Robert Grenier (RG) spoke at Columbia in March and I took some notes because I find his work and him to be completely fascinating. Thought others might want to see some of this too. [Note: my transcriptions of the poems are nothing like the poems and should be held very suspect. They are the (bad) map, and not the territory.]
RG has 170 books of these hand-written poems. Lately he has been thinking about ghosts - "ghosts presence as absence" - because of the deaths of Creeley, Scalapino, Bromige. He talked about his poem from Sentences: "gost." He says "One of my tasks is to bring the 'h' back into existence..."
Shows:
HERE
I AM
THERE
YOU
Which is an allusion to the Creely poem that goes "here I am, there you are." (Look up). The "are" is the ghost here.
RG talks folks through the "making" of the poem, acts as an intermediary. The handwritten poem in the books is THE poem and his ideal reader would be the one who reads thru these.
AN A NO
PPLE DAVID
ORCH BROM
ARD (AND) IGE
Works are made out of letters.
He reads some more:
(Fill in)
He talks about writing the fact as it's happening in the letters themselves!!!
He says the poet only reaches the one who wants to read the poem.
(Hint to his "orthography": all the lines are underlined.)
This work is a form like a sonnet is a form.
"Naked duration"
“constructed artiface of the occasion” – letters in space
“lost in the enactment of the ‘line’” (meaning the line that makes up the letters)
An artist named John Bacchi (sic?) translates Grenier poems by drawing them out
“My deepest intention is that someone would read the 170 books…”
LATE DARK
RAIN ENING
IN SKY
MAY TODAY
“I am the reader of the work as it is drawn.”
BEGINS BEAN
AT SQUASH
NIGHT
CORN
Sometimes people write to call it into being.
THE TODAY
MOST REAL
BLUE WHITE
SKY CLOUD
You can see the cloud and write it.
Some day I will be gone and I think someone will see that cloud.
“a potential occasion for another real experience”
