Organizer: Linda Voris
Members of this working group read contemporary experimental poetry and poetics in once-monthly meetings and discuss the changes in reading practices and critical approach such poetry requires.
{{Scroll further down on this page to find out more about our name!}}
Fall 2017 meetings:
September
Ann Carson, Float
Spring 2017 meetings:
April:
Rae Armantrout, Versed
March:
Stephen Rodefer, Four Lectures
February:
Eleni Sikelianos, Blue Guide ( a volume in Earliest Worlds)
Spring 2016 meetings:
April:
Peter Gizzi, The Outernationale
Also, have a look at this interesting typographical video of the poem “The Quest.” Click on the image to watch the video and listen to the poem.
March:
Montana Ray, Guns and Butter
February:
Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Four Year Old Girl
Also: Click below to read a critical essay on Berssenbrugge’s work:
Linda Voris, “A Sensitive Empiricism: Berssenbrugge’s Phenomenological Investigations”
Voris_A Sensitive Empiricism_Berssenbrugge’s_Phenomenological Investigations
Fall 2015 meetings:
September:
Anne Carson, Autobiography of Red
From Autobiography of Red:
“Words bounce. Words, if you let them, will do what they want to do and what they have to do.”
and
“Reality is a sound, you have to tune in to it not just keep yelling.”
October:
Bhanu Kapil, Incubation, A Space for Monsters
November:
Claudia Rankine, Citizen: An American Lyric
The reading list for each meeting is decided by the group members.
Also on the list: Past and recent books by Lyn Hejinian, Rae Armantrout, Leslie Scalapino, Fanny Howe, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Barbara Guest and John Ashbery. Also, contemporary poets such as Matthew Zapruder and Ben Lerner. OR, in place of discussing a book, we might read and discuss one, long and difficult poem (Ashbery’s “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”) OR together do a close reading of a poem, OR study one issue of a poetry journal (LANA Turner Journal), OR read a sequence (Ted Berrigan’s The Sonnets), OR read around in poetics including essays by Nathaniel Mackey, Charles Bernstein, Jack Spicer or Lyn Hejinian.
MEETING TIMES
Interested in joining?
Email Linda Voris, voris@american.edu
What is The Silver Range?
Our group name comes from a line in Frank O’Hara’s poem, “Digression On Number 1, 1948.” The poem refers to a painting by Jackson Pollock, titled Number 1, 1948.
Frank O’Hara
Digression On Number 1, 1948
I am ill today but I am not
too ill. I am not ill at all.
It is a perfect day, warm
for winter, cold for fall.
A fine day for seeing. I see
ceramics, during lunch hour, by
Miro, and I see the sea by Leger;
light, complicated Metzingers
and a rude awakening by Brauner,
a little table by Picasso, pink.
I am tired today but I am not
too tired. I am not tired at all.
There is the Pollock, white, harm
will not fall, his perfect hand
and the many short voyages. They’ll
never fence the silver range.
Stars are out and there is sea
enough beneath the glistening earth
to bear me toward the future
which is not so dark. I see.
