the poetry meme...

THE FIRST POEM I REMEMBER READING WAS...

Surname Viet Given Name Nam (?) Trinh T. Minh Ha
Frankenstein (?) Mary Shelley.
Job (f. the bible)(?) GOD.
Titus (?) Shakey Shakes.
The Kingfishers(?) Olson.
The Light in the Crevice (?) Hounani K. Trask.
Looking for Livingston (?) Marlene Nourbese Philip
The Raven (?) Poe.
Naked Lunch (?) Burroughs.
Howl (?) Ginsberg.
Mamma Roma (?) Pier Paolo Pasolini.
A baseball game
a sermon
My Life (?) Hejinian.
Ring of Fire (?) Jarnot.
Tender Buttons (?) Stein.
Language (?) Spicer.

(I really don't know...i mean they all are "first poems" to me for different if not at times similar reasons... and my memory seems to transfigure itself as i try to think
of what i have thought
at times what a poem might be...)

I WAS FORCED TO MEMORIZE NUMEROUS POEMS IN SCHOOL AND...

...Um...Just two as I remember...Mercutio's queen Maab speech in Romeo and Juliet...but my teacher had us theme out the scene for fun...so i played mercutio as a hippie wastoid....my teacher responded to my almost perfectly recited speech/poem as hipster with an affectionate, "jared, i trust you're not really stoned..."

...the only other time I was required to memorize a poem was for Reed Bye at Naropa...but in his contemplative poetics class i knew i could have a little fun with it...so taking a cue from a Rimbaud poem Andy Peterson had given me, I translated the lines of the poem i was supposed to be memorizing...i think it was Perce Shelley (SP?) or a Niedecker poem....into only its vowels...then following rimbaud, translated the vowels into colors...then i memorized the sequence and recited that back to the class...in the end, getting out of memorizing the poem might have proved more difficult. One line read, red, red, blue, white, white, red, green, red, red, red...

MY FIRST PUBLICATION...

Was either a non-fiction community college newspaper article on composition instructor and editor of 3rd bed, Vincent Standley...at the time i had no idea of the journals place in the american lineage of avante...although i bought it because he was my professor and i was interested...and i felt an energy in it hard to find in community college comp texts...The piece i wrote was just a sort of spotlight..."Hey look at this great teacher" kinda thing...

The other "first" publication was a poem titled "War Room." It was published in Western Washington University's Womens Center Journal, Labyrinth. It was an anti-war pantoum.

I READ POETRY BECAUSE...Is there anything elso to read...but i don't mean this as a contempt for other literatures, rather it is an attempt to try and see every Thing (object, sound, feeling, sight, taste, etc.) as poetry..or as an extension of humanity's transmissions into the world...our world is made of poetry...the question becomes (for me)... when are we not seeing poetry?

...And this is not to make a universal statement but to call into question the idea that poetry is some specific thing and suggest that poetry is much more abundant in our culture than we sometimes think or is presented by institutions who hold particular interest in keeping static the imagination of the beings in their vicinity...

FAVORITE POEM QUESTION...

The Man Without Content (?) Agamben.
Autobiography of a Stutterer (?) Cooper.
Museum of Thrown Objects (?) Peterson.
Periplum Maps our Star/ Less Shores (?) Rogers.
The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers (?) Kapil.
Look at Me Now and Here I Am (?) Stein.
Proprioception (?) Olson.
Brain of the Earths Body (?) Preziosi.
Arcades Project (?) Benjamin.
Collected Celan (?)
Parade Rain (?) Koshkin.
This is Affront You Pig (?) Logan Ryan Smith.
Neoliberal Rocket Badge(?) Boykoff
For Love (?) The Creels.
Mouf (?) Sakkis.
Ring of Fire (?) Jarnot.
That They Were at the Beach (?) Scalapino.
Discipline and Punish (?) Foucault.
Eunoia (?) Bok.
Notes on the Possibilities and Extractions of Existence (?) Hollo.
Level Ground (?) Armentrout.
Kill or Cure (?) Waldman.
A (?) Zuk
Tri/Via (?) Corpuz and Naka Pierce
Kaddish (?) Ginsberg.
Stanzas in Meditation (?) Stein.
S*PERM**K*T (?) Mullen.
Precinct Kali and The Gertrude Spicer Story (?) Bertolino.
So We Have Been Given Time Or (?) Nakayasu.
Oxota (?) Hejinian.
Further Sightings and Conversations (?) Rothenberg.
Cunt-ups (?) Bellamy.
Une Semaine De Bonte (?) Ernst.
Four Buildings on Mardou Street (?) Killroy.
Happy Birthday of Death (?) Corso.
Collected Spicer
Collected Berrigan
Naked Lunch (?) Burroughs.
Howl (?) Ginsberg.
Lunch Poems (?) OHara.
Spring and All (?) WCW.
M (?) Cage
Finnegans Wake (?) Joyce.
Scout (?) Cole.
Vicuna (?)
Howe (?)
Harry Smith (?)

My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature...

what if in fact it is not the writing which determines a genre or categorical designation but the reading...in this sense i am a reader of poetry regardless of what formal architecture is brought to my senses...um, or at least try to be....so i read both the formal category of poetry the same way i try and read other types of literature...

I Find Poetry...

...constantly...

The Last TIme I Heard Poetry...

Jules Boykoff's Reading!!! I saw someone read there own poems in a way that revealed how no one else could have written them, and they were, genuinely political, collaborative, and social.

I THINK POETRY IS...

We Think
Poetry Is.

I tag, Andrew Peterson, Jennifer Rogers, Joseph Cooper, Elizabeth Guthrie, and Michael Koshkin.