various works of fiction and non-fiction, and with my own novels. But any of those options would have merely spoken to the process. The resulting book would have been a conceptual work at best, and at worst an exercise. I was in search of a text whose erasure would somehow be a continuation of its creation.

His qualification of "conceptual work" and "exercises" as somehow low or negative is really unfortunate at best and disingenuous at worst (to steal his phrasing). I find both conceptual writing processes and exercises to be productive and generative. And I think the "process" is deeply important, at least on an equal level with "product." Despite his assertion to the contrary, most of the texts I've seen that use erasure (e.g. Nets, Humument, Anti-Humbolt, Darkness) are clearly a continuation of the original's creation.  He goes on:

My first several drafts read more like concrete poetry, and I hated them.

Wow, so evidently Safran Foer hated these drafts because they simply resembled "concrete poetry."

In conclusion, Safran Foer publishes a conceptual work that involves erasure as an exercise to structure a process that produces a book object with text that resembles visual poetry. And then just as quickly writes an essay excoriating all of the techniques, strategies and concepts from which he drew. 

Argh.

The review at HTMLGiant puts it best:

Foer [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] is a kind of [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] fixation [ ] [ ] [ ] although [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] exposed [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]. Foer [ ] [ ] discards [ ] [ ] Schulz [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] Foer [ ] [] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] killed [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] himself. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] forced [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] collapse [ ] [ ] [ ]. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] the book’s lack [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] destroy it. [ ] [ ] brave [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [] hack [] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]. The idea of [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] life [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ], [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] irony, [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] art [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ].