Notes towards Drawings of Staircases

Also, thinking on the metaphor of drawing perspectives of staircases and all…..

Isn’t the point of these kinds of exercises to make you pay attention, to make you see by having to draw something rudimentary, by making you create with your hand something that could be far more accurately reproduced with a camera? To say, or infer, that the purpose of such an exercise is the product is to not see the exercise clearly.
Stephen Berry, comment to post below

Along the East River and the Bronx
The kids were singing, showing off their bodies
At the wheel, the oil, the rawhide, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners were drawing silver out of boulders
While children made perspective drawings of stairways.

Jack Spicer, “Ode for Walt Whitman”

Drawings: Industrialism / Capitalism vs. Creative

Third kind: Lottery

Fourth: “to eliminate the draw” (Dorn, Slinger)

David Marriott: “Signs Taken for Signifiers in Language Writing”

marginalization vs. canonization

folk / craft / mastery (hard vs. “soft”)

genderized language — hierarchical structures — codeswitching

financial flarf?

Steve McCaffery / Dick Higgins / Ronald Johnson — “uncreative writing” / fluxus / Dada etc.

OuLiPo — “anticipatory plagiarism”

Borges — every reader his own Shakespeare, Pierre Menard

Pound — economic theory — Bretton Woods Agreement — “each person should print his own money”

Ginsberg / Beats — Goldsmith / Flarf-conpo (???) (literary market)

Bernie Madoff / sustainability / peak oil

profit motive / Negative Capability

Keats: “why were they proud?”

Lorine Niedecker / Objectivisim — “enough to carry me through”

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2 Responses to Notes towards Drawings of Staircases

  1. Andrew N says:

    I need to track down that Spicer poem, but, given the title, is there also an element of the Romantic theme of preferring innocence to experience, or I guess of believing that experience and age can corrupt the natural connection to the divine we’re all born with? No idea, just a passing thought that might be handy in your note taking. Certainly what the children are doing, given their subject, is more transcendental in nature, especially if they’re drawing spiral staircases…oh so pretty.

    Whatcha doing? Working on a paper, a dissertation topic? Adding some spice in your life…har har har

  2. dhadbawnik says:

    Andrew: great to hear from you, man. I miss your blog. What you been up to?
    As for the Spicer poem, it’s from After Lorca — check it out and let me know what you think…
    No way I’m writing a paper on this. Just a way to organize various streams of thought.
    Always looking to spice thing up…

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