The Avant-Garde in Le Mans

The International Conference, "Poets and Publishers: Circulating Avant-Garde Poetry (1945-2010)" will be held at Université du Maine (Le Mans) October 14-15. The following program was recently made public:

International Conference Poets and Publishers: Circulating Avant-Garde Poetry (1945-2010)
Location : Université du Maine (Le Mans) : Bibliothèque universitaire Vercors, salle Pierre Belon.

Organizer : Hélène Aji (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre) With the support of Labo 3L.AM (EA 4335), Université du Maine (Le Mans) and Universidad de La Laguna, Le Mans-Métropole, Conseil général de la Sarthe, Institut des Amériques (Pôle Ouest)

Thursday, October 14 :
13h-14h : Registration and buffet lunch.
14h : Opening of the conference.
14h30 15h30 : Opening lecture : Jacques Darras (Université de Picardie JulesVerne) : « Pouvoir éditorial, position poétique ».
16h 18h : Workshop I : Shaping the avant-garde.
Chair : Hélène Lecossois (Université du Maine)
Céline Mansanti (Université de Picardie-Jules Verne) : « La diffusion de la poésie d¹avant-garde de langue anglaise : presses à petit tirage et petites revues ».
Stewart Smith (University of Strathclyde) : « Little magazines and the avant-garde in 1960s Scotland ».
Peggy Pacini (Université de Cergy-Pontoise) : « City Lights and the Emergence of Beat Poetry: Redefining Poetic and Cultural Boundaries ».
Barbara Montefalcone (Université de Caen, ERIBIA) : « Black Mountain Review,
Jargon Press et Granary Books : Petite édition et collaboration artistique aux Etats-Unis ».
18h30 : Cocktail at the University Library.

19h : Poetry Reading in French and in English : Jacques Darras and Jerome Rothenberg.

Friday, October 15 :
9h30 11h : Workshop II : Creating communities.
Chair : Benaouda Lebdaï (Université du Maine)
Micah Robbins (Southern Methodist University) : « Shifting the Focus: The Loujon Press and Literary New Orleans ».
Aldon L. Nielsen (The Pennsylvania State University, USA) : « Kid Creole and His Beau-Coconauts: Lloyd Addison's Astro-Black Infinities».
Lily Robert-Foley (Université Paris VIII) : « Xexoxial Endarchy: Visual Poetry and Intentional Community in the Midwestern United States ».
11h30 12h30 : Workshop III : Publicizing experimentation (1).
Chair : Brigitte Félix (Université du Maine)
Dulce Mª Rodríguez González (Universidad de La Laguna) : « Linking Atlantic Shores: Circulating American Poetry in Some Spanish Publications ».
Christian Vogels (Université de Nantes) : « Mécénats et comptes d¹auteur : les siamois antipodiques de la poésie contemporaine ».

12h30-14h : Lunch at the University Restaurant.
14h 15h30 : Workshop III : Publicizing experimentation (2).
Chair : Brigitte Félix (Université du Maine)
Drew Mc Dowell (University of Calgary, Canada) : « Circulatory Flux: Disseminating the Avant-Garde ».
Jennifer K. Dick (Université de Mulhouse) : « Visible Invisibilities : Radical Poets who Publish ».
Marina Morbiducci (Università « La Sapienza », Rome, Italy) : «'Editorial Peaceful Penetration': experimental poetry in small presses ».
16h-18h : Workshop IV : Working out new poetics.
Chair : Anne-Laure Fortin-Tournès (Université du Maine)
Matilde Martín (Universidad de La Laguna) : « Exchanging Poetical Views through Small Presses: Three American Examples ».
Noura Wedell (Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon) : « Pour de nouvelles éducations sentimentales ».
Clément Oudart (Université de Paris VI UPMC) : « Typewriting as War Machine: Robert Duncan between self- and anti-publishing ».
Manuel Brito (Universidad de La Laguna) : « The Explicit Agenda of American Poetic Avant-Garde : Publishing and Transnationalizing ».
20h : Banquet dinner in town.

Saturday, October 16 :

9h30 11h : Workshop V : From local to global stakes.
Chair : Éliane Elmaleh (Université du Maine)
Mostofa Tarequl Ahsan (University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh) : « Poets and Publishers' Accountability in Circulating Poetic Vision in Bangladesh ».
Efe Duyan : « The Emerging of 'Poet-Editor' in Turkish Literature and the Growth of Marginal Publishing Houses ».
Prakash Kona (The English and Foreign Languages University, Tarnaka, Hyderabad, India): «Globalization and the Avant-garde Poet, a Revaluation
of Sorts ».
11h30 12h30 : Conclusion.

Jacques Darras, né en 1939 dans le Ponthieu près de la Manche, compose depuis 1988 un long poème en plusieurs chants, La Maye, du nom d¹une petite rivière côtière du nord de la France. Il vient de publier le Chant VII de ce poème, « La Maye réfléchit » (Le Cri, Bruxelles, mars 2009). Il a créé à Amiens en 1978 la revue in¹hui (70 numéros. Il a co-fondé le mensuel national de poésie « Aujourd'hui Poème » (88 numéros). Il est professeur émérite de l¹Université de Picardie où il a enseigné la poésie anglo-américaine. Il a traduit Walt Whitman, Malcolm Lowry, Ezra Pound, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Carlos Williams, Ted Hughes, ainsi que de nombreux poètes britanniques et américains contemporains. Il est traduit en espagnol, en néerlandais, en italien, en arabe, en chinois, en anglais. Il se produit en lectures, soit seul soit en compagnie du comédien Jacques Bonnaffé (spectacle « Jacques to Jacques », en tournée depuis sa création au Théâtre de la Bastille au printemps 2004). Il a reçu le Prix Apollinaire en 2004 et le Grand Prix de Poésie de l¹Académie Française pour l¹ensemble de son œuvre en 2006.

Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally known poet with over eighty books of poetry and several assemblages of traditional and avant-garde poetry such as Technicians of the Sacred, Shaking the Pumpkin, Revolution of the Word, and Poems for the Millennium (in three volumes). A Book of Witness, his twelfth book of poems from New Directions, appeared in 2003, and a thirteenth book, Triptych, appeared in 2007. His second collection of literary essays, Poetics & Polemics 1980-2005, appeared at the end of 2008, and new books of poems in 2009 and 2010 include Gematria Complete, Concealments & Caprichos, and Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010. Translations into French include Poèmes pour le jeu du silence (Bourgois, 1978), Après le jeu du silence (CIPM, Marseille 1991), Delights/Délices & Other Gematria (Editions Ottezec, 1998), Indiens d'Amérique du Nord (Textuel: L'oeil du Poete, 1998), Les variations Lorca (Belin, 2000), Un Nirvana cruel (Editions Phi, 2002), Livre de témoignage (Charles Moreau Editions, 2002), 4 poèmes d'un livre des recels (Cahiers de la Seine, 2003) and most recently Les Techniciens du Sacré (Editions Jose Corti, 2008).

Links

Jerome Rothenberg, Poems and Poetics (September 24, 2010).

CFP on Fabula.org (February 2010).

In the nation's throat

"The St. Gauden's memorial was installed at the edge of Boston Common and dedicated amidst a large public ceremony on Memorial Day, 1897," wrote Denise Von Glahn Cooney in "New Sources for 'The "St. Gaudens" in Boston Common (Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and His Colored Regiment)'" (Musical Quarterly 81.1, 1997). In that article, Von Glahn traces the poetic sources behind the musical composition of "Three Places in New England" by Charles Ives (first performed in 1931). It would not be the last time that poetry, music, and film would take up the memorial (see "Robert Gould Shaw" by Paul Laurence Dunbar, "Saint-Gaudens: An Ode" by Robert Underwood Johnson, "For the Union Dead" by Robert Lowell, "Boston Common" by John Berryman, the film Glory, and the recent PBS documentary about Saint Gaudens, etc.).

The monument by St. Gaudens, wrote Robert Lowell, "sticks like a fishbone / in the city's throat." Clearly Lowell was on to something. His poem sticks in the nation's throat, calling for less empire and more humanity. My guess is that Lowell would have enjoyed David Armitage's The Declaration of Independence, A Global History (2007).

Links

Text of "For the Union Dead" and biography of Robert Lowell (www.poets.org).

*Hear Lowell read the poem (http://college.holycross.edu).

*Hear "For the Union Dead" read by Frank Bidart, Peter Davison, and Robert Pinsky, The Atlantic Monthly (November 1960 and April, 2001).

Commentary about "For the Union Dead" by Helen Vendler, Thomas Travisano, Michael Thurston, Paul Doherty, Alan Williamson, Paul Breslin, on "Modern American Poetry" (www.english.illinois.edu).

Reginald Shepherd, "Robert Lowell and the Massachusetts 54th," (March 28, 2007).

Concerning Charles Ives, "Three Places in New England" (www.musicweb-international.com).

Robert Gould Shaw Memorial Project (www.nga.gov).

Trailer for Glory, directed by Edward Zwick (1989).

2009 Augustus Saint-Gaudens exhibit at the MET, June 30-November 15, 2009 (www.metmuseum.org) (www.tfaoi.com).

David Armitage, The Declaration of Independence, A Global History (2007).

Robert Lowell's Birthday

Edward Byrne celebrates the birthday of Robert Lowell as well as the 50th anniversary of Life Studies on his blog One Poet's Notes with "Robert Lowell and the 'Great' Debate" (March 1, 2009).

Get your Ginsberg here

Bill Morgan's books, The Letters of Allen Ginsberg and The Selected Letters of Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder are reviewed in this week's Sunday Book Review:  James Campbell, "Howls," New York Times (January 9, 2009).

Tributes to Gwendolyn Brooks

After Gwendolyn Brooks died in 2000, Chicago Public Radio Broadcast a show (December 4, 2000) lasting over an hour about her life, and including a rebroadcast of her 1961 interview with Studs Terkel.  You can find a podcast of the show here.

Donald Hall's Paris Review interviews

Donald Hall edited The Paris Review from 1953-1962.  He started the series of interviews known as "The Art of Poetry," and interviewed, among others, T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.  The archives of the interviews are now available on-line.  

http://www.theparisreview.org/literature.php

The text of Hall's interview with T.S. Eliot, "The Art of Poetry, #1," The Paris Review 21 (Spring-Summer 1959):

http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4738_ELIOT4.pdf

The text of his interview with Ezra Pound, "The Art of Poetry, #5," The Paris Review 28 (Summer-Fall, 1962):

http://www.theparisreview.org/media/4598_POUND.pdf

Richard Eberhart in 1980

In a 1980 interview with Don Swaim on Book Beat, the CBS Radio show, available on Wired for Books, Richard Eberhart (1904-2005) described how the poetry of the well-made poem, coming from the New Criticism, and the control of the poetry scene by the academy (he mentioned the Kenyon Review, Allen Tate, etc.) was dethroned in 1956.

Ginsberg’s “Howl” changed the poetry landscape when it was published in 1956. “The well-made poem went out of fashion…” The young poets wrote in long loose lines, and wrote about anything under the sun. “William Carlos Williams taught us all, from my generation down, that there is no subject in the world that cannot be poetical.”

He said he wished the intellectual approach and the popular approach to art could meet. He would like the serious poem of America to be able to reach the populace. Shakespeare’s poetry was understood both by the princes and the groundlings… Eberhart said he felt surprised that as “a boy from Southern Minnesota” he should come to be known as an establishment poet.

Mentioning his contacts and friendships with older poets, Williams, Frost, and Stevens, Eberhart refused to mention the names of younger poets he admired.

Without having met Czeslaw Milosz, Eberhart said he had read his work for some 25 years, and enjoyed the modesty of his comments after winning the Nobel Prize, that he regretted being in the limelight and wasn't sure he wanted to have to put up with fame...  

The interview ends with Eberhart reading “Sagacity”.

Carol Rumens: "I recognise the intense emotional appeal of warehouses and railway bridges..."

In "Poem of the week" for the Guardian (June 9, 2008), Carol Rumens comments on "The Running Changes" by Roy Fisher, asking "What is the beauty of un-beautiful places, and how does a poet writing about them . . . manage to make them memorable?"

Read other columns by Carol Rumens in the Guardian.