English 111 / Comp Lit 115

May 20, 2015 6:20 PM

Experimental Writing Seminar: Constraints & Collaborations. In addition to setting out a few dozen writing exercises, the online syllabus for an introductory course taught by Charles Bernstein (poet and co-editor of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E) links to a variety of poems, poetry generators, and prose experiments on the web.

Substitution

• Lee Ann Brown, "Pledge," and Michael Magee, "Pledge": new Pledges of Allegiance
• Kenneth Goldsmith, "Head Citations": altered pop song lyrics
• Bernadette Mayer, "Before Sextet": altered condom instructions
• H. D., "Sea Poppies," and Jennifer Scappettone, "Vase Poppies": a well-known Imagist poem and a poem written through it (discussion)
• The N+7 Machine: a web app implementing the famous OuLiPo technique also known as S+7

Exercises in Style

• Raymond Queneau, Exercises in Style (PDF excerpt): 99 variations on "one" story
• Caroline Bergvall with Ciáran Maher, "Via" (audio only): "a compiled list of translations into English of Dante's opening lines as archived in the British Library up until May 2000"
• Raymond Queneau, "One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems": a web app implementing Queneau's combinatoric poem

Homophonic & Dialect Translation

• Charles Bernstein, "From the Basque" and "Me Transform - O!": two homophonic readings
• Steve McCaffery, "The Kommunist Manifesto or Wot We Wukkerz Want, Bi Charley Marx un Fred Engels" (text and audio): "translation of the Communist Manifesto into West Riding of Yorkshire dialect"
• Louis Zukofsky, "A Foin Lass Bodders Me" (audio only): translation of Guido Cavalcanti's "Donna Me Prega" (more info)
• Robert Majzels (et al)'s 85s (texts and videos): translations/transformations of classic Chinese poems into 85-letter visual poems in English
• Jonathan Stalling, Yíngēlìshī (audio/video only): homophonic songs interpretable in both English and Chinese
• David Melnick, Men in Aida, Book I and Book II: homophonic translations drawn from The Iliad
• Ron Silliman, blog posts on homophonic translation: a presentation of examples by Chris Tysh, David Melnick, and Ron Silliman himself
• Nathan Kageyama, "Stay Come": translation of Ezra Pound's "The Return" into Hawaian Creole English
• bpNichol, selections from Translating Translating Apollinaire: numerous transformations of bpNichol's first published poem
• Robert Kelly, Earish: numerous homophonic translations of poems by Celan
• Charles Bernstein, "Sane as Tugged Vat, Your Love": homophonic translation of "Sanat Tulevat Yolla"
• Buffalax, "Benny Lava": homophonic sub-titling of the song "Kalluri Vaanil" from the movie Pennin Manathai Thottu

Without Rules, (K)not!, or Is Free Writing Free?

• Jack Kerouac, notes on spontaneous bop prosody: guidelines for writing "'without consciousness'"
• Bernadette Mayer, Studying Hunger: text based on the poet's 365-page journal of her psychoanalysis (more info)
• Bernadette Mayer, "The Prostitutes At The Eldorado Club" from The Desires Of Mothers To Please Others In Letters: excerpt from a book blurbed "An epistolary text which takes as its formal parameters the nine months of Ms. Mayer's last pregnancy--an augury by bee sting--and writes the reader's psyche to the fences"
• Hannah Weiner, Clairvoyant Journal: journal of the poet's immediate, literal vision of words "on my forehead IN THE AIR on other people on the typewriter on the page" (more info)
• Hannah Weiner, "UBLIMINAL": another short piece of clairvoyant experience transcription
• Clark Coolidge, excerpt from American Ones (full text): prose poetry about American landscapes, jazz, poetry itself, etc. (more info)

Pierre Joris

• Readings from Poasis and works online: 1, 2, and 3

Bruce Andrews

• Readings from works online: 1 and 2

Chance Operation & the Aleatoric

• Readings by Jackson Mac Low (discussion): "Insect Assassins" and selections from Words nd Ends from Ez ("string word: Ezra Pound")
• eDiastic: a web app based on Jackson Mac Low's "diastic technique"
• William S. Burroughs, quotes on the cut-up method: straightforward descriptions of Burroughs's technique
• Brion Gysin, "Cut-Ups Self-Explained": a statement on cut-ups by the painter who introduced them to Burroughs
• Gysin/Burroughs, "Open Letter to Life Magazine," an excerpt from Minutes to Go: "cut-up of 'Beat Generation,' Life Magazine Dec 5 1959"
• Text Mixing Desk v2.0: an online tool inspired by Burroughs / cut-ups
• Poem/text remixers from Language Is A Virus: Madlib Poem, Cut Up Machine, Poetry Gyroscope, WTF-O-Vision, Sentence Builder, and Text Mixer among others.
• God's Rude Wireless: another cut-up engine
• That can be my next tweet!: a Twitter feed scrambler

The Art of Constraint

• Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and Robert McNally's "Tablespoons": the classic poem and its re-interpretation by the handwriting recognition software on the Apple Newton
• Christian Bök, Eunoia (text and Flash versions; also audio): five short lipogrammatic texts akin to Perec's A Void
• Kenneth Goldsmith, Fidget (text and Java applet versions): "every move Kenneth Goldsmith's body made on June 16, 1997"
• Several works composed of neologisms / nonsense words: Kurt Schwitters, "Ur Sonata"; P. Inman, Ocker, Platin, and Uneven Development; and David Melnick, Pcoet.

Memory, Novel Forms

• Joe Brainard, excerpt from I Remember (audio excerpts): poem in which each new thought begins, "I remember ..." (more info)
• Joe Brainard, Ten Imaginary Still Lifes: poem in which each new image begins, "I close my eyes. I see ..."
• Francis Ponge, "l'Orange": poem about a single object, famously being compared to l'éponge

Short lines/Short Poems

• Tom Beckett, Hay(na)Ku sampler: three-line poems with words-per-line matching the line's ordinality
• Robert Creeley, selections (.doc file!): short poems with short lines
• Robert Grenier, Sentences: randomly ordered short poems, originally boxed in form
• Ted Greenwald, Makes Sense: a poem with one word per line
• Aram Saroyan, Aram Saroyan: thirty minimalist poems, including the world's shortest poem and other work controversial for its brevity

...

• David Antin, "In Place of a Lecture: Three Musics for Two Voices" from Talking: improvised "talk poem" (Wikipedia)
• Kenneth Goldsmith, Soliloquy: "an unedited document of every word I spoke during the week of April 15-21, 1996" (more info)

Flarf / Conceptual Poetry / Web-Generated Poems / Found Poems / Appropriation

• K. Silem Mohammad, readings from Deer Head Nation (audio only): poetry based on Google search results
• Michael Magee, "The Flarf Files": explanation of Flarf with examples (critique; special feature)
• The Claudius App: a web magazine, currently featuring an auto-suggest search interface for its table of contents (more info)
• The Apostrophe Engine: another search-engine-based poem (film inspired by the poem)
• Kate Fagan, "Three Centos": three short collage poems
• The Eater of Meaning: a web app that extracts the meaning from other webpages and serves what remains (e.g. www.metafilter.com)

Digital & Visual Poetry

• Anthology of Visual/Concrete Poetry (see also the Visual Poetry web app for drawing with text)
• Anthology of Digital Poetics and Poetry

Poets / artists giving public readings or lectures mentioned on the syllabus

• Trisha Low; Joey Yearous-Algozin on Trisha Low; Trisha Low on Joey Yearous-Algozin
• Katie Price
• Steve McLaughlin
• Kara Walker and "Roughneck Constructivists"
• Ben Lerner
• Craig Dworkin
• Laynie Browne
• Lisa Jarnot
• Rae Armantrout

posted by Monsieur Caution (4 comments total)

Yor killin me here.
No Ron Silliman?
Fantasistssss collection and thus flagged so.
posted by clavdivs at 7:06 PM on May 20, 2015

In the immortal words of the great prophet Keanu: "whoa".
posted by dejah420 at 9:07 PM on May 20, 2015

It's too bad the N+7 machine doesn't let you permalink to your results. Some of their suggested experiments turn out to be quite beautiful, like this pretty familiar one (it mistakes "bear" for a noun and that somehow just makes it even better):

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
N+1
You shall not beard false witticism against your neighbourhood.
N+2
You shall not bearer false wizard against your neologism.
N+3
You shall not bearing false wodge against your neophyte.
N+4
You shall not bearskin false woe against your nephew.
N+5
You shall not beast false wog against your nerve.
N+6
You shall not beat false wok against your nest.
N+7
You shall not beater false wolf against your nestle.
N+8
You shall not beating false wolfhound against your nestling.
N+9
You shall not beatnik false woman against your net.
N+10
You shall not beau false womanizer against your nettle.
N+11
You shall not beaut false womb against your network.
N+12
You shall not beautician false wombat against your neuron.
N+13
You shall not beauty false wonder against your neurosis.

False wonder against your neurosis, indeed. Out of the mouths of machines.
posted by RogerB at 9:57 PM on May 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

In the gaffe, everyone will be famous for fifteen misapprehensions.
posted by larrybob at 10:50 AM on May 21, 2015 [2 favorites]