Just watched a new release DVD called How to Draw a Bunny. It's a documentary on the pop artist Ray Jonhson.
Really fascinating and eerie. for some reason I can't get the visual of two Ray Johnson performance piecesout of my head:
1) running around a room in various ways with a chalkboard on wheels
2) conducting a reading which consisted of beating a box with his belt
A lot of the commentators talked about how everything Ray did/touched etc. was a work of art. His highly organized death was also a "work of art."
This movie really got me excited about the possibilites of art. Also read Alice Notley's Margaret & Dusty and currently reading Edward Foster's The Angelus Bell.
I really really loved Alice Notley's Margaret & Dusty. A total experience reading the book from beginning to end in one session. Really liked "As you Like It."
Also finsihed Jarnot's Some Other Kind of Mission. I actually liked it better than Ring of Fire. Haven't read Black Dog Songs yet.
Alice Notley and Ray Johnson get me fired up about the everlasting possibilites of the "NY School." I was worried that too many of us younger poets were creating a period style out of the "NY school" in tone (glib, funny, etc.) But I think Frank O'Hara, Alice Notley, Kenward Elmslie, Ted berrigan, Lisa Jarnot (and so on) show variety and vitality in their of the cuff charged wit. Maybe now I can go back to loving what I really love. That rush of words. That street vernacular. That ice old pepsi.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913):
Wit \Wit\, v. t. & i. [inf. (To) Wit; pres. sing. Wot; pl.
Wite; imp. Wist(e); p. p. Wist; p. pr. & vb. n.
Wit(t)ing. See the Note below.] [OE. witen, pres. ich wot,
wat, I know (wot), imp. wiste, AS. witan, pres. w[=a]t, imp.
wiste, wisse; akin to OFries. wita, OS. witan, D. weten, G.
wissen, OHG. wizzan, Icel. vita, Sw. veta, Dan. vide, Goth.
witan to observe, wait I know, Russ. vidiete to see, L.
videre, Gr. ?, Skr. vid to know, learn; cf. Skr. vid to find.
????. Cf. History, Idea, Idol, -oid, Twit, Veda,
Vision, Wise, a. & n., Wot.]
To know; to learn. ``I wot and wist alway.'' --Chaucer.
I fell in love with Frank O'Hara a while back. Combine O'Hara with Silliman and Stein and Bunting and Joyce what do you get?
I love the lineage recipes. Always off. But also somewhat on.
How to Draw A Bunny