watch video on Cage's "Writing through Howl"

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From the course by University of Pennsylvania

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

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University of Pennsylvania

Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (“ModPo”)

178 ratings

ModPo is a fast-paced introduction to modern and contemporary U.S. poetry, with an emphasis on experimental verse, from Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman to the present. Participants (who need no prior experience with poetry) will learn how to read poems that are supposedly "difficult." We encounter and discuss the poems one at a time. It's much easier than it seems! Join us and try it! Yes, the next live, interactive 10-week session of ModPo will begin on September 8, 2018, and will conclude on November 19, 2018. Al Filreis will be in touch with you by email before the September 8 start of the course with all the information you'll need to participate. If you have questions, you can email the ModPo team at modpo@writing.upenn.edu. During the 10 weeks of the course, you will be guided through poems, video discussions of each poem, and community discussions of each poem. And (unique among open online courses) we offer weekly, interactive live webcasts. Our famed TAs also offer office hours throughout the week. We help arrange meet-ups and in-site study groups. If you are curious about the ModPo team, type "ModPo YouTube introduction" into Google or your favorite search engine, and watch the 20-minute introductory video. You will get an overview of the course and will meet the brilliant TAs, who will be encountering the poems with you all the way to the end. If you use Facebook, join the always-thriving ModPo group: from inside Facebook, search for "Modern & Contemporary American Poetry" and then request to be added as a member. If you have any questions about ModPo, you can post a question to the FB group and you'll receive an almost instant reply. We tweet all year long at @ModPoPenn and you can also find ModPo colleagues using the hashtag #ModPoLive. ModPo is hosted by—and is housed at—the Kelly Writers House at 3805 Locust Walk on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia USA. All ModPo'ers are welcome to visit the Writers House when they are in our area. Our discussions are filmed there. Our live webcasts take place in the famed "Arts Cafe" of the House. To find out what's going on at the Writers House any time, just dial 215-746-POEM.

From the lesson

chapter 9.2 (week 9)—some trends in recent poetry: chance

<p><b>Week 9 begins at 9 AM on Sunday, November 4, 2018 and ends at 9 AM on Sunday, November 11.</b> For those doing ModPo on their own or in small groups, the week 9 materials are open and available all year.</p><p>When Jackson Mac Low put a body of language (for instance a poem by Gertrude Stein) through a rigorous procedure, he would say that he created (or “wrote”—in the sense of computer programming) the procedure and that the procedure then created the poem. One of his goals was to experiment with the elimination or evacuation or at least the suppression of poetic ego. In this sense his work stands alongside that of Silliman and Hejinian who (by other means) sought to question the stable lyric subject that had been for so long been associated with the writing of poetry, and with imagination generally. On this point the chapter 9 poets are unified in breaking from modernism's implicit and often explicit claim of creative, a-world-in-a-poem-making genius. But otherwise the aesthetic connection between, for instance, Mac Low and Stein is strongly positive. (Please note: during our filmed discussion on Mac Low's “A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore,” Al Filreis gets a little carried away when reading a list of words made from Moore’s name; neither the word “spicer” nor the phrase “this weekend” can be derived from those letters!) </p><p><b>ASSIGNMENTS:</b> During this week there are two quizzes due (see below). There is also a writing assignment due. Writing assignment #4 should be submitted between 9 AM on 11/5/18 and 9 AM on 11/11/18; after that, peer reviews will be submitted any time between 9 AM on 11/12/18 and 9 AM on 11/18/18. There is also a live webcast on Wednesday, November 7, at 5 PM (Philadelphia time).</p>

watch video on Cage's "Writing through Howl"17:46

watch video on Cage’s adagia20:38

watch video on Mac Low's "A Vocabulary for Peter Innisfree Moore"19:58

watch video on Mac Low's approach to Stein26:59

watch video on Osman's "Dropping Leaflets"12:23

watch video on Bernadette Mayer's writing experiments12:53

watch video on Retallack's "Not a Cage"14:32

watch further discussion of Retallack's "Not a Cage"1:33

Meet the Instructors

Al Filreis
Kelly Professor, Dir. Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing, Faculty Dir. Kelly Writers House

So we're now going to talk about John Cage who, in a certain period of his career

liked to write or create mysostics. What's a mysostic?

Molly can you define. Know how it's defined?

>> Yeah it's similar to an acrostic but instead of the, the spine word.

The word that runs vertically down, down through the other words being At the

beginning of each word it's right in the middle.

>> At the beginning of each line, it's in the middle of the word.

>> Or in the middle of the line. >> Right.

>> Okay. And, Max just to get us started because

we're going to be doing a bit of this through the zostics of cage and the

diastics of Jackson Mac Low today. Tell, tell us about the relationship

between the seed. Letters, the seed word, and the source

text. The seed or the spine.

>> In, in Cage's situation? Which is the general.

>> Or general. Yeah, what, what could be the relationship

between the two. >> Well for Cage he takes a he takes a

word or a phrase. >> The, he, uses as his, his oracle, I

think he calls it. >> Well, the oracle is, sort of, the

source of text. >> Okay, right.

Well, its sort of the incantation [inaudible].

>> Mm-hm. >> Sure, he goes through, then his oracle

text, his source text, and he extracts words, with, with letters snatching his,

sort of, [inaudible] in a [inaudible]. >> And the relationship in terms of

context. In relations to terms of content between

the, the spine text, or the seed. And, the source text can be what?

>> The, the relationship between. It can be, it can be anything.

You can take any word and use that as your, your spine word, to go through.

>> Molly? >> But often he uses the, the author's

name, or the title of the book or the poem.

>> In the instance we're looking at, he would use the author's name.

>> Right. Okay.

But so you can create a harmony. I'm writing through Allen Ginsberg's howl

so my spine will be Allen Ginsberg and any kind of juxtaposition that gets created

out of that is ironic, if I can put it that way.

You can also create an irony. We are jumping ahead a little bit.

Some of you took Walt Whitman's name and ran it through Emily Dickinson to create

your own mesostic and so there you are starting with what you hope is,

juxtaposition. And if it turns out that Emily has that

Emily creates in the oracle of Whitman which seems appropriate something that's

actually very Dickinsonian we have a new kind of oddity.

So you can kinda make, make meaning that way.

It'll surprise you sometimes. Okay so writing through Howell was a piece

that John Cage. >> Look, produced, and he took Allen

Ginsberg and he ran it through. And sometimes he's supposed to create in a

pure mesostic. He creates one word.

But sometimes he creates two or more words.

Why? What do we call them, and why does he do

that? If you don't know what it's called, it's

fine, Anna, but. >> Why does he do it?

>> Yeah. >>, Called the wing words.

He adds extra words. >> Adding extra words.

>> Mm-hm. >> I mean, I guess, it just, it just gives

you kind of more room, to keep going with the.

>> Mm-hm. Mm-hm.

>> Because I mean Howell's is a massive poem.

I think it would be kinda doing the poem, doing [inaudible] a disservice if you only

just. >> Oh, so you're assuming that the plan

was not to do it a disservice. >> Well, I just think there's a lot, by

going through his name twice. >> Well it goes through it many, many

times we're looking at an excerpt it goes through twice.

>> Many, many times in the excerpt we have it goes through twice I think.

It let's him just keep rolling with what he's ...

>> Okay. Before we look at the text, anybody else

wanna add what the effect might be here? Amaris, what are you predicting the effect

would be? What to you expect the effect to be?

>> I think we'd be looking at the [inaudible] between the lines.

Whereas, before, it's just this very high concentration on each particular words.

>> Before [inaudible] in Ginsburg's Howl. >> Yeah.

Here, it sort of enables us to draw connections in a different way.

Okay so I'll read the result. This is a little passage from the

beginning of Writing through Howl. And I'll ask you to try to compare it to

the source text to Ginsberg's Howl. By the way quickly why would John Cage

write through Allen Ginsberg? Just in a, you know, anthology sort of

sense. Why do you have?

What's the, what's the potential relations between these two figures, in the history

of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry.

Not that there's any kind of, you know. Bigness about that question, don't feel

any pressure Ali. >> Well.

You know, vertically at least. Ginsberg and the Beats were kind of out of

their time, cutting a cutting edge to a certain extent.

John Cage was definitely cutting edge, I think.

>> They were both equally cutting edge at the time in the 50s and 60s.

You don't have to answer that, but you see the just of my question.

Dave? >> What's the relationship?

>> I think they are cutting edge in different ways.

Where Ginsberg may have been cutting edge in the way he used language to try to

express something. Cage was questioning the ability of

language to express something. So they are both cutting age cutting edge

in different ways I think. >> Okay, alright so let me read the

excerpt as best I can. Saw I am gonna read it almost in a

Ginsbergean tone but I am gonna do the Cagean result.

Saw themselves. Looking for hipsters, starry dynamo.

High sat their heaven. Saw publishing odes on rooms listening to

the terror. Beards returning through Laredo.

Belt for New York in drugs with alcohol and balls.

Blind in the mind. Toward illuminating dawn's blinking light,

the winter light, endless ride. All right, what do you hear, if you were

given this poem and told that it wasn't John Cage, non quasi non-intentionally

writing it? But in fact, it was John Cage in a

traditional, romantic, subjective, lyric poet sitting down, expressing how he feels

way. What would you say?

Anna, what would you begin to do? >> I'd get out my grammar red pen and I'd

be a grump. [laugh] and write the capitalizations and.

>> Oh, you'd start to be grumpy. What if you were a really kind of a hip,

reader of imagism and language that was, with a lot left out.

Okay, don't be grumpy. >> [laugh].

>> Let's try someone who wants to be hip for a second.

Max, you're hip generally speaking. >> [laugh].

>> I would, I would start to close read it.

I think I would. >> Yeah, do some close reading.

>> Saw themselves looking for hipsters and there's, that's ...

>> That works doesn't it? >> That's, yeah, actually that

chromatically works ... >> Does it work to create the same, does

it begin to create the same meaning Of the beats, of the beatific, beaten down.

>> Angel-headed hipsters with their drugs and their driving.

>> Sure, and I, I, I think, I think it does.

>> It does, doesn't it? >> Oddly enough.

And it's, it's even. >> Well, why do you say?

>> It's even a little more ironic. >> Well, why did you say oddly enough?

I mean, Cage wrote this about the Beats. Why wouldn't it be about the Beats?

>> Well, because we would expect maybe a little bit more, a little bit more chaos.

>> Randomness. >> A little bit more nonsense.

But the fact that, that works grammatically is, is remarkable.

>> Okay, do, so you're close-reading it terms of content.

Anyone want to close-read it in terms of poetics, form?

Amaris? >> Well it has this very minimalist form

to it so it's quite a contrast to the original text.

Which is just so long, these long lines full of detail and description.

And I think we're surprised to see here an equal evocativeness and vividness in the

text. >> Equal evocative-ness.

Okay, so doubters who, you know, decide, that aleatory, that chance operated, that.

This kind of deterministic, or quasi-deterministic, writing that, gets

beyond the traditional self-expressive self of the writer.

That this stuff would produce accidental meaning at best.

>> And you're saying, well accidental or not, it's evocative equally.

>> Mm-hm. >> Wow.

>> Cuz it's easy to. >> You really mean that, or are you just

playing along? >> No.

I think it's easy to dismiss it as nonsense, and perhaps other results would

be, I'm not like. >> If the seed text or the spine terms

were not as interesting or not as fortunate.

>> Perhaps they just didn't contain as much power like even these words dialoged

from the original meaning that Ginsberg intended still maintain their power.

>> Dave what would you say of all the choices, Howell is a fortunate choice for

someone who is doing a Mazostic. Because, what is it about Howell's

textness, textuality. >> Use of words, how, how, why is it a

fortunate one to be pulling things out of. >> Well, it's very wordy.

>> It's wordy, there's a lot of words. >> Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, an

emotional cry, a, a plea for. >> So the number, the percentage of

emotional cry words is higher than in other kinds of poetry.

>> I think. I think you could say it is.

It's very, it's very Prossey. It's got very long lines, very

description, very heavy description. I think it works as a good seed text.

I like it. >> No, it's not the seed text.

It's the source text but that's alright we'll get the vocabulary.

>> [laugh] >> Okay. Does anybody want to disagree with Dave?

I mean there is a problem with. I like what Dave said following with what

Amaris said. What's, what's the problem with that?

Should I say it, then you guys can follow up?

>> Yeah, Emily think so? Okay.

Well. >> [laugh].

>> The fact is that the, that the det-, deterministic process, procedure only

takes one word at a time, buddy. So it's not like, you know, so I'm taking.

Wordiness doesn't make a difference. He's, he's, he's doing a certain thing,

and only a certain number of words are going to work.

So, it's getting a little spooky oracle, oracular cuz Anne-Maurice is right, when

we get to blind in the mind, there's a rhyme.

It's actually an end rhyme. How did that happen?

>> Well, it happened cuz mine doesn't weigh more and he added it.

>> Mm-hm. So there's intention.

Flying in the mind toward illuminating dawn's blinking light.

Do you remember that passage that we talked about way back?

I'm going to read it again and I want you to compare the sound of the passage which

is full of assonance and rhyme and, and tripping meter in Ginsberg.

Remember this is the way we concluded that Ginsberg was highly wrought remember that.

Which goes against the cliche of the beats.

That they are just writing automatically this is highly wrought.

Then we'll look at it the way Cage produces it in his mesostic and you can

compare it. Here we go.

Peyote solidities of halls. Backyard green trees, cemetery dawns.

Wine drunkenness over the rooftops. Storefront boroughs of teahead joyride.

Neon blinking traffic light. Sun and moon and tree vibrations in the

roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn. Ashcan rantings and kind king light of

mind who chained themselves to subways for endless rides from Battery to holy Bronx.

This becomes dawn's blinking light. >> The winter light endless ride.

Okay, compare them. Amaris, , you started this.

>> [laugh]. Well, we have a lot more.

With a sense of it being sort of overwhelming.

And I remember noting that I fell into more of the musical quality of how because

it was so overwhelming in detail. But, in Cage's version, oddly enough.

[laugh]. >> [inaudible] oddly enough, he does what.

>> There is meaning to be, to be cleaned from.

>> What does, what would you say he does. I mean, Emily, if you were back at your

high school or middle school and you were teaching students.

Just had no presupposition about things and who are actually so computer literate

more than you that doing this kind of random extraction sort of not random

deterministic extraction wouldn't phase then in, in the least.

And so you were responsible in a neutral kind of teacherly tone.

You're going to become a teacher let's face it.

[laugh] In a teacherly tone you're, you're gonna say okay students compare these two

and if one of them said you know what he, the cage extracted.

The sound of the poem from Ginsburg, what would you say in response to that, seventh

grader? >> I'm thinking.

>> Well, he did, didn't he? >> You're asking a seventh grader a

question, [laugh], after a question. [laugh] Why are you posing into a

statement. >> He did.

That sound is entirely intact even if reduced and reproduced artificially

somehow. >> Okay.

So let's quickly look, before we take a break, let's quickly look at what Marjorie

Perloff. >> How she's interpreted this.

Anna, can you summarize any of what she said in dealing with this?

>>, She's writing an essay about Ginsberg and, and mostly celebrating it's

[inaudible] Ginsberg in the 1980's I believe.

>> Mm-hm. >> Well, basically says that riding

through hell takes Ginsberg what she, what she calls a dense, clotted, overwrought

line and turns it into kind of a, a reduction.

>> Mm-hm. >> Where.

>> She's or where Cage is not only taken almost like the kinda nugget the little

soul of every line. >> A vicerum we might say.

>> Sure you could say that. >> I like that word vicerum.

>>, But she says more. She says the dense overwrought of Ginsburg

gives way stark reduction. A reduction that leaves a great deal to

the reader's imagination. Say something about that?

>> Well I mean we were if you think about. Ginnsburg's line, which you know, kind of

is very evocative for the imagination. Cause he's left, or he's given all this

insane. >> Language.

He doesn't leave a lot to the imagination, because he's kind of spells it all out for

us. >> Well, it allows us everything.

Mm-hm. >> Very [inaudible] in that sense.

>> You know, it's all there. >> But this, you know.

>> And Cage [inaudible] Insomnia and that creates, he creates an open text.

So we go from somewhat closed to open. She also says Cage's stanzas leave, leave

a good deal open, but they are by no means to be taken as non-sensible.

Now your response to this is crucial to course.

So there's no pressure here because if this course turns out to be chapters eight

nine in particular turn out to be creating in the minds of readers and students that

anything goes in this new poetry, anything goes.

And if the, the work of McClough and Pollack, Pollack, Jackson Pollack...

Jackson McClough and John Cage and others don't readdress that by saying this is

deterministic. This is not improvisation, it's not

random. It's deterministic its aleatory.

>> It's created by non-intentional writing, but it's rigorous is, in its

application of instructions. If we can't respond, I'm really building

this up. Who wants to take this on?

What does she mean? Cages stanzas leave a good deal open, but

they're by no means to be taken as nonsensical.

Max, give it a try. >> Well.

>> Pressure and the whole course depends on you.

>> [laugh], If, if Ginsberg's is as Proloft says the mode of continuity, where

he writes Howl as a sort of big, there's much more even though it's all sort of

surrealist and seems to be this juxtaposition of images.

There's a lot more intention than we thought once we see this sort of Cagian

reduction. And Cage's is the, the, is the mode, the

mode of openness when it comes to Howl. And.

>> In a way of what Cage shows us is that there's ways of reading and rewriting text

and that there's meaning to be gleaned for from that from those different modes and

approaches. >> Okay.

So Cage provides us an alternative and he also essentially re-reads the text we

thought was revolutionary it turns out to be which her phrase is reassuringly

traditional. So the relationship between Cage and

Ginsberg is both one of homage. Cage sees a lot of really great language

in, in Ginsberg. It's also one of I wouldn't say rebuke

cause that's not really in Cage's vocabulary but essentially about prodding

and extraction of what's open and possible.

Cage is dwelling in possibility believes that Ginsburg created a beginning middle

and end and closed off possibility. But in this text can be I don't want to

say rescued can be extracted can be made something that allows us to think freshly.

This is all about learning how to shift our attention.

So when we come back we'll look a little more at some Cagean ideas and see if it'll

set us up for the rest of the chapter.

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