Bruce Andrews

I sometimes wonder: Who reads this stuff other than me? Thinking that it seems like such a 'refined' taste that very, VERY few people wd read it. &, yet, Andrews is widely published - including in large edition & circulation bks like the Norton "Postmodern American Poetry" - & must, therefore, be 'widely' read (at least by standards of poetry reading). I usually like his way w/ words - he fucks them w/o fucking them up, inseminates them w/o making them poignant. This is a collection of short poems. "PROXIMO" begins:

"the hand
antique formaldehyde
weds
of a hung man
to be a toy museum"

It hangs together like bones from a variety of species dangling from a clothes hanger & YOU are the forensic anthropologist who refuses to conclude from them.… (mer)

This was the 2nd or 3rd bk I was published in so, of course, I was thrilled. The bk contains a review by Bruce Andrews of my 1st bk [see GoodReads reviews of my 1st bk here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2536352.t_he_book_t_he_referent_4_wch_consist... & my response to Andrews' review. When my letter was originally published in L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E it was retyped by Andrews & completely botched as a result. Therefore, it was a relief when Bernstein consulted me before this bk came out so that I cd correct Andrews' mistakes.

Despite the personal problems that I had w/ L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, I'll always have great affection & enthusiasm for this bk. Anyone who's ever been involved in the early days of a movement can identify w/ the exhilaration of witnessing formative ideas flying fast & furious.

For me, 'language writing' was a way of approaching language that rendered difficult the reader's non-critical reading of the text. Given that I'm also a film & vaudeo maker, I found this akin to the 'Structuralist' (&, as I later found out, Materialist) project of calling attn to the materials used. As such, 'Structuralist' filmmakers were a bit theoretically ahead of the 'language writers' unless one counts Gertrude Stein & Jackson Mac Low as 'language writers' instead of as proto-'language writers'.

At any rate, the initial 'language writing' was anti-transparency & there was a political subtext of encouraging more participatory media. If one's to read, one shd also write what one is reading.. somehow. & be conscious of it. Such ideas seemed to get progressively more muddied as 'language writing' became more & more of an academic bandwagon.

Whatever. The bk's divided into 3 main sections: "POETICS AND LANGUAGE", "WRITING AND POLITICS", & "READINGS". There's such an impressive selection of writers here that no matter what the theory this makes a fascinating read.… (mer)

Written in faint pencil near the back of this bk I find a note from myself to myself: "IT'S A PLEASURE 2 OPEN LOVE SONGS WHEREVER & FIND WHATEVER". The press that published this bk, "pod", was created by Kirby Malone & Marshall Reese of Baltimore's Merzaum Collective. I had high hopes for them but their publishing career was short-lived. This was probably their largest project. I reckon that when most people think of love songs they think of songs w/ narrative lyrics written by one person & directed toward another. Things like: "I love you Billy Jean, way more than my mean machine".

This bk isn't like that. ALTHOUGH, after all the poems, there's a page that reads: "For Ellen; December 25, 1973". So, who knows? At any rate, these love songs may just not be directed from a MAN to a WOMAN, they may have an ironic collection title, they may be love songs for something inanimate - or language, they may be love songs of Bruce for himself.

Whatever the case may be, for me, they're full of the excitement of trying out different ways of putting language units together. There're instructions for tape or performance, there're drawings. I have "SONG NO 150" starred in the table of contents - perhaps b/c I liked the instructions for subvocalization. I have"P"s next to some in the table, perhaps thinking I might perform them. & while I was reading thru them again to write this I found myself immediately wanting to perform them rather than just read them silently. But did I? No. Or, perhaps, only in my head.

"LOVE SONG NO 22" has instructions for 3 performers the 1st of whom is to throw specified cutlery into a sink. It's poetry like this that engages me not so much in the words on the page but at least into imagining the words in the rm, the words off the page. They just don't write love songs like this anymore.… (mer)