Ceptuetics

critical replays

2008-10-26T14:39:00.004-04:00

An interview with Kenneth Goldsmith in Rain Taxi (transcribed from Ceptuetics, 03/08)

A review of K. Silem Mohammad's Breathalyzer (in Josef Kaplan's excellent Sustainable Aircraft)

Be sure to pick up the print edition of Rain Taxi for a review of Goldsmith's American Trilogy by Steve Zultanski (mp3-steve). Also, check out the other reviews in Sustainable Aircraft's second issue, including Diana Hamilton (mp3-diana) on Meg Hamill's Death Notices and Eddie Hopely (mp3-eddie) on Nico Vassilakis' Text Loses Time.

more from this blog-w/o-a-radiobody soon?

Craig Dworkin

2008-10-16T21:52:00.007-04:00

For Ceptuetics' last show, Craig Dworkin provided insight into some of the social and technological issues surrounding conceptual poetics and addressed his editorial choices for the UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing and a forthcoming book co-edited with Kenneth Goldsmith, Against Expression. He read from his most recent book, Parse (Atelos), and discussed the place of subjectivity in this text and other "uncreative" works.

Craig will be interviewing Vito Acconci at the Bronx Museum on Saturday at 3pm (North Wing, 2nd Floor). Scroll down from here for more info.

FOR GODOT

2008-10-09T10:18:00.001-04:00

Steve talks about ISSUE ONE from Rotterdam.

Greg sings Stein from Philadelphia.

Vlad waits. He doesn't have any thoughts about the pdf.

Brad Flis

2008-10-05T12:33:00.006-04:00

Brad Flis reads from his book Peasants, which will soon be released by Patrick Lovelace Editions. He shares a few other poems and talks with me about the union of disparate historical moments in his writing, the pressure to generate ethically 'responsible' work, and questions of clarity and censorship in poetry.

He'll be reading at the Poetry Project with Patrick Durgin on Monday 10/20 at 8pm.

Tracie Morris and Tan Lin

2008-09-27T10:26:00.003-04:00

Tan Lin reads (with me) from Plagiarism/Outsource, a project that chronicles Heath Ledger's death through SMS messages and RSS feeds. We talk about the technological provisions for ambient writing with multiple subjectivities, Tan's strategy of re-writing news stories by inserting himself into the work, the genres of autobiography and the novel, duration, and Warhol & disco as post-medium moments.

Tracie Morris airs audio pieces - "Get It, Got It," a collaboration with Elliott Sharp, and "Gallery" - and reads from a collaboration with Charles Bernstein, "Truth Be Told." We talk about poetry's potential for political intervention as we receive word on the economic crisis, and discuss language use in the 2008 election, speech act theory, and collaboration. File is strangely reverb-y.

Juliana Spahr

2008-09-15T12:30:00.003-04:00

A new poem, The Incinerator, and a discussion on autobiography/anti-autobiography (see Juliana's Everybody's Autonomy), representing the local (thru Chillicothe), & class in Appalachia.

Listen here

Jen Bervin

2008-08-28T13:32:00.002-04:00

Apologies to those who tried to catch Jen Bervin's reading/interview streaming at wnyu.org or iTunes -- WNYU's still in the midst of a move and doesn't have working Internet yet. Here's the show to download. Jen read from her latest book, The Desert (Granary Books, 2008), and talked about sewing-through John Van Dyke's work, her book's air, and the new readers & writers of the desert.

Five Shows on PennSound

2008-08-21T22:04:00.003-04:00

Recent shows with David Buuck, Eddie Hopely, Matmos, Brian Kim Stefans, and Caroline Bergvall are all available on PennSound, thanks to Dear colleagueS Danny Snelson & Michael S. Hennessey.

WNYU's packing up for greener pastures (a few blocks down), so expect new room tones to fill the non-breaking spaces & stitches of Jen Bervin's poetry and book art next week.

Look to the right for more guests, soon.

Oh Meow: MATMOS

2008-07-24T21:50:00.004-04:00

Matmos (Drew Daniel & M.C. Schmidt) talk about their conceptual sound pieces, parapsychology, telepathic love, pedagogy, performances, and the sound & visual portraits that comprise The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast, an album that pays tribute to Wittgenstein, Burroughs and Solanas, among others.

Matmos has a new album out, Supreme Balloon

rabbit on their way to the capitol

2008-06-27T12:46:00.003-04:00

Eddie Hopely reads from the chapbooks Plant, Rabbit on their way to the capitol, and other poems. We talk about blueprints, image and text, community & collaboration. Diana Hamilton and I read with Eddie, and describe his rabbit.

Brian Kim Stefans

2008-06-21T16:57:00.004-04:00

Brian Kim Stefans reads from Kluge: A Meditation (Roof, 2007) and talks with me about minimal bits of information as events and variation in conceptual literature, ambient poetics and musical influences like John Cage and Alvin Lucier.

Caroline Bergvall

2008-06-09T12:09:00.002-04:00

Caroline Bergvall reads a Chaucer tale and some figs. We discuss intertextuality, multilingualism and governmental strictures on speech, and the intersections of 'differential' practice, performance writing, and conceptualism. Caroline also gives a short recap of the recent Conceptual Poetry and Its Others conference at University of Arizona, which you can read more about from Kenneth Goldsmith and Charles Alexander.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), Caroline will be performing My Chaucer at the Hispanic Society of America along with Mario Diaz de Leon. 7:30 pm: Audubon Terrace, Broadway between 155th and 156th streets...By subway take number 1 train to 157th and Broadway

Danny Snelson

2008-06-03T01:33:00.006-04:00

Danny Snelson performs the translation project MY DEAR COUNTESS, a video / text cut-up. He also reads from The Book of Ravelling Women, a re-purposed Djuna Barnes chapbook with visual art by Phoebe Springstubb, and talks with me about his source materials, his projects' focus on reading, and re-orienting the 'you' of Barnes' work. See his recent PennSound featured resources here.

Welcome to the Zoo

2008-05-16T15:05:00.003-04:00

Diana Hamilton reads from The Zoo, Soft Snap (+0ther Salutations), and other works. She talks with me about words hanging out together, Wikipedia, anthropomorphism, and Dick Cheney.

For those in New York, Diana will be reading at the Poetry Project this Monday the 19th, at 8pm, along with another ceptuetics guest, sara wintz.

from Soft Snap:

third-person reading be
divorced or giving divorce a Divorce

rates in us are rising
accord to rought round of in

no doubt process everyone
unhapis even worse. If you are
better to bail

a reassessing of how:
become an issue you can spend

come laws

Chris Funkhouser

2008-05-08T21:40:00.004-04:00

talks digital poetry and reads from a forthcoming work, Technopoetry Rising. More of his work recently archived at PennSound.

note: Caroline Bergvall will not be on the show May 21st, but June 4th.

Ara Shirinyan

2008-05-06T12:39:00.005-04:00

Ara Shirinyan reads from Syria is in the World (Palm Press, 2007) and Your Country Is Great (Afghanistan - Guyana) (Futurepoem, 2008). We talk about the "largest small country," its claims to being "in the world" and the language of tourism, before closing with a discussion on post-conceptual poetics.

Listen here

Anne Tardos + Laura Elrick

2008-04-26T21:53:00.006-04:00

late on this, but happy to group these two shows together, they make a very poly-duo btwn Tardos' I Am You (Salt, 2008) and Elrick's multivocal audio pieces, accumulated using language from her book Fantasies in Permeable Structures (Factory School, 2005)

Anne Tardos on Ceputetics, 04/16/08

Laura Elrick on Ceptuetics, 04/23/08

the reason for the delay, i'm glad to say, will (persistent cold willing) result this week in a finished thesis on conceptual writing & a reading/discussion on post-conceptual poetics with Ara Shirinyan for next week's show.

Judith Goldman

2008-04-14T20:11:00.005-04:00

Judith Goldman came onto ceptuetics after a stunning reading of chopped & détourned news stories at the Poetry Project. She read several new pieces, and discussed zones + boundaries, filtering the Internet, Spanglish and anti-immigration.

Updated Archives

2008-04-08T15:33:00.003-04:00

All readings/interviews to date are now permanently archived on this blog (that is, there should be no more expired links, if you've tried unsuccessfully to listen to shows from the fall). Enjoy:

10-03-07 Rob Fitterman
10-24-07 Lawrence Giffin
11-07-07 Steven Zultanski
11-28-07 Sara Wintz
12-12-07 Rodrigo Toscano
01-23-08 Rachel Levitsky
02-06-08 Marie Buck
02-13-08 Barbara Cole
03-05-08 Rod Smith
03-12-08 Bruce Andrews
03-19-08 Kim Rosenfield
03-26-08 Kenneth Goldsmith
04-02-08 Anselm Berrigan

Tomorrow, Judith Goldman

Anselm Berrigan

2008-04-05T12:02:00.003-04:00

reading & interview on ceptuetics

Anselm reads from Some Notes on My Programming (Edge, 2006) and Have A Good One, a 46-page poem composed of 97 short poems sharing that title. We talk about his writing's connection to loss, poetry as political forum, and the structure of his new serial poem.

Anselm is reading with Ben Friedlander at Poetry Project this Wednesday (4/9) at 8pm.

Kenneth Goldsmith

2008-03-27T23:01:00.004-04:00

Kenneth Goldsmith talked with me on ceptuetics about his latest book, Sports, the new installment of his American "on the ones" trilogy (Make Now Press). From there we wander through many filters of conceptual writing: boredom, temporality, information management, peeling language off the page & pouring it into different forms.

See Goldsmith's EPC author page for many articles on his work, including an excellent collection of writings in Open Letter: Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics, edited by Barbara Cole and Lori Emerson. Also, Goldsmith & UbuWeb in this month's ArtForum.

Please feel free to send me comments/thoughts on Goldsmith's work at ceptuetics@wnyu.org, if interested - I'm coming near a deadline for a thesis on the subject of conceptual writing, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Caroline Bergvall, and would be happy to discuss their work & the movement w/ others.

Bruce Andrews, Kim Rosenfield

2008-03-20T13:38:00.007-04:00

"we're all idiom now": Bruce Andrews reads from Give 'Em Enough Rope, Lip Service, and War and Peace (journal edited by Judith Goldman and Leslie Scalapino), discussing his modular writing process, his collaborations with musicians, dancers & other poets, and Lip Service's interrogation of gender socialization. At the end Bruce gives a shout-out to Obama.

re:evolution: Kim Rosenfield reads, sings, and talks about her latest, ambiguously named project (forthcoming on Les Figues next spring) - we talk inherited modes of logic & how to disrupt them w/ subjectivity in the poetic text, Kim strutting her stuff, feminism, and psychotherapy. Interrupting re-evolution's "Denouement," Kim gives a shout-out to Obama.

Rod Smith reading/interview

2008-03-11T22:53:00.004-04:00

Rod Smith reads from Deed (University of Iowa, 2008), discusses the structure of the book, quotation and détournement, his writing processes, and the New American and “outsider” traditions that have influenced him.

......two upcoming events......

2008-03-03T18:19:00.006-05:00

Lil' Norton night
(President's Choice, Model Homes, Physical Poets)
Poetry Project, 131 E. 10th St at 2nd Ave
Friday, March 7 @ 10pm

Anne Tardos, Laura Elrick, Patrick Lovelace, Seth Landman,
Kareem Estefan, Eddie Hopely, Diana Hamilton, Kevin Thurston

more info at Poetry Project's calendar

Spectral Cravings
(performances / poems coordinated by Rachel Levitsky)
Dixon Place, 258 Bowery btwn Houston + Prince
Monday, March 10 @ 7pm

Pamela Brown, Andres Clerici, Lydia Cortes, Kareem Estefan,
Maria Mirabal, William Owen, Austin Publicover, Gail Tuch, Phyllis Wat

more info at William Owen's blog

Anselm Berrigan ... reading/interview not aired tonight

2008-02-27T19:47:00.003-05:00

After enjoying a great conversation with Anselm earlier today on his book Some Notes on My Programming and a new 45-page poem made of nearly 100 shorter poems called "Have A Good One," I found that the CD-R with the reading/interview was entirely blank. So the show is postponed, I'll post a new date soon, my apologies!

For those who tuned in to WNYU tonight, what you heard was an 11/21/07 ceptuetics interview with Sara Wintz.

ceptuetics 02-20-08

2008-02-22T11:23:00.002-05:00

That's Eddie Hopely's head. We all drew it two weekends ago at Freddy's in Brooklyn, for an "Acrosticoncretics" performance where the first letters of each word in Eddie's poem spelled out directions for mapping his head on a grid. I didn't end up with anyone's head, but I loved the different ways of listening the piece opened up - at first, catching letters to form words to make an image, then when I gave up on a particular section, catching words to make a poem, and finally, when I realized that most of the words being spelled could be predicted ("l-i-n-e" or "m-i-d-d-l-e" for example), looking to thread together and even anticipating words. Eddie's poetry renders reading an unpredictable activity of visual mapping, achieving something like a Situationist drift through language, which emphasizes process, disorientation, and networks of meaning that need not be connected.

Wednesday's show brought together a few recent performances, including Saturday's Segue reading with sound/noise artist Austin Publicover and poet Christina Strong, which you can hear (unfortunately cut off!) at the beginning of the file. Check out Austin's noise accompaniments to current Segue curator Alan Davies' poems in Mad Hatter's Review Issue 9 here. Alan Licht has some recent Conceptual Soundworks available on Ubu (I play an excerpt of "Rashomon"), and last in the playlist, Carla Harryman, with whom Austin Publicover has also collaborated, performed part of her Belladonna* book Open Box in Providence in 2005, available at PennSound.

Listen to the show here, it's time for me to go out in the snow.

1. Austin Publicover - Poem to the Last Fourteen of My Ex-Girlfriends, but Not the Thirteenth (excerpt)
2. Eddie Hopely - Acrosticoncretics: My Head
3. Alan Licht - Rashomon (excerpt)
4. Carla Harryman - Open Box (excerpt)

Next week, Anselm Berrigan, who is the author of three books of poetry published by Edge Books, most recently Some Notes on My Programming (2006). He co-edited the Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan (U.Cal, 2005), was Artistic Director of the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church from 2003-2007, and has just joined the staff of The Brooklyn Rail. He's also just completed a 46-page poem made of 97 short poems all called "Have A Good One."

Barbara Cole on ceptuetics

2008-02-15T12:23:00.001-05:00

After an excellent Belladonna* reading with Elizabeth Robinson, Barbara Cole came into ceptuetics on Wednesday to read and discuss portions of her ongoing long poem, situ ation come dies. The scope of this project - a 5-part Bildungsroman written in the present, to paraphrase Rachel Levitsky - is already astonishing. Foxy Moron, which you can read from ubu's /ubu editions, investigates the sexual development of a young girl through the many shards of language that force their way upon her by way of pop songs, parents, pornos, and the bully at the back of the bus. Barbara's latest chapbook, from ear: say, out on Belladonna*, is a more solemn narrative that shifts the setting from grade school to the doctor's office. During the show, she discusses and reads from both sections:

Listen here

Marie Buck reading/interview

2008-02-06T21:32:00.001-05:00

Brie

You may already be an anarchist. It's true. Nothing is finer, more sublime or creamy. In its long history, when you come up with your own ideas and initiatives and solutions, it should bulge slightly. Not all brie is created equal. Poetry is made by all, not one, and at our cheese counter lies a cheese monger's tip.

from WHOLE FOODS, by Marie Buck

Download the show here and if you haven't already, check out Marie's irreverent, outrageous chapbook Beard of Bees, see what Ron Silliman has to say, and order some Model Homes! Can't get enough? Look out for a collection of Marie's poetry on Patrick Lovelace's press, Nocturnal Editions, this spring.

Next week on ceptuetics:
Barbara Cole received her Ph.D. from the Poetics Program at SUNY—Buffalo in 2006. Since 2000, she has been writing the ongoing project, situ ation come dies, a long poem in five parts. In 2002, a chapbook-length excerpt of the first section was published by Handwritten Press followed by an excerpt from the second section, foxy moron, by /ubu editions in 2004. Most recently, Belladonna published a chapbook excerpt from the middle section, ear say. Earlier chapbooks include little wives (Potes&Poets, 1998) and postcards (BeautifulSwimmer, 1998). In 2005, Cole co-edited (with Lori Emerson) an issue of Open Letter: A Canadian Journal of Writing and Theory on "Kenneth Goldsmith and Conceptual Poetics." Currently, she is co-editing (with Sarah Bay-Cheng) a collection of plays written by modernist poets.

ceptuetics 01-30-08

2008-02-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

Wednesday's show (follow this link, and click on "01 ceptuetics 01-30-08.mp3" on the right hand side of the page)

Lawrence Weiner "Having Been Done At / Having Been Done To, Essendo Stato Fatto A" Tellus 21: Audio by Visual Artists {1973}

Redell Olsen "Untitled" The Book of Fur (Rem Press) {2000}
Kristin Prevallet "Lyric Infiltration" Scratch Sides: Poetry, Documentation, and Image-Text Projects (Skanky Possum Books) {2002}
Kevin Davies "Part Two" The Golden Age of Paraphernalia {2004 reading; book forthcoming}

P. Inman "Smaller" Criss Cross (Roof Books) {1994}

Marjorie Welish "One A"

Patti Smith "Parade" Sugar, Alcohol, & Meat (Giorno Poetry Systems)

On Wednesday, tune in to hear Marie Buck, who writes poems, co-edits the mostly-poetry journal Model Homes with Brad Flis, and studies poetry and poetics in the English Ph.D. program at Wayne State University in Detroit. Her chapbook "Life & Style" appears online at Beard of Bees, and a prose piece is forthcoming in the "bpNichol + 20" issue of Open Letter.

Rachel Levitsky reading/interview

2008-01-27T15:10:00.003-05:00

Wednesday's show: Rachel Levitsky reads from Neighbor, a manuscript forthcoming on Ugly Duckling Presse, and The Story of My Accident is Ours, a novella.

hi again, here are two shows

2008-01-22T19:54:00.000-05:00

Back from a trip to Berlin, and very excited to begin classes with Avital Ronell & Kamau Brathwaite this semester. Also some great upcoming guests to be announced soon! For now, archives of the two shows that aired while I was away, and tune in tomorrow night to hear Rachel Levitsky read recent work & talk with me about her poetry and Belladonna* books.

Ceptuetics 01-09-08 (dedicated to Henri Chopin)

1. bpNichol - "Clover"
2. Henri Chopin - "Sol Air"
3. Nikolaus Einhorn - "Don't you may be, the essential interview" (w/ John Cage and Hans G. Helms)
4. Robert Ashley - "She Was a Visitor"

Ceptuetics 01-16-08

1. Rachel Blau DuPlessis - "Draft 72"
2. Erica Hunt - "Invisible Hands"
3. Tom Raworth - "Catacoustics"
4. Ben Friedlander - "The Mind is a Bubble Sheet"
5. Hans Arp - "Dada-Spruche"
6. Camille Bryen - "Tete de Coq"
7. Nam June Paik - "Simple"
8. Language Removal Services - "Marilyn Monroe"
9. Bruce Andrews - "You Made This World, We Didn't" (which I mistakenly present as the Index to I Don't Have Any Paper, So Shut Up)

Tomorrow:

Rachel Levitsky’s first full length volume, Under the Sun was published by Futurepoem books in 2003. She is the author of five chapbooks of poetry, Dearly (a+bend, 1999), Dearly 356, Cartographies of Error (Leroy, 1999), The Adventures of Yaya and Grace (PotesPoets, 1999) and 2(1x1)Portraits (Baksun, 1998). Most of her poetic works tend toward what is known as ‘the long poem’ and she is currently writing a prose novella. Levitsky writes poetry plays, three of which (one with Camille Roy) have been performed in New York and San Francisco. Her work has been published in magazines such as The Reculse, Sentence, Fence, The Brooklyn Rail, Global City, The Hat, Skanky Possum, Lungfull! and in the anthologies, Boog City (vol. I & II), Bowery Women, and 19 Lines: A Drawing Center Writing Anthology. Recently her work was translated into Icelandic for the anthology 131.839 Slög Med Bilum by Eiríkur Örn Nordahl. Online poetry and critical essays can be found on such sites as Narrativity, Duration Press, How2, and Web Conjunctions. She is the founder and co-director of Belladonna*, an event and publication series of feminist avant-garde poetics.

happy new year & ceptuetics 01-02-08

2008-01-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

Happy new year! here's today's show

1. J. Henry Chunko "1-60" {remix of Charles Bernstein's 1-100}

2. Tracie Morris "Afro-Futurism" {Close Listening, 2005}
3. Eileen Myles "Orleans" {Frequency Audio Journal issue one}
4. Rod Smith "Love Poems 2" {Fear the Sky, Narrow House Recordings}
5. John Yau "100 Views of the Port of Baltimore" CD {2000}
6. Lydia Davis "The Dog Man" {1984}

7. Charles Amirkhanian "Hypothetical Moments" Mental Radio {1981}
8. Anne Tardos & Jackson MacLow "Refrigerator Defrosting Pseudoglossolalia" {Doings: Assorted Performance Pieces 1955-2002 (Granary Books) CD}

9. Nicole Brossard "Installations" {2001}

Ceptuetics 12-19-07

2007-12-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

Listen to today's show, which veered off in many directions...

	Marcel Broodthaers "Interview With A Cat (excerpt)"
	Tan Lin "1935 "The Present Situation in Quantum Mechanics"
	Susan Stone "Langue Etude" Tellus #11 (The Sound of Radio) {1985}
	Jarrod Fowler "The Weather, by Kenneth Goldsmith"
	On Kawara "1994-2613 AD (excerpt)" One Million Years
	Christian Bok "Mushroom Clouds" The Cyborg Opera
	Henri Chopin "Rouge" {1956}
	Eberhard Blum "Track 5" 62 Mesostics Re: Merce Cunningham (Hat Now) CD {text by John Cage}
	Kimberly Lyons "11 Spiders" {2006}

If you like the Susan Stone track, check out the three new Tellus cassettes presented on Ubu, great stuff brought to you by Danny Snelson and Continuo.

2007 Favorites

2007-12-19T02:29:00.000-05:00

Favorite albums of 2007
1. These Are Powers - "Terrific Seasons" (Hoss)
2. Black Dice - "Load Blown" (Paw Tracks)
3. The Fiery Furnaces - "Widow City" (Thrill Jockey)
4. Panda Bear - "Person Pitch" (Paw Tracks)
5. KK Null - "Fertile" (Touch)
6. M.I.A. - "Kala" (XL/Interscope)
7. Liars - "Liars" (Mute)
8. Aa - "gAame" (Gigantic)
9. Sightings - "Through the Panama" (Load)
10. Magik Markers - "Boss" (Ecstatic Peace)

and reissues...
Negativland - A Big 10-8 Place (Seeland)
Glenn Branca - Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses (Atavistic)
Lily Greenham - Lingual Music (Paradigm)
Culture - Two Sevens Clash (Shanachie)
Ruins - Refusal Fossil (Skin Graft)
Laurie Anderson - Big Science (Nonesuch)

poems, videos, bonus tracks...
Linh Dinh - Jam Alerts (Chax)
Cheryl Donegan - Refuses (on Ubu)
Kenneth Goldsmith - Traffic (Make Now)
Aram Saroyan - Complete Minimal Poems (Ugly Duckling)
David Schafer - In the Year 2525 remix (scroll down his Ubu page)
Juliana Spahr - Intricate Systems (The Press Gang)
Edwin Torres - The PoPedology of an Ambient Language (Atelos)
Hannah Weiner's Open House, ed. Patrick Durgin (Kenning Editions)

(Add your own top 10 list here.)
I'll be on WNYU tomorrow from 4-8pm, doing a Wednesday edition of the New Afternoon Show and then Ceptuetics. Tune in at 7:30 to hear Marcel Broodthaers interviewing a cat.

Tomorrow Kenny Goldsmith will be singing theory with accompaniment from Alan Licht. Also performing: C. Spencer Yeh. At the Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, 8pm.

Rodrigo Toscano

2007-12-13T14:22:00.003-05:00

Rodrigo came into ceptuetics yesterday and talked with me about his latest project, Collapsible Poetics Theater, a series of polyvocal pieces, body movement poems, and poetics plays that will be collected next year by Fence Books. He also aired a radio play, "Eco-Strato-Static" (text for this and other CPT pieces available at his EPC page).

Download the show here

The Collapsible Poetics Theater is an all volunteer effort, one that assembles itself within a given 48-72 hour period of each performance. Each locale (with its resident poets, experienced actors, experienced non-actors) brings an entirely new set of possibilities. It is reminiscent of Commedia Dell'Arte in its traveling, portable, rapid-set up qualities. To be sure, Poetics Theater fits into the poetry scene as a baby does in itchy burlap; it fits into the drama scene as does a little crown, little scepter, little gown, all neatly stored in a metal suitcase (quite literally!). The dings are just dings. The persistent question is: can the poem be tested any further?

Upcoming Guests

2007-12-06T16:50:00.001-05:00

Tune in next Wednesday to hear Rodrigo Toscano on ceptuetics. For those unfamiliar with his work:

Rodrigo Toscano is the author of To Leveling Swerve, Platform, The Disparities, and Partisans. His new collection Collapsible Poetics Theater, which was a National Poetry Series 2007 selection, is due out in 2008. Toscano is the artistic coordinator for the Collapsible Poetics Theater (CPT). His experimental poetics plays, body movement poems, and polyvocalic pieces have been performed at the Disney Redcat Theater in Los Angeles, Ontological-Hysteric Poet’s Theater Festival, Yockadot Poetics Theater Festival (Alexandria, Virginia), and in Teubingen, Germany. His poetics radio pieces have been aired on WPIX FM, New York, PS. 1 Radio, KAOS Public Radio, Olympia. Toscano is originally from the Borderlands of California. He works at the Labor Institute in Manhattan, and lives in Brooklyn.

In addition, tomorrow the Fiery Furnaces will be coming into my other radio show (The New Afternoon Show, a new rock/electronic/ experimental/noise show that has been running on WNYU for 25+ years). The Fiery Furnaces are one of my favorite indie rock bands to emerge since 2000, and I'm very excited to have them on for a live performance + interview. Tune in tomorrow around 5:30-6:45 pm (full show runs from 4-7:30), as always at 89.1FM, wnyu.org, or directly on iTunes, under "eclectic" in the radio section.

Sara Wintz on ceptuetics

2007-11-29T15:07:00.001-05:00

Sara Wintz reads several short poems from a manuscript on language & gender, discusses those topics, her reading practices, Language poetry, regionalism and more here.

The file throws you into her second poem after the intro and hellos, so here is a bio:

Description: Sara Wintz is lead singer of the pretty panicks press and co-publisher of :::thepressgang:::, publisher of juliana spahr's recent chapbook, intricate systems, and--in december--karen volkman's one might. Sara's writing has appeared in cricketonlinereview, shampoo poetry, ecopoetics, and canwehaveourballback.

Apologies to Sara & friends for the delay in airing + recording! Hope you enjoy it all the same.

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

2007-11-25T22:10:00.000-05:00

To those who tuned in this past Wednesday to hear Sara Wintz, I'm very sorry the interview didn't air. I was out of town for the holidays and an earlier interview (with Steve Zultanski) was aired by mistake.

So, Sara Wintz will now be reading & talking about her poetry this coming Wednesday the 28th from 7:30-8:00pm. If you miss it, catch it afterwards at wnyu.org or right here.

Thanks for the interest!

ceptuetics 11-14-07

2007-11-16T15:18:00.000-05:00

Download Wednesday's show here. I think this one's the most fun non-guest show to date (minus a couple technical slips!), so check it out.

7:30 PM	Jerome Rothenberg "Horse Song XI" Horse Songs & Other Soundings (S Press)
7:35 PM	Abigail Child "From Solids (excerpts)" From Solids (Roof Books)
7:37 PM	Charles Bernstein "1-100" {1969}
7:42 PM	Kristin Oppenheim "Tap Your Shoes" {1996}
7:45 PM	Jed Rasula "Repeat If Necessary" {2000}
7:48 PM	David Cameron "The Lemonade Man" Flowers of Bad (Unbelievable Alligator)
7:52 PM	Edwin Torres "Some Kind of Rip In What I See" {2006}
7:58 PM	Kenneth Goldsmith "Slobodan Milosevic and Kenny G" {WFMU, 2006}

Next week, my friend Sara Wintz will be on the show. Until then, you can read some of her poetry here and here.

Also, I will be reading along with friends at 169 Bar this Monday, around 6pm. Stop by, and check out the now regularly updated Minetta Review calendar for upcoming NYC readings. There are a bunch of great events this weekend.

Steve Zultanski on Ceptuetics

2007-11-08T17:34:00.002-05:00

Following Saturday's President's Choice reading, Steve Zultanski stopped by yesterday on ceptuetics. He read portions of his chapbook Homoem (Radical Readout, 2005), along with a few other poems of his, which likewise sample and problematize some of the most disturbing characteristics of contemporary media and politics through a persistent, repetitive "list-poem" form. In addition to discussing his own work, we talked about his journal Presidents Choice.

Listen to the full show here.

President's Choice Release Party this Saturday

2007-10-30T12:05:00.000-04:00

From Steve Zultanski, editor of the awesome new journal Presidents Choice:

Hi all,

Just letting you know that on Nov. 3 in NYC there's going to be a great reading to launch the first issue of President's Choice magazine.

The readers:

Rodrigo Toscano
Kim Rosenfield
Kareem Estefan
Brian Kim Stefans
Robert Fitterman
Lawrence Giffin
Lauren Spohrer

All appearing at:

The 169 Bar (169 East Broadway) in Manhattan,
on Saturday, Nov. 3, from 5:30 - 8
[Google Map]

The cost is a whopping $5 (five dollars).

Hope to see each and every one of you there.

In the meantime, President's Choice is still available right here:
http://www.presidentschoice.blogspot.com/

Christian Marclay at Anthology Film Archives

2007-10-26T03:39:00.000-04:00

UP AND OUT
by Christian Marclay

Image track: BLOW-UP (1966) by Michelangelo Antonioni.
Sound track: BLOW OUT (1981) by Brian De Palma.

"The creative premise of UP AND OUT is stupefyingly simple. Christian Marclay lifts the picture from Antonioni's BLOW-UP and the soundtrack from De Palma's BLOW OUT (two movies which are not unrelated, the former about photography and latent voyeurism, the latter about sound recording and latent eavesdropping) and thrusts these partial cinematic systems along unaccustomed courses of solitude. Each has been forcibly divorced from the sounds or images of a now-absent partner, towards which its structure and meaning were originally devised. In Marclay's video, they never quite conjoin but relentlessly, and independently, hurry ahead to their assigned ends. The clandestine liaisons which they occasionally seem to carry on, vertically across time, occur only as conjurations of the spectator's imagination... "UP AND OUT is a Cage-ian gambit, a forcing together by chance of two readymade elements which do not necessarily belong in the same space. The thematic and rhythmic kinship of one film to another (De Palma was a terrific student of his predecessors) makes the coincidences all the more delectable and persuasive. Marclay reveals the formulization of cinema to stand outside our conventional notions of time. We are invited to introduce our memories - the experience of watching movies, perhaps the experience of watching these movies - complex temporal engagements which we habitually suspend in the cinema. With UP AND OUT, Marclay submits the vectors of time to perceptible scrutiny."
-Ben Portis, Assistant Curator, Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Published in CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: CINEMA, Oakville Galleries, Oakville (Ontario) 2000.

Friday night screening only: Film critic Amy Taubin will be present for a conversation with Christian Marclay following the screening.
Upcoming Showings:

* Sunday Oct 28 8:00 PM
* Saturday Oct 27 8:00 PM
* Friday Oct 26 8:00 PM

Lawrence Giffin on Ceptuetics

2007-10-25T10:29:00.002-04:00

Here's yesterday's show,
Lawrence Giffin is the series editor of The Physical Poets Home Library, a small-run journal featuring various American poetry communities' self-edited work. He read from the manuscript Applied Traumatics, which examines the nature of language, child sexuality, and privation through the figures of Christ, Helen Keller, and "Genie," the 'feral' child of Arcadia, California. He also read short pieces from another manuscript, as well as work by Marie Buck, Brad Flis, and Steven Zultanski, as featured in Physical Poets Issue One. You can find out more about the Physical Poets journal at physicalpoetry.blogspot.com.

Links to archived shows are now permanent. You can also find Rob Fitterman's reading here for good.

10/10/07

2007-10-14T12:17:00.000-04:00

Apologies for the delay, here's the latest ceptuetics.

1. Xavier Gautier - Lydia (Notre Travail Benefique, 2001)
2. Dick Higgins - Omnia Gallia (1980)
3. Edwin Torres - E Man's Proclamation (The PoPedology of an Ambient Language, Atelos)
4. Jena Osman - Dropping Leaflets (2001)
5. Bob Cobbing - Suesequence (Konkrete Canticle, 1971)
6. Craig Dworkin - from Strand (Roof, 2005)
7. Aram Saroyan - Crickets (10 + 2 = 12: American Text-Sound Pieces, 1965)

The following day, I saw Aram Saroyan read "Crickets" at Poets House, where he was speaking along with Elaine Equi on the topic of minimalist poetry. It remained a beautiful piece, with the mimetic "ts" sound slowly detaching itself from the rest of the word to fill the room with a noise sadly absent in New York City.

"Crickets" is not only equally effective on the page and in performance, but remarkably, each presentation reveals something about the other. I was disappointed to hear that some of my other favorite Saroyan poems - "sky/every/day" or "a leaf/left/by the/cat/I guess" - sounded rushed and lost the visual elements when he read them. Many people have remarked that Aram Saroyan: Complete Minimal Poems is an amazingly fast read, and I also went through its 250 or so pages in about 15 minutes, but there is something unnerving in watching Saroyan read one of his poems while holding the following page open. Saroyan compared his poems with only one word to Warhol's images of celebrities, and in the same way we react to a beautiful and familiar face, I think it's important to stare at Saroyan's words for as long as we want.

Still, that's only one of many reactions I had in watching one of my favorite poets read pieces he had been good and done with for forty years. He told us that by 1967 he had abandoned the minimal poem, and in recent years has not written poetry at all, except for one piece prompted by the release of his Complete Minimal Poems. This poem, entitled "Autobiography", begins with the words "1943, 1944, 1945" and yes, continues through "2005, 2006, 2007." On the page, I don't think it would be very interesting at this point in Saroyan's career, but it was a wonderfully performative autobiography. Saroyan looked down at the podium during the 40s, looked up at the audience after '49 to announce with a chuckle "I've got this piece memorized," then slowly read through the following 58 words with his attention divided between the audience and the podium, his voice faltering at times so that despite the inevitability of the piece, there was actually a tense feeling that we might not arrive at the present year. Most of what we know and celebrate about Saroyan ends with the 1960s, and in a discussion that largely stayed fixed in a moment of Warhol, Kerouac, and Creeley, "Autobiography" was both a chillingly blank and expressive look at what followed.

Rob Fitterman reads and talks poetics

2007-10-04T18:16:00.002-04:00

Here's an mp3 of yesterday's show. Rob read from two new manuscripts, Sprawl (Metropolis 31-40) and Rob the Plagiarist, and answered my questions about his use of appropriated language, his development towards the long poem/book format, and aspects of his genre-annihilating work with visual artist Dirk Rowntree, War: the Musical (Subpress).

Rob Fitterman on ceptuetics

Rob Fitterman performance tonight

2007-10-03T13:13:00.000-04:00

Rob Fitterman will be appearing on ceptuetics tonight to read from his new manuscript "Rob the Plagiarist" and talk to me about his poetry. Rob teaches at NYU and has been a great influence and friend since I took a course with him last year, so I'm very happy to have him as my first guest. Tune in tonight at 7:30-8:00 EST, as always.

A bio:
Robert Fitterman is the author of nine books of poetry, including three installments of his ongoing poem Metropolis: Metropolis 1-15 (Sun & Moon Press, 2000), Metropolis 16-29 (Coach House Books, 2002), and Metropolis XXX: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edge Books, 2004). Earlier titles include Leases (Periphery Press), among the cynics (Singing Horse Press) and Ameresque (Buck Downs Books). His most recent title, War, the musical, is a collaboration with artist Dirk Rowntree. He teaches at New York University in both the General Studies Program and the Department of English, and also the writing faculty at the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College.

Ceptuetics #3

2007-09-19T20:07:00.000-04:00

Here's the third show archived.

Ceptuetics #3

1. Emmett Williams "Duet" The Dial-A-Poem Poets (Giorno Poetry Systems) CD
2. Hannah Weiner "excerpt from Spoke" Live at the Ear Inn (Oracular Laboratory) CD
3. Barbara Cole "from Situation Comedies: Foxy Moron" CD
4. Rodrigo Toscano "Portrait Seven" The Disparities (Green Integer) CD
5. Joan La Barbara "Poem #61" 73 Poems (Permanent Press) CD
6. Charles Amirkhanian "Just" 10 + 2 = 12 American Text-Sound Pieces CD
7. Gertrude Stein "If I Told Him: A Complete Portrait of Picasso" CD

Debut Show

2007-09-07T13:49:00.000-04:00

Here's an mp3 of the first edition of ceptuetics. I was very happy with the show despite a couple technical problems and more than a little nervousness. This mp3 will only be available for the next week until I figure out where to host large files. If you miss it, you can always stream at WNYU's archives.

Ceptuetics Debut

Featured on this show:

Brion Gysin - "I Am" Machine-Poem
John Cage - excerpt from Mureau
Rae Armantrout - Manufacturing
Caroline Bergvall - excerpt from Via: Dante Variations
Christian Bok - excerpt from Chapter I of Eunoia
Ernst Jandl - What You Can Do Without Vowels
Paul de Vree - Kids

FIRST SHOW WEDNESDAY, SEPT 5 7:30-8:00PM E.S.T.

2007-09-03T16:41:00.001-04:00

Featuring a tribute to John Cage on his (posthumous) 95th birthday.

To listen online, go to WNYU.ORG OR iTunes Radio (WNYU is listed under "eclectic").

If you can't tune in Wednesday nights, each show will be archived as a stream at WNYU and as a downloadable mp3 right here.

For a preview of ceptuetics, listen to the promo, a collage of some favorites (see below).

R. Henry Nigl - Shout Art
K. Silem Mohammad - Peace Kittens
Gertrude Stein - If I Told Him, A Completed Portrait of Picasso
Rob Fitterman - from Metropolis
Darren Wershler-Henry - from The Tapeworm Foundry
Ernst Jandl - What You Can Do Without Vowels
Yoko Ono flushing a toilet
Aram Saroyan - Crickets
Adachi Tomomi - Ursonate (by Kurt Schwitters)
John Cage - First Sonata for Prepared Piano
Christian Bok - Chapter U (from Eunoia)

poetry samples courtesy of UbuWeb, except for Mohammad and Wershler-Henry, courtesy of PennSound