Bobbing for a Dadaist Poem, the main activity inspired by ModPo for the Poets of Babel meeting on October 31st, 2012

The Modern and Contemporary Poetry Course, better known as ModPo, led by Prof. Al Filreis and his enlightened TA team, from the University of Pennsylvania, started September 10, 2012. Since beginning the course, not only have I become obsessed with it (I’ve been ‘squeezing’ it in everywhere as Prof. Filreis extolled us to do in the webcast. I was even late to a doctor’s appointment listening to PennSound‘s PoemTalk on “The Way” and the end of last week’s video discussions!) , most of my Facebook posts since have been inspired by it and I’ve decided to pursue a new career path thanks to ModPo and Prof. Filreis: I want to be a professor of poetry!

I just thought you might enjoy “The Way” ModPo has changed my Facebook presence aside from the expected shares on the Poets of Babel Facebook Page.

September 10th I was already sharing:

• “I just want to go to the library and sniff everything!”
• “I dwell in possibility” by Emily Dickinson
• “When we fill our thoughts with right things, the wrong ones have no room to enter.”

September 15th:

“I know I have the best of time and space, and was never measured and
never will be measured.

I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
……………………………………………………………..
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road. ”
~Whitman “Song of Myself”  (46)

September 19th:

• “in the penumbra” (inspired by Allen Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California” , “What peaches and what penumbras!”)

• Michal & Zilpah [two friends in Israel taking ModPo as well; last names deleted for privacy] how are you liking the ModPo Course? I love it- did my essay early! 😛
• www.coursera.org (just in case folks have been missing the awesomeness!)
• I ♥ open pronouns.

Cid Corman, “It isn’t for want”

It isn’t for want
of something to say–
something to tell you–

something you should know–
but to detain you–
keep you from going–

feeling myself here
as long as *you* are–
as long as you *are.*

(I used “*” because I don’t have the option of italics for status updates)

• Grease is the word (PoemTalk #8) (On Rae Armantrout, “The Way”)

September 21st:

• “Sometimes I’d like to have a beer with the Whitmanians and sometimes sip fine wine with the Dickinsonians”- Loving ModPo!

September 23rd:

• Gray Room by Wallace Stevens

September 24th (2 seconds ago):

“I know how furiously your heart is beating.”
~Wallace Stevens, “Gray Room”
…because I do, because it’s my heart that is beating furiously.

~~~~~

[Restarted this post in November!]

October 2nd:

• “A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.”
  ~Gertrude Stein, “A Long Dress”
• “The difference is spreading. ”
  ~Gertrude Stein, “A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass”
• “Success in Circuit lies” ~E.D.

October 7th:

“The composition is the thing seen by every one living in the living they are doing, they are the composing of the composition that at the time they are living is the composition of the time in which they are living. It is that that makes living a thing they are doing.” ~Gertrude Stein
October 13th:

• “I judge judge”
  -Gertrude Stein, “If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso”

October 20th:

• To Make a Dadaist Poem by Tristan Tzara « Moving Poems
• “Forcing twentieth-century America into a sonnet— gosh, how I hate sonnets—is like putting a crab into a square box. You’ve got to cut off his legs to make him fit. When you get through, you don’t have a crab anymore.”–Williams Carlos Williams, in an interview [from Interviews with William Carlos Williams: Speaking Straight Ahead 1976)]

  My sentiments exactly!

• With more ‘free time,’ I’m two weeks behind in my poetry course!!
  Catching up!

October 21st:

“Come here and open your mouth!”
~Gwendolyn Brooks to Etheridge Knight
October 26th:

“that moment in time which is imagistic and not linguistic”

-Al Filreis
October 29th:

• “a rueful adieu to experience”
• “the source of your art is maintained in a place like this”

October 31st:

Poets of Babel the 6th ~All Hallows’ Eve, We Made a Dadaist Poem! (photo album)

November 1st:

Had so much fun “bobbing for a dadaist poem” last night at Poets of Babel!!!

November 2nd:

Arranging by chanceTo meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing

~Ashbery, “Some Trees”

November 9th:

“Come what may it can’t.
There are a number of.
But there is only one.
That’s why I want to.”~Bob Perelman, “Chronic Meanings”

November 10th:

“I want to remember a day in a poem”
-Al Filreis on Ron Silliman’s “BART”

November 14th:

“In other words, she is continually reasserting the fact that the world is always joined in media res, in the middle of things. The divinely ordained right way forward has been lost — but it will always remain so, and ever has been.”
~Brian M. Reed ‘Lost Already Walking’ Caroline Bergvall’s Via

November 20th:

If just thinking about it makes me this excited then I guess I’ll have to go for it!

~~~~~

I could write an entire essay on each of these status updates, or on the relationship between status updates and poetry and more about what ModPo has done for me…but I won’t. Not today. I want to just leave it for a while. Let what speaks to you speak to you and ignore the rest. I will not direct it nor interpret it. It was already there and I just ‘found’ it. Now, I “share.”

What will you go looking for?