Berstein’s attempt to break down the illusions of space for creation in a free environment of the web is analyzed in a very skeptic way. In Electronic pies he questions the idea of a web where everything can be heard. What he is really saying is that authority f space has been shifted. All the aphorisms he uses similar to great thinkers of the past who had small illuminations, or rather had summed up ways in communicating their discoveries. Nietzsche comes to mind… (Will, don’t start…) but Berstein is also simplifying large themes into a structure that could easily be read and passed over. Perhaps he is mimicking the ways in which we function under/inside/outside the Web.

What I find interesting is that Burstein by his own actions of existing on the web as a poet and thinker empowers the space he criticizes.

In Poetry Bailout the satire is obvious. The world is full of different types of poetry. Is he mocking the ways in which poems are reproduced? Or is the way poetry has been reestablished in creativity?

In Antipoetry month he begins by mimicking Eliot’s Wasteland, April is the cruelest month in order to attack free verse without patterns. Is he a structuralist? Not sure about his aim….

His poetry, “On Election Day” and “Sane as Tugged Vat” have very different styles. Using Jocasta as a character who in many ways had been fooled by the gods is an interesting insertion to talk of love…Also, when he says to click on an image another poem pops up….is he toying with the reader in what one expects the web to do? Still not sure about this guy…I find him political and straight forward but not accurate in his attempt because I’m still uncertain of his messages.

Into the cracking earth ribs

where darkness lives

And smutches its nothings

Onto your face

You work for mother

You work for sister

There you celebrate

The end of the war

Your eyes holes of hope

Somewhere above the lights

2500 meters under

Holding tight

Metal and bone quiver

The sun broken on a man

Generations of broken stone

Beneath your feet

Bite the heat

And taste of coal

Flowers with blood

The big town in your head

Follows languages of miners

Rankine very decisively demonstrates the differences and powers of different person views of writing in relation to communicating the truth about a social condition through a personal experience. Switching from “you” to “I” the point of view changes for the reader and a conscious aesthetic of the invisible is replaced by a real image of the speaker in relations to the reader. This is an important role for the reader to no longer follow but to participate in the movement of the poem as a primary supporter of the speaker.

“You said I has so much power; it’s insane” follows the disclosure that the “pronoun barely holding the person together” is a linguistic interior/exterior concept that becomes destabilized in the practice of the poem. The “I” cannot hold a significant power in a system of racism where it does not belong to the person. This idea of racist development is a subjective aesthetic of the self as a different entity, not belonging to the body. Rankine plays with the different kinds of poetic styles and rules when she mentions how as a poet she has “tried rhyme, tried truth, tried epistolary untruth, tried and tried” and the solution is a collection of different kinds of pieces of writing as in this book. In the first section the lies about how the body is perceived in the public eye, when she refers to Serena’s body that according to the media suggests that her body “should not be in such an ambition.” Rankine describes the moment on television when tennis player Wozniacki imitates Serena’s body and she says, “at last, in this real, and unreal moment,” is where the truth of expression lies in the audience to express their real perception of Serena Williams, the best female tennis player of all time.

In the middle of the poem there is a dialogue of an imaginary presence. The complexity of the personas in the poem now becomes intriguing as we wonder if there is a third person in the poem or if the poet is directly talking to the reader. “…you are reading minds but did you try?” and then after the poet responses to the question with “I tried…” a voice again says, “never mind our unlikeness, you too have heard the noise in your voice/anyway, sit down. Sit here alongside.” The sensibility that the reader is present in the poem implies a complicated bridge between text and reality that persists throughout the whole text.

For Rankine, poetic self reflection seems to be in the language and the suggestions of how the reader perceives the political/social issue of individuality in a racist world that denies its own racism. The assimilation between poetic expression and political references creates a context in her poetry that reminds the reader of previous poetic conventions of context-politics-voice sort of narrative. What I mean is that the “I” in this poetry even though personal in it’s sensibilities it is a political figure with the awareness of a system in place. “You could build a world out of need, or you could hold everything black and see” suggests that in order to create, the poet makes a direct conscious decision to bring the reader to a world that is real.

Of course the reader cannot ignore the image at the bottom of the page between sections of the poem. A black page with a sort of medieval statues of common gargoyles and a woman sitting on a pedestal is facing half the other section of the poem. The reminder that this is a differential text in the ways that the compositional methods of poetic expression are aided by the images it produces. This image is not mentioned in the poem, nor does it reflect the meaning of the poem but it does create a mystical sense of loss from a time past. The woman has wings and at the bottom of the page a monk or saint, is in a praying position. This image is small but very powerful as it presents images that are familiar to the reader as well as the insertion of the black woman with wings as an angel of some sort. The image becomes a source of conceptual dialect between the past and present. “Yesterday called to say we were together…” is the first line of the next page until the poem proposes three questions. “Is this you?” and later, “whose are you?” is not really answered in the poem. Even though there is a voice answering we are not sure if this an imaginary dialogue or a real instance… “Yes, it’s me, clear the way, then hold me clear of this that faces, the storm carrying me through dawn…” there is action in the other presence and power to control events. The poem looses its straightforwardness and becomes a bit chaotic at times. This is perhaps the poet’s central analysis of the subject of self and race and the identity of the poet.

Not everyone can access the same text?  I was not sure how long these conversations can be… I played a bit for the first time in my life.

“Galatea has what I call a multilinear plot: unlike traditional IF, it has no single path to victory. Instead there are a large number of endings, some more satisfactory than others, of which many could be considered “win” states. It takes only a few minutes of play to arrive at an ending, but considerably longer to find all of them.” Player

I did not get to any victory…what does anyone win?

“From this perspective, it’s all about growing up and learning to understand what’s alien. It’s about dropping pretenses, egos and prejudices. It’s about realizing the value of others’ creations, and never losing sight of your own role relating to them. It’s about learning to accept criticism, even as a critic. It’s about becoming more measured, but also understanding that wearing your heart on your sleeve is okay. It is, in essence, the same journey I’m having to embark on, as I take my first steps into this scary world of writing about videogames.” Player

Well, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Very strangely I did not get a “true” communication here but the experience was interesting in how the computer gave a voice…

think about What do you want to think about? >

kiss What do you want to kiss? >

you You can’t see any such thing. >

look The Gallery’s End Unlit, except for the single spotlight; unfurnished, except for the defining swath of black velvet. And a placard on a little stand. On the pedestal is Galatea.

>goodbye “Well. I suppose I’ll be going,” you say. “Very well,” she remarks. Her voice is naturally low — alto tones — but there’s something wrong with the modulation, as though at any moment she might start to scream.

>life (Galatea about the life) “What do you know about life?” you ask her. (General questions: you can almost always find ones that haven’t been anticipated.) “Nothing,” she says, “except what I saw of his; and that seldom made any sense to me. He told me that people are born, and that they die, and that there are stages in between– childhood, adolescence… I asked him why he didn’t carve me as a child so that I could grow up.” There’s a pregnant pause. “I never heard him laugh so hard as when I asked him that. And he said that I certainly had the brain of a child.” There’s a moment of stillness.

Neighbor Procedure=Human Shields

The very first poems seemed to struggle linguistically-I had hard time making sense of it and finding meaning. As I continued, I was confused with all the names that I did not have any association or reference to. The section Shoot & Weep was the most difficult. The reader senses a hidden message within the language and structure of the poems.

The presence of a different language and different names sends an alarm of a cultural awareness or, I should say, unawareness. The poems that include a stanza of the same repetitions and Hebrew make the reader want to know what the book is about.

There is an ironic political definition in the title itself. When one thinks of neighbors one usually things of common interests but not in this case.

In the second section Book of Comparisons is the most experimental in visual poetry. The words do not have any order, they king of flow on the page after page. In between Hebrew there are a few words that talk of shame and fruits on the ground. Is it a prayer?

It is to separate the political from the artistic. Does Zolf want this poetry to be political poetry or is more of an expose? Does poetry give a name to the many who died in the neighbor procedures? Is this a litany? Do we read the names out loud? The poems do work as social and cultural commentaries.

The Innocent Abroad section contains conventional structure poems as well as experimental ones. L’eveil section is written in a target after it follows the single page of a gun target. It is threatening to the reader even to imagine a life of torment and murder. Also, the hints and references to America are suspicious to me. It acquires a few questions from the reader.

How involved are we? Does this selection of poems suggest?

Is this political poetry? How?

How do we relate to the foreign names mentioned?

What are some of the linguistic difficulties in reading these poems?

Do we need to do research to understand the poet’s intention better? Are we forced to take side on the Palestine and the Israeli war?

Middle Passages begins as a collection of dedications of poems to many real people. It is not until I’m into a few chapters that I recognize some of the names. Mandela and some otters. By page 14 the style takes a “right “ we can only read from right to left, wait, no, it looks like that but we can still read it from left to right.

The language repeats certain themes of the sculls and violence as much as it repeats the hills and the breezes of a certain place. All of the poems appear as dedications to specific historical people who were either murdered or went missing. The language shifts from romantic to tragic many time sin different poems.

“all along the rustle all along the echoes all along the world

And that that stutter I had heard in some dark summer freedom…”

This is part of “Flute” where imagery is personified in the echoes of history. This style of linguistic twisting of meaning into opposites of words is prominent in most of the poems. “Crashed into history” is tragic and sad, the tone of melancholy linger and penetrates the poem. The same language provides a melancholy comfort, a universal celestial power beyond human violence.

“but there are stars that burn that murders do not know

Soft diamonds behind the blown to bits…”

The voice is always of an observer of violence who sees the good and kind and precious in the tormented and tired. He sees talent and youth and hope as well.

The style of this poetry is radical in parts of a specific dialect. I read most of the poems out loud, and found myself taken into a different world. The sound carries the meaning and vise versa. Words for the most part run from line into other lines like water.

“Images have gender” words do not.

“A book is something about completion isn’t it? – the moment when you declare a collection of fragments (words, sentences, pages, images) to be a whole, and a whole that is in your authorship and ownership. You can’t copyright something you say, or even something you place on the Internet, in the same way. That’s another reason why the Internet is interesting, because you can revise pages so easily – it lies somewhere between literary and oral traditions. I just made a series of works that are one-off books – they are all printed and registered as an edition of one. I was thinking that it would be nice to make a book that’s an edition of a half; it would be necessarily and forever unfinished, which all works are in a way.” FB

Even though I like what Fiona Banner says about art, I have a difficult time conceptualizing art within the perimeters of temporality as she describes it. A nude artist painting a nude woman on stage as part of an art exhibit. How we do we capture that? Is the experience she describes as the awareness of art in memory? Yet, she writes unfinished books in a form of tombstones because they are dead once they are written. I did not see her describe any process of the imagination of reading written traditional format book. She refers to things the intimacy of holding books and touching them and building a relationship with them because as humans we need relationships but she does not really address issues of imagination. She also comment son how visual art is different in ways we communicate with color.

I opened the Heart of Darkness portfolio and I guess we never get to see the photos that are supposed to be in it…Then we realize that the photos are not taken by her, they were and assignment to Paulo Pellegrin to discover the city of London. We still never see the photos. At the bottom it reads: Accessioned into the Archive of Modern Conflict.

Okay I think I get it. We live within conflicts.

Middle Passages begins as a collection of dedications of poems to many real people. It is not until I’m into a few chapters that I recognize some of the names. Mandela and some otters. By page 14 the style takes a “right “ we can only read from right to left, wait, no, it looks like that but we can still read it from left to right.

The language repeats certain themes of the sculls and violence as much as it repeats the hills and the breezes of a certain place. All of the poems appear as dedications to specific historical people who were either murdered or went missing. The language shifts from romantic to tragic many time sin different poems.

“all along the rustle all along the echoes all along the world

And that that stutter I had heard in some dark summer freedom…”

This is part of “Flutes” where imagery is personified in the echoes of history. This style of linguistic twisting of meaning into opposites of words is prominent in most of the poems. “Crashed into history” is tragic and sad, the tone of melancholy linger and penetrates the poem. The same language provides a melancholy comfort, a universal celestial power beyond human violence.

“but there are stars that burn that murders do not know

Soft diamonds behind the blown to bits…”

The voice is always of an observer of violence who sees the good and kind and precious in the tormented and tired. He sees talent and youth and hope as well.

The style of this poetry is radical in parts of a specific dialect. I read most of the poems out loud, and found myself taken into a different world. The sound carries the meaning and vise versa. Words for the most part run from line into other lines like water.

1. What kind of anxieties does Goldsmith create in his work?

1. Does he create a sense of loss of moral responsibility for his audience that he as an artist does not need to comply by? For instance, how are we to judge his “no editing” technique while/after we satisfy our own curiosities?

3. Is he creating a big brother watching atmosphere in his work?

My first response to Kenneth Goldsmith’s the traffic jam was to look at the date, and then I realized that his is always the case with BQE Manhattan GW Bridge, etc. This made me wonder as to the reasons of why he would be interested in the recording of this type of documentation. There is a sense of accuracy as it is recorded on the specific day, or I should say it is announced but not really recorded until he records it. Is this some evidence of how much spoken language and or activity goes unrecorded in every day life? Is more important in its mundane occurrence than we give it. Is this activity that it is now communal and it is shared by so many in their own cars in isolation form the rest of the drivers, etc? We share the roads and we do not speak of it, not simultaneously, but if we were to share a drink or a couch or a home our relationships to each other would be measured differently.

Then I think of the poetic search in this piece. Is it poetic? What would define it as such here? Soliloquy changes in conversation. It is not recorded from the radio but it is as if we, the readers, are overhearing people speak quietly at a gallery. I like this piece. The movement of the conversation is making some sense, even though we don’t know if it is a inner thought pattern or just an actual recording of people’s voices. When I did go to other days on the list, I wonder why I did that. I almost feel as if I was a voyeur listening in on a phone line or listening to people pass by in the street by my open window. Is this where language lies, lost in the mingle of big cities?

In Fidget Goldsmith writes every bodily movement for 24 hours in order to record the difficulties of accurate reporting. The impossibility of keeping track of the many functions our bodies go through the instant is very real as we read part of. The voluntary and automatic responses to the outside world and inside thoughts that function simultaneously are almost impossible to capture.

Fidget’s premise was to record every move my body made on June 16, 1997 (Bloomsday). I attached a microphone to my body and spoke every movement from 10:00 AM, when I woke up, to 11:00 PM, when I went to sleep. I was alone all day in my apartment and didn’t answer the phone, go on errands, etc. I just observed my body and spoke. From the outset the piece was a total work of fiction. As I sit here writing this letter, my body is making thousands of movements; I am only able to observe one at a time. It’s impossible to describe every move my body made on a given day.

The issue of functionality becomes an issue here. How do distinguish a thing past as a fiction or reality? The fact is that as soon as the activity is completed we no longer have any way of commenting unless we rely on memory and therefore change the event.

The interesting part is that he is speaking to a microphone instead of writing. Is there any difference between the way he records the events of his body through the day and the way he writes about them later? He admits the activity becomes more difficult as he has to talk through his actions. “The exercise becomes harder and harder, the verbal equivalents to physical motion more and more abbreviated.” The warning comes early on in the text as the preparation for recording happens. This activity might be an orchestrated mal function of our existence. Does it also prove that as an experiment it is impossible to be vocal, thoughtful, creative and spontaneous at the same time? Is fiction really not meant to be experiential or perhaps, it could be experienced post experience and shared post writing?