Thoughts and Questions for Colie Collen

As our knowledge of Collen pertains to her role in Fence I think my questions would arise from the poets and themes we gathered from the magazine. In addition perhaps more logistical mechanical questions pertaining to the publishing process might come up at the roundtable. I would first ask her about the role of the past in the issue of Fence:

The artwork here superimposes the surreal or Dada onto the lithograph. Does this juxtaposition of earlier artistic ideas with modernist ones perhaps work into the idea of challenging assumptions which moves throughout Fence?

I would follow this past/present/challenging assumptions question with one about the abrasiveness of content and attack on decorum. Moreover, how such an abrasive quality works to reinterpret language and its connection with meaning, or present lack thereof.

The Challenging Nature of Fence Magazine

As Fence Magazine's attention to detail is remarkable, one can see even from the cover the juxtaposition of the new and old, attacking assumptions with new poetic tools, and the critique of current society through comparison to the old. The cover and the few similar pieces which unfortunately only span the magazine with regularity until page twelve, are spin offs of lithographs with the addition of certain surrealist and Dadaist influences. One such lithograph/collage pictures a hand with soap written on it in the sky.

In this way the poetry of Fence's second magazine in their twelfth volume stems from an irreverence and utilization of the past to question the current status quo, most notably through the reinterpretation of language. Catherine Wagner and Lara Glenum attack and play with the confines of language. In fact Wagner's irreverence and disregard for decorum almost turns into gibberish in her poem "Coming and I Did Not Run Away:"

Brand spankin hanky pankin

new periodical

in my uterus

yest I cried

thought I was going

NUTSO

Yet Wagner's work represents gibberish in the most constructive way possible, a gibberish which forces one to think about the everyday language they use. Her last stanza "I saw the 'usual turn of phrase' / coming and I did not run away / I lay around" embodies this irreverence for the "usual" and the need to seek stronger definitions for language.

Working in Wagner's vein of reinterpretation and investigation, Lara Glenum works to reclaim and debase demeaning language. For instance in her poem "Hypnic Jerk" she writes:

or so I told Mino

while taking pipe

My cunt grew all sing-songy

amid his pettifogging miracles

& coughed out a deer head

Here Glenum ropes in a classical reference to "Mino" and the unusual word "pettifogging, while bringing the harmful word "cunt" out into the open. This juxtaposition creates a jarring image for the reader, one where "usual turns of phrase" are turned upside down and then chopped with a hatchet.

Yet this call for reinterpretation of social norms is not limited to language. Christine Herzer and Jose Perez Beduya show us that a reinterpretation of identity is also necessary. For instance Beduya's line "An ethical relation among things / He was completely gone / The Absolute / Propped up by a broomstick" shows how the "he" and the "absolute," no longer find secure footing, precipitating further personal exploration. Herzer's work seems to follow in Beduya's message concerning the absence of an ethical relationship. Moreover Herzer represents her "narrator" as many separate, non linear and paradoxical themes. Her poem "Please Erase as Many Lines as You Need" displays this:

i come from a non-verbal background

...

i dont have to break my privacy to be honest

...

people like you need to fuck people like me

Such an illogical development shows the conflict inherent in self and the need to reinterpret identity on less divisive, exclusionary terms.

Fence's latest issue captivates the reader through meaningful insight into language and identity, utilizing the framework of the past to jar our present notions and assumptions.

Wish I Could've Been Back Home...

The annual Split This Rock Poetry Festival was held this week in DC. The Nation has a great article on the event pertaining to our definition of language and its need for reinterpretation. Mullen would be pleased.

The festival also examined contemporary poetry and the declining printed sphere.

http://live.thenation.com/doc/20100315/miller

Here's a good excerpt on language:

Words are luggage for our politics, and those of us who are writers have a special responsibility to prevent the erosion of their value and meaning. I want to compose poems with words that can wear pants and shirts without creases.

Magee's Means of Reinterpretation: What is the End?

Reinterpretation and rethinking convention must always be moved forward in the contemporary sphere of poetry. Yet Michael Magee's My Angie Dickinson finds disparity in its correlation of "flarf" and reverence for iconoclasm. Magee sets out to honor the powerful, unconventional, and most importantly impious nature of Emily Dickinson, as he states in his foreword, "I was cognizant of the fact that Dickinson's poems, both in form and content, remain surprisingly volatile despite the various historical attempts to keep them more placid." Perhaps a good example of Dickinson's, indeed unconventional form would be, "It was not death; for I stood up:"

It was not death, for I stood up, And all the dead lie down; It was not night, for all the bells Put out their tongues, for noon.  It was not frost, for on my flesh I felt siroccos crawl,-- Nor fire, for just my marble feet Could keep a chancel cool.
Dickinson treats death with surreal closeness and strength, while cutting up the traditional stanza with caesura. Yet Magee's work most resurrects this refreshing volatility through, "a process of disorientation and orientation." This process is clearly evidenced in Magee's poem "003:"
Poetry should be happy, NOT                                                                                                                               all gloomy like ANGIE Dickinson                                                                                        her "deer-in-the-headlights" gaze                                                                                                            as---model---after---model                                                                                                                      walk down three times a year                                                                                                                  the magical image---of the winter---                                                                                                   fairyland---of a class---                                                                                                                              Kate Miller pleasures herself...
Magee deftly disrupts his first line, repeatedly questioning our assumptions of the poem's content and form, determined to strike caesuras into the heart of piety. Thus an attack on piety provides strong ground for a description of Magee's work, his juxtaposition of Dickinson with "ANGIE" Dickinson leading the charge. Magee states just that in his foreword. 
Yet in Magee's work his poems seem to sink into a quagmire of means without reaching his end, which we might assume to be the elevation of Dickinson's iconoclasm. Magee desires to generate reverence through "flarf". His poems themselves are even organized like the google search engine which birthed them. Yet the inherent unintentional quality of flarf, in some ways its strength, seems to fall short when matched with such an intentional goal, for instance in poem "095:" 
mainstream cinema gravitated                                                                                                                    from "people" ---like, Keanu Reeves---                                                                                                  and "By the River" ---Styx again---                                                                                                          the loneliness creeps---
The idea of the unintentional manifesting itself in the complex, interconnected world of communication we use today can find some legitimacy. Yet volleys of pop culture references seem inherently inept at garnering praise for Emily Dickinson. The idea of the terrible, woven into flarf, may find its place in poetry yet, but the seriousness of Magee's endeavor trivializes whatever productive poetic vehicle would emanate from such a dialogue between high and low brow culture. 
The rupture of the literary canon through lines like "The Hitler-loathing skipper/ In the---Dick Oasis--- (038)" may still provide some worth in their representation of our world, yet become too enamored at their own conception that they fail to see the ends of their existence. 
          

Praise and Critique for Mullen's Sleeping with Dictionary

Response to Harryette Mullen provides worthy praise of the transforming power her poems contain. Both Christine Hume and Reginald Harris describe well Mullen's reinterpretation and confrontation of the status quo while remarking poignantly on the purpose of word play.
Hume argues for Mullen's use of wordplay as a serious poetic tool, as opposed to its current place "when it isn't simply an attention getting device...something to be brushed away...before the company gets here." In this way she elevates Mullen's use of play into a valuable discussion on the human condition, stating that her comedy, "[flays] our nature to the bone."Although Hume's focus on the erotic play of Mullen's work does much to explain the nature of Sleeping with the Dictionary the fact that her article does cement her praise in this comedic framework can somewhat restrict the power of Mullen's transformation and reinterpretation. Hume writes of Mullen's own structural upheavals as calling for a greater social one, her use of rearrangement to rhetorically condemn and question convention. She quotes Mullen:
If you cannot understand English, you will be moved out of the way. . . . It’s not our fault you were born wearing a gang color. It is not our obligation to inform you of your rights. Step aside, please while our officer inspects your bad attitude. You have no rights that we are bound to respect. Please remain calm, or we can’t be held responsible for what happens to you.
Here Mullen cleverly throws the rhetoric of the establishment right back in its face. Yet as Hume focuses so strongly on the play of Mullen this approach somehow weakens her praise of Mullen's work. While it is "serious play" indeed, when we draw such a line where does the play end and the true power of transforming social oppression begin?
In this way Reginald Harris focuses almost entirely on the playful cleverness of Mullen's poetry, the use of games to reinterpret and question the hierarchy around us. Harris' acknowledgment of Mullen's political and social ideas merely states that they have not disappeared.
Thus I don't believe these reviews give credit to the existential nature of Mullen's work. Mullen breaks down the very notion and existence of language, questioning its connections and rhetorical power to come out with verses rich in their reinterpretation of the status quo. For instance her poem "Denigration" piercingly illuminates the power of connotation and the "denigration" it promotes. Moreover does Mullen simply contain the political power and action of her older work or is she challenging and recasting language in powerful new ways?

Mullen's Call for the Reinterpretation of Language

In Haryette Mullen's collection, self-consciously titled, "Sleeping with the Dictionary" our convictions about language and its use as a poetic device are transformed and recast. Mullen works to break up the connections made through words and investigate their use and power. Perhaps drawing from her African American heritage and the vernacular, Mullen is able to piece apart the hierarchy of language to find a greater meaning in its dissolution and reinterpretation.
One manner in which Mullen reinterprets language is the prose poem. As prose poems by their nature question the power of poetic verse, Mullen utilizes their ability to harness the power of natural speech and play with its presence in poetry. Her poem "Bleeding Hearts" emphasizes this inherent beauty of prose:

This
ramshackle stack of shotguns I'm holding in my scope. I'm
beady-eyed as a bug. Slippery as a sardine. Salty as a kipper.
You could rehash me for breakfast. Find my shrinking awe, or
share your wink. I'll get a rash wench.

Thus even in a form such as prose assonance, alliteration and cacophony still abound. Mullen continues this dialogue with the inherent beauty of speech in "Wino Rhino," "My heart quivers as arrows on street maps target/ me for urban renewal."
In addition to her work with prose, Mullen digs deeper into her dissolution of poetic connectivity with language. While the prose poem confronts the existence of language in poetry, her further "elliptical" movement seeks to confront our convictions of language itself. Her poem, conveniently titled, "Elliptical" attacks this connection by deleting words and replacing them with ellipses.

They just cant seem too...They should try harder to...They
ought to be more...We all wish they weren't so...

Therefore through this omission Mullen parallels the fact that language is inherently elliptical, that meaning is never as concrete as it seems. We have no idea what words should go in those spaces. Thus it is the poet's power to create which gives poetry its beauty. Mullen's poem "Coo/Slur" follows this discussion over the connection of language, here moving to connection so basic as the linking of letters to form words, "da red/ yell ow/ bro won t/ an orange you/ bay jaun/ pure people."
Moreover, Mullen shows that in today's world of entropy we cannot be certain of the suspicious connection between words and letters. Thus in a method of beauty and play, Mullen breaks down our assumptions to the roots of what is poetically essential.