Author Archives: billmohr

Lyn Hejinian (1941-2024): Monumental Poet-Editor-Publisher-Critic

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Today’s New York Times contains three major obituaries: Robert M. Young, a filmmaker, age 99; Nancy Wallace, riparian activist, age 93; and Guy Alexandre, a transplant surgeon, age 89. All three deserved their extended notices.

But where in the New York Times is any notice of the recent passing of Lyn Hejinian, whose work as editor and publisher of Tuumba Press infused the Language poets with a heady sense of an irrefutable avant-gardism. The chapbooks that she printed on a steady basis between 1976 and 1984. It’s impossible, I believe, to convey to readers the excitement that I felt as I received those chapbooks in the mail from her. By late 1980, I was looking for some alternative to the post-Beat writing (additionally influenced by James Schuyler and Ted Berrigan) that I had been doing for over a decade. While I had been an assiduous reader of Paul Vangelisti’s and John McBride’s INVISIBLE CITY, Dennis Cooper’s LITTLE CAESAR, and Leland Hickman’s BACHY, as well as Stephen Kessler’s ALCATRAZ EDITIONS, I still found myself reluctant to “experiment” in the way that inaccessibly simmered within me. Hejinian’s ensemble of chapbooks proved to be a major turning point. Her impact as an editor and publisher on almost all the poets who contributed work to or were influenced by Ron Silliman’s anthology, IN THE AMERICAN TREE (1986), made her a proleptic force within the Language insurgency. In 1984, for instance, issue four of POETICS JOURNAL included her crucial essay, “The Rejection of Closure.”

Although Hejinian’s “My Life” will probably always be her best-known work, and it certainly had a profound impact on other poets such as Ron Silliman, it is the combination of all her projects that makes her such an important figure in contemporary poetry. In particular, I would direct attention to THE GRAND PIANO, a ten-volume group memoir that should serve as a model for any community of poets seeking to preserve the dialogue of poets in their youth.

I wish she could have lived so that she could have witnessed a massive celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Tuumba Press. I would hope that UC Berkeley and UCSD’s Special Collections might be able to pull together such a convocation. In the meantime, I will find myself being more quiet than usual when I retreat to solitude, though no amount of stillness could be enough to suggest my appreciation for her inspiring example.

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RON SILLIMAN on Lyn Hejinian:

“When, in 200 years, students are reading the poetry of Lyn Hejinian – as certainly they shall if humans are still about – those readers will undoubtedly begin with My Life (hopefully in its initial Burning Deck version, not because the earlier edition is “better,” but because that is the volume that changed the lives of so many other poets). Those who go on to read Hejinian’s finest work, however, will then turn to The Book of a Thousand Eyes, which Omnidawn brought out earlier this year.” Ron Silliman’s Blog, December 10, 2012
https://www.writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2012/12/when-in-200-years-students-are-reading.html

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Lytle Shaw’s Obituary notice:
://jacket2.org/article/lyn-hejinian-1941-2024-obituary-lytle-shaw

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Tuumba Press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Hejinian

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French critic Hélène Ali:

https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2005-1-page-79.htm

The Stakes of Narrative in the Poetries of David Antin, Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian: New Forms, New Constraints
Hélène Aji
Dans Revue française d’études américaines 2005/1 (no 103), pages 79 à 92

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Interview with Lyn Hejinian:

https://english.berkeley.edu/news/remembering-lyn-hejinian-0

The Kinship of Memory

Friday, February 23, 2024

Of the quartet of photographs in today’s post, only one somersaults back over 30 years ago: the second one, which features painted wooden panels leaning against a wall. I first saw those panels in the late summer of 1993, when I read with poet-actor Harry Northup at Portfolio Coffee House in Long Beach. Kitty-corner to the coffee house was an elementary school playground with a block-long chain-link fence on which the panels gleamed as public art. Harry and I were celebrating the release of our spoken word albums, VEHEMENCE and PERSONAL CRIME, along with fellow spoken word performer, the late Linda Albertano, and a local poet Pam Nielsen.

Portfolio Coffee House was forced to move by the landlord over a year ago, after being a landmark gathering place for poets and the occasional musician. Other coffee shops have opened up on Fourth Street, including Coffee Drunk and Rose Park Coffee. I have met and talked with young poets at both these places, but I miss Portfolio. My hair is all gray now. How dark my.hair still was, back then, 30 years ago. Of course, what do I expect of inevitability but its unwobbling fulfillment? I sit ere, grateful to be able to still move my fingers on a keyboard and to know that I will be reading my poetry on Harry’s Poetry Hour this coming Tuesday, February 27th.

I took the photograph of the panels a couple weeks ago, before a set of rainstorms pumped up the snow levels in the Sierra Nevada and pushed the annual precipitation totals in Los Angeles County above normal. I should walk over this weekend and see if they are still there, leaning agains the wall in the subdued, but vigilant light of a Southern California winter.

California (Adjunct) Faculty Association Caves In to Chancellor’s Office

February 20, 2024

The California Faculty Association (CFA) is a union representing over 20,000 faculty in the California State University system. The overwhelming majority of its members are not tenured faculty, but part-time (adjunct) faculty who exercise the same franchise as the tenured faculty. Each member gets one vote. Since the majority of the faculty are not tenured, but at best have three-year contracts, guess which contingent gets the most attention from the union’s leadership?

When the CRA reported that 76 percent of the vote on the new contract was in favor of accepting it, guess which percentage of the CFA is adjunct faculty? You wouldn’t be far off it you name the same percent.

It certainly came as no surprise to me that the CFA called off its strike after one day. This union’s leadership would never be tolerated by the United Teachers of Los Angeles or the Auto Workers Union. In recognition of the extraordinary erosion of our paychecks the past two years, the Chancellor’s Office offered a five percent raise, and the CFA accepted it.

Supposedly, there is another five percent raise coming next year, but that depends on whether the Legislature and Governor deign to honor their promise. Well, I’m not waiting around to get spit on again.

I quit.

I quit the union, and why shouldn’t I? .The value of my pension (which I will finally at age 76 begin collecting this summer) was decimated the past two years, and the union did not lift a finger to protect it.

And to think that I endured a month of hell on behalf of this union back when things were really tough at the end of this century’s first decade.

Good luck, CFA, with negotiating your next contract when the current one expires in the summer of 2025. You won’t find me wasting my time on your picket line in 2026, when I am FERPing (half-time, tenured faculty), and when the deal you made is worth even less to membership than it is now.

If you ever get your courage back, let me know and I’ll reconsider. But CFA leadership has long refused to take the needs of its tenure-track and tenured faculty membership seriously, and I predict it will never change.

Post-script on Wednesday, February 21:
I was hired as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2006 with a salary that was below $60,000. Mind you, I had a Ph.D. and brought over 30 years of experience as an editor, publisher, and teacher to the table on day one. When I given tenure and promoted to associate professor four years later, I got a ten percent raise, which was 2.5 percent more than the minimum that often accompanies that promotion.

The fact remains that if I had not put in a tremendous amount of work and been promoted to full professor in 2017 and been awarded a 15 percent raise that year, I would now be only earning a pittance more as an associate professor than I did as a newly hired assistant professor, once inflation was factored in.

Bob Edwards, the Walter Cronkite of the Baby Boom Generation

February 16, 2024

I was working on the final draft of my Ph.D. dissertation in the spring of 2004 when I heard that Bob Edwards was being fired from his job at NPR. The notion that he was too old to serve as a drawing card depressed me, not least because I had been on the academic job market, and I had had only two job interviews, and one job talk at that point. In 2005, I did not get a single job interview, even with a Ph.D. degree in hand,

Edwards was not that old when he lost the only job he’d known for almost a quarter century. He was born, after all, the same year I was. The announcement of his death very close to twenty years after NPR and he went separate ways hits home because our lives shared an awareness of the same major points of cultural and political demarcation.

Of all of his interviews, one I recall in particular was with a homeless man in a park in Washington, D.C. The compassion in his voice was as palpable as the the contradictory altruism and abjection of the man he was interviewing. Rarely have I ever heard a conversation in which so much inner anguish has been revealed with such subtle urgency.

Maybe somewhere there’s a tape: “The Best of Bob Edwards.” If I ever get to retire completely from my job, I’d love to spend a few days listening to it.

R.I.P., Mr. Edwards.

Robert Alan Edwards (May 16, 1947 – February 10, 2024)

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/12/165681524/bob-edwards-dead-npr-host

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2004/04/29/bob-edwards-38/948fcd65-36c8-40a1-b4c1-050daf4decb5/’’

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/13/1231061499/remembering-longtime-morning-edition-host-bob-edwards-who-has-died-at-76

Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez (1949-2024): the voice that summoned in “Diva”

THe opera star of “Diva” recently died, and though it is an all too brief post on Valentine’s Day, I simply must take note of her passing. The excerpt of Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez singing in a suspense thriller built around a “bootleg” tape of an artist who doesn’t believe in the commodification of her voice is one of the most poignant experiences of my entire life. I just listened to it once again, and it is more enrapturing than ever. I regret that I never had a chance to hear her perform live.

Oddly enough, my guess is that this film, which was released over 40 years ago, has probably not been seen by the majority of filmgoers between the ages of 18 and 30.

May the most exquisite operatic voice I have ever heard rest in eternal reverberation.

Wanda Coleman’s “American Sonnets” and Terrance Hayes

Sunday, February 11

This weekend I’ve been preparing to lead a discussion of MFA students about Terrance Hayes’s “American Sonnets for My Once & Future Assassin.” I’ve just finished jotting down notes on each of his sonnets and realized that I should have assigned Wanda Coleman’s sequence to them, too. While it’s too late for me to insist that they do so, I would like to post this brief note today (at 5:45 p.m., PST) to let my readers know that they can be found on-line:

https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Wanda-Coleman-American-Sonnets-Complete.pdf

There are dozens of poets whose work deserves close attention and at least some brief commentary, and the sad part of being a devoted reader of contemporary American poetry is the fact that no one could meet that demand, even if she or he were paid a full-time salary. Nevertheless, it’s almost incumbent on any serious reader to record a small portion of their insights into a few poets.

In Hayes’s case, I would like to apply a rule I heard about years ago that claimed anyone who wanted to know what one of Shakespeare’s plays was about only had to read the line of poetry that was at the exact center of the play. I thought that was an interesting premise, even if it was nothing more than a premise meant to bolster and augment one’s motive for indulging in Bardolotry.

In the “Once and Future Assassin” collection of poems, the rule turns up a haunting line, which in fact circles back to the very first “American Sonnet.” You’ll find that line in the middle of the sonnet on page 43: “To be dead and alive at the same time.” That kind of simultaneity is exactly what happens when Orpheus draws an “X” across the eyes of the beloved.

Hayes is an astonishing poet, and I have more to say about this book on another morning.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Don’t Look Back, Taylor Swift: J. Ivy’s Won Two in a Row!

Monday, February 5, 2024

THE BEST SPOKEN WORD POETRY ALBUM — 2024 GRAMMY AWARD

“our muscle memory is made out of miracles” — J. Ivy

Even as Jay-Z gave a stirring acceptance speech after receiving the Dr. Dre Global Impact Grammy, let us remember that over a half-dozen years ago Chicago poet J. Ivy began to agitate for the Grammy Awards for “Spoken Word” to have a separate category for poetry. This is something that should have happened a long time ago. If it had, Michael C. Ford would certainly have an actual Grammy sitting on whatever stands in for a mantel where he lives. Ford was once nominated for a Grammy, and he will continue to share that honor along with the others who were nominated with J. Ivy for the 2024, which went for the second year in a row to J. Ivy.

THE LIGHT INSIDE:

I wasn’t able to scribble down all the names of J. Ivy’s collaborators in making “THE LIGHT INSIDE,” but here is a partial list:
Torrey Torae
Christian McBride
Jimmy Jam
Greg Majors
Omar Keith
Dj Jazzy Jeff
Anthony Hamilton
Bootsy Collins
Michael Jamal Warner
Maurice Brown

Tarrey Torae
“our muscle memory is made out of miracles”

FROM 2023 AWARDS FOR BEST SPOKEN WORD POETRY


First Win

J. Ivy wins for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album

Jay-Z’s acceptance speech:

Why Does It Have to Rain on My Grammy After-Party? Storm Watch: Thursday (Feb. 1) through Tuesday (Feb. 6)

Storm Watch: Thursday (Feb. 1) through Tuesday (Feb. 6)

Monday, February 5
UPDATE: Classes at seven CSU campuses were shifted to Zoom today, though the amount of rain in Long Beach was less than overwhelming in my neighborhood. However, the sewage spill into the Pacific Ocean that almost always occurs when more than two inches of rain hits Los Angeles County took place with a kind of aquatic fatalism.

https://lbpost.com/news/5-million-gallon-sewage-spill-prompts-long-beach-to-close-all-swimming-areas/?utm_medium=email
5-million-gallon sewage spill prompts Long Beach to close all swimming areas

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Yesterday, I drove my 1998 Oldsmobile to Allen Tire on Carson Boulevard and got new tires put on. I hope to be able to drive the car another year or so, and the old tires had reached their limit. My decision to set aside time for this chore was in large part due to the storm that’s coming in. We got a sneak preview just a while ago: as of 10 a.m. Thursday, February 1, 2.3 inches of rain had fallen overnight at Long Beach Airport, while 2.4 inches had fallen at LAX. The local deluge barricaded a portion of the 710 Freeway near PCH, and a nearby railroad underpass was also impassible. Floodwater nearly completely submerged several vehicles in the area. Other streets in Long Beach were only partially closed.Right hand lanes on Seventh Street, for instance, were engorged with rainwater, and traffic oozed its way along, reduced to the left lanes only. Parts of PCH in Huntington Beach, however, were closed in both directions. Elsewhere, the CHP reported at least 50 spinouts and crashes on freeways and roads in the central Los Angeles area Thursday morning. Flooding also embroiled the southbound side of the McClure Tunnel in Santa Monica. A foreboding hint of another possible residential catastrophe in the Rancho Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates, after the next storm will have passed, also surfaced with reports of mud flows on Thursday on the peninsula’s roadways.

As of Saturday morning, February 3, two inches of rain are predicted for tomorrow, followed by an inch of rain on Monday. The storm will begin tuning up with a twelve-hour spate of showers that commence on Sunday, at midnight. By noon, the rain will begin falling in earnest and not let up until noon Tuesday, after which light rain and showers can be expected for another 24 hours. The storm will taper off on Tuesday, with less than a half-inch predicted.

The Grammy Award presentation focuses its broadcast on the songs and bands who will draw the biggest audiences. If only as a gesture of respect to those whose writing and performing is more aligned with various poetry scenes in Los Angeles than the bands who be featured tomorrow, here is a partial list of nominations for the Spoken Word Grammy this year:
The Spoken Word Nominations this year are:

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
When The Poems Do What They Do == Aja Monet
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aja-monet-when-the-poems-do-what-they-do/

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
The Light Inside — J. Ivy
http://www.j-ivy.com/audios

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
Grocery Shopping With My Mother. — Kevin Powell

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
A-You’re Not Wrong B-They’re Not Either: The Fukc-It Pill Revisited. — Queen Sheba

Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording
It’s Ok To Be Angry About Capitalism

NOTE: J. Ivy won the inaugural Best Spoken Word Poetry Album Grammy in 2023 for “The Poet Who Sat By The Door.”

*****

In San Diego, slightly less than two weeks ago, an overwhelming deluge brought left the trolley system only functioning in a small portion of the county, and flooded several freeways. In National City, which is south of downtown San Diego, floods damaged many houses and apartment buildings, and approximately 100 people have been evicted from now uninhabitable buildings and are in desperate need of permanent shelter.

Four or more inches fell at:
Otay Mountain; Point Loma; National City, 4.21 inches; and Palomar Mountain.
Three or more inches fell at:
La Mesa; Fallbrook; Dulzura Summit, San Diego International Airport and Carlsbad Airport; Lake Cuyamaca; and Santee, 3.05 inches.

Oceanside and Kearney Mesa got two and a half inches; the mountain town of Julian received over two inches, as did San Marcos.

Jack Skelley: “Fear of Kathy Acker” (the theatrical adaptation)

Last year, Semiotext(e) published Jack Skelley’s “Complete Fear of Kathy Acker,” the compilation of a project that began as a very small pamphlet in the early 1980s, or at least that’s when I remember seeing the first one. I have yet to obtain a copy of the finished edition, but I am hoping to have a chance to read it before I attend the theatrical adaptation that will have a brief run at the end of this month at Illusion Magic Lounge in Santa Monica located at 1418 4th St, Santa Monica, CA 90401.The performances will begin at 8:00 on February 27th, 28th, and 29th.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fear-of-kathy-acker-tickets-807381408527

If Skelley’s work seems somewhat familiar to readers of this blog, but you can’t quite place it, let me give you a little hint. My review of his book, “Pleased to Meet You Beastmaster 666,” was one of the top three dozen most visited posts in my blog during the past two years.In addition to his widely admired first book, “MONSTERS,” from Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar Press, Skelley was also the editor and publisher oF BARNEY magazine in the early 1980s. In addition, he played in several bands, including PLANET OF TOYS with poet-performance artist Bob Flanagan, and curated the musical presentations at Beyond Baroque under the banner, “Beyond Barbecue.”

D.R. Wagner — Poet and Artist (1943-2023)

January 25, 2024 —

This morning, soon after a brief meditation and while doing some stretching on a yoga mat, I thought to myself, “maybe January 25the will the date for the anniversary of my death.” It’s a Thursday, I thought, so there’s a blending of Merwin and Vallejo. And it had been raining before dawn, when I first got up.

While I have no idea of course on what day I will die, I will remember this date as the one when a friend told me that D.R. Wagner, poet and artist, died a month ago, at age 80. I suppose I first heard of him over a half-century ago because of a magazine he edited called THE RUNCIBLE SPOON. Ah! Those were the glory days of poetry, when no one ever thought of it as a “career.” The AWP seemed like some obscure splinter group of a right wing political faction; it was of little relevance to the ever accelerating small press movement that D.R. Wagner was emblematic of.

Truly, may he rest in the muse’s dreams as one who spent his time on earth as only a poet can.
chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU50BCbfbp4

Some of Donald R. Wagner’s boos include:

The Lost Carnival and Other Places (Death Crater, California: Molly Moon Press, 1969. 22pp.)

Cruising’ at the Limit: Selected Poems 1968-1978 (1982)

April 15, April 16 : poems

Confessional poem to free the mind of its hang ups and keep the underworld free of its goofy
Cat’s Pajamas Press, 1970.

Round, earth, poems (Milwaukee : Gunrunner Press, 1969)