Ron Silliman Reviews For the Time Being

Check out Ron Silliman's review of For the Time Being: The Bootstrap Book of Poetic Journals.

"For the Time-Being is one of those “Aha” experiences – the idea behind it is so good and so right that the one real surprise is that this anthology didn’t exist 30 years ago."

For the Time Being is Here

The advance copies arrived at Bootstrap Productions. I got my first peek at the book this morning! It's a large format book (7.5" x 9") and tops out at 250 pages. The cover is pretty striking and, frankly, turned out much better than I suspected. The Timothy Daniel's San Francisco street scene painting is framed in some kind of gold-on-chestnut, thrift store-esque frame which has been roughly mounted (you can still see the cut marks) and if you turn the book 180 degrees and look closely, you can actually see a reflection of Brain Toth (the cover designer) taking a picture of the painting inside the painting. The whole painting (frame and all) appears to hang on a wall (or page) with the title acting as a tag or description. Simply put: it's a cover with a lot of layers. A reflection of a book designer inside a painting framed and mounted on a wall appearing to be a piece of art for sale at a gallery. I think it all captures the spirit of the project really well, especally two people walking and talking on a empty street somewhere in some dark city. Certainly, when we began this project, few people had any idea what Tyler and I were up to.

I doubt I'll do another book like this any time soon. All-in-all, this proved to be a fairly exhausting endeavor. Literally, I think it was a two year and nine month project from the initial conception until today. I'm going to sit back right now and pour a stiff drink and enjoy simply holding it in my hands. Thanks to everyone who's helped along the way, especially Ryan and Derek who spent countless hours proofing (and catching) many mistakes.

The book can be ordered directly from Bootstrap Productions.

Kyger, Continued

Digging through past emails with Joanne Kyger, I came across this:

I only considered the writing in the Japan/India Journals [Strange Big Moon] to be a kind of working writing book. Otherwise I do consider the 'poetic journal' a form in itself.

Desecheo Notebook, Trip Out and Fall Back, Visit to Maya Land, Phenomenological, Wonderful Focus of You, The Dharma Committee, I consider examples of 'poetic journals.'

Notice how Kyger, like Doherty, goes out of her way to differentiate between "writer's notebooks" and "poetic journals." Notice also, how Kyger doesn't include her book Again in this list (Though I have included it in the poetic journal booklist below). Even though the poems in Again are dated, it is my understanding that she considers this to be strictly a work of poetry.

The Poetic Journal, Defined

Near the end of an extended email conversation I had with Joanne Kyger (who may arguably be considered the founder of American poetic journals), she defined the genre: 'Poetic journal' ....for me it means a kind of movement back and forth from prose-like descriptive narrative bridges into shorter 'poem' like lines. Like the haibun style. And the element of time, happening in the moment, aware of the moment. Tight, spare. Etc. (20 October 2005).

During our conversation, Kyger kept linking the poetic journal lineage to the Japanese "nikki," a la "nikki bungaku" and "nikki uta." In an essay about this lineage, Hank Glassman has this to say about Japanese poetic diaries. (Notice how similar this sounds to Kyger's definition):

"The first work of Japanese prose, Tosa nikki, compiled by Ki no Tsurayuki around 935, belongs to a genre known to modern scholars as the poetic diary, uta nikki. The poetic diaries of classical Japanese literature are anthologies of poems strung together by narrative prose sections. Often these works, especially travel diaries, were intended as primers of poetry in which the author would offer critique of the poems collected, note their successful aspects, and point up their deficiencies. In such a case, the poems could have all been composed by the author and spoken by characters in the diary; they could be actual poems received from lovers, family members, and other corespondents, or ones heard at poetry gatherings. These works, several of which will be discussed below and referred to simply as diaries, were not kept as records of daily events, but rather written as reminiscences, remembrances of the past based on draft copies of poems sent and saved scraps of poems received."

This is interesting take on poetic journals, however, I don't entirely ascribe to idea that this definition works for poetic journals as Tyler Doherty and I describe them in For the Time Being, especially the anthologizing aspect of the poems, or the idea that they are a kind of working notebook. Doherty makes a clear distinction between the intention of a writer's notebooks and the intention of a poetic journal (the first being private writing that is published secondarily, the second being writing that is personal, but that is still intended for publication, or at least an audience beyond the writer herself). With that said, I am interested in how this idea of the poetic journal as a series of "poems strung together by narrative prose sections" fits into the genre as a whole. If we viewed poetic journals strictly through this prism, we would be forced to eliminate a number of very fine writers from the booklist including Paul Blackburn , Larry Eigner, and even Doherty himself. If looked at this way, however, it does shed some light on the working process of writers like Andrew Schelling, Kyger, Michael Rothenberg, and Gary Snyder, who all write poetic journals that conform to this somewhat narrow definition.

More than anything, I think this definition tells us how closely aligned these Beat and post-beat writings are to the Japanese nikki. Another interesting tidbit is that Kyger's lauded journal of her Japanese experiences with Snyder, Strange Big Moon, is not written in the nikki style. In my conversations with Kyger, I have learned that she simply had not read the Japanese poetic diaries until the mid 1970s or so. After she reads these diaries, however, her writing unquestionably changes.

In conclusion, I'm still in favor of poetic journals casting a wider net. I see the usefulness of the poetic diary form, and I do view poetic diaries as a subset of poetic journals, but it would seem a shame to me to limit the genre to such narrow confines.

Andrew Schelling's Poetic Journal Course Description

This fall, Andrew Schelling will teach a course on poetry and journal writing at Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. The biggest difference in this year's course may be its title. After many years of calling his course "The Poem and the Journal," he has now begun to used the term "poetic journal." He has told me that he plans on using For the Time Being as a course text as well. The following is his course description:

Practice of Poetry: The Poetic Journal
A writing workshop. Participants keep daily entries of thoughts, experimental writing, observation, conversation, readings, dreams and study. Readings in an array of chronicles: Japanese writers including Basho, Sei Shonagon and Masaoka Shiki; contemporary Americans who have published poetic journals: Joanne Kyger, Hannah Weiner, Lorine Niedecker, Gary Snyder and others. Questions: What makes a journal shapely? How have others composed cross-genre work on the edge of poetry, essay, fiction and autobiography? What does it mean to write with Time as the key element? Is revision of journal entries a crime or a necessity? Students submit an edited final project of twenty pages, with an introduction.

Poetic Journal Booklist

***This list appears in For the Time Being. Please feel free to suggest titles in the comments section***

IN AND AROUND POETIC JOURNALS: A SELECTED BOOKLIST

*With thanks to Andrew Schelling, who pointed us toward many of these titles.

Ashbery, John: The Vermont Notebook.
Berrigan, Ted: Train Ride.
Blackburn, Paul: The Journals.
Brainard, Joe: Bolinas Journal.
Cendrars, Blaise: Prose of the Trans-Siberian & of the Little Jeanne de France.
Creeley, Robert: A Day Book; Pieces; Hello: A Journal.
Corbett, William: Collected Poems.
Dahlen, Beverly: A Reading.
Denby, Edwin: Mediterranean Cities.
Doherty, Tyler: Bodhidharma Never Came to Hatboro.
Duggan, Laurie: Compared to What.
Duncan, Robert: The HD Book: Part II, A Day Book.
Eigner, Larry: Readiness / Enough / Depends / On; Windows / Walls / Yard / Ways.
Fischer, Norman: The Narrow Roads of Japan; Success.
Gallagher, Ryan: Plum Smash and other Flashbulbs.
Ginsberg, Allen: Planet News; The Fall of America.
Giscombe, C.S.: Into and Out of Dislocation.
Grenier, Robert: Series; A Day at the Beach.
Hahn, Kimiko: The Narrow Road to the Interior.
Kerouac, Jack: Book of Dreams; Some of the Dharma; Book of Sketches.
Kyger, Joanne: Again; As Ever; Just Space; Patzcuaro; Japan and India Journals; Phenomenological.
Lehman, David: The Daily Mirror.
Mathews, Harry: 20 Lines a Day.
Mayer, Bernadette: Studying Hunger; Midwinter’s Day.
Oppen, George: Day Books.
Padgett, Ron: The Albanian Journal.
Ratcliffe, Stephen: Human/Nature; Real; Cloud/Ridge.
Reznikoff, Charles: Collected Poems.
Rothenberg, Michael: An Unhurried Vision, The Paris Journals.
Roussel, Raymond: New Impressions of Africa.
Schelling, Andrew: The Road to Ocosingo; Two Elk: A High Country Notebook.
Schuyler, James: The Dairy of James Schuyler; Collected Poems.
Schuyler, James & Darragh Park: Two Journals.
Silliman, Ron: BART; Xing.
Sloman, Joel: Cuban Journal.
Snyder, Gary: Passage Through India; Earth House Hold; The Gary Snyder Reader.
Snyder, Gary & Tom Killion: The High Sierra of California.
Waldman, Anne: Journals & Dreams.
Weiner, Hannah: Clairvoyant Journal; The Fast; Country Girl.
Whalen, Philip: Every Day; The Goof Book; Scenes of Life at the Capital.
Wieners, John: 707 Scott Street.
Williams, William Carlos: Descent of Winter.

Studies & Translations from the Japanese Tradition

Basho, Matsuo: Oku no Hosomichi (various translations—Corman, Hamill, Miner, Keene, Sato, Yuasa); The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches. Translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa.
Brazel, Karen: Diary of Lady Nijo.
Cranston, Edwin: The Izumi Shikabu Diary.
Keene, Donald: Travelers of 100 Ages: The Japanese Through Their Diaries; As I Crossed a Bridge of Dreams: Recollections of a Woman in 11th Century Japan; Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenko; Modern Japanese Journals.
Miner, Earl: Japanese Poetic Diaries. (Includes the Tosa Diary & Diary of Izumi Shikibu)
Morris, Ivan: The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon; The World of the Shining Prince.
Murasaki: Diary of Lady Muraskai. Translated by Richard Bowering.
Santoka: For All My Walking.
Seidensticker, Edward: The Gossamer Years: A Diary by a Noblewoman of Heian Japan.
Shiki, Masaoka: Selected Poems. Translated by Burton Watson.

New from Bootstrap Productions

For the Time Being
Originally uploaded by tomorgan.

For the Time-Being brings together for the first time twenty-nine writers from three continents whose work explores and interrogates the genre of the poetic journal. Tracing its roots back to Sei Shonagon and Matsuo Basho through Thoreau’s journals and into the work of the New American poets, the poetic journal remains a vibrant and adaptive genre that continues delight. Ever alert to the minutiae of daily lived experience, as well as to the linguistic twists and turns poems are likely to take when writing is oriented towards improvisation and discovery, these pieces enlarge our appreciation of the world in all its Whitmanic scope and splendor. Also included in this volume are an informative introduction outlining the history and characteristics of the genre, essays and interviews on favorite ancestors and aspects of the craft, and a piece dedicated to how to teach the poetic journal in the classroom. A valuable resource for poets, teachers, and scholars alike, this anthology collects under one roof an eclectic grouping of poets whose various attentions enliven our works and days.