A Moving Object
March 18, 2008    File under: Alabama , America , Civil Rights , Denver , Editing , Food , Information Technology , Intake , Interior Monologue , Labwork , Language , Listening , Lomography / Photography , Memory & Memorial , Poetry & Poetics , Postcards , Self-promotion , Steganography , Tapeworm , Teaching , The South

For my RSS readers, I am radically redesigning my entire site, so the blog root and RSS feeds are changing. Please visit me at www.jakeadamyork.com and let's go from there. It will probably be another 2-3 weeks before all the RSS feeds are in place, but maybe you can take a gander and let me know what you think of the new look and function until then.

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The Erotic Life of Property
July 6, 2007    File under: Information Technology , Language , Lomography / Photography , Poetry & Poetics

A few days ago, I ran across this image, which I originally posted here over a year ago, on Nicholas Manning's blog, where it had a new title, one much better, or at least more powerful, more capable, than any title I'd have ever given it.

I wrote Nicholas, to wit:

*First*

As a regular but perhaps infrequent reader of your blog, I just saw
this post:

http://thenewermetaphysicals.blogspot.com/2007/05/blog-post.html

And therein saw a photograph I took and posted on my blog some months
back.

I very much enjoy the title you've given it, and I am indeed quite
flattered you think enough of it to post it.

I'm working on an essay about quotation and what Lewis Hyde called
the "erotic life of property," and I was wondering if you could tell
me more about how the image came to you. I'd like to trace its
transit if possible.

All my best, and thank you for your blog,

Jake Adam York

*Second: A Reply*

Jake,

I'm really delighted to have found out where this came from, and to be
able to give you proper credit for your wonderful photo. I'd love to call
it a collaborative effort, though you deserve much more kudos than me.

Firstly, it is indeed a fascinating incarnation of the erotic life of
property: property's fluidity conferred by simple ignoring of borders of
attribution! Was your photo thus unfaithful to you? The erotics of
appropriation, perhaps. The story of this particular attribution is, I
suppose, not atypical of the flux-like, largely untraceable dynamics of
such things. I was having a conversation by letter with another friend and
poet about the hoary but still strangely pressing idea of emotionality in
poetry being justified by mirage-like "non-linguistic" or "non-rhetorical"
or "authentic" displays and mises en scene of Self. Your photo, in this
context, hit me like a gorgeous breath: it was personality's helplessness
in such justifications, a helplessness which was not, for all that,
malevolent, simply, after this century, sad and exhausted, burnt-out.
Being situated in the context of consumption was also extremely important,
for the idea of Personality somehow authentifying language was like the
commodity exchange: a stamp of garantee on the dubious product.

As you saw, Susanna Gardner said it would make a beautiful cover for an
anthology or critical book. But I'm sure it works as a stand-alone piece
as well. Maybe we can do something with it. I'll post it again Jake on the
blog this week and give you your attribution you so richly deserve.

All my best,

Nicholas

*Third: A Continuation*

Nicholas,

Thanks for your reply and your thoughts.

I wasn't concerned at all that my photograph was unfaithful to me. I always expected it to travel beyond whatever gallery I could construct for it, and I'm glad it has: for me a large part of the joy in writing and in photographing lies in knowing the work will always exceed whatever story we tell about ourselves to ourselves and whatever berth we construct for the genesis or the survival of the work. I think this is the test of work, so I'm interested, not because I feel betrayed but because something that was supposed to happen did, and I'm simply interested in the mechanics, the dynamics of conversation and community that transmit work.

I'm particularly interested in this transit because, though the photograph lost its attribution, it nevertheless never went very far afield, or at least it returned somewhat close to home: though you and I have not exchanged before, the ecosystem of poetry blogs is fairly well interconnected, so to see the photograph inside that ecosystem does not represent a radical relocation. I'm asking myself whether circulation (erotism in the etymological sense, always tending toward the other, though not necessarily sexually) within a community, however internally heterogenous, is somehow easier to accept because its easier to understand or because the traces or residues of transit are never completely dissolved.

The new question that comes to me here is why was the photograph e-mailed, rather than being linked? The internet provides for the most durable trace or residue in the link (which indexes all sorts of information), but the photograph is clearly more powerful, more capable, once it's alienated from its origin, and I wonder if the e-mailer knew this or if he/she had received it in turn from someone else.... And that's why I wrote you.

Your reading of the photograph is powerful. I would press many of the same complaints you're pressing in your reading, though I doubt many of those who know me or even read my poems would suspect me of such discomfort. And so, the query is also, as it tries to identify the moment when the photograph left my blog and its attribution, a search for the value of my name and my blog in this ecosystem, not as a narcissism, but rather as a study in rhetoric.

As for the photograph itself, I've no plans for it---indeed, almost
all my photographs just sit around (I did a few gallery shows and got
somewhat tired of them)---so the idea that someone could title it and
give it new life is very welcome. Anyone is welcome to it for a cover
&c.

Thank you, Nicholas,

Jake

***

A lot to digest here, both due to my rather lackluster blogging of late, and because of the recent adventures in the land of licensing, on which more later, as well as the discussion of posting poems on blogs....

Anyone have any ideas here?

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Half of Abraham Lincoln's Milk Is Cream
June 21, 2007    File under: Language

Earlier this week, I led a workshop for some middle-school students, and we wrote some poems adapting the telephone/Chinese Whispers game. Mostly it taught me how willful some students are. Nevertheless, they managed to write quite a bit, and together we made a poem about Abraham Lincoln. (I have only arranged what they wrote (this one's for A and Z)):



I’VE BEEN THINKING


Abraham Lincoln was one of the greatest presidents.
Had a beard. Smelled bad
is how Abe Lincoln smelled. Pretty flowers
covered Abraham Lincoln’s grave.
Abraham Lincoln was surrounded by peace.
Abraham Lincoln had been part of Linkin Park
until they figured he couldn’t play an instrument.
Now Abraham Lincoln’s taken with the Backstreet Boys.
Few people know Abraham Lincoln wrote a book
about mutated, wet celery, that Abe liked fishies,
but everyone knows Abraham Lincoln
looked funny. Though fat people didn’t tend to support
Abraham Lincoln, Abraham was a man with a goal.
Abraham Lincoln was so big he could carry the earth!
Abraham Lincoln had an amazing hat
I’m soooo jealous the pencils like Abraham Lincoln.
In front of that tree stands an Abraham Lincoln impersonator
The day is perfect like Abraham Lincoln.
Doesn’t she know Abraham Lincoln was killed,
Was killed by a person who killed Abraham,
That A.B. man had not emotions,
Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth,
Is easy to fire a gun at A.B. Lincoln?
I think a carnivore will eat Abraham Lincoln,
but maybe A. B. has an AK in his hat.
Maybe half of Abraham Lincoln’s milk is cream.
All I can say for sure is Abraham Lincoln
stole my name, so I’ll always be happy.






Wish I could have included this in the workshops somehow... (sound quality is unfortunate):

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Migration
May 16, 2007    File under: Alabama , America , Denver , Editing , Information Technology , Intake , Interior Monologue , Language , Lomography / Photography , Memory & Memorial , Poetry & Poetics , Postcards , Self-promotion , Steganography , Tapeworm , Teaching , The South

This is for those of you who read my blog via RSS...

I am considering, very strongly, moving to WordPress in the very near future. I've already arranged a version of the Ladder at http://www.jakeadamyork.com/wp/, and I'm leaning heavily toward switching, in which case the feed addresses will certainly change. I will broadcast a warning before it happens however.

If you're reading via RSS, you probably aren't much concerned with the way the site looks, but if you're at all interested, please take a look and let me know what you think.

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The Crowd He Becomes
May 3, 2007    File under: Language , Memory & Memorial , Poetry & Poetics , Self-promotion

The new DIAGRAM presents a poem of mine, from the new book, which, it now looks, may be out in January (!).

I'm on the radio tonight here in Mississippi. See you then.

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Residual
March 30, 2007    File under: Information Technology , Language , Poetry & Poetics , Self-promotion

Found on a blog that belongs to someone whose name I cannot uncover just yet:

... Jake Adam York (whose work made my palms sweat at GSU last week) ...

That's a good thing, I hope.

###

Also, among the phrases given to search engines that were eventually recorded by my stats software:

jake adam york is an ass

There it is, whoever you are. The next time you're looking for it, you'll find it, and maybe some proof as well, I don't know.

###

Both blips got me thinking about the residues of our selves, or of ideas of our selves, to which we have increasingly more access.

A few years back, a reporter told me a source claimed to have had an affair with me, and I'm still occasionally accused on the basis of that suggestion.

You never know who says it. And usually the trace is human, a change in the weather that is you in the minds of others.

But sometimes there are these electric residues.

###

Reading Noah Eli Gordon's Inbox, another treatment of such residues. He calls it a "reverse memoir," a collection of all the things in his e-mail inbox on a certain day, what other people were saying to him, and so a reverse portrait as well, a kind of Hockney photo-collage, but in writing, where the pieces of observation imply the lens, the sesne.

Noah's reading tomorrow. You should go.

He's been described as "a handful of fire." He'll make more than your palms sweat.

###

Thank you.

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Dear Allison, Dear Joshua,
March 29, 2007    File under: Denver , Editing , Information Technology , Intake , Language , Lomography / Photography , Poetry & Poetics

You left just in time. This morning we woke to five, maybe six inches of snow. I am told the Farmers Almanac predicted this, but this is the first I've heard of it. Its almanac size to quote Allison.

Perhaps this is the appropriate afterward. Your visit was one of the best I can remember. The time you spent talking to our students was wonderfully instructive, even inspiring, if I may pull the raggedy term from the cedar chest again. Your readings were captivating, and the balance was perfect. What more is there to say? This silence, enforced in ice and water, seems right.

I wasn't as aggressive as Mathias in capturing your visit photographically, but I got a few shots for the record.

Joshua listening:

And Allison, I made the mistake of shooting you in digital. I think analog, or analogue, would have been better.

I'm told the control booth sustained a power failure about 3/4 of the way through your reading, Allison, and so much of the sound recording was lost, though we're combing the computer caches to discover what we can. I'm going to tell those who were hoping to hear it as a podcast that this is testament to the power of the reading. Josh, I've got most of your reading, and I'll be working on a broadcast version in the coming weeks.

Please tell everyone about the broadside. We'll have it up for sell next week on the Copper Nickel site.

And, in the meantime, please rest. I hope your memories of Denver are good ones, and I hope we'll see you both again before too long.

All my best,

Jake

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Overheard
December 24, 2006    File under: Language

If I was somebody, I'd stay home.

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The Sincerest Form
October 29, 2006    File under: Language

When I wrote, last week, "The World Is Poorly Written," I'd just burned a half-hour watching a PBS documentary on fire. Before that, there were other linguistically dissatisfying shows, but I'd tuned in hoping to catch another episode of "Eyes on the Prize," which had been running earlier in the week, only to find weak narration of forest fires and magma.

I'll grant, maybe when language is exposed to fantastic heat, the normal ligatures break down and dangling modifiers and participles become the dominant carbon, abandoned by their proper geologic parents and hungry to bond with some molecular or grammatic chain, but I thought PBS was better than that. Honestly.

***

A student describes himself as "stoked for poetry." So, I have taken to calling him "The Poetry Furnace." But, as yet, no such magmatic disruptions of syntax.

***

Is there a "hot" poet whose language melts and re-alloys as a result of superheating?

Maybe that poet is Alex Lemon?

***

Denver is warmer today. Leaves valve lightly in the wind, as if asking for the rake, ready for the black-bag compression, the slow breakdown fire of compost, and then translation.

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What I Wanted
April 25, 2006    File under: Language , Poetry & Poetics , Steganography

... was for the words to agree in such a way that I could come to them as a man without a soul and take that agreement for my soul and then to understand what it was like to stand inside those words as they emerged from me. Then I would understand.

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Voting Irregularities (2)
November 3, 2005    File under: America , Denver , Information Technology , Intake , Language , Teaching

Tuesday after voting, I went on a eight-mile bike ride. It was nice to clear my head and forget about how underpopulated my polling place was. I rode past rows and rows and rows of signs for Referenda C & D. But I saw barely more people on my ride than I did around the voting booths. I ventured later onto campus, from which I'd taken an election holiday, and the place was crawling, yet few people were talking about the election, and there were scant evidence that anyone cared.

Two students wrote that day — one to say that he just didn't vote, and one to say that when he asked people if they voted they got offended — and while I didn't exactly get depressed, I was again disappointed by these signs of the health, or the lack of health, of our civic discussions.

It always baffles me that people don't vote. It isn't hard. And it's one of the few ways in which the common citizen can act directly on the shape of the government. I'd never think that protest or discussion of any sort were not political acts, but voting is a special act, one that's provided for in our history, one for which many people struggled and died — and I'm not primarily thinking about our military but about the Civil Rights Martyrs, many of whom died in protests specifically designed to expand voting rights and voting practice, activists of whom I've thought often in the days following Rosa Parks' death. I think each of us has a citizenly duty to vote. But we have an even more powerful ethical obligtion to vote in order to sanctify the deaths of those who fought for this.

I made my memorial.

And then I began thinking about why people don't vote.

I've been personally frustrated by our university administration's official discouragement of our (professors') involvement in political discussion or political action. I know there's a state law that makes it illegal for state employees (of which I am supposedly one) to engage in political campaigns, electioneering, or generally to advocate any policy or political position that might benefit them directly or conflict with the performance of their duties (is this a sedition law?) so that it cannot be said that the taxpayers have been forced to finance their own opposition, but we, the university, is in the business of dialogue, and I find it ludicrous that the professors have been officially asked not to engage in this dialogue. So I can't do any thing more, they say, than encourage my students to vote. So I cannot motivate them toward action through dialogue; I can only suggest that it's a good idea. And since people generally avoid discussions of politics in their daily lives, this means that one of the few places in which one should be able to have an open and spirited discussion is now no longer one of those places. As far as the citizenly conversation about the direction and health of our polity is concerned, it's almost as deserted as my polling place.

And then I see that the opponents of Referendum C, having lost the election, are considering suing to stop expenditure of the money retained under this provision, effectively working to void the election, and I wonder how much effect this has on voter participation.


Last year, I took my LCA with me to the polling place. I had some black-and-white film in it I was planning to double over. This is one of the frames that came up, one I find very appropriate at present. It's hard to see, but my ballot, my actual ballot, is just below the sign, almost wiped out by it.

I wish for a day when I won't think of this picture, but I don't know when it's going to happen.

And in the meantime, both the willfull ignorance and the horrible silence of our political exchanges make me wish again for greater conversational sympathy, more careful listening.

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When people say "Just so I'm clear..."
October 19, 2005    File under: Language

... I imagine them suddenly transformed into one of those Visible Human Body models, the skin translucing, the lungs suddenly apparent, then transparent, too, till soon they're so clear I cannot see them.

I think I misread Jay Fliegelman's work on transparency.

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