Hejinian & Mohammad @ 21 Grand

The (New) Reading Series @ 21 Grand presents



LYN HEJINIAN & K. SILEM MOHAMMAD

Sunday, March 30th
6:30pm

21 GRAND
416 25th St.
Oakland CA
$3

Sugarhigh on Immanent Critique

Jane Dark's Sugarhigh:

The frictionless, immediate, and unremarked slippage from immanent critique to intentional fallacy is a useful index of the problematic of enlisting partial concepts from one philosophical practice to bolster a quite different aesthetic claim.

Agreed. And yet, this is a problem that haunts the entire field of criticism, or "critique," writ large, exactly because the definitions are at stake not only of intention, or aesthetic, but of critique, and whether critique necessarily touches on the aesthetic. Certainly this has been at the heart of many a dark and dreary battle over the aims of academic literary studies and theory in recent years. Or, put another way, who agrees on what is immanent? Isn't the very notion of an "intentional fallacy" an argument for the non-immanence of aesthetic intentionality? And isn't that in itself an argument that can be taken in different directions toward different ends, including both determinist and idealist ends?

What I'm trying to say is that I am skeptical about both the model of the poem as transcendent fetish object and the model of the poem as index of concrete material factors. But I don't have the mental rigor to take this position further. I have just enough brains to conceptualize a few things clearly enough to convince myself that there is no base capable of supporting those few things within the same ideational system, and that therefore everything is ultimately incoherent and disgusting. This is the conservative impulse in me, inherited from some Enlightenment orientation toward intellectual pessimism, toward the conviction that all philosophical effort, as yet one more luxurious symptom, inevitably collapses into farce and despair. I'm not proud of it. It's lazy and self-serving at the same time that it's profoundly depressing. And I think it has something to do with the same part of me that's bad at math.

Greatest Poetry Book Covers of All Time Dept.

Michael McClure, Ghost Tantras (Four Seasons Foundation, 1969).

Thanks to Lanny for directing me to this!

Poetry Book Covers I Like

Starting with this post, Gary Sullivan has been talking about the aesthetics of poetry book covers. I thought I'd get in on the act and post a short sampling of recent covers that I think work particularly well. This is not an absolute "best" list, just a grab bag. I may post more later.



Joshua Clover, The Totality for Kids (University of California Press, 2006)
Cover Design: Jessica Grunwald
Cover illustration: Constant Nieuwenhuys, Gezicht op New Babylonische sectoren (View of New Babylon Sectors)

This cover works for me on several levels. It evokes the Situationist-cum-Frankfurt School theoretical itchiness of Clover's vision, with its synthesis of elegaically desolated spatial and affective details arranged into an architectural landscape whose muted ironic undertones match the laconic biliousness of the appropriated Raoul Vaneigem title. The art is balanced well with the textual elements (on the back cover as well, where the designer skillfully lets the compositional balance of the illustration guide the placement of the blurbs). It also sort of looks like one of those Hipgnosis prog rock album covers from the seventies, which seems right for Clover, approximately.



Juliana Spahr, Fuck You-Aloha-I Love You (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)
Text Design: Dean Bornstein
Stick Figure Illustrations: from Otto E. Ryser's A Teacher's Manual for Tumbling and Apparatus Stunts

Another university press design. They do tend to have the budget, I guess. But I really like the bold, basic red/white/black/blue/white color scheme [note: I can't find an image file that doesn't make it look muddy, which it really isn't], and the use of retro typographical styles without resorting to obvious period pastiche. The stick figures have an almost Keith-Haring-like feel, the cloying sunniness of which is offset by the geometrical severity of the layout, which is in turn a perfect complement to the deployment of neo-Steinian repetitive grammar as a vehicle for the self-reflexive interrogation of "sensitive liberal values" in Spahr's writing.



Hannah Weiner's Open House (Kenning Editions, 2007)
Cover Design: Quemadura

Yes, I know, we're all tired of drooling over Jeff Clark. And some of his designs do verge on an obscene corporate hypercompetence. His luxurious vices are evident even here, in, for example, the ever-so-barely skewed setting of the original "Hannah Weiner's Open House" flyer, complete with paper crease: it looks like it could be an album cover for some impossibly hip indie-folk diva. Which, in a sense, it is. But it just looks so great, and the entire edition is a model of intelligent and attractive layout. Ditto his design for the Zukofsky issue of Chicago Review (the same design, in slightly altered form, that is used on Mark Scroggins's critical book on Zuk).

[Addendum: I was going to include Jennifer Moxley's Often Capital (Flood Editions, 2005), with its gorgeous detail of a Twombly canvas, on this list, but I just realized that it's yet another Clark design, so forget it. Who the hell does he think he is?]



Michael Earl Craig, Yes, Master (Fence Books, 2006)
Cover Design: Brad Bunkers
Cover Photograph: Jacques Tati, 1954, by Philippe Halsman

Fence covers are hit-and-miss. They can sometimes look like Toyota owner manuals. The back cover of Yes, Master is singularly unimaginative: a tiny bit of the bottom of the cover photo (one of Tati's feet), and below it a big bland blue expanse framing ... a poem that also appears inside the book. And all these books have ISBNs on the back, but on Fence Books they look like they were stamped there by zealous totalitarian drones, as though they were intended to be the very center of the buyer's visual focus. But. First of all, that's an awesome photo of Tati. Second, I don't know whether it was Craig's idea or the designer's, but I can't look at the way the title is used as a caption for Tati, who is thereby transformed from a guy trying to catch a ball into a supplicant ogre, without laughing. It's nothing more than a basic verbal/visual gag, but it's a good gag, and it's effective as an index of Craig's poetry, which is among the very best in the otherwise generally unfortunate trend of James Tate imitations (unkind: I should say that it transcends that trend, but I don't do transcendence). Don't let me be misunderstood. I genuinely like these poems. There's one that says Klaus Kinski should have been raped with a carrot.



Michael Magee, My Angie Dickinson (Zasterle, 2006).
Cover Design: Christian Palino

What is there to say? Sheer brilliance, just as with Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale (2006) and Sharon Mesmer's Annoying Diabetic Bitch (2008), both from Magee's press, Combo Books. Palino's work for Combo has been unfalteringly excellent, even if it does look like he "borrowed" the cover concept of Lyn Hejinian's The Hunt for my A Thousand Devils.



Jennifer L. Knox, Drunk By Noon (Bloof Books, 2007)
Cover Design: Charles Orr
Cover Painting: Charles Browning, "Booger," 2005

Or for that matter, the earlier and very similar cover of her A Gringo Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005). Here's a case where not just the illustration itself, but the overall sensibility of the painter, is wonderfully in tune with the poet's twisted mind. Browning's work (check out his site) is a lovingly hateful series of variations on themes by nineteenth-century American painters like George Caleb Bingham, and somehow translates into a fit parallel to Knox's barbed embrace of contemporary "white trash" culture. The proudly unsubtle Americana touches in the framing and lettering--it doesn't really show up in the image file, but that dark blue background looks suspiciously like denim--are just right.



Ryan Daley, Armored Elevator (BlazeVOX Books, 2007).
Book Design: Geoffrey Gatza
Cover Art: Thomas Keeley

Dude's finger is cut off! That's messed up.



Lyn Hejinian, The Beginner (Tuumba Press, 2002)
Cover Design: Ree Katrak
Cover Art: Emilie Clark

A thin, pretty little book. Too pretty, maybe? No, I say.



Hung Q. Tu, Structures of Feeling (Krupskaya, 2003)
Cover Design: Frank Mueller
Cover Photograph: Catherine Opie, Untitled #30 from "Freeway" series, 1994

Krupskaya Books always look pretty good, even when the art on the cover itself is nothing special, because they have a strong, uniform formula for the proportions of text and image placement. This also means that they all tend to look alike. But some of them do stand out, like this one, which depresses me in all the ways I prefer to be depressed. The book, by the way, rocks extra hard.



John Ashbery, Three Poems (Viking Press, 1972)
Cover Design: ?

No, it's not recent. But I just don't understand why poets don't have covers like this anymore.

The Constant Critic: Kim Hyesoon, Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers

I have joined the panel of reviewers at The Constant Critic, and my first review is now up, of Kim Hyesoon's Mommy Must Be a Fountain of Feathers.

Poet's Bookshelf II

Now available from Barnwood Press.

101 poets list books that have been especially important in their artistic development, and offer commentary.

Featuring: Sandra Alcosser, Jack Anderson, Philip Appleman, Ivan Argüelles, Rane Arroyo, Mary Jo Bang, Ellen Bass, Luis Benítez, Robert Bly, Marianne Boruch, Daniel Bourne, Andrea Hollander Budy, Mairéad Byrne, Nick Carbó, Maxine Chernoff, Tom Clark, Joshua Clover, Andrei Codrescu, Martha Collins, Shanna Compton, Stephen Corey, Alfred Corn, Barbara Crooker, James Cushing, Catherine Daly, Linh Dinh, Edward Field, Forrest Gander, Robert Gibb, Sandra Gilbert, Diane Glancy, Kenneth Goldsmith, Noah Eli Gordon, Stephen Herz, H. L. Hix, Anselm Hollo, Janet Holmes, Cathy Park Hong, Kent Johnson, Marilyn Kallet, Ilya Kaminsky, Robert Kelly, Amy King, Jennifer L. Knox, Ted Kooser, Greg Kuzma, Ben Lerner, Haki R. Madhubuti, David Mason, Gail Mazur, Joyelle McSweeney, Robert Mezey, Leslie Adrienne Miller, Roger Mitchell, Judith Moffett, K. Silem Mohammad, William Mohr, Carol Moldaw, Jennifer Moxley, Lisel Mueller, Eileen Myles, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Charles North, Kate Northrop, Mwatabu Okantah, Carole Simmons Oles, Jena Osman, Alicia Ostriker, Linda Pastan, Simon Perchik, Bob Perelman, Roger Pfingston, Marge Piercy, Katha Pollitt, David Ray, Judy Ray, Alberto Ríos, Jane Robinson, Robert Ronnow, Jerome Rothenberg, Jerome Sala, Dennis Schmitz, Grace Schulman, Lloyd Schwartz, Purvi Shah, David Shapiro, Reginald Shepherd, Dale Smith, Thomas R. Smith, Kevin Stein, Carolyn Stoloff, Eileen Tabios, Thom Tammaro, Tony Tost, Diane Wakoski, Diane Ward, Barrett Watten, Miller Williams, A. D. Winans, Mark Wisniewski, and Carolyne Wright.