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Post by afilreis on Jan 19, 2023 10:35:11 GMT -5
Hello, everyone:
Our active time together is drawing to a close. Our group officially concludes on Friday, January 20th. These discussion forum threads will remain open into the foreseeable fiuture so please never hesitate to continue posting, asking questions, adding ideas.
Meantime: now and through the end of January 20th, let us post our final thoughts? What more do you want to say? What haven't you said but have wanted to say? Which of the writings we've discussed did you admire or appreciate most? Which gave you the most trouble? What your sense of Joan Retallack's ideas and art overall? What seems to be her vision? Her goal? Her overall effect?
I look forward to reading your final thoughts!
- Al
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Will B
ModPo student
Posts: 19
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Post by Will B on Jan 19, 2023 11:31:37 GMT -5
Thanks so much, Al, for sharing Joan Retallack with us, and thanks so much, fellow Retallacktites or Retallacka fans, for helping me to understand more than I would have otherwise.
I especially appreciate that I learned or relearned the value of close reading for the purpose of at least seeing, if not fully understanding, what the poet is doing. I recognized how easy it is to read carelessly and simply to miss things: “sleeping dog lies” not “sleeping dogs lie” in “The Problem of Evil” and “the spilt second glance” not “the split-second glance” in the prose poem Memnoirs, just as 2 examples. I still have to put more effort into reading, noticing.
My favorite work that we didn’t spend much time with was Memnoirs, a work that (not unexpectedly) addressed many of Retallack’s favorite topics. Some of my favorite lines (all necessarily quoted out of context): “fiction is precisely what they now call non-fiction”; “for a very long time the child want(ed) more than she could say to not want more than she could say i.e. impossible according to any simple formula for mirroring formulas”; “catastrophe theorists say that if we backtrack along the previous path there will be no catastrophe this time i.e. not this time”; and “i.e. ok this is the vocabulary in which you will be locked up for the next ten years there is no good behavior clause the study of memory tells us that a person is a place after all.” I’ll stop there.
I think Retallack wants us to pay attention to words, not only what they might mean (and how that game goes) but also what they might do (to us and the world around us). Not that I know what she is trying to do. But I enjoyed the words and the lines and the parts that made little sense to me.
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Post by stacyantoniadis on Jan 19, 2023 14:42:38 GMT -5
I feel like a novice floating away in the sea of modern poetry...and I don't mind. Retallack makes me think in new ways. Thank you.
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Post by siobhan on Jan 19, 2023 15:08:29 GMT -5
I really liked this course. I definitely have a greater appreciation for JR than I would have had I read her on my own. I have to admit I found her intimidating at first and always difficult. But then as I think Al has said somewhere: difficult does not take away from the poem, it just means you have to spend more time with it, or on it, which is probably a very good thing. Close reading her poetry entails maybe more work than some other poets. But it's best not to shy away from things just because they are hard (although I may be kicking and screaming as I go). JR provides a different way of looking at things. Her poetry entails a lot of references to various other writers and thinkers. I liked all of it about equally. I think the Poethical Wager, as far as I grasped what she was saying, helped shed light on her poetry and gave me a better understanding of her rationale. It's true; life is complicated; reality is complicated. I was reading something else she wrote, I think in Jacket2, where she states: "To go about in this world partly blind, deaf, insensate in innumerable ways to — in all probability — most of what exists in space-time is part of the condition of being human." I think this is so true and I think she tries, in her poetry, to let us perceive some of what we would otherwise be blind to. Infusing her work with the complex reality which is all around us. I think a lot of what's in nature is simple and elegant, but definitely not all. Of course we perceive it as simple and elegant by imposing an order and organization which we as human beings can readily understand. But perhaps that is not what the reality looks like at all, not it at all. We are limited in our perceptions. She takes a different angle on reality, than at least I am used to. So the whole idea of reality, as she says in the Poethical Wager, has become, for us in the 20th and 21st, infused with "unprecented and accelerating complexity." Her juxtaposition of lines seemingly not following one after another logically is a way of glimpsing that reality and an attempt at showing the reader new perspectives on things, new connections - which she herself might not even have seen before she wrote the poem. It's like in Not a Cage; lines ordered basically randomly from vastly varying sources may appear to have a kind of logical sequence with certain juxtapositions. Placing them one after another randomly can give them a new kind of meaning. I'm grateful for having adopted a kind of openness to JR in a way I couldn't at first. I have been able to find a meaningfulness in something that I found it hard to find meaning in. Thank you Al, and all the ModPoers for a rewarding and enlightening educational experience (as always in ModPo.)
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lfm
Community TA
Posts: 9
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Post by lfm on Jan 19, 2023 17:32:10 GMT -5
Thank you Joan and Al, and each of you who contributed to the conversation. It is wonderful to be among people who experience ambiguity with playful creativity, who adhere to an ethics of caring and honesty without falling into a cheap despair.
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lidia
ModPo student
Posts: 24
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Post by lidia on Jan 19, 2023 18:43:32 GMT -5
Thanks Al and Participants. Staying power pays off. Learning happens. Much appreciated.
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Post by Kathy Florence on Jan 19, 2023 19:18:04 GMT -5
This course reminded me that, on any given day, we can just make up a simple or crazy, complex procedure that kicks out words, phrases, lines, and sentences. And that output can become the input to a poem. The possibilities are endless!
Much appreciation to Al and all the JR students.
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leahs
ModPo student
Posts: 11
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Post by leahs on Jan 19, 2023 19:44:49 GMT -5
To finish off my time in this course, I just had a listen to the PoemTalk about Poethics with JR, Al, Laynie Brown and Erica Kaufman.
What I come away with is much appreciation for JR's appreciation for "serious play." That has been a gift for me in this SloPo -- to be reminded of the way artmaking or writingmaking is a form of serious play, of ways that serious play can remake one's world or one's perception of world, or both. That has been really great for me.
I also have enjoyed the emphasis in JR's work in this SloPo on an exploratory or experimental tone at times. That discussion in the PoemTalk of not knowing, as a writer or reader, exactly where an essay will go, for instance. That was also really helpful to me.
So often in my own work/day job and life I feel like I'm dealing with very determinate things and/or very immovable things. So again, the opportunity to read and think here about a less determinate approach to phenomena, or to enact some of that collectively, has been helpful, and/or I have enjoyed that.
Thanks, all!
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Post by jimlynch on Jan 19, 2023 23:30:02 GMT -5
Thanks Al, for this mini-course on Joan Retallack, for space you created for discussion and further understanding of this important poet's work and ideas! And thanks to everyone who participated and offered so many different insights into the poetry! My only regret is that I couldn't find enough time to go even deeper into the work, and to participate more, to interact more.
Whether there are limits or not to human understanding, or limits of language, one thing is for certain: there's no limits to understanding better.
And here's to the “blurring of genres”!
- Jim
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Post by Paul K on Jan 20, 2023 0:10:29 GMT -5
Adding my thanks to all--Al for the syllabus and questions, JR for the writing, all of you for being part of this sometimes parallel, sometimes divergent, sometimes intersecting conversation. I feel rewarded by your and my efforts.
Two administrative notes that seem important to the community of ModPo:
RE the new forum (here rather than Coursera): It took a short while for some of us to learn how to use the quote feature to comment on others' posts, but I think that, for the most part, we did so. It does not allow for seeing a string of comments back and forth in a compact way. Perhaps that allows us to stay all focused on the larger conversation we are all having? But I don't have a big enough vision or long enough history with Coursera to really evaluate.
RE moderation: We had one instance of conflict and hurt. It underlined for me the challenges of communication, written communication, and open forums like this. Figuring out how to respond in a helpful way in an open forum with no chance of side conversation is difficult. Thanks, Cat, for trying. I don't know, of course, if Al or another moderator engaged Denny and Laura through other channels. I would value continuing to hear from both.
And final thoughts:
I have been thinking about serious play and what poetry is. Some may recall my post about "How to Do Things With Words" in which I complained of wanting rhythm. Rhythm is one way to play with words. So are rhyme, alliteration, repetition, onomatopoeia, metaphor, simile, line breaks, manipulation of capitalization and punctuation, and many more. And so, I now see, are fragmentation, systematic and random rearrangement, discontinuity, and the collage of cast-offs. All this play, well done, can give illumination and delight and do something. I turned back to "How to Do Things With Words" tonight and found connections and themes appearing where initially I had been at much of a loss. I was even able to read the first page of it aloud to my wife and make her laugh--not shaking her head, but with appreciation!
The period of our course concludes, but my reading of Joan Retallack is not done. I look forward to continuing in other ModPo/SloPo courses. May we all--animal, mineral, vegetable--be sometimes dreaming!
-Paul
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Post by sophianaz on Jan 20, 2023 0:36:02 GMT -5
If there was such a thing as Quantum Poetry, Joan Retallack’s work would be it. Time is circular, spatiality is a shifting point of view, the text is often sly, elusive and sometimes a sleight of hand(for example, I am just now realizing that Slef is an anagram of self). Her language is a complex cocktail and it’s definitely challenging to decode all the flavors but it’s finely salted with humor and there’s sensory pleasure in imbibing it even if I don’t quite comprehend all of it.
Thank you Al for opening my brain’s groove a little further! And thanks to all the other participants, I have enjoyed reading your takes on JR.
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Post by dianeld on Jan 20, 2023 2:51:25 GMT -5
This has been an interesting space to be in so thank you Al for all your time and work - maybe there will be another poet forum at some point in the future? I hope so.
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Post by Ray Schrempf on Jan 20, 2023 6:12:11 GMT -5
I was pleasantly surprised by how dissonance can be satisfying. I find myself listening to more John Cage and Schoenberg. And I’ll be reading more Retallack. Possibly this has something to do with how dissonance works. There is a certain pleasure in the unexpected. Think I’ll let Miss Pasta be my muse for a while.
These things just Seem to right themselves. Let Greta Lack Be my Sally Lunn For Miss Pasta. A consummate Dissonance.
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Post by Barbara Nilsen on Jan 20, 2023 12:31:00 GMT -5
Thanks to Joan Retallack for her body of extraordinary work, Al for facilitating the SloPo course with excellent leading questions, almost daily e-mails, and a great opportunity to gather on zoom, and thank you to all who wrote so thoughtfully about each selection of JR's writing. The community input helped me to see things I would have never noticed on my own. This short course definitely enhanced my appreciation for Joan Retallack's lifelong work.
I agree with Paul, I did feel the style of this forum made it difficult to have an easy opportunity for a sustained conversation inspired by an individual post. As far as I could tell, there are also no e-mail alerts when a writer gets a response or is asked a question about what he/she/they has written. I missed those features.
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Post by marciacamino on Jan 20, 2023 14:15:25 GMT -5
Thank you, Al. And thanks to JR for her work!
The works we read by JR hit me on the mental levels (i.e., meaning, much meaning from close reading discussions derived from poet's drawing on linguistics, philosophy, poetry's history, intellectualisms, culture {art et al}, through my first, second, third reads…plus readers' own experiences in all these facets the poet is choosing or randomizing mostly). I bet when I explore JR more on my own, I might find more soul-full, universal connection, and emotion-based likening with her writings, and I look forward to learning more about how she is webbed with others poets, and all about them.
JR is fabulous in a lot of ways, and so is ModPo and specifically its SloPo course offerings that brought us all together. I love being part of a group that believes, reads, discusses, and presents of poetry that poetry is nothing short of fantastic. For it is. Thank you all for being here!
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