Column094 — July/August 2009 « POETICKS-

Column094 — July/August 2009 « POETICKS

Column094 — July/August 2009

The State of North American Vizpo, Part Two

Small Press Review,
Volume 41, Numbers 7/8, July/August 2009

    Poetry, Volume 193, Issue 2, November 2008
     Edited by Christian Wiman
    100 pp; 444 N. Michigan Ave., Ste.1850,
      Chicago IL 60611. $5.50 ppd./copy.

      po–X-cetera
      Webmaster: Bob Grumman
      http://comprepoetica.com/newblog/blog01758.html

Because too few poetry critics really tie into a poem they’re discussing, and just about none that treat visual poems, I’ve decided to interrupt my overview of what’s going on in the precincts of current visio-textual art to zero in on one of the pieces in the Poetry gallery I wrote about in my last column, Scott Helmes’s “haiku #62″ (which is on view at my blog, URL above). It’s a great piece, for one thing, as good as any current visio-textual art I’ve seen. But it should also allow me to say a few things about the non-verbal aesthetic value of text in visual art that I don’t believe anyone else has.

At first, I thought “haiku #62″ entirely non-verbal–“asemic,” as those making averbal textual designs call it. It has a few words and word-fragments, but they didn’t seem to mean much, aesthetically. It was a portrait of a standard American haiku, because its title said it was, it consisted of three “lines” like such a haiku, and because it had text, if not significant words. Moreover (and this is something else I overlooked at first), its text is entirely oriented as literature–all its letters, that is, are standing straight up.

Now, however, I see that its employment of pure text plus non-representational design as the 5/7 of a traditional haiku makes a word in its third “line,” “place” aesthetically important for naming where it is as both strongly a visimagery place (“visimagery” is my newest coinage for “visual art”), but also a textual place (with linguistic potential). The “sq ft of” in the 5/7 portion suggests (lyrically and amusingly) that measurement, definition, something not haphazard, is required to make the color and shape of the third line create a place. So I now classify it as (barely) a visual wordwork.

To go on, it is superb even if taken as purely visual. Fonts, letter-sizes, colors repeating and varying and contrasting all over it–with a haiku delicacy and serenity; its three main shapes suggesting fragments of autumn, things afloat or in flight, and the momentariness that haiku so much represent, but also clearly out of the bright brittle of High Commerce.

The text, as pure text, does more–and here is where, I hope, I get meaningfully into the question of what attributes of non-verbal text can carry out useful functions in visual art. So far, I’ve found five such attributes: (1) it’s recognizable; (2) it’s tonally significant; (3) it’s auditory; (4) its elements have direction; (5) it is symbolic.

(1) That text is recognizable, or familiar, is particularly advantageous in a nonrepresentational work of visual art by acting against disorientation or alienation, giving an engagent spots to rest his eyes in–and landmarks to use (cartoceptually) in traversing the piece. Text will make what it’s in to some degree comfortingly resemble a printed page, too–the way the circular forms I like to put in my non-representational visual artworks suggest moons or suns to give what they’re in the look of landscapes. This seems unarguably true of “Haiku 62.”

(2) That text can make a significant tonal contribution to a visual artwork. Cursive results in a tone much different than print does, and various fonts can express many different tones. In the Helmes piece, it provides a sharp Madison Ave. contrast to its over-all haiku ambience. Tonality is important, but I can’t see how it can ever be central.

(3) That text consists of elements that for the most part can be pronounced, or partially pronounced (and which most people will automatically sub-vocally pronounce, however slightly) will add an auditory dimension to the artworks it’s in. In some cases this can be exploited to major effect. The auditory effect of “Haiku 62’s” text seems to me minimal–which is one reason I find it very close to the borblur between poetry and visimagery. On the other hand, the escape it seems to be making from language into more ethereal realms is not minor. . . .

(4) Closely related to (1) is text’s having direction–letters face right (for the English-speaking), thus acting as unobtrusive arrows. Hence, text can be used to guide an engagent’s exploration of what it’s in more dependably than anything else other than actual arrows (if that’s what the piece’s creator wants). Its having direction also gives a piece a tone of going somewhere, of having purpose, and motion toward a goal. At the very least, it gives a piece a greater feel of location than the piece would otherwise have–or, another expressive element for its maker to work with–as I feel Scott Helmes did to excellent effect in his piece, albeit very possibly unconsciously.

(5) Most obviously, text adds a symbolic layer to a work of visual art it’s in. Freshness, since visual art is generally . . . visual. Vivid contrast, as well: something wholly abstract next to (and/or containing) something wholly sensual (color). More than that (according to my theory of psychology, at any rate), an egagent will not (really) see the text, he will read it, or try to. So the piece with have a sort of “underscore” of symbols. It will be much weaker in an asemic piece than in something with significant verbal content, but it will still be present, and the engagent will still experience it in two different parts of his brain, his visual and his conceptual awarenesses. If he does this both at once, he will get into Manywhere-at-Once, as I called it years ago, naming it the most important destination of poetry.

Column054 — January/February 2002 « POETICKS

Column054 — January/February 2002

A Little on Cyber-Lit, then Cycho-Lit

Small Press Review,
Volume 34, Numbers 1/2, January/February 2002

American Book Review.
Volume 22, Number 4,
September/October 2001; 32 pp;
The Unit for Contemporary Literature,
Illinois State University, Campus Box 4241,
Normal IL 61790-4241. $4.

The Chair on the Way to the Fire.
Martin Koenig. 30 pp; 2001; Pa;
Popular Reality, Box 73, Schenectady NY 12301. $5.

I Taught My Dog To Shoot A Gun.
Al Ackerman. 103 pp; 2001; Pa;
Popular Reality, Box 73, Schenectady NY 12301. $8.

I got semi-excited when I saw page one of the September/October issue of American Book Review: it announced a special focus section on “codework,” or “the computer stirring into the text, and the text stirring the computer,” as Focus Editor Alan Sondheim put it in his introductory piece. At last, thought I, a not-entirely-invisible publication is covering a school of poetry I myself haven’t yet come to grips with! The first discussion in the section that I read, which was by Talan Memmott, disappointed me, though. Memmott presented a good brief over-view, I guess–with links to people doing valuable work in the field, notably Ted Warnell. But he failed to suggest that anyone was doing anything very new. Sure, some people, like Brian Lennon, are making formal poetic devices of e.mail devices, like headers, to good effect, and I much like the faster-than- page-turning clicked steps of some of Warnell’s pieces, but such innovations seem minor to me (as innovations). Nor does Memmott succeed in making a case for poets like the talented Mez’s finding “new uses of textual symbols” that result in a new “form of conductivity.” He seems unaware of that such pre-computer infraverbal poets as E.E. Cummings were using punctuation marks expressively, and achieving coinages constructed like Mez’s “e-rrelevant” and “distinct[ure]ion” (both of which I much like) years ago.

Memmott and the other contributors to the focus section, McKenzie Wark, Beatrice Beaugien, Belinda Barnet and Florian Cramer, are well worth reading, particularly for the poems and excerpts of poems they use to illustrate their discussions. I haven’t space here to treat them a hundredth as fully as they, and “codework,” deserve. I do believe they are closing in on something of high value; I just am not yet convinced that it is in any important way yet new. Kudos, anyway, to American Book Review for clearing the way for the discussion of a kind of literature it will take the mainstream at least another ten years to get to (and another ten to do so penetratingly).

Now for another plug for Popular Reality, putting out books again after the revival of the zine of that name a couple of years ago. Its latest two titles, The Chair on the Way to the Fire and I Taught My Dog To Shoot A Gun, are terrific. The first of these consists almost entirely of purposely crude-seeming line drawings sans details (e.g., faces with no eyes, hairlines, eyebrows, mouths except in profile, etc.) and their banal, completely pertinent but somehow disconnected captions. One of the drawings shows a cigarette-smoking deer with a man’s body behind a diner counter; it is labeled, “Would you be a deer and work nights at a greasy spoon?” Another, perhaps my favorite, shows some kind of bird in profile speaking to a creature that’s nothing but a head-sized shape with spikes, like the Statue of Liberty’s crown in outline, from behind, and two lines angling away from the shape to suggest a cape. A few horizontal lines cross in front of the peculiar couple. The highest has a few jags in it to suggest leaves or sunrays; two others make partial boxes or curve one way or another to suggest who knows what. The caption: “Sometimes these things work themselves out.” Many of Koenig’s pieces, like the latter, somehow resonate with archetypal feelings of dislocation, and are thus–for me–poetic; they are also very funny about taking any part of life seriously, in the tradition of Glen Baxter, B. Kliban and Gary Larson.

As for the Ackerman title, it does nothing to disabuse me of my opinion that Ackerman is the funniest writer I know of in this country. Certainly he is as good at portraying total nuts’ incredibly creative (and logical) schemes to wrest beauty and meaning out of life than anyone who has ever written–though Flannery O’Connor at her best comes close to him. He is a master of funny drawing, too: as a depiction of one of his gap-toothed loons, de-focused into at least two faces, and in ravishingly-vivid color is on the cover, and several of Ackerman’s drawings in the books interior demonstrate. The stories–well, here’s a brief taste: “And I (a girl named Suzy) think that’s exactly where fortune turned around for me, opening its arms and welcoming me to a whole new vision and ball game. By the end of the week, once I had put Blind Ka and the garage firmly behind me, I met a wonderful new man, who was part-owner of a used bookstore and knew how to have fun and be sociable and could even play a musical instrument (the snare drum), but who, so far as I could tell, never felt compelled to cover his face with anything more exotic than his own boxershorts, which came hand-picked from the Goodwill,” and this found ad from Popular Mechanix, 1951: “OH BOY .. . mom says there’s going to be a TELEVISION set in our NEW REFRIGERATOR!”

Drat. I wanted to talk about Tundra, an excellent newish magazine of and about short poems, and american poetry (free and how), Igor Satanovsky’s excellent new collection of very funny textual who-knows-whats and weirdly emotion-stirring mergings of lines from famous poems and graphics from who-knows-where, but I’ve run out of room. You’ll have to wait till next issue to find out more, I’m afraid.

Column071 — March/April 2005 « POETICKS

Column071 — March/April 2005

The Ever-Visible RK

Small Press Review,
Volume 37, Numbers 3/4, March/April 2005

35 Years of Visible Writing: a Memoir.
Richard Kostelanetz. 54 pp; 2004; Pa;
Koja Press, Box140083, Brooklyn NY 11214.
http://kojapress.com. $23.

As everyone reading this should know, Richard Kostelanetz has been a leading otherstream poet for a number of decades. His general mode of working as a poet is to find some feature of words that few if any other poets have exploited, and build several thousand poems exploiting it. Well, maybe only a few hundred. Anyway, 35 Years of Visible Writing contains many of the best of them, with a valuable commentary by the author on his practice and philosophy as a poet.

Making the book by itself close to a visual poem is its design by Igor Satanovsky, who provides just the right images of Kostelanetz’s work in just the right places not only to near-perfectly accompany Kostelanetz’s commentary but flow interactively into a whole that is greater than the sum of their parts, to use an expression Kostelantz says in the book is a main aim of his as a poet. Nothing stunningly brilliant, just a lot of things elegantly and sensitively applied. For instance, Satanovsky alternates white on black with conventional black on white pages throughout much of the book. The first exception to the alternation is a . . . minimalist canvas, I’d call it, filled with “69” over and over in black on a white background. The constant op-art reversal of the “6” (or is it the “9?”) is given an extra charge by the sudden white background where black was expected. Elsewhere, a lefthand page contains one of Kostenetz’s “corner poems,” as I guess I’d name them, in which the corners of the page is occupied, respectively, by “WORDS,” “VECTORS,” “VIBRATIONS” and “POEM,” in white, each oriented in a different way (i.e., perpendicularly upward, and the reverse, and horizonatal, and upside-down). On the facing page is a variation of the same poem that consists of the same four words and orientations plus twelve other “inter-resonant” words that form four smaller corner poems. That it switches to black letters on a white page makes it seem like a jump from night into day.

Satanovsky does all kinds of other things with different-sized type, text going up and down or in circles or elsehow, shaped swatches of text, and the like–always enhancing Kostelanetz’s discussion and works, never intruding on them.

Among Kostelanetz’s works are several of the cut-up and reassembled specimens of a photograph of Kostelanetz from his Reincarnations that Satanovsky has deftly scattered through the book to constantly break a face into the otherwise rarifiedly hyper- conceptuality of the book. Reincarnations differs from most of Kostelanetz’s work here (and mostwhere) in being wholly averbal. But it is typical of that work in its sequentiality, its anti-conventionality (though others using the same ploy over the years have cost it some of its original impact), its constructivist minimalism (each frame being made up of 80 rearranged squares), and–at its best–its focused aesthetic wallop.

A page from Kostelanetz’s well-known and popular East Village series of 1970-71 is here, too. Each of these is a little map of some portion of the East Village, but with little squares of hand-written prose description, commentary or simple naming replacing buildings and streets–and placed in such a way (diagonally, for instance) as to make a highly connotative poem of the result rather than just a map.

“Disintegration” is here, too–one of Kostelanetz’s earliest and most-antholgized visual poems, no doubt because, in simply showing the word “disintegration” disintegrating visio-onomatopoeically, it doesn’t take much on the part of a spectator to appreciate it. Many others of the best of Kostelanetz’s word-games are here. There are photographs of his work in holography, too, with more of his discussion concerned with that than with anything else.

The book ends with a description of the 2001 installation he collaborated on with HyunYeul Lee, a grad student at MIT, as part of a group exhibition titled ID/Entities. It sounds like something that should have been captured on film. Here is what Kostelanetz writes about it: “I offered autobiographical texts which she incorporated into an extraordinary multimedia installation that was faithful to my esthetic in nearly all respects, ambitious in using several projections, and rich in the use of my verbal materials. Into a setting that resembled a writer’s study with a desk, typewriter, and a wooden chair next to a simulated window on the left side and a fireplace on the right she cast several kinetic projections of my words and only my words.” As critic Barbara Pollock wrote, “. . . words–animated and projected–replace the writer. . . . lines of text dance across (his) desk, jump in and out of (his) inkwell, and rumble across the window in traffic patterns. . . .”

Kostelanetz’s commentary is always informative and fluid. I don’t know why he considers some of his poems visual, though. His strings–poems in which meaningfullyricalinkingots go on for scores or hundreds of words–are purely verbal, as far as I’m concerned, for example. He considers them “visual” simply, I take it, because his removal of spaces is a visual act. But so is writing a letter. He also considers such of his InSerts as “GrasShopper” and “CrumBled” visual because “capitalization is essentially a visual enhancement.” But so is underlining, bold-facing and italicization, so I consider it a textual operation, and would give Kostelanetz’s InSerts my own name for such texts: “infraverbal,” since they depend primarily on textual manipulations going on inside words rather than inside sentences, as is the case in traditional poetry.

I also think some of his poems are better described as prose. I’ve written about that in my blog, beginning with the entry on his “circular poems” that I posted early in January at http://www.reocities.com/comprepoetica/Blog/OldBlogs/Blog00337.html. Whatever they’re called, though, the best of them are among the best and most important we have from the past 35 years, and Kostelanetz more worth arguing with about poetry than just about anyone else around. (But WHY did he have to say at the very end of his book that he favors “black and white as the sole colors indigenous to art, believing that all other hues belong primarily to ‘illustration?’”)

Literary Terms « POETICKS

Literary Terms

Wilshberia:

Poetry Between 1960 and 2010

Wilshberia, the continuum of contemporary poetry composed
between around 1960 and the present certified by the poetry
establishment (i.e., universities, grants-bestowing organizations,
visible critics, venues like the New Yorker and the American
Poetry Review) begins with formal poetry like much of Richard
Wilbur’s work. Descent into a different lesser formality of neo-
plasmic poetry based on Whitman that Ginsberg was the most
well-known recent author of, next comes free verse that is
nonetheless highly bound to implicit rules, Iowa Plaintext Poetry;
slightly further from traditional poetry the nearprose of Williams
and his many followers who seem to try to write poetry as close to
prose as possible. To this point, the poetry is convergent,
attempting to cohere around a unifying principle. It edges away
from that more and more as we continue over the continuum,
starting with surrealist poetry, which diverges from the world as we
know it into perceptual disruption. A bit more divergent is the
jump-cut poetry of the New York School, represented at its most
divergent by John Ashbery’s most divergent poems and the jump-
cut poetry of the so-called “language poets,’ which is not, for me,
truly language poetry because grammatical concerns are not to
much of an extent the basis of it

The Establishment’s view of the relationship of all other poetry
being composed during this time to the poetry of Wilshberia has
been neatly voiced by Professor David Graham. Professor Graham
likens it to the equivalent of the relationship to genuine baseball of
“two guys in Havre, Montana who like to kick a deer skull back &
forth and call it ‘baseball.’ Sure, there’s no bat, ball, gloves,
diamond, fans, pitcher, or catcher– but they do call it baseball, and
wonder why the mainstream media consistently fails to mention
their game.” Odd how there are always professors unable to learn
from history how bad deriding innovative enterprises almost
always makes you look bad. On the other hand, if their opposition
is as effective as the gatekeepers limiting the visibility of
contemporary poetry between around 1960 and 2000 to Wilshberia
has been, they won’t be around to see that opposition break down.
Unfortunately, the innovators whose work they opposed won’t be,
either.

Not that all the poets whose work makes up “the Underwilsh,” as I
call the uncertified work from the middle of the last century until
now, are innovative. In fact, very few are. But the most important
poetries of the Underwilsh were innovative at some point during
the reign of Wilshberian poetry. Probably only animated visual
poetry, cyber poetry, mathematical poetry and cryptographic poetry
are seriously that now. It would seem that recognition of
innovative art takes a generation

The poetry of the Underwilsh at its left end has always been
conventional. It begins with what is unquestionable the most
popular poetry in America, doggerel–which, for me, it poetry
intentionally employing no poetic device but rhyme; next come
classical American haiku–the 5/7/5 kind, other varieties of haiku
being scattered throughout most other kinds of poetry–followed by
light verse (both known to academia but looked down on); next
comes contragenteel poetry, which is basically the nearprose of
Williams and his followers except using coarser language (and
concerning less polite subjects, although subject matter is not what
I look at to place poetries into this scheme of mine); performance
poetry, hypertextual poetry; genuine language poetry;
cryptographic poetry; cyber poetry; mathematical poetry; visual
poetry (both static and animated visual poetry) and sound poetry,
with the latter two fading into what is called asemic poetry, which
is either visimagery (visual art) or music employing text or
supposed by its creator to suggest textuality and thus not by my
standards kinds of poetry, but considered such by others, so proper
to mention here.

Almost all the poetries in the Underwilsh will eventually be
certified by the academy and the rest of the poetry establishment.
The only interesting questions left will be what kind of effective
poetry will then be ignored, and whether or not the newest poets to
be certified will treat what comes after their kind of poetry as
unsympathetically as theirs was treated.

Anti-Wilshberian: Anyone who believes no poetry of consequence is composed in Wilshberia. Incorrectly applied to those expressing opposition to Mono-Wilshberianism.

Mono-Wilshberian: Anyone who believes the poetry of Wilshberia is the only significant kind of contemporary American poetry.

Wilshberian: One who admires some of the poetry of Wilshberia and or, at least sometimes, composes it. Sometimes incorrectly confused with Mono-Wilshberian (something I’ve done myself).

Comprepoetica Biographies — B « POETICKS

Comprepoetica Biographies — B

Maura Alia Bramkamp (BRAM camp)

Poet

(street address) 266 Elmwood Ave #307
(city&state) Buffalo, NY 14222
(e.mail address) [email protected]
(affiliations/organizations)

National Writers Union, member

Italian American Writers Union, member
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Lifetime Subscriber

(publication credits)
The Buffalo News (essays)

Amazon.com Editorial Review: Welcome To My Planet: Where English is Sometimes Spoken, by Shannon Olson

ARTVOICE (Buffalo, NY)

Buffalo Spree (Buffalo, NY)
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal (San Francisco)
Switched-On-Gutenberg (Internet Seattle-based)
Exhibition (Bainbridge Island, WA)
The Woodstock Times (Woodstock,NY)

synapse (Seattle, WA)
convolvulus
Half Tones to Jubilee (Pensacola, FL)
Signals (Olympia, WA)
tight (Guerneville, CA)
Spillway (WA)

The Healing Woman (CA)
The Wise Woman (CA)
105 Magazine (New Paltz, NY)
POETALK (CA)
cups: a cafe journal (San Francisco, CA)
Arts Journal poems & interview (Poulsbo, WA)

Coffee House Quarterly (CO)
Higher Source (Bainbridge Island, WA)
And others . . .

(list of works)

CHAPBOOK
Resculpting (Paper Boat Press,1995)

ANTHOLOGIES
This Far Together (Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, 1995)
Go Gently (The Healing Woman, 1995)
Bay Area Poets Coalition 1995 Anthology
Husky Voices (Univ of WA, MFA Anthology, 1998)

(where written up)
Women’s Work (Seattle,WA, 1995)
Arts Journal (Poulsbo, WA, 1996)
The Healing Woman (1996)
Small Press Review (Pick of the Month & Review, 1996)

synapse (review, 1996)
The Kitsap Herald (1995)

(contemporary poets important to Bramkamp)
Charles Simic, Jana Harris, Billy Collins, Lynda Hull (deceased),
Seamus Heaney, Lynn Emmanuel, Carolyn Kizer,
Mark Doty, Raymond Carver, Nikki Finney,

Jane Kenyon, Ai, Gillian Conoley, Patti Smith

Larry Levis (deceased), Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Nancy Willard,
Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, Carol Ann Duffy,
Marlene Nourbese Philip & many others

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Colette, Muriel Rukeyser, Paul Celan,
Rilke, Rimbaud, Edward Lear, Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop,

Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’Neil, W.H. Auden, Frank O’Hara
And many more . . .

(critics important to respondent)

Eavan Boland, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich
otherwise, not particularly interested in criticism. I think going through an MFA program ruined it for me.

(tastes in poetry) I am most drawn to narrative, lyrical, and prose poetry. Yet, I read widely and try to sample styles outside my usual references.

(impression of contemporary poetry) Ever-changing. Expanding, shouting, fighting amongst our many selves, loud, soft, chilling,consoling, alienating, inviting.

(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)
Switched-On-Gutenberg (Internet)
The Cortland Review (Internet)
SketchRadio.com (Internet)

Small Press Review & Small Magazine Review (Dust Books)
The Directory of Poetry Publishers (Dust Books)
Directory of Literary Magazines (CLMP)
.

Michael Basinski

Poet

Basinski lives at 30 Colonial Avenue, Lancaster NY 14086; his
e.mail address is [email protected]; his phone number 716 645-2917

He was born 19 November 1979 in Lisbon. He is 6 feet tall and weighs 165 pounds. His eyes and hair are brown, his ethnic background Polish. He got his Ph.D. at SUNY, Buffalo. His occupation, says he, is working, his vocations, etc. His characterizes himself a pagan in both religion and politics. He claims not to enjoy anything in the arts besides poetry, or have any interest in sports. He enjoys nothing in science or philosophy, either.

In answer to the <

Maura Alia Bramkamp (BRAM camp)

Poet

(street address) 266 Elmwood Ave #307
(city&state) Buffalo, NY 14222
(e.mail address) [email protected]
(affiliations/organizations)

National Writers Union, member

Italian American Writers Union, member
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Lifetime Subscriber

(publication credits)
The Buffalo News (essays)
Amazon.com Editorial Review: Welcome To My Planet: Where English is Sometimes
Spoken, by Shannon Olson
ARTVOICE (Buffalo, NY)

Buffalo Spree (Buffalo, NY)
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal (San Francisco)
Switched-On-Gutenberg (Internet Seattle-based)
Exhibition (Bainbridge Island, WA)
The Woodstock Times (Woodstock,NY)

synapse (Seattle, WA)
convolvulus
Half Tones to Jubilee (Pensacola, FL)
Signals (Olympia, WA)
tight (Guerneville, CA)
Spillway (WA)

The Healing Woman (CA)
The Wise Woman (CA)
105 Magazine (New Paltz, NY)
POETALK (CA)
cups: a cafe journal (San Francisco, CA)
Arts Journalpoems & interview (Poulsbo, WA)

Coffee House Quarterly (CO)
Higher Source (Bainbridge Island, WA)
And others………

(list of works)

CHAPBOOK
Resculpting (Paper Boat Press,1995)

(where written up)
Women’s Work (Seattle,WA, 1995)
Arts Journal (Poulsbo, WA, 1996)
The Healing Woman (1996)
Small Press Review (Pick of the Month & Review, 1996)

synapse (review, 1996)
The Kitsap Herald (1995)

(contemporary poets important to Bramkamp)
Charles Simic, Jana Harris, Billy Collins, Lynda Hull (deceased),
Seamus Heaney, Lynn Emmanuel, Carolyn Kizer,
Mark Doty, Raymond Carver, Nikki Finney,
Jane Kenyon, Ai, Gillian Conoley, Patti Smith

Larry Levis (deceased), Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Nancy Willard,
Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, Carol Ann Duffy,
Marlene Nourbese Philip & many others

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Colette, Muriel Rukeyser, Paul Celan,
Rilke, Rimbaud, Edward Lear, Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop,

Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’Neil, W.H. Auden, Frank O’Hara
And many more……….

(critics important to respondent)

Eavan Boland, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich…
otherwise, not particularly interested in criticism. I think going through an MFA program
ruined it for me.

(tastes in poetry) I’m most drawn to narrative, lyrical, and prose poetry. Yet, I
read widely and try to sample styles outside my usual references.

(impression of contemporary poetry) Ever-changing. Expanding, shouting, fighting
amongst our many selves, loud, soft, chilling,consoling, alienating & inviting.

(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)
Switched-On-Gutenberg (Internet)
The Cortland Review (Internet)
SketchRadio.com (Internet)

Small Press Review & Small Magazine Review (Dust Books)
The Directory of Poetry Publishers (Dust Books)
Directory of Literary Magazines (CLMP)
.

Michael Basinski, Poet

Basinski lives at 30 Colonial Avenue, Lancaster NY 14086; his
e.mail address is [email protected]; his phone number 716 645-2917

He was born 19 November 1979 in Lisbon. He is 6 feet tall and weighs 165 pounds. His
eyes and hair are brown, his ethnic background Polish. He got his Ph.D. at SUNY,
Buffalo. His occupation, says he, is working, his vocations, etc. His characterizes himself
a pagan in both religion and politics. He claims not to enjoy anything in the arts besides
poetry, or have any interest in sports. He enjoys nothing in science or philosophy, either.
In answer to the Comprepoetica survey question that asks a respondent to name
the first poem that comes to his mind right then, he said, None.

Basinski has published in many periodicals including First Offense, First Intensity,
Angle, Torque(Toronto), Kiosk, Essex Street, Washington Review, Chain, Boxkite,
Leopold Bloom, Taproot, Generator, Arras, Explosive Magazine, RIF/T, Yellow Silk,
Benzine, Sure, Another Chicago Magazine, Lyric&, Mirage no.4(Period)ical, Lower
Limit Speech, Juxta, Wooden Head Review, Synaesthetic, Small Press Review, and
other WEB and Email magazines.

His books include: [Un-Nome], The Runaway Spoon Press; Idyll, Juxta
Press; Heebee-jeebies, Meow Press; and many others. He has been written up in
Texture, Small Press Review, Taproot Reviews, Exile, Poetic Briefs, etc.

He says that the poets of yesteryear important to him are Those before the coming of
circles. His tastes in poetry? Glitches and witches. His impression of contemporary
poetry? Angels and beasts.

David Beaudouin, Poet

Beaudouin resides with his wife, family and Dawgs at 2840 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD
21218. His e.mail address is [email protected], his phone number is 410-467-0600. He
was born 3 February 1951 in Baltimore.

Beaudouin got his degree in 1975 from Johns Hopkins. His religion is Quakerism, his
main political belief, Keep right except to pass.

His credits include the following chapbooks:
Catenae,
American Night,
Human Nature and 
Gig. He was last published on the Net in Enterzone.

Contemporary poets of importance to him are
Bernard Welt,
Terry Winch,
Kendra Kopelke,
Kim Carlin,
Jenmny Keith,
Ron Padgett and
Anselm Hollo. Earlier poets of importance to him are

Frank O’Hara,
Charles Olson,
Joe Cardarelli, and
Elliott Coleman.

About contemporary poetry, he says, Well, it’s a mess, but I’m not
cleaning it up this time.

He enjoys going to the moviesany movies. He sums up his background in
philosophy and science with the following single sentence: When I was 10, I invented the
Buddha in my bedroom.

About his life, he says, Well, it seems to be moving along.
.
.
.

Thomas Bell, Poet

Bell lives at 2518 Wellington Pl., Murfreesboro, TN 37128. His telephone number is
(615)
904-2374; his e.mail addresses are [email protected] and [email protected].
Born 18 February 1943 in Milwaukee, he is married and has two children. He is right-
handed; about this he says, I write right and draw left. poetry depends on where
i’m coming from. i right write and draw to an inside straight.

He describes his religious denomination as democrat. His occupation is

psychologist, for which he got the necessary degrees from the University of Wisconsin –
Milwaukee, Marquette, and the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology. He is also
an
editor and librarian. He’s had work published on
paper and on the Internet.

One contemporary poet who is especially important to him is Allen Davies, and he
considers William Carlos
Williams the most important poet of the past for him. He names no critics he favors
but throws his support to those who are experimental experiential.

Click<a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem24.html”> here</a> to
read The Flowers, one of Bell’s poems.

Visit <A HREF=”http://www.public.usit.net/trbell”>Bell’s HomeSite</a> for
more of his poems.

Ken Brandon, Poet

Ken Brandona painter as well as a poet (actually, both combined, much of the time)was
born 10 February 1934 in Seattle, Washington. He now lives with his wife, Maru Bruno
Flores, in Mexico. His mailing address is La Danza 6, San Miguel de Allende, GTO.
37700 Mexico; his phone number is (Mexico)(415)-2-7098. A graduate of the University
of Washington in Seattle, he has three children: Ansel, Mateo and Dylan.

According to the Comprepoetica survey form he filled out,
Brandon makes his living under dim eyes passes the trail market. His religion is Zenjoko,
his political affiliation good. As for the poets who have influenced him,

<pre>

the other poets
I throw in the fire
to get hot
</pre>
His hobbies are confidential. In answer to the survey question about what techniques and
subject matter are of value to him in poetry, he says, Technique is self without trying for
any subject matter. Regarding contemporary poetry, he says, As I think of it, it defines
itself automatically.

Brandon is a publisher who has put out 19 issues of the zine, Iz Knot, as of 1997.
His work has not been much written up. My own stuff grips my interest, he says in
response to the query on the survey about what books he reads, or movies he goes to, and
so forth. He describes his background in philosophy and science as normal. As for the
sports he watches or participates in, information about that, he says, is confidential.

On life-in-general, Brandon says:
<pre>

finding his path less taken
misled the dead gardner
for a while
</pre>
To view an untitled sample poem by Brandon, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem31.html”>here</a>. 
Janet Buck

Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, humor, and
essays have appeared in The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Melic Review, Sapphire
Magazine, The Recursive Angel, Southern Ocean Review, Lynx: Poetry from Bath,
Apples & Oranges, Oranges & Apples, The Rose & Thorn, San
Francisco Salvo,
Poetry Super Highway, Poetik License, Mind Fire, Astrophysicist’s Tango

Partner
Speaks, Perihelion, Oracle, Poetry Motel, Feminista!, Calliope, The Beaded
Strand,
New Thought Journal, Medicinal Purposes, 2River View, Kimera, Free Cuisinart,
In
Motion, Athens City Times, Conspire, Idling, remark, BeeHive, Gravity,
AfterNoon, A
Writer’s Choice, Niederngasse, Shades of December, Maelstrom, The Oracular
Tree,

Red Booth Review, Poetry Heaven, Tintern Abbey, Arkham, hoursbecomedays, The
Artful Mind, Oatmeal & Poetry, Black Rose Blooming, Apollo Online, Masquerade,
Pigs ‘n Poets, Savoy, The Poet’s Edge, Allegory, GreenCross, Online
Writer,
Poetry
Cafe, Oblique, Locust Magazine, The Poetry Kit, Pyrowords, Vortex, Ceteris
Paribus,
The Suisun Valley Review, Illya’s Honey, Fires of Autumn, Orbital Revolution,

A
Little Poetry, Dead Letters, King Log, Peshekee Review, The Green Tricycle,
Pogonip,
Chimeric, Poetry Repair Shop, 3:00 AM Magazine, Wired Art from Wired Hearts,
and
hundreds of print journals and e-zines world-wide. A print collection of
Janet’s poetry
entitled Calamity’s Quilt is soon to be published by Newton’s Baby Press.

For a sample of her poetry, A Writer’s Prayer, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem49.html”>here</a>.
Bill Burmeister (BER my stir), Poet

Burmeister resides with his wife, Diana, at 8018 Lakepointe Drive, Plantation, Fla 33322.
His
e.mail address is [email protected]. A Florida native of Armenian
(mother) and German (dad) descent, he was born 22 March 1961, in St. Petersburg. He
works as an Electronics Engineer, having gotten his bachelor’s and
master’s in that field at the University of Central Florida. His hobbies include
reading folklore, following baseball, listening to jazz/blues music, raising plants, amateur
astronomy, good wine and cigars, and collecting stamps.

He has several works in progress (as of late October 1997): poem/play (1 yr); first
chapbook of poems; translations of a play by the (deceased) Ecuadorian poet Gonzalo
Escudero and poems from Jorge Guillen’s Cantico.

Among the contemporary poets important to Burmeister are
John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, A. Child, Clark Coolidge, Henry Gould, Lyn Hejinian,
Simic, J. Tate, Revell, Paz, Yau, L.Scalapino, B.Hillman, S.Howe, D.Ignatow, M.Strand,
M.McClure, B.Guest, R.Bly . . .
Earlier poets important to him include Homer, Dante A., Milton, Shakespeare, Blake,
Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Loy, Williams (WCW), Pound, Breton,
Char, Zukofsky, Oppenheim.Celan, Loy, Joyce, T.Roethke, Carroll, Jorge Guillen, Lorca,
Neruda, Gonzalo Escudero, Spicer, Duncan, Patchen, Antonio Machado, Dickinson,
Wallace Stevens, Unamuno, Gustavo Adolpho Bequer, Beckett, D.Thomas, Muriel
Rukuyser, Rilke, J.Taggart . . .

Among critics, he particularly values the work of Blanchot, Bernstein, Perloff, Sartre,
Bachelard and Paz.

About his tastes in poetry he says, I have a fairly open, generous approach to poetry,
especially in what comes to me from the past. For poetry in the present, I look for the
writing as thinking, metaphysical, meditative, stream of consciousness, chance, new
surrealism, playfulness with language, nonsense, energetic lively language, reinvented
language, and so on. I look for innovation, but not necessarily formal innovation. What I
like most, I get from the avante-garde, but contentment with the avante-garde is an
impossibility by definition. The avante-garde is not the beginning and the end of a
particular kind of poetry, but rather only the beginning, and maybe not the best possible at
that since a new dialogue has been begun with all of literature and history, the past as well
as a future.

As for criticism, he says, I don’t consider myself a critic as such, although
naturally, I recognize the importance of maintaining a critical ability since this has been
and will continue to be an essential part of literature. For me, taste, appeal, enjoyment,
and enthusiasm must be considered at the personal level as much as any aesthetic, but can
never be
forced upon another as aesthetic. I tend to believe that poetry
is a lot like religion in that a kind of faith is necessary to
hold the poem together. It seems to me that the poem is a delicate, but patient entity that
outlives time-sensitive criticism (such as identity politics and other socio-political agendas
in the guise of criticism). Good critical writing is that which goes before or after good
writing: it informs, enlightens, and expands readership rather than merely decodes and
justifies.

Outside his field, Burmeister enjoys reading novels by James (The Wings of a
Dove), Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury) Kafka (The Trial) Gunter
Grass (Cat and Mouse, Tin Drum), Thomas Mann (The Magic Mountain),
the science fiction of G.Bear, Simak, Asimov, and D.Brin (before he choked), and Plays
by Beckett (Waiting for Godot, Krapp’s last tape), Gonzalo Escudero
(Parallelogram), the short word plays of Gertrude Stein, and the plays of
Sheakespeare. He collects books of black & white photography (Weston, Man Ray,
Irina Ionesco) and films (Wells, The Marx Brothers, D.Lynch and more). He is also
building a collection of original paintings by Latin American painters such as the
contemporary Ecuadorian Arauz. He listens to John Cage, experimental jazz (A.Braxton
and others) and acid jazz, and classical music.

About his interests in science and philosophy, he says, i tend (right now anyway) to be
partial toward the Spanish philo. Jose Ortega y Gassett, J.P.Sartre, Kierkegaard, Derrida,
& Kant.
For philosophy of science, I have tended toward Einstein, Newton, Asimov, and Faraday.
Burmeister was educated in hard sciences up through elementary modern physics (theory
of quantuum electrodynamics, statistical mechanics, etc.), in mathematics
up through essential calculus, linear operator theory, diffential equations and boundary
value problems (applied).

In answer to the Comprepoetica survey question about the present world situation,
he says, I’m wondering for how long we can survive this ludicrous zero-sum game
known as the ‘Global economy.’

For a sample of Bill Burmeister’s poetry (with a brief commentary on it by
Burmeister), click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/soho/cafe/1493/poem11.html”>here</a>.

Harry Burrus, Poet/Publisher

Burrus lives with his wife, Megan, at 1266 Fountain View, Houston, Texas 77057-2204.
His telephone number is (713) 784-2802; his e.mail address, [email protected]

He was born in Denver, reared in St. Louis. Moved to Houston in June 1977. He is six
feet one and weighs 175 pounds. His parents

were university professors. His father was the first Pro Football player with a PHD. He
himself holds advanced degrees in Film, Dramatic Arts, and Poetryand is active as a
collagist, photographer, screenwriter and filmmaker as well as a poet and the publisher of
O!!Zone, which he describes as a
modest literary-art zine.

His poetry books include: I Do Not Sleep With Strangers, Confessions of a Tennis
Pro;
Bouquet; A Game of Rules; Without Feathers; For Deposit Only; the Jaguar
Porfolio; and Cartouche. He has also co-edited with Peter Gravis of Black Tie
Press,

American Poetry Confronts the 1990’s.

Burrus’s poetry, photographs, and collages have appeared in various publications
and
exhibitions in the US and abroad.

Says Burrus about making a living, I gain dinero via photography, scripts, workshops, and
various other artistic
pursuits (and years ago as a tennis pro).

About religion and politics/nationalism (and money), he finds that most people
cannot discuss without harboring ill-feeling and/or distrust for those who
possess views different from their own. Hence, I tend not to engage in these
areas unless it is with those capable of out of body experiences.

He has difficulty specifically determining what poets and critics and other influences have
been important to him. The aggregation is subtle and ongoing. Travel, for sure, is a
primary player. On the goat path and with the
aroma of donkey dung filling the surrounding air, I witness and pick up
juxtaposition, impact, resonance, and cultural unravelings. On these

excursions I shoot a lot of film, make journal entries, and ambient sound
recordings and always use the material. I never know how or when or in what
form the work will appear, but it eventually does pop up somewhere, either in
poems, art of some kind like a collage, or, perhaps, a story emerges.

I am drawn to openness, curiosity, and a willingness to take chances. I like
strong personalities. I favor high energy and experimentation. The seduction
has been more from artists and filmmakers, rather than poets, although a few
poets have landed a stroke or two. A few personalities that quickly come to

mind are: Ernst, Magritte, Man Ray, Buñuel, Resnais, Cartier-Bresson,
Schwitters, Godard, Bergman, Newton, Rausenberg, Matta, Isidore Ducasse,
Pessoa, Prevert, Bowles, Wenders, and Gysin.

I tend to appreciate those engaged in multiple activities and skilled in
different pursuits. Peter Beard and Bruce Chatwin come to mind. Journeymen.
I enjoy Henry Miller’s writing about watercolors more than his novels. I
enjoy the independence of his watercolors.

I make extractions from movements (Dada, Surrealism, The Beats, etc.), pulling

on the dynamism or a particular tack something I notice that I might employ
in my work. I may utilize or value aspects of the thinking that goes into a
work more than the work itself. Burroughs’ and Kerouac’s and Lawrence’s
ideas, for example. I also value their dedication.

Previously I read a lot of poetry and poetry publications, but I became
disenchanted with the likes of APR and Poetry too much sameness. Even

newcomers and alternative journals, which broke away from the writing school
content and were, at first, exciting and fresh, even they slowly lost their
zest and started wearing that familiar uniform. There is, however, still
energy in various zines and micro-presses, so, choice is out there. One must
forage for the interesting which is the same with people.

My engagement with international visual poets, mail artists, and photographers
provides visual stimulation, plus insights into other cultures. Myriad

personalities have opened to me and my exchange with them I eagerly maintain.
I find correspondence or working on a collage or making a photograph more
intriguing than being a spectator of some sporting event.

Burrus cites three critics who write well about their topics: Walter Pater, John Simon, and
Marvin Bell.

The last full collection of poetry Burrus has read (as of 15 November 1997 was
Bukowski’s Betting on the Muse; last

non-poetry book: Breaking the Maya Code, by Michael Coe.

Click <a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem18.html”>here</a> to see
Blue Mirror, a poem from Burrus’s A Game of Rules

(name of respondent) Brandon
(pronunciation of respondent’s name) Carpenter
(street address) 4616 S. Rusk
(city&state) Amarillo, Tx 79110

(e.mail address) [email protected]
(phone number) N/A
(po-type) Poet/Critic
(affiliations/organizations)

Denver Word Affiliate
Vocal Velocity Records

(publication credits)

Poetry Cafe
Anvil
Poetry Shelter
Pauper.com
Sharptongue

(list of works)

A flame of the heart in the hands of Dread
Discombobulate the Dissemated

Muddy’s Cafe: Out of the Mud
Sharptongue

(contemporary poets important to respondent) Ben Ohmart
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Baudlelaire
Rimbaud
Ginsberg

Kerouac

(tastes in poetry)

Avant-Garde
Beat

(description of criticism) Pick out the truth of the piece, show the path to find these truths
and uplift the reader, author, editor and other critics.
(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)

Realpoetic

(sample of respondent’s poetry) members.tripod.com/Carpenter_B
<hr />
</body>
</html>
.

Joel Chace, Poet

(pronunciation of respondent’s name) Chase
(street address) 300 E. Seminary St.

(city&state) Mercersburg, PA 17236
(e.mail address) [email protected]
(phone number) 717-328-3824

(affiliations/organizations)

Poetry EditorAntietam Review and 5_Trope electronic
magazine.

(publication credits)

My poems have appeared or are forthcoming in print journals and
magazines such as the following: The Seneca Review, The Connecticut
Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Poetry Motel, No Exit, Pembroke
Magazine, Crazy Horse, Kudos (England), and Porto-Franco (Romania). I

have also published work in Electronic Magazines such as the following:
Ninth St. Labs, Recursive Angel, Highbeams, Switched-on-Gutenberg,
Kudzu, Pif, The Morpo Review, Snakeskin, Slumgullion, PotePoetZine,
and The Experioddicist.

(list of works)

Northwoods Press, in 1984, published my collection of poems entitled
The Harp Beyond the Wall. Persephone Press, in 1992, published my

second book, Red Ghost, which won the first Persephone Press Book Award
and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in that same year. Big Easy
Press, in 1995, brought out a collection entitled Court of Ass-Sizes.
In June, 1997, came a full-length collection, Twentieth Century
Deaths, from Singular Speech Press. The Melancholy of Yorick

(Birch Brook Press) and maggnummappuss (nominated for a 1998 Pushcart Prize)
appeared in 1998, and a bi-lingual edition of my poems is being prepared in Romania.

(where written up)

Slumgullion, Pif, Mind Fire, A Writer’s Choice, Next,
No Exit, Grab-a-Nickel, Small Press Review.

(contemporary poets important to respondent)

Jake Berry, W.D. Snodgrass, Adrienne Rich,
Jack Foley, Robert Creeley.

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)

Jack Spicer, Thomas McGrath, Muriel Rukeyser,
Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman.

(critics important to respondent)

Jack Foley, Muriel Rukeyser,
Marjorie Perloff.

For two samples of Chace’s poetry, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem48.html”>here</a>. He’d
appreciate any feedback on it that you’d care to e.mail him.

Blaise Cirelli, Poet
Cirelli was born 1 January 1952 in Philadelphia. He describes himself as having a
Buddhist leaning and being Leftist Apolitical. His publication credits include
Agniezewska’s Diary, VIA, Zaum, Blind Donkey and Talus and
Scree, and his
etry’s been written up in the San Louis Obispo Local newspaper. Contemporary
poets he admires include Michael Palmer,

Lyn Hejinian, Mei Mei Bruseenbugge (spelling?), Robert Hass, Ron Padgett and Robert
Pinsky. He also admires the work of Ezra Pound,
Homer,
William Carlos Williams,
Loraine Niedecker,
Frank O’Hara,
Shelley,
Browning and
Tennyson.
Critics important to him are

Charles Altieri,
Helen Vendler,
Marjorie Perloff and
Forest Gander.

As a reader of poetry, he enjoys Experimental, Meditative Lyric poetryand not
Nature (Because how can you not like nature? I’d rather be in nature than read
about it). His impression of the current scene is that There seem to be a lot of

diocre poets getting published.

Among his favorite books are: The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
and The
Sorrows of Young Werther. He lists two favorite movies: Black Robe and
Il Postino. The sculpture of Henry Moore is important to him. About philosophy
he says, I wish I could understand Wittgenstein. On life-in-general: Some peop

are born with failure, others have it thrust upon them. His
Favorite name for a cat: Spot (if it has spots); Favorite food: organic turnips.

For a sample of Cirelli’s poetry click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem4.html”>here</a>.

Dark Poet, Poet

Dark Poet’s address is 555 this isn’t real, Punta Gorda FL 33982. His
e.mail address is [email protected], his phone
number,(941) 555-9992.

(affiliations/organizations) NA
(publication credits) NA
(list of works) NA
(where written up) Conspiracy boards all over
(contemporary poets important to respondent) na
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent) Poe
(critics important to respondent) na
(tastes in poetry) na

You can find a sample of Dark Poet’s work by clicking <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem45.html”>here</a>. His attitude
toward getting feedback on it: Sure. It’s a rough draft.

Catherine Daly (DAY lee), Poet

Daly lives at 533 South Alandele Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90036.
Her e.mail address is [email protected], and is affiliated with
UCLA Extension and various listservs.

So far (late 1998), Daly has gotten about 80 poems into print but has not yet had a book
published. She has the following
manuscripts sitting around her house, however: Engine No. 9, Locket, Manners in the
Colony, Dark Night, and The Green Hotel.

The work of Barbara Guest and some of that of Barbara Hillman
has been important to her, and she likes the work of Todd Baron, Spencer Selby, Karen
Volkman, Ann Lauterbach (her favorite poetry teacher), Janet Holmes, Jeanne Marie
Beaumontthe last three of
whom have been especially supportive of her efforts.

She considers the usual suspects among the poets of yesteryear
important to her, and she admires the criticism of Susan Howe.

About poetry she says, I expect a great deal of thought and feeling to be behind a poem,
and I tend to like poems which reflect ideas. Because I studied religion and philosophy
and math, I am particularly sensitive to the misuse of many ideas commonly placed into
these categories.

She likes her poetic narration true, not fictional.

A critic as well as a poet, Daly prefers to express critically what (she feels) the poet
attempts vs. succeeds at doing. For example, she says, Wallace Stevens mentioned that it
was really what he attempted that pleased him about his work, but that he never achieved
anything near that in his poetry. For a sample
of her criticism, her first book review, an impression of contemporary poetry, can be
found in American Letters & Commentary, 10th Anniversary issue.

She thinks the American Contemporary Poetry ’scene’ is very much like
the alternative music scene of the 80s, and perhaps what the truly alternative music scene
still is: an incredibly generous but fragmented variety of subgenres waiting for someone
like Kurt Cobain to come along and steal all of the riffs and jam them together on a
national stage.

See Daly’s web site for links to poems of hers that have been published online:

http://members.aol.com/cadaly.

Michel Delville (del VIL), Critic

(pronunciation of respondent’s name) [delvil]
Delville lives at Alllée du Beau Vivier 38, 4102 Seraing, Belgium. His e.mail address is
[email protected]; his phone number is ++ 32 4 3374386.

He has two books coming out in 1998: The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and
the Law of Genre (Gainesville FL: UP of Florida), and J. G. Ballard
(Plymouth: Northcote House).

He considers the following contemporary poets of importance:
Henri Michaux, Ron Silliman, Vasko Popa,
Miroslav Holub, Francis Ponge, Madeline Gins,
Paul Nougé, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob, Pierre Alferi,

John Cage, Peter Redgrove and Rosmarie Waldrop.

As for poets of the past, he lists Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire,
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Milton and Dante as
the heavyweights for him.

He notes four critics as being important to him: Marjorie Perloff, Roland Barthes, Frank
Lentricchia and Gérard Genette.

Debra Di Blasi, Poet

(pronunciation of Di Blasi’s name) dee BLAH-see
Di Blasi’s mailing address is 5932 Charlotte St., Kansas City, MO 64110, her
e.mail address is [email protected].

(affiliations/organizations)
Missouri Arts Council Literature Panelist

PEN Center USA West Member
The Authors Guild, Inc. Member
The Academy of American Poets Associate Member
The Writers Place Member
National League of American Pen Women, Westport, MO Branch

Member Chair, Short Story Committee
publication credits

BOOKS:
* Drought & Say What You Like, novella, New Directions Books: New
York, NY. March 1997 winner Thorpe Menn Book Award
* Prayers of an Accidental Nature, short story collection, Coffee House Press:
Minneapolis, MN. May 1999.

* Gass Pain, hypertext essay (Dalkey Archive Press/The Center for Book Culture,
www.centerforthebook.org)
*many published short fiction, articles, essays, reviews

list of works

FICTION
* What the Body Requires (formerly titled Reprise: Reprisal), novel (See
AWARDS)

* The Fourth Book, short story collection, in progress
SHORT STORIES
*Czechoslovakian Rhapsody Sung To The Accompaniment Of Piano. The Iowa
Review. December 2000 (See RADIO / AUDIO and PERFORMANCE /
INSTALLATION / THEATRE)
* Blue, Recollection, and Exiles. The Prague Review. Winter 2000

*Snapshots: A Geneology. Show + Tell anthology of Kansas City writers and artists,
Potpourri Publications: Kansas City, MO. June 2000
*The Buck. Potpourri literary journal. Fall 1996
*Blind. New Letters literary journal. Spring 1996
*Drowning Hard. Cottonwood literary journal. 1995 anthologized in Moondance e-zine.
1997

*I Am Telling You Lies. Sou’wester literary journal. 1995
*Chairman of the Board. TIWA (Themes Interpreted by Writers and Artists) literary and
visual arts magazine. 1993 (See RADIO / AUDIO)
*An Interview With My Husband. New Delta Review. 1991 anthologized in Lovers:
Writings By Women, The Crossing Press. 1992. (See AWARDS)
*Delbert. AENE literary journal. 1991

*The Season’s Condition. Colorado-North Review literary journal. 1990 (See
FILM and RADIO / AUDIO)
*Where All Things Converge. Transfer literary journal. 1989
NONFICTION
*The Way Men Kiss, memoir, in progress

Gass Pain, hypertext, The Center for Book Culture casebook on William H.
Gass’s The Tunnel, H.L. Hix, editor. November 2000
(www.centerforbookculture.org)
Essays
Millennium Garden: Paintings by Jim Sajovic. Published in art catalog. September 1999.
Out of the Garden, Into the Cave. 1997 (See AWARDS)
What Three Cheers Everywhere Provide. Anthologized in Exposures: Essays By Missouri
Women, Woods Colt Press: Kansas City, MO, March 1997 (See AWARDS)

Articles (for SOMA arts magazine: San Francisco, CA)
We’ve Got Joe Montana. 1994
I Am Writing To You From the Middle Of Nowhere. 1990
James Rosenquist: Seeing/Not Seeing. 1990
Diamanda Galas: Honesty Inside A Clenched Fist. 1989

Rising From the Ash Heap of Performance Art, Rinde Eckert Takes Off. 1988
Otto Hitzberger: Cutting Away. 1987
Miró. 1987
Jonathan Barbieri: Missiles Across the Border. 1987
Art Reviews (for The New Art Examiner: Chicago, IL)

Jane Ashbury. 1985.
Marilyn Propp. 1984,
SCREENPLAYS / FILM
Screenplays Produced
Drought, 16mm, 28 min. 1998 (premiere) 1993 (written)
Based on the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.

Produced by Breathing Furniture Films/Lisa Moncure & Michael Leen,
Screenplay by Debra Di Blasi, Lisa Moncure, Michael Leen, Directed by Lisa Moncure,
Photography by Michael Leen, Sound Design by Jim McKee/Earwax Productions,
Starring Jessika Cardinahl & Jack Conley, Production esign by Megan Ricks
& John Matheson, Editing by Jennifer Jean Cacavas, Radio Program Music by
Allen Davis.
SCREENINGS:
o National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, November 2000
o Ragtag Cinema: Columbia, MO. June 2000
o Universe Elle, as part of the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival: Cannes,
France. May 2000

* Broadcast rights purchased by Independent Film Channel. Premiere broadcast
November 23, 1999
* Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee: Kansas City, MO. April 1999 (see AWARDS)
o       Göteborg Sweden Film Festival: Göteborg, Sweden. Feb. 1999
o       Festival Internacional de Cine de Bilbao Spain: Bilbao, Spain.   November 1998
o       Sao Paulo Mostra Internacional de Cinama: Sao Paulo, Brazil. October 1998
o       Figueira da Foz International Festival of Cinema: Lisbon Portugal. September 1998
(See AWARDS)
o       Webster University Film Series: St. Louis, MO. September 1999.
o       Sarajevo International Film Festival: Sarajevo, Bosnia. August 1998
o       Recontres Cinemágraphiques Franco-American D’Avignon, France:
Avignon, France. June 1998 (See AWARDS)

o Charlotte Film Festival: Charlotte, NC. June 1998
o Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival: Toronto, Canada. June 1998 (See
AWARDS)
o New York/Avignon Film Festival: New York, NY. April-May 1998
o New York Women’s Film Festival: New York, NY. April 1998
o Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival: Taos, NM. April 1998 (See AWARDS)
o American Film Institute Film Festival: Los Angeles, CA. World premiere: October
1997 
The Season’s Condition — Super 8, 10 min.

Based on the short story of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.
Produced and directed by Lisa Moncure, photography by Michael Leen. 
SCREENINGS:
o Toronto Film Festival: Toronto, Canada. 1998
o American Film Institute Film Festival: Los Angeles, CA. 1995
o Bay Area Film & Video Poetry Festival: San Francisco, CA. 1994

o Culture Under Fire Film Festival: Kansas City, MO. 1994
Screenplays in Pre-Production
My Father’s Farm, original short documentary in pre-production, based on the
essay Out of the Garden, Into the Cave by Debra Di Blasi. Produced/written/directed by
Debra Di Blasi.
Intruder, short screenplay in pre-production screenplay by Debra Di Blasi.
Producer/director Edward Stencel.
Screenplays Unproduced
The Hunger Winter, original feature in progress co-written with historian Hal Wert

The Shortest Route Home, original short screenplay
The Walking Wounded, original feature-length screenplay (See AWARDS)
The Significance of Dreams, original short screenplay
Taming Wild Geese — unproduced original feature-length screenplay
Staring Into The Sun — unproduced original feature-length screenplay 
RADIO / AUDIO
Czechoslovakian Rhapsody, radio adaptation from the short story of the same
title. Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE): Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998

Kansas City Fiction Writers: Vol. 1 — short stories (The Season’s Condition and
Chairman of the Board) recorded for double CD set, limited edition featuring Kansas City
fiction writers. Art Radio: Kansas City, MO. Release date December 1998
Dreamless Dream, radio adaptation from the short stories Blind, Stones, and Our
Perversions. Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation: Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998

An Interview With My Husband — chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi. Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser, directed by
Art Suskin, stage management by Nancy Madsen, premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO, October 1997
Drought — radio adaptation of the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi, produced
and adapted by YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Corporation), Helsinki, Finland o broadcast
premiere May 1998
PERFORMANCE / EXHIBITIONS / THEATRE
Unbroken View, multimedia installation collaboration with visual artist Sharyn O’Mara
assisted by sound designer Chris Willits. Premiere exhibition: Edwin A. Ulrich Museum:
Wichita, KS. November 2000-January 2001. Traveling to Juniata Landscape Museum:
Juniata, Pennsylvania. September 2001.
Czechoslovakian Rhapsody, multimedia performance based on the short story of the same
title by Debra Di Blasi. Written/directed/produced/performed by Debra Di Blasi.
Premiere Ragtag Cinema, June 2000
An Interview With My Husband — chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi. Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser, directed by
Art Suskin, stage management by Nancy Madsen, premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO, October 1997
(where written up)
The New York Times Book Review
*Publishers Weekly

*Book Forum
*ForeWord
*In Print
*The Kansas City Star
many, many others
contemporary poets important to Di Blasi
Louise Gluck
Larry Levis (deceased)
Billy Collins

H.L. Hix
Galway Kinnell
Mark Strand
Marilyn Hacker
many, many others
poets of yesteryear important to Di Blasi
Sylvia Plath
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats

many, many others
critics important to Di Blasi: Not particularly interested in criticism
tastes in poetry: As a fiction writer, I am most fond of narrative poetry, although I enjoy
anything brilliant that contains aural lyricism. Content is important only in that it helps
illuminate a ‘truth’ I already know or confronts me with one I have not yet
discovered.
impression of contemporary poetry: Wonderful. The range of styles and voices is a
pleasure.
zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary: Virtually every serious literary journal
that publishes poetry deserves to be on this list.

survey question that asks a respondent to name
the first poem that comes to his mind right then, he said, None.