Sunday, March 11, 2007

Here are some workshop doozies. I was told once that something I submitted was 'a little performancey'. Another time it was 'a little Languagey'. The capital 'L' is from Language Poetry, I presume. Yeah, what's with all the language in this poem? I was hoping for nut-covered raisins. A frequent approach is to treat the poem like it were one of those machines filled with prizes, and the reader has to operate a mechanical claw and try to grab one. One compliment was that it sounds like the 'crazy person' on the bus. You know that person on the bus? Didn't Ron Silliman read from Tjanting on the bus? I know Charles Reznikoff did. Like I said, I took it as a compliment. I probably wouldn't actually do it, but I admire those that do. Kind of like people who have great experiences on drugs. I used to worry that because I had so little experience with substances, I would never be able to write like Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg. But alot of the poems in a magazines like Poetry sound much more depraved than anyone, or anything written, on drugs.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I read all of Ketjak at the corner of Market & Powell in SF, in front of the original branch of the Bank of America in September 1978. That took 4 and 1/2 hours, I was spitting blood by the end and lost my voice -- completely -- for three days.

For Tjanting, I and 25 others took over the Church Street Muni Station -- it was the only one that Muni & the Public Utilities Commission could agree on -- and the reading took 10:32. We had told Muni that we thought it would take 10:30. Our on-time record was much better than theirs.

Mike Hauser said...

I had read something somewhere about this. Thanks for the info.