Rod Smith, Touché

Thunder stirs the symbolized

between & is transitory—

a downspotting, circuitous

wild—

the house

has a learning & the house

has a viewfinder—the best

thing in the house though

is an anklet, or a fish poacher

—they have what the skylight

has—which is not what a duct has.

the house in the lake

it is trapped & burdensome,

terrifically inert, sandbagged

& bubbling up—a blatant

casuistry echoes in the

crawlspace—parietal, jipped,

plaster cast, & smarmy—

            house tells & is told

            house in the heaving

            need—woe house

            woe

   ____________

it takes great courage

to visit certain homes

   ____________

                        (“The Good House, etc.”)

Subtitled “In Memory of My Theories Vol. 2” is Washington D.C. poet and publisher Rod Smith’s Touché (Wave Books, 2015), a curious follow-up (as he suggests) to his third poetry collection, In Memory of My Theories (O Books, 1996). With Touché, Smith is now the author of twelve poetry collections, from The Boy Poems (Washington, DC: Buck Downs Books, 1994) and Protective Immediacy (New York: Roof, 1999) to Music or Honesty (Roof Books, 2003) and Deed (Iowa City, IA: University of Iowa Press, 2007). After a small handful of poetry titles and nearly twenty years between, what does In Memory of My Theories, if anything, have to do with the current title, Touché? In an interview conducted by Patrick F. Durgin, online at r e a d m e #2 (Winter 2000), Smith describes the earlier collection:

One wants a friend in contingency. A kind of contextual gliding I suppose is what is meant by the title In Memory of My Theories which contains work as much as a decade old at the time of publication. Given that span, in the end what’s “isolated” in the book might be only “the impulse.” So the constructing of a book is the compression of a large number of hours of the writer’s (or writers’) experience into a musical event (events) — that would be the impulse that can be shared — not so much an ideological informing as a roving, a perceiving, a “listening in” — which creates an experience rather than reporting it.

Whereas the previous collection, Deed, appeared more streamlined, the poems collected in Touché suggest the same kind of structural and possibly temporal compositional span as he discusses above, allowing these two collections—Touché and In Memory of My Theories —to each exist as a kind of catch-all, held together precisely by the wide variety of pieces included. Given some of the acknowledgements at the back of the collection range in dates from 2002 to more contemporary publications, it suggests that Smith’s two-volume (loosely considered, of course) “In Memory of My Theories” are not only composed of poems outside of his more formal book-length projects, but reminiscent of Denver, Colorado poet Noah Eli Gordon’s recent The Word Kingdom in the Word Kingdom (Brooklyn NY: Brooklyn Arts Press, 2015) [see my review of such here] or Toronto poet Jay MillAr’s Other Poems (Nightwood Editions/blewointment, 2010) [see my essay on Jay MillAr's work here], two books that also existed between and around their other book-length poetry projects, becoming book-length considerations of the scattered “occasional.” Given that this is the second volume, this suggests a deeper and more ongoing engagement with how poems connect to each other; that all are part of a larger, ongoing, singular project, contained so far in the space of two trade volumes. Might there be a third down the road, or even a fourth? And where might all this be heading?

Me’s Wittl Birdy Bong Stowy

I boughted my wittl pairwukete

a birdy bong for hims bifday

but it gived him a itty wittle cut on hims

bitty wittle beak-wip couldn’t do a bawwel woll

i didn’t know y-cuz

i mean it was hims wip not

hims wittle wingys so i sd

to hims wittle birdy-wirdy

which was not hims namey-wamey

the dawk suwwounds us nummy-wummy googly woo

Hoo’s got a wittle bitty potty mouth?

Why you!

In Deirdre Kovac’s review of In Memory of My Theories in Poetry Project Newsletter, she describes the poems as being “both hyper-linguistic (i.e., language pointing to itself, as an object with all the attendant baggage of etymology, linguistics, etc.) and sub-semantic (i.e., symphonic, the direct route described above).” She continues:

This de-dichotomizing is also part of how Smith’s work is structured and moves—motion, if not arrival, being key. He revels in the habits of syntax, and breaks them. The action lies not in the action of event, of verbs, but in that of connection, a linguistic motion—derived from his use of prepositions—of what belongs to what, what suture, what addition. Even the verbs are sometimes made to work like prepositions. “So It Is that / the direction is indented by the dubious double affect of the undone area she / is to be believed to inhabit” (“Sieff”). The motion is made constant also by musical combination, vowel-sound surface progressions and Anglo-Saxon sound patterns within a Latinate (however interrupted) syntax.

Composed around his other works, the poems that make up these two volumes might be his engagement with the mechanics of language, meaning and syntax, and the boundaries of how poems are supposed to be built. The poems in Touché are incredibly playful, straightforward, confusing, highly deliberate and varied, from the more formal lyric to poems that engage directly with sound, collision and accident, to language and flarf works, and poems that twist linguistic expectation, meaning and narrative, as well as the occasional piece that reads as an incredibly dense essay on composition: “either spontaneously / or following a collision,” he writes, to close the poem “Treatise on Consequences.” If his other poetry collections show where he’s been, the poems in Touché might just show where he’s headed.

Miss Rose Goes To Washington

We spent the bulk of last week in Washington D.C., there for the sake of a conference Christine was attending for work. Miss Rose and I wandered the city as best we could, in-between naps and such. Neither of us had been to the city before, but apparently Christine had, at least once or twice.

Our airplane was small, which meant the washroom, where I changed the young lady, was also small.

The rainbow ring around the airplane as we neared the city. That means good luck, yes?

Tuesday, March 31, 2015: We flew in, later afternoon. At least the flight was only an hour-plus, but the wee lass was a bit tricky to wrangle. We made hotel, showed Rose some episodes of some of her toddler-shows, and almost immediately crashed.

Wednesday, April 1, 2015: Woke early in Washington, apparently a day that Rose considered was best for eating blueberries while lying down (for some reason). After Christine left for her conference, Rose and I headed out to meet up with poet Reb Livingston and her son Gideon at Kramerbooks and Afterwords Café for lunch, and bookstore wandering. Before we met them, we wandered a bit around Dupont Circle, and Rose ran around where the empty fountain (seasonal, I presume) sits. 

Reb and I have been occasional correspondents for some time now, so good to finally be able to meet in person (especially since I haven’t yet attended an AWP, where, apparently, everyone meets everybody). Livingston was also the publisher of Lea Graham’s trade poetry collection, the last title for her series of titles under No Tell Books. Now she's part of Queen Mob’s Teahouse, and was also kind enough to pass along a copy of her novel, Bombyonder (2014), published by Bitter Cherry Books, an extension of Coconut. Much thanks!

Although I’m disappointed: after days of planning, I never did get to open with my “Doctor Livingston, I presume.” I mean, I bet she’s never heard anyone offer her that before. Ever.

We returned to the hotel for her nap, just in time. Post-nap, we headed off to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which was absolutely incredible. Disappointing, a bit, that the museum had a small display for Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space (including his space suit and a couple of other things), but nothing for Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (from whom Rose was given one of her middle names). Still: we stood by Apollo 11 and marvelled, not just at how small the capsule really is, but how completely cool to be able to be standing by such a thing.

The rockets were completely, entirely cool. I really can't say that enough.

Given how often Christine attended space-camp as a teen, I suspected we had no option but to visit here. I picked up some postcards to send folk back home, and a small space shuttle toy for Rose.

Just behind the museum, the stretch of parks and other spaces between the Washington Monument and the Capital Building.

After spending most of the day in the ring sling (I didn't dare let her run around the bookstore or the museum, etcetera), we were both starting to wear.

Although I did wish we'd the time to visit the Capital Building, the Washington Monument and even Grant's Tomb, given that we were so close (and, as Groucho Marx knew, where no-one is buried).

Thursday, April 2, 2015: A morning off to the Washington Zoo, where Rose meandered very slowly, which means we didn’t see much at all, but at least she got some exercise.

Somehow, she absolutely fascinated by the cobblestone.

I think I’m finally getting the hang of the Washington Metro system. Although I don’t understand all the exhaust that lives in the tunnels; are the trains powered by coal? I don’t see or smell the same kind of exhaust from any of the subways in Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal. Explain? [Someone finally did: not coal, but a matter of accumulated exhaust that simply has nowhere else to go]

In the zoo (once we finally arrived; we got slightly turned around upon leaving the subway) we saw spotted leopards, giant pandas, elephants and a zebra. She made her elephant noises, she made her lion/dragon noises, she made her dog noises (we saw a dog on the way in). Given Rose’s schedule, we didn’t go much further into the zoo, but stopped briefly for food before heading back to the hotel for her nap. She was asleep before we left the train.

Sleeps, sleeps. She did sleep.

Post-nap we were off again, this time to visit poet Rod Smith at his bookstore gig, Bridge Street Books, where I picked up some titles from him directly, as well as some from store itself, including his newest poetry collection, TOUCHE (Wave Books, 2015). I brought along my copy of his previous poetry collection, Deed (University of Iowa Press, 2007), which he was kind enough to sign (and I remember enjoying). Also picked up a Susan Howe title I didn’t have, her Frame Structures: Early Poems 1974-1979 (New Directions, 1996), and a title (and poet) I wasn’t aware of previously, Elizabeth Arnold's Civilization (Flood Editions, 2006). I’d love to see more books from Flood Editions, but they just don’t make it up our way (there is so much I'm missing!). When in American bookstores, I always keep my eye open. Smith was also kind enough to pass along some review copies from his Edge Books, which I haven't had a chance to go through yet (hoping soon, once I'm back at my desk, properly).

It was good to meet Mr. Smith also, but my exhaustion from carrying baby for a couple of days prevented me from remembering to capture a photo of us in the store. I've only been kicking myself daily for that, since.

Slowly back towards the centre (ish), I fed Rose some dinner-ish on a small patch of grass just by the bridge. Yoghurt, cheese, crackers. Given that she’d been much of the day and the day prior in the ring sling, I figured I really needed to allow her some running space. I really didn’t want her running around in the museums, given the crowds (apparently kids are off school this week, which brings the incredible crowds to just about everything we’ve been attempting). She ate some yoghurt, and said hello to a dog.

Heading back, we met up with Christine and our pal Wendy (also here for the conference) for dinner, just by Dupont Circle. After carrying the wee lass around for two days of hotel and tourist, I was about ready to crash (which meant again: a lack of photos). Already looking forward to home, where I can just set her loose and not worry.

Friday, April 3, 2015: Our last day in Washington, we wandered our morning over to the National Museum of Natural History (where the above photo was taken). Given we were only at Ottawa’s Museum of Nature recently, it became easier to compare: I think I prefer our museum, at least for stuff for younger folk. We did see some exhibits that appealed, including an array of fish that caught her attention for more than a few minutes. The immobile (non-living) fish had to be super-large for her to be paying attention.

There were some pretty cool exhibits, including some mummies from Ancient Egypt, which Rose ran by quickly and I wasn't able to see more than skim. It was good, at least, to allow her to run around a bit.

After seeing various animals, we discovered the Hope Diamond was at the museum, which seemed rather odd. I went to see, just to be able to say that I had.

Once leaving, we shared a pretzel and wandered into the Sculpture Gardens, among the cherry blossoms. Yes, they exist. Yes, around the same time there was a freezing rain warning in Ottawa. What the?

 

 

And, also, a spider sculpture by the same artist who has the spider sculpture in front of the National Gallery of Canada, back home in that Ottawa.

She was asleep, again, before we landed back at the hotel. Given we had to check out by 3pm, her nearly three hour nap began in the ring sling, and ended in the ring sling. Dropped bags off at the front desk before meeting Christine at Air and Space (so she, too, could re-visit space-y things), and wandered around there a bit. A bit. A wee bit. And once done, we headed back for bags, and off to the airport [the worst part: getting to the airport and checking email to discover a good pal from high school lives in Washington D.C. and I COMPLETELY forgot; aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgh]. The wee lass (eventually) crashed on the plane. Home.

 

Open Letter, Fifteenth Series, Number 2: Olson @ the Century

Despite the occultation of Olson’s reputation, a return to his ideas and writing is more urgent than ever. What are the stakes of polis in an imminent world of neo-Liberalism, the quantitative accumulation of wealth in a small coterie of corrupt malefactors, the rise of fundamentalist ideals proactively eroding the boundaries between State and Church, and the immersion of heterogeneities into the economic and fiscal homogenous condition dubbed globalization? Olson is the poet who introduced scale and ontology into poetics, radically revising natural history into the human universe, seeing the earth as our home. His Copernican revolution within poetics (“man is himself an object”) together with his commitment to a theory of communication and information that goes far beyond the centralized cerebellum of the Cartesian cogito, rendered him the exemplary poet of the Cybernetic Age. And with the earth on the brink of ecological disaster and language enmeshed in the age of informatics, Olson appears as a prophet and perhaps a destroying angel. (We should also pay credit to Olson’s pioneering work in what later emerged as Ethnopoetics. His studies of Mayan glyphs, though hardly resulting in a decoding, do inflect an interest in non-Romanic writing systems and in pre-Columbian culture that offers an eccentricating parallel to his theory of proprioception). (Steve McCaffery, “Introduction”)

With talk of Frank Davey’s Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory winding down after some forty-plus years comes an issue guest-edited by Steve McCaffery, “Olson @ the Century” (Fifteenth Series, Number 2, Spring 2013). As McCaffery writes in his introduction: “With the exception of Frank Davey’s, Stephen Fredman’s, and Miriam Nichol’s articles, the present collection of essays is based on papers initially presented as part of Olson@ the Century. An Archival and Projective Reconsideration, a symposium held at the University at Buffalo October 14-16, 2010. Conceived less as an homage to or an attempted reinstallation of Olson’s ideas and theories, the symposium was envisioned as a double-vectored reassessment along the two trajectories named in the title: archival and projective. The ‘projective’ reassessments are presented first; three archival contributions end the gathering.” The issue comes at an interesting time, when most of the current attention on that particular period of American poetry is focused on Robert Duncan, with the publication of Duncan’s The H.D. Book (eds. Michael Boughn and Victor Coleman; University of California Press, 2011), The Collected Early Poems and Plays (ed. Peter Quartermain; University of California Press, 2012) and The Collected Later Poetry and Plays (ed. Peter Quartermain; University of California Press, 2013), and the collection of essays, Reading Duncan Reading: Robert Duncan and the Poetics of Derivation (eds. Stephen Collis and Graham Lyons; University of Iowa Press, 2012), as well as Lisa Jarnot’s biography of Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus (University of California Press, 2012). Given that the conference happened three years ago, why is this collection only coming into print now?

Place, as it unrolls in The Maximus Poems, is not simply a geographical point; it is an intense, multi-dimensional nexus of vectors that include a prehistory, a geological narrative, a geography, multiple human histories and criss-crossing myths, technological mediators, and as well the individual’s own genealogy and inner landscape. Olson draws on state of the art contemporary discourses such as Einsteinian physics, Jungian psychology, Sauerian geography and Whiteheadian philosophy to put together a locus that is complexly alive. He then suggests that individuals hold themselves responsible to it. (Miriam Nichols, “The Closing of the Field: Modernism at the Wall”)

There is an interesting selection of letters from Robert Creeley to Charles Olson, four letters stretching from 1953 to 1970, selected from The Selected Letters of Robert Creeley that Kaplan Harris, Rod Smith and Peter Baker have put together for the University of California Press, to appear this fall. The letters highlight aspects of Creeley’s encouragement, shaping and working Olson’s image. One footnote reads, “The letters chronicle the fact that Creeley was instrumental in shaping the Olson canon. We see Creeley take an active hand in the publication and promotion of Olson’s writing. We also see Creeley continue to be involved with Olson legacy for the duration of his own life, from editing Olson’s Selected Poems (University of California Press, 1993) to advising friends and colleagues on approaches for teaching his work to a new generation of students.” What becomes clear about this collection of pieces on Olson and his work is in how each contributor to the collection manages to talk about Olson directly by dealing with him indirectly, nearly through the works and words of others. Miriam Nichol’s essay, “The Closing of the Field: Modernism at the Wall traces a compelling thread from Charles Olson’s views of history and identity through Ezra Pound to Erin Mouré’s work on the idea of the citizen. As Nichols writes:

            Elsewhere, in the poetry collection O Cidadán, and in her essays, My Beloved Wager, Mouré links her on-going meditation on such transformative properties to a study of citizenship. For Mouré, the inequity and suffering caused by globalization do not call for a return to nationalism in the traditional sense because nationalism implies entitlements and exclusions dependent on a concept of origin. She writes that “historical and national entitlement (a notion warped and split by colonialisms) always seems to mean some people have to die or be denied full citizenship in the policy, denied use of their language, because of their origins. Faced with this, what use are ‘origins’?” (159). Instead, Mouré speaks of “assemblages of the person” or “coalects” (MBW 156, original emphasis); borders that are porous and leaky, bodies that are permeable, identities that are fluid, wonderstruck and eager for transport. The self, she says, has its “two avenues (that of autonomy, standing before the self, and that of the other, standing before those who precede one)” and those “play through and against each other […].”

A particularly interesting essay is Davey’s end-piece, “Olson in Canada,” writing about Olson’s influence on Canadian writers and writing, particularly his lack of influence on writers in eastern Canada, such as Raymond Souster and Louis Dudek. The influence Olson had on writers in the west, particularly Vancouver, is well-known and Davey names names, including Ottawa poet William Hawkins, who drove west with Roy MacSkimming to participate in the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference. Considering that Souster brought Olson up to Toronto as part of his infamous Contact Reading Series, the lack of change in Toronto poetry reads as particularly willful by some. As Davey writes, “Overall, this period of Olson’s contact with Canadian writers appears to do little more than make them aware of his poetics and of the formal possibilities they offered. Only Dudek shows any significant understanding of them, and is unimpressed. Souster is impressed but seemingly unable to understand well enough to make sustained use of them.” The interaction made little difference on Souster’s writing, but impacted his editorial significantly, as Davey notes a number of future Contact authors who picked up elements of Olson’s writing, including George Bowering and Davey himself. Still, one of the most striking parts of Davey’s essay is the clarification of how exactly Olson’s work influenced Canadian writing: “One of the oddities of Canadian attention to Olson is that even though most of it occurs during the 1960s, it is the Olson of the 1950s – of ‘Projective Verse,’ written in the late 1940s and first published in 1950, and of the first three books of ‘The Maximus Poems,’ that are most influential. Only those who followed him to Buffalo – Wah and Hogg – seem to have found much to learn from in the later books.” About Souster, Davey writes:

Souster’s lack of change, however, may not have been as conscious or deliberate as Whiteman hints. There are several places in his letters to Olson where he appears to regret not understanding Olson’s poems and theories as fully as he would like, or where he apologizes for the limitations of his own poems – in one instance sending Olson a new poem and commenting “not much, I’m afraid, but I suppose typical stuff right now, not really making it” (78). Acknowledging one’s own limitations does not necessarily mean that one has choen to have them. Moreover, Olson seems to have received positively what poems Souster did show him. When Donald Allen proposed to include Irving Layton and Gael Turnbull in his The New American Poetry 1945-1960 anthology in order to show that the new poetry had international reach, Olson quickly replied “lawd if you are going to include Canadians, above all pick Souster for yr center, there – especially for such an anthology, for he and not that Englishy slicky Layton or that nice Migrant Gael: lawd Souster is the one who has for years caught on that the American thing exists for use: ex/ his Contact-Combustion, as against anything Montreal etc” (Maud 60).