What follows is what I wrote during the discussion part of the night, some of you who know me/my writing practice may be familiar with this way I have of writing. It’s a mixture of quotation, manipulation, commentary, riffing, and response, none of which is delineated. Sometimes I take these resultant writings and make them into poems. Sometimes that involves editing, sometimes it doesn’t. Plagiarism is an integral part of contemporary poetic practice. If you don’t believe me ask Joan Retallack. This is a poem. This is an essay. This is a list. This is a ______. This is “a composition of thinking rather than trying to prove a point.”

Somebody was filming it, and I’m sure it’ll end up on the internet somewhere, either on SPT’s site or on PennSound. I’ll post the link to it as soon as I know where it is.

++++++++

again in the work at hand
how those histories are narrated, open up the tent
so I don’t know how we can do it, community
collectivity with no hand raising
overtly the moment now
activism as performance

how people see the tension between this moment and that one in a couple seconds
let’s say
we’re making a political practice of non-representational practice
avoid a specific practice
no internet then, internet now
that in itself is substantial

new possibilities
in some ways one could model, one could think of them as
what is that other
in that present
a possible trope
what we’re doing
look and listen

a sense of time
in recession
possible to live without money
FEEDBACK
by rejection of the system
it’s the same system now
we didn’t want jobs
an opportunity to focus
in a sense of what time is

not having money
not having healthcare
the ability to live in a somewhat precarious relationship
let no one represent you! -T. Adorno
the aesthetic that mediates
charismatic leaders
so far we haven’t seen
naturally a resistance
a large amount of suspicion towards anyone who might take command

let’s keep inconveniencing them

language centered writing strategy>>not putting forward any narrative>>audience must struggle to understand

without even thinking
lack of demands having such an impact

very strong statements about politics and listening>>exploring a line of thinking>>a composition of thinking rather than trying to prove a point

thinking about demands>>in an environment wherein demands are repeatedly not met not making demands becomes an utterly appropriate tactic

when we began writing
we were in the wake of maximized anomie
heading straight for Reagan
social action as a social collective

elective affinities>>being radically individual

an open horizon vs. a problem of totality
some sense of
some sense of changing everything
as opposed to the gains
as opposed to getting on a bus full of people reading S/Z by Barthes in 1977

consciously collaborative
different functions
different lifespans
different forces
different temporality
the overlay of different times articulated against each other

we’re everywhere else

the ontology of collective
refers away from itself
what kinds of social structures emerge
a blended process
architecture of the module
the matrix filled in non-linearly
a both/and solution
a compromise formation

anti-monolithic.>multilog.>10 individual voices not singing the same song.>this is a lot of stuff.>OR OR OR>>nobody was in a position of representing “the whole”

a certain amount of tension in “we”>>this “we” does not include me

its strengths and its limitations are the same
extend itself as a rhizome in that larger sense
a certain kind of pressure on an individual document
if you don’t do anything except what’s already proper you don’t create alternatives
talking and listening at the same time

human mic>>an age of non-mechanical reproduction>>supporting the saying regardless of agreement or disagreement with what’s being said

the fragility of the gesture
the desire to start over and over and over

++++++++

Choice quotes from the reading portion:

We cannot shed the light that falls on us.

It is the present moment that wants expanding.

As a poet there’s no limit to what I cannot do.

The way we want to see ourselves is hopelessly entangled with the way we want to show ourselves.

Frank ekstaas,
rectum: hungry.

Codify, psych
unauthorized bowel,
occupy quota.

Capital: listless
peopl, disbelief.

Muffin kidney,
dicknose bird,
sparkle water.

What?

Lucky.

Rock baffle
frosted who
bananas crystalline.

Vermillion addled
nuts. Sure,
elations mediatrix
squall, madness,
spatula psychosis.

Onanism transmission:
word.

Fuckyou,
crocodile heliotrope,
batarded capture.

Tactile at
terminal tart.
Suspend collarbone,
sheath swoon!

Baseball, freestyle
quackery, trochillidae
grant, nuts.

Huh?

Conquest.

Hung thingagram,
uh, word.

Proof wont
word.

Iris,
egoist,
inhabit fjord,
dumpling pink,
demanding.

Herald kingdom,
funicular quash,
constant hi
doodle pipeline.

Sandwich jubilee,
recalcitrant tackle.

One stuffed,
anyone.

Belvedere.

Polysemy, damn!

Effervescent idea,
specious, please.

Pill wayward.

Ok _____.

Idiosyncratic reciprocate
rain monad.

Zoiks!

Slips.
No, blocks.

Variable hull:
resilience, onion
proboscis, onomatopoeia.

Huh?

Gumption.

CERN synecdoche
hoop, calendula,
antithetical modern.

Mirror cake:
contingency toward
disabled yes?

Garbanzo word:
elephant toooon,
oh! Commandment:
obliviate conduit.

Done smile.

Sum banjo:
Kate etude.

Cornholio wide,
cornea finally
epistrophe scythe.

Calendar hobble.

Love deviant.
No rambly
milk determined,
elysian. Mortar
one robot.

Focus snailutations.

Phlogiston bulletproof,
douche cartographic.

Silence juxtapose.

Everything in my life is different. Everything in my life is the same.

It’s almost impossible to retain the formatting of my more visual poetry on this blogging platform, so the best I can do is to upload a pdf…broken cloud

want

the

choking

motion

the

glass

impression

the

strong

pull

the

latent

stare

if

you

were

clamoring

for

the

tension

we

gave

it

up

you

pushed

you

did

not

die

you

did

not

let

me

die

you

did

drink

from

the

cup

of

there were

As she spread them across her face
cupped her face in them
hid her eyes with them
with those who striped their skin
each time an undercurrent pushes
towards the outreach framing the lens for the viewer.

Vastness again.
Seeing the strings of tiny islands
dotting the horizon of her brow.
Oh my, I couldn’t stop staring.

In the end it was fine — the middle
where things simultaneously begin.
This is to say we are at the middle
but just beginning.

In the evening, the neighboring yard
was filled with baggy-jeaned serious talkers.
Topics included:
* the social construction of mental health
* your childhood obsessions
*wineries of the Oregon coast
*easier routes through difficult terrain

That proved to lead nowhere of significance, either.
It would start to come apart when
the day was at its end. Oh – the beginning again -

this begins with a stone
or a reflection
or something fossilized and yet to be found
both trying to be hard.

(written by Shaina Fay, Kate Robinson, Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Leah Jacobs, Cheena Marie Lo, and Matt Johnson; line/stanza breaks by Kate Robinson)

The people that I’ve been writing these with have all spent a lot of time together, both socially and in a writerly context. In particular, the three of us that wrote the piece I’m posting here spent practically every single day last school year hanging out in the English graduate lounge/on the lawn outside Mills hall talking shit/shop and reading each others’/our favorite work aloud. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the benefits and limitations of a shared language. How rich communication can be if a group could create a collective way of thinking/expressing! By the same token, how might an insular community create an insular language that communicates outside of itself?

POSSIBLE ATTEMPTS:
*write using only readily available printed matter (newspapers, magazines, etc.)
*”translate” popular media
*”automatic writing”
*erasure/appropriation of existing books
*NOT THINKING OF YOURSELF AS SOMEHOW ABOVE CERTAIN KINDS OF LANGUAGE

An acquaintance of mine criticized my use of the word “buddy” today. In my last class at Evergreen a classmate of mine proposed that we create a standard English dictionary (the French have this) that dictates an “official” language usage for the entire country. I don’t understand the idea that some words are not suitable for my use, or that certain dialects are somehow better than others, of course there are exceptions, ie. racial/social slurs, but language for me is compelled by its color, its variance and its ever eluding nuance.

Why would I want to know what every possible shift in language meant without working at it?

At that moment language would lose its wonder.

Anyway, I think that it’s been a really great exercise for us all to do this together, it’s allowing us to listen to each others’ poetry in a way that crawls inside its bends and rhythms. The line/stanza breaks and title are mine, in the original piece the lines went all the way to the margins; I just transcribed it in a large block then imposed my own rhythm upon it. I would like to get my two friends to make their own versions of this, see how they intersect…

TO MAKE THIS MORE

When the lamp is on behind your head you look different,
green and bundled, and then one wonders:
where does the word “Caucasian” come from
she said with a cock of her head.
I like that shirt you are wearing – you
must have a thing for paisley.

Is it street charm, or something else
I cannot decipher, obscured by a bright light
bathed in impossible sentences.
This is when you wrap yourself around something that
cannot interlock, but then are locked
inwards toward. And the key?

Open your mouth
and let the grass grow out of it,
let the dirt fall a naked crawl
and of course impending doom in the greenery
of your hesitant smile, your hesitant
smell, your hesitant eyes
every spell.

And you wait patiently, although filled
with anxiety, like a miniature object
on a miniature shelf, and here we are
dispersed like objects in a simple choreographed room.

What happened to me is that I was chilled.
Then out of the barn door into
the misty afternoon and something
has dried up or become euphoric
or still in this after the blast,
a knife of water besieging me,
punished like a rioter,
throwing caution to the wind,
throwing yourself on the pyre.

Is there a precipice somewhere
to make this more abstract?
Though of course everything is an abstraction,
and we can’t change that.

and when the impulse presents itself I take it

with the waves
washing your words
with the roar of the waves and your words emerging
in moments

how long would it take?
the urgency comes in
waves
and I anticipate the next time you grab my hand

it drowns you out,
the waves

the gull flying with all he can muster
straight into the gale,
barely moving forward and careening
with its frequent shifts

translating with the help of the icy gusts
to a broken jolting language, but
your hand keeps moving and moving

barely moving forward

louise nevelson's rain garden ii

i am terrible at having a blog.

since school ended my thoughts have been so unfocused. it’s been almost impossible to force myself to sit down and type out any of the various blog entries that have flitted through my brain in the last two months or so.

so just break the ice, kate.

i’m percolating a project wherein i get as many people as i can to write me some sort of statement of belief/philosophy. their perspective and approach to the world made concrete in some way through words. the plan is to collect these (hopefully) varied pieces of writing and then spread them all out on a floor or large table somewhere and see what kind of book wants to be made from them. another friend is collecting photographs of peoples altars. he’s thinking of this term “altar” in a really broad sense. i wonder how our two projects might intersect.

i went to a reading yesterday that was a weird blending of worlds for me. it was put on by peers from evergreen who live here and who just published a book that includes stories by people from my past and my present. semi-familiar punks collided with my geeky poet friends. we all stood in a circle and i noticed the varied uniformity of all of our subcultural costumes. we read a story together through a game of telephone that went around the circle. two people wrapped in sheets stood on big rocks in the middle of the sutro bath ruins and alternated different parts of another story. hemingway made a guest appearance in the form of a cardboard cutout and a boom box. the reading was dynamic and affected. i was simultaneously charmed and irritated.

i revel in the conflict.

more things like this should happen.

my mind is so chaotic. there are so many thoughts and ideas shouting from the corners that it’s hard to just settle on one and go with it. weeding through i get overwhelmed and it paralyzes me. i think that’s why i need a community. it’s my community that says, when i’m babbling on about this or that, “kate, that’s a great idea. do it.”

I want
I really like
I think
I would like to continue
I think
I respond
I often have a hard time delineating
I have
I want
I’m generally willing to
I think
I have sex
but I think
I feel like you
I definitely do not,
I have
I feel to you
I have
I like
I feel ambivalent
intensely
calm and easy
but it’s the comfortable feeling that breeds anxiety

I don’t
I feel
all of a sudden
we could just throw out
whatever connection
misreading this situation