disappearing ETC. . .

Reading some great essays on Tom Raworth (Removed for Further Study from The Gig) and some really amazing performance/sound/shamanistic poems of Maggie O'Sullivan (Palace of Reptiles also from The Gig).

Recently heard Redell Olsen on the Penn Sound site.

I am really interested in the various reconfigurations of Objectivism in England and Ireland. There is a real performance/oral based aethetic in the work of Geraldine Monk, Maggie O'Sullivan, Redell Olsen, and of course Tom Raworth. But it would be wrong to label these poets as Objectivists from the England and Ireland. There could be a connection to primitivism/vorticism, as well as connections to various poets from the English and Irish traditions. For example, Geraldine Monk writes through/with Hopkins in Interregnum.

It's also different in terms of university support. While a lot of American innovative poets decry the academy, it seems a lot of poets from England (and especially Ireland) could do with more institutional support (Randolph Healy, Billy Mills etc.) Joyce and Beckett continue. Paul Muldoon seems to be the token "postmodern" Irish poet. Or the only accepted rigorous poet. I've noticed there seems to be a little more support for innovative poetics in England than Ireland. Pastoral Irishness reigns supreme (via Heaney etc.) An Irishness reinforced by the English etc.

When was ETC. . . invented? I thought the etc. was more for the page until I heard Creeley in an interview use it orally quite a lot.

ETC:

I love the casual allusion to going on and on or perhaps a false assumption that the listener/reader gets the main idea.

The main idea? The more I say those two words together the more they seem very strange.

For the past few weeks I disappeared into Zukofsky. Now I am reading the latest issue of The Hat. I really connect to Spicer's idea of dictation. Waking up and waiting. Or in the words of Lawrence "Not me, not me but the wind that blows through me." The wind, in my case, is not so much a muse but a big ball of gas. A speaking ball of gas. ETC. . .

Dictation not as a continuation of Romantic ideology. My psyche is still there but well-mixed with many other beasts.

My third MS, Resident Alien, is coming into view. I like this stage. Oringally it started as a book "about" kings. Then it morphed into a book about shitting and anal sex. The first section is still about kings. But the original political/personal title is now moving in unexpected directions. A resident alien in language. I often listen to foreign languages on the internet just to hear sound. Although English is not a second language in the strict sense, growing up in Ireland then moving to England and then Las Vegas, language became alien very quickly. I think Maggie O'Sullivan really rings my bell in terms of her sound-based aesthetics. I have also felt a close connection to Hopkins but quickly abandoned him when I kept hitting dead ends imitating Seamus Heaney. Now that I've read Maggie O'Sullivan's Interregnum I realize Heaney does not own the market on Hopkins.