README re: GRIST ON-LINE #1 As of October 1, 1993 GRIST On-Line is available only in ASCII format. IF YOU DOWNLOAD THE FILE AND PRINT IT USE COURIER 10CPI FOR YOUR FONT AND THE CORRECT LINE SPACING SHOULD BE MAINTAINED. USING JUSTIFIED TYPEFACES WILL PRODUCE RESULTS NOT INTENDED BY THE AUTHORS. GRIST will soon be available in other formats. Plans include a Postscript fully formated version as well as other versions for which free, downloadable reader/viewers will be made available. Announcements of these enhanced editions will appear in GRIST as they are available. The GRIST Electonic Chapbook Series will appear in these enhanced versions as well. GGGGGGG GGGGGGGGGGG GGGGGG GGGGGG GGGGG GGGGGG GGGG GGGG GGGG GGGG GGGGG GRIST GGGGGGG GRIST GGGGGGGG GRIST GGGGGGGGGGGGGGRIST GGGGGGGGGGGGGGRISTGRISTGRIST GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRISTGRISTGRISTGRISTGRIST ONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINEONLINE S k y B l u e I r i s E y e B l o s s o m **************************************** GRIST On-Line, #1 October, 1993 John Fowler, Editor and Publisher This First Issue of GRIST On-Line is Dedicated to Miekael and Ian of Spunk Press. Special thanks to Paul Southworth. Copyright 1993 by John E. Fowler. All individual works Copyright 1993 by their respective authors. All further rights to works belong to the authors and revert to the authors on publication. GRIST On-Line is published electronically on a monthly schedule. Reproduction of any complete issue of the magazine is permitted for nonprofit distribution as long as the source is cited, i.e., GRIST On-Line, plus the Network, BBS or other carrier, and the author are clearly and prominently identified. Complete issues of GRIST On-Line may be downloaded, duplicated and distributed free of charge. Authors hold a presumptive copyright and they should be contacted directly or through GRIST On-Line for permission to reprint individual pieces. The views represented herein do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, the magazine or the electronic carrier. GRIST On-Line contributors assume all responsibility for ensuring that articles and any other works submitted do not violate copyright protection. Subscriptions via INTERNET e- mail are available -- Authors may submit works for publication to the editor at fowler@phantom.com. Hardcopy or diskette submissions in ASCII should be sent by U.S. Postal Service to GRIST ON-LINE, John Fowler, editor, Columbus Circle Sta., P.O. Box 20805, New York, NY 10023-1496. Hardcopy subscriptions are available at $80.00 for individuals and $160.00 for insitutions for four quarterly issues per year which will contain unique material in addition to three issues of GRIST On-Line. Include SASE with all submissions if a response is desired. Please inquire concerning special publishing or distribution projects including electronic chapbook/book upload or distribution on diskette. Ideas or collections of work for special issues or topics will be considered. Contributions, grants, computer equipment, network time, or other forms of support are welcome. GRIST On-Line is not for profit. GRIST On-Line is available for anonymous ftp from etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist which is the preferred form of distribution. **************************************** "Formerly, psychologists regarded language as merely a series of images, a verbal hallucination, or a purely imaginary exuberance. Their critics regarded language as the simple product of a pure mental function. We now regard language as the reverberation of my relations with myself and with others." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, Northwestern University Press, p. 20 **************************************** EDITORIAL STATEMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 APPETITE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Douglas Blazek darkness will laugh _beyond_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Will Inman A SONG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Tuli Kupferberg SANTA FE. WIRES INTO INFINITY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Carol Berge the mild stranger's story. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Carol Berge FORMS: THE CHALLENGE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Carol Berge from NON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Ron Silliman YELLOW WINDOWS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Clayton Eshleman WOOS.PU.EE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Allen De Loach TALL ORDERS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 ezra WORDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 ezra WORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 ezra APPROACHING EIGHTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 David Ignatow READING NOTES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Jim McCrary the work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Armand Schwerner ETHANE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Ross Thomson from What to Whisper Until It Rains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Karl Young THE PRAYER OF ANTHILLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Jim Jurado sand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Hannah Weiner Slink. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Ficus strangulensis WAS POE AFRAID?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Charles Plymell GO TO THE SUNSET AND TURN. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Charles Plymell BRIEF ENCOUNTER. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Kirby Congdon from THE LORCA VARIATIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Jerome Rothenberg from What to Whisper Until It Rains. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Karl Young A REVIEW OF _WEST OF MASS_ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Charles Plymell ORALITY >> LINEARITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 fowler FiCus comments:. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 *Nous Refuse*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Joe Amato DDT and the DreamWorld BBS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 fowler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 What is Mail Art?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Ashley Parker Owens Networker Telenetlink. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Chuck Welch (Crackerjack Kid) SPUNK PRESS MANIFESTO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 POETRY PUBLICATION SHOWCASE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 VIRPO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 VISPO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Electronic Publishing: What is it and why does it mean Choice? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Paul Peacock LETTERS TO THE EDITOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 **************************************** EDITORIAL STATEMENT GRIST On-Line #1, a journal of electronic network poetry, art and culture, October 1, 1993; available at anonymous ftp etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist or by subscription fowler@phantom.com. GRIST is eclectic. GRIST is open to all language and visual art forms that develop on the Net. We are rapidly becoming multimedia artists--the old borderlines between forms are gone. The Net is an extension of the alternative forms of communication and InterAction that were initiated by the break from traditional academic and culturally controlled forums of the period prior to the mid 60s. A very limited off-line, papercopy, laser-printed DTP edition, will be issued quarterly to subscribers and will contain some material unique to that edition. Insofar as resources, time and energy allow, GRIST supports and facilitates dissemination and archiving of e-mail art appearing in the pages of GRIST On-Line as well as the results of congresses, shows and other programs that may arise in the network context. GRIST On-Line is a place where all the forms of expression that are coming together on the Net will be presented, developed, discussed and exhibited. GRIST is a place where the impact of the Net on the form and content of what we call poetry and graphic and visual art will be visible and viable. (This may not be apparent at once. Much of the what appears in this first issue does not reflect the impact of the Net-- other than the fact that it is appearing here at this time. Yet, a reading that includes a consciousness of place of publication and even, possibly, prescience, might not be out of place.) Not a lot of poets, and not a lot of artists, have engaged electronic production, reproduction and distribution. A primary goal of GRIST is to facilitate that engagement. However, what actually appears, month to month, will be a function of what contributors are doing, not what they might be doing. GRIST On-Line supports a philosophy of the Net that is visionary, free, open, and democratic. However, there will be nodes, gathering points within that vast freedom, where people will naturally congregate to share ideas, techniques, and creations. GRIST intends to be one of those nodes. Articles, announcements, essays, art work, correspondence and feedback welcome and solicited at all times. Any reference to the original GRIST would be incomplete if there were no indication of the contribution made by co- editors George Kimball and Charlie Plymell. For many issues they were, in fact, the editors, while I acted as publisher (from the thin bankroll of the Abington Book Shop which was too soon exhausted). They sought out authors, gathered material, traveled, wrote letters, made phone calls, cajoled subscribers, designed, laid out, typed, printed, collated, stapled, stamped and delivered. Without them, GRIST would not have been what it was. Many more in the Lawrence scene contributed time and help, Jim McCrary, Rob Rusk and more too numerous to mention. My thanks to them all. fowler, September 30, 1993 **************************************** APPETITE Douglas Blazek In the cafeteria words eat applesauce. Fried foods. They pull hoods over their heads and work their jaws like briefcases. A bee becomes a bison. A plain becomes a plate. Flocks of wood birds are snared in mid-air their legs poised like silverware. Deer are devoured with mustard greens and curry powder. Next a city, a mid-sized city, is mauled by eating- etiquette and false teeth. Century after century is chewed like newspaper in a paper shredder. Can you hear the gurgling? The after dinner drink in which a planet is drowning? Finally air is clear as starbreath. Peace is thicker than exhaustion. The words are finished eating. Nothing remains but the words. **************************************** darkness will laugh _beyond_ Will Inman the corpuscles of night are very small tongues of silence. their unutterable meanings flow into larger tongues of wind and, further out, into very largest tongues of rivers of stars, and their meanings even most cosmic are still, unutterably still, even as they move into new forms of flow, new tongues, with languages not even gods can put words to. so darkness utters light until light fills throat with unutterable meanings, and all the threnodies of angels and lovers are at home in corpuscles of the dark: no matter what they say and sing or what is said and sung about them, only darkness can hold the fullness of what lovers know and feel. let the old gods spit rules and hold fast old boundaries, let their priestly pimps mark stale territories, darkness will laugh unutterable laughter _beyond_. lovers know the unspeakable meanings, the joys of darklit tongues on secret geographies of flesh, sweats of unseeing, clouds charged sparking godfull with passion: lovers know what flows down the marrows of death, what tongues know they will not say, lap the tendrils of darkmost waking, this smallest of tongues speaks silence unutterable intimacies with stars 10 July 1991, Tucson **************************************** A SONG Tuli Kupferberg THE NEW AMERICA tune: "America" My country is it of thee? Land bereft of Liberty Is it of thee I sing? Land where the Indians died Land of the Slave-Holders' pride From ev'ry mountain's strip-mined side Let Pollution spring. My Know-Nothing country, thee Land of Great College Fees Thy hair's been dyed. We hear thy rocks & rolls Jingled by them greedy souls And all thru the Land they Stole Thy TV is refried. Thy gunshots shoot the breeze Gooks hang from world-wide trees You own The Bomb. Lied to in all our schools Beaten with their Golden Rules Treated like a bunch of fools Our time will come. Their propertied God, to thee Architect of Tyranny To thee we won't cower. Soon may our Land be bright With Rebellion's Holy Light In daring love is our might Common People to Power! **************************************** SANTA FE. WIRES INTO INFINITY. AUGUST 1993. Carol Berge Strange lovely skin made like a "blister" you remember how it was that cupola of glass over the pilot of the old Messerschmitt if that's how you spell it she said to him. There was a flurry of feathers. Says on the carton KEEP FROZEN, and Product of U.S.A. What did that mean, was it about being thawed when the times were better. When the forms of what they called then marriage were so improved upon as to become creative of things other than children. You understand this was long after the idea of church or state protecting procreative process. Meaning a different kind of commitment: Closer my gods to thee or to the mature talents. A question of protection, this idea of the lovely strangeness of skin made like a glass cupola or what they called a "blister" as it was over the old pilots of the Luftwaffe in that war to end wars. That sacred space, or maybe the word was "secret" spaces, hard to tell when translating at this distance--that space where even in the heat of summer there would always be a breeze, constant and benign, across the hills from the east. Objects have their own individual fields of magnetism, he said to her, if I seen it once I seen it a thousand times, someone come into the shop, go for thinking about a thing, even touch it, don't matter if they buy it before they leave, if they don't, next person who come in walk right over to it, watch and see. And none that Kirlian aura stuff about it either. Spend the night in a sleeping bag they used to call them and see what I mean. Age of specialization is what it was, imagine that is what I'm asking of you. Before the whole new languages emerging like codes from the bellies of the children. That low, steady hum from the machines, always on even when turned off, even in the silence of winter there would always be that hum, constant and possibly malevolent, no way to tell yet, across the hills from the west. **************************************** the mild stranger's story Carol Berge from GRIST #3, 1964 he brings me here, where they meet, embrace drylipped, these who have been tender flesh of one flesh, over years, into children: their divorce final from their rooms, dreams, the children, odd-eyed, here from grandmother's farm. the visit: couples: her new man lives there, has grey hair. as do i, watching, outside the eyes of all of them: the children, the others. **************************************** FORMS: THE CHALLENGE An Introduction Carol Berge Everything is motion: physics, the description we give to the history of matter. We're in and of it, with choices. If we write in one mode for twenty years while the world changes with and around us, we're safe, like teachers who proffer only the dead establishment. Yes, to Chaucer, Shakespeare, Browning's monologues and all the varied mythos, and then to make one's own, of your life: a distillate. Those who wrote in 1890 were modern for then. We record this era in current idiom. Around us, 1981: intense storage and report of information, fast take and quick studies, bubble memories, recombinant DNA, encoded masks, fast speed forward and playback, electronic speech synthesis (ESS), charm and beauty to mean atomic particles, a tachy-case labelled Notes from Cyber City, A Silicon Valley where young millionaire engineers segue into others making change in Mendocino valleys, modular input, interfaces, lithium drift detectors, you see it, the brain as original databank. Forms follow time: if each cell contains humanity's history, lives can essence into one page: each punctuation-mark a gesture, a breath; a relationship in a paragraph, a family's anatomy in a sentence, the process a page, the prognosis implicit throughout and evident. A haiku of fiction forms, a terse garden of bansai. Bloom of souls as lasers crystals filaments chips shining. Legend and history as earth. Motion into the future from now. from Fierce Metronome: The One-Page Novels, and Other Short Fiction, Window Editions, 1981, as collected from previous publications c. 1970-80. **************************************** from NON For Jackson Mac Low Ron Silliman Proto-mallie: the flaneur. "The older I get the more floors I discover at Macys." Little red thermos looks like fire extinguisher. Ants won't cross trail of petroleum jelly. Hat with no bill, cubist leather beret. Sore on my tongue, smell of dung. Voice's choices sight's relight. In gaol they make you surrender your panty hose to prevent suicide. The crowd of protesters approach, chanting "out of the boutiques and into the streets." Seagull brushes up against my cap. Rude Work Ahead. Velcro strap, reusable cast. Dog's name is Cutty. Eco-Brutalism, Deep Semiology. Sturgeon General. Boot failure! Odd trim of the ear's rim. The neck seen as a tube is seen incorrectly. Post-its peeking from a three-ring binder. Dog snarls behind window of locked Rabbit. Morning's magic means make my daily bread. Ears put head in brackets. Hypervariables in DNA show up on screen like Bar code on a cereal box. Rushed writing. one is to words always an outsider, tho they invade your head, colonize dreams. Neither an Aram nor Omar be. Picking your teeth versus picking your nose. Voice echoes up the lightwell. Reading to discern liquids from the bottoms of used cups. Place mats map the table. De Man who shot liberty: valence. Blue sparks fly in the dark tunnel beneath the train's wheels. The sound of an egg cracking against the bowl's edge. All sirens are narrative. The brothers hover in the doorway smokin' their crack. Powdery sugar atop apple pancake. Now that we have computers liquid paper is doomed. Pair of grackles attempt to mate perched atop Amtrak arrow logo till the she-male jumps into flight. Water fountain's cooling motor hums on. An odd john; high urinals and low basins hard to tell apart. Thimbalism. "JWs," he sniffed and sniffed he did, "black Mormons." yellow stone house across the way, in which lives Mrs. Florence Schneider amid her treasures, rare china, fine handspun cotton, a garden of grape hyacinth--that odd blue purple. Dump truck pale blue filled with clay atop which lays a shovel. Black lores of the red cardinal. Rounded shovel is for cutting into the earth, square ones for piling it away. Combination of the swing and these new reading glasses quickly makes me seasick. Back panel of greeting cards. (c) copyright 1993 Ron Silliman **************************************** YELLOW WINDOWS Clayton Eshleman Out our bedroom window across car park backyard through walnut trees into two yellow I can't see windows, a hotel world, the 30s, what is this mime? Something is occuring inside, *Blue Velvet*? Nothing moves. Nothing moves me deeply, wiry branches in early January. Nothing happens in the yellow. I want to see, I want a shadow play to hammer in, the origin of the race. Two yellow windows 50 yards away. They hang there, twins of twins. **************************************** WOOS.PU.EE (The Whirl Wind, The Roadrunner) for Janet Burden Allen De Loach She moves in this vision delicious - there is a setting for this, the afternoon - full blouse in the wind swings on shadows against the wall veranda silhouettes beautiful in her black dress she is filling the sun her youthfulness she nibbles her lip corner biting away years between us at least sex is not everything ? - When we tell the story it's never the same, as the story goes - I remember Treaty Oak where Osceola spoke, I climbed its branches in childhood, was 5 years old at 1428 Alveras Street 500 feet from the St. John's River, flowing North - When we tell the story it's often Dreamtime, as the story goes - we fraternize with him & her, "where are you when I need you", they say - The way is very clear : we age. we middle-age. we're older yet. the world is more complex in our eyes, no longer right & wrong, clear cut, the price of truth misty ! The Old Man says the spirits tell each flower gives a scent, has its own scent, owns that scent - the names we use to speak of it we own, has its meaning in what we own - to know this secret is tricky indeed, The Old Man says, the scent is there without us, Or so that part of the story was told in the Springtime, The Old Man says, in the Wintertime another part of the story went another way - in the Summertime the small corn-shoots sing, reaching leaves toward the sun the MotherEarth warm cradles the roots, or so the story goes told over and over so simply without us being there - in the Fall is harvest - we eat the corn roast store corn for Springtime we tell stories so simply we are there in every way as always - And there is Winter, so simply, The Old Man says, Tomorrow we will be the spirits come in dreams no earth we walk upon - Today we are dreamers - we know what it is we are given to do ? we speak so sure - we do - truthfully - don't we ? , The Old Man says, continuing to me, how do you, passing ideas, how do you, grow your crops. how do you, know sunrise sunset time to plant seeds, The Old Man says, continuing on the calendar the wind swirls the desert. **************************************** TALL ORDERS ezra A somber fellow says, "For fun;" and says, "not love, but usage." Tall order for regular people. "Blight; brown poison nodules; bleak time," Appearance says, "make eager males enter soon and linger long." Eagles gasp: "Along sharp night ridge, granite angled mountain shoulder, moon shone, made inspiration updraft spiral aloft." To please, too anxious; bitterly relieved, specter's spade prepares a grave. Past, or previous, a laughing man descends borne down on eagle's wing as sober tongues wag solemn songs. "For fun," they sing, "for fun; not for love, but usage." **************************************** WORDS ezra WORD WODR WODER, WADER, WEDER, WIDER, WUDER ORDW ORDWOE RDWO RIDOW DWOR DEWOR WRDO WIERDO ORWD ORWORD RDOW ROWOOD DWRO DAWRO WROD WRODSZKYI ODWR ODWER RWOD RAWDO DORW DOROW RWDO RODOW DRWO DERWO OWRD OWDRI RODW ROWDER WDOR WIDOR WDRO WOODRO OWDR RIDWO ROWD ROWED DOWR DOWER ODRW ODEROW DROW DROW WORD WORD Word pro cess or drow orp ssec ro or cess orp drow drooprow rowo prd row prod drop wor Word or cess pro proc cess or word drow so ssec orp cep rosso osorspec opec ross cepor oss ceps roso oso repces pose ro ro words or swerds pro **************************************** "What sustains the invention of a new system of expression, therefore, is the drive of speaking subjects who wish to be understood and who take over as a new mode of speaking the debris produced by another mode of expression." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, Northwestern University Press, p. 35 **************************************** APPROACHING EIGHTY David Ignatow At my age to discover my illusion about existence, as if having lived my life in a hothouse of flowers - very well, I change my view and see continuous bombardment, Serbs and Bosnians, and under that constant barrage, eat, socialize and stroll the streets, a citizen of his town who falls, silently hit, while others behind or in front continue on their stroll, chatter among themselves and carry an umbrella under the sun. **************************************** READING NOTES from Part II of "West of Mass" Jim McCrary It's all in the fingers now trees grow on computers from the mind and eventually become "strange" this isn't just the way it is it is the way it is continuing going out as big as it can get and that becomes the same size it always was. So where do things lie across the field of shape and size does it mean nothing now that we can find it all or do we just keep looking Smaller or larger which was it where did this begin the word caught up in it and if that goes on long enough will it block out the white or will the black just block out (Part II of "West of Mass" will be #1 in the GRIST On-line Electronic Chapbook Series. It will be available this fall from ftp etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetyr/Grist. ***************************************** the work Armand Schwerner for Phil Niblock 1. the work it is not that there is no beginning is there no beginning the fluid text becomes its very river, rapids, it is that the text is not or that beginninglessness itself be in the heart of the text, that search there is the beginning of the mistake of considering of lust for a beginning hold me lover but no it is not possible to contract for a stay it is not possible not to voice, to voice poem must be possible there is no walking in this room no sitting no one listens no prone alert there is only this endless speaking to voice; the head the thighs the red work only this endless speaking overheard semiheard it is impossible to not overhear the endless speaking in all the bodies sending sending themselves to themselves there is no rolling no eating there is no roiling in the fucking-room for no one is it possible not to overhear the beginningless speaking lizard movement in the mind-body gnawing and a great coil endless there is only the goddess of the endless speaking upsurging through the asphalt why is there this no-beginning says the weary attention to rest to rest after the capture one moment capture of silence the unconscious gossip damped once there can be no beginning the cut sharp cry of the crowbar need to connect but the endless speaking upsurging there is no walking no one ever eats there is no running only this speaking no one is drawing circles or the circle is being drawn into the mind loop upon bright loop of the speaking forming endless menorah branches of the speaking guttering candles of the mind's speaking random is it random random animalcules of the wax of the wax of the mind's speaking the clambering lizard of the mind playing as it's the moaning of the endless speaking or bright gutterings giving the dark an Egyptian relief what's going on under or undercutting beyond or transshaping through the speaking master, there is no walking no master no one is sitting here no one squeezing her thighs together for the lips' pleasure there is no listening no listening! only the endless speaking the vast cabin of branches forking out in constantly unexpected emptinesses the raw cabin woodworld the sap of such joyousness! no rest, is it awakening? could it be the attentiveness implicit in the red work the stems intent like Leaky toward their patience their unstopping patience the watchfulness of the stems, branches observing branches, is this an awakening or a dying? green-ochre lizard-color stems, uranium stillness, is the action a phenomenal joke not patience but slavery attentive it is not possible to contract for a stay (the work, complete in 3 parts, will be #2 in the GRIST On- line Electronic Chapbook Series. It will be available this fall from ftp etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist.) **************************************** ETHANE Ross Thomson High | enougH-Can-Height | ereH-Covalent-Hold | On | tigHt **************************************** from What to Whisper Until It Rains Short Poems 1963-1972; Revised 1989 & 1992 in a few short lines Word Press and Light and Dust Books, 1993 by Karl Young ice blades in the rough veins of the pine trees hang in the silence, wait in the slow days; snow light in the predawn of the bedroom illuminates my halfsleep, penetrates my sealed eyes. floating in the first calm we have known yet we may pass even touch before the spring comes. **************************************** THE PRAYER OF ANTHILLS Jim Jurado I dig near the roots of Oak trees for anthills. An anthill always follows the curvature of the earth. Anthills can cure the backache of any psychic. Anthills form slowly in the distance of whispers. I smell anthills in the latent perfume under lilac bushes. I search for anthills in my ears. An African legend says the bright sun sleeps in a different anthill every night. I wait for long rain, to rot the white peonies, and attract the anthills. An anthill will tie our wishes into knots. An anthill can have different shapes: a line forming a scent dance around a rose, a moving parallelogram of weather patterns, or a gyrating square for tight defense. The optical illusion of an anthill will give you a headache. The syrup of my cactus shadow, with my hair sticky with needles, sometimes drips in the grass, leading me to the lost City of Gold of these anthills. All mirages begin as anthills. Anthills can teach you about the mirror of the senses, where understanding has become a myth. For example, an anthill tastes like the thunderstorm in a tomato. An anthill is like zero, the ghost of all numbers. I ring an anthill like a temple bell. I wash my face with anthills. **************************************** sand Hannah Weiner seen wordswith sandra moor silent teacher daughter pail slipper sale underwail skip ertipertothewail skip ertipertothehail re marks my old mother died and she lied across the veil milage mail skipertiperto the pail well only one we daughters sung mix up breed well ill take her no way scrail we d rather flail scrail well it takes some understan now i sit upon the land well i guess we end it do re me now sister e is the simple one what she spee well gather and bespeak ye joy to ye whipperamerstam well yer power gone if we dont like your tongue yer gotta be among well the elders see flakerstrake rattlesnake well its ok' tell him to close his mouth and take a hake fertermertail is what i guess comes next sister beat them to the last agree twenty seven in the family poetry sake the strake and let it lake i gonna ate well for me ho we plan a tree fermertail we didnt get skrate well i guess yer could use a cup well stickerail my pa did well say mailerwail contrail cut the slail striker piker mail yer lernuskail well i met a flaw stakerslaker and she bow well whatchagot to meet sancha feet now which book yer visions see it was the new well okee now the old one he i see 80 nearly 90 passed on old henry **************************************** AN APPENDAGE OR APPURTENANCE (Forrest/FiCus, suffering from a case of collegiate hemophilia, sends an expectoration from some part of his respiratory tract; or, a copious discharge from dilated torturous veins in swollen tissue at or within the anal margin. Shit, put a hemostat on that. Or treat it quick with hemp or hemp nettle, Mary. [fowler]) As if I drifted I lay and uncovered dictionary dream..."Slink"...the word "slink" slipped into my mind. Mought it be that a sliver of lime and a glass of slivovitz would cure this slobbering for a sloe-eyed beauty? I crave...I look and up a slope, sloppily wet from exertion, is a slot. I observe as it slothfully slouches, a la Didion, my way...I look up again and inhabit the entire water volume of a slough...a clock-tick and I realize a sloven-hoofed animal nibbles my waterline, slowly imbibes my crystal essence. My tentacular tributaries move slow and sludgy...as I evolve toward end-of-training, slug-shaped tiny ones crawl upon my marge, trailing unique signatures, tropistic only. A flash of searing light and I'm slugging in the ring again, aging fast toward burnout...the light fades...old me is sluiced away before the water can evaporate...for moments or millennia, I slumber...to abide speaching slurred, the animal's hooves now slurry mud in my self, I try to rise getting only slush...caught it seems in this sly backwater as the animal's lips smack, her eyes light, my smallness increases. Parts of me feel as a small ale in its small minded small talk trying to pass it off as creating a reality...a smarty pants...I smash Him and asudden begin drifting begin talking a smattering of creek' thinking like a river I roll along obscured by smaze, I catch a boat and smear it on a rock uttering the smear word Aaaaahhhhhh' I toil long tubing toward the smell of frying onions feeling a smelt I wonder often if oceanward going and smile another salt fish and I smirk...I am to smite these tight saltless shores one last time having been forged in the smithy and found right I carry in me condensed smog to be purified of smoke and sly smiles carried from before to the still-pot of Gaia for desmids and whale sharks to return to sediments and to a subduction zone and sometime later...smoky quartz...a sharp crystal smolders and scratches my eye...I SHATTER awake, the player's diamond needle scratches the center surface of "Mysterious Mountain". I sweat. Mahn! Tha' musta been Some dream. What's for supper? Ficus strangulensis, 3 June 1993 **************************************** "The power of language lies neither in that future of knowledge toward which it moves nor in that mythical past from which it has emerged: it lies entirely in its present, insofar as it succeeds in ordering the would-be key words to make them say more than they have ever said, and transcends itself as a product of the past, thus giving us the illusion of going beyond all given language." Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Prose of the World, Northwestern University Press, p. 41 **************************************** WAS POE AFRAID? Charles Plymell On these same streets tonite... in Baltimore. Was Poe afraid? Afraid of the florescent eyes of dogs, the ravens, and the rats shot running out of Hollins Market, the smell of rot as thick as fur. Afraid of roaches, disease, of poverty, timeless poverty, that brings a cruel whip to ponies pulling carts full of vegetables on Greene Street, overloaded with greed. Afraid of the fast sky over Cross St., clouds thrown over a crimson cloak, torn from the hill, sliding to the dark water's bay where night rusts silently away. Afraid of the partygoers, like sparkling ghosts from the statues, swirling great pleated sheets when street lights go dim, losing the stars, streaming party coils to their last car... some on twilight's slightly twisted cane. Afraid of the beer, the drugs, the vault of shoreline's fractal ragged fault floating in a dream grave afraid to yell disciples repeating smug versions of hell. The whirl of a wash, a tangled thread sets an alarm that turns to dread makes the vision flow instead to creation and how such grace is fed. **************************************** GO TO THE SUNSET AND TURN Charles Plymell The branch of stream and law entwines lost rail to the stars and back again while the dandelion sits on a weed. Joyous supernal it sits on a weed A long ride over forgotten roads in the crisp kilowatts of radios alone in the night, the tracks on Vortex plains erased by gentle snow like upon the magic board I drew in school The radar screen longs for blind events like towns alone in their night frost snow and wind streaks across the pavement showing sudden ghosts of fabled lizards O Gypsy Moth around my lampshade what dims the light beyond the door and twists trees reaching to the sky and down again into their own ring of years? In a month the moon repeats its fundamental note involuntary stomachs drift to Venus she repeats hers and within the newborn yet another aspect opens Hungry wolves know the snow. And I'm home to unwind the mummy roll by roll a part of me, an edge I cannot peer beyond, a hidden angle, a side I cannot see In the corner the spider weaves haphazardly forgetting the first part of the spiral tired perhaps, of the trembling fly in a forgotten filling station in Kansas **************************************** BRIEF ENCOUNTER Kirby Congdon These were the things we--strangers--shared: the neighborhood's change, our street, finally! repaired, the weather's extremes, head-lined like some scandal, our building's roof, its water tanks the skylights over elevator works, the mechanic worlds we never saw but so depended on! as we passed daily in lobbies, unconcerned, below and our familiar faces meeting, so sudden, here, and now, like tourists, out of place, in some foreign land, tied by these casual threads --like some long lost cord to some primeval egg-- with the wave of a hand, a nod, hardly grave, of what had been --neither dark nor deep, and nothing said: no regrets over any purse, property, or stolen bed. We sang no songs together but neither did we do to the other any kind of wrong, though we gave no hand and shared no pain. At this meeting point of pointless chance we know, if we think, but don't, we'll not see that face again --maybe can and could, but, then again, more likely, won't. **************************************** from THE LORCA VARIATIONS forthcoming from New Directions (XXIII) Jerome Rothenberg "White" Proem. Days dissolve. The ink inside the album starts to fade. Constantinople turning white erases Eloisa Lopez. And that archbishop, really something else. See where she's got him in her album -- what indulgence, oh my soul! He's like a little white thing. [ 1 ] First White Birds fly down from the moon in white March (open sesame!) white & unreal like a child on the prairie a flower (open sesame!) white in the forest a cherrytree's shadow. [2] Second White Frost on her feathers is white. grow cold on the syrinx. Dead Leda, her flesh glowing white in the forest, & Pan, sailing by in his boat. When it's night the blond swan, golden cygnus, throws open his wings. [3] Third White White's a conjure for clouds & for mountains with the clouds on their shoulders. Stars are conjures for wings & for snow where stars drop down from the clouds. Mountains are conjures for stars, for all white conjurations. [4] Fourth White Snow across the fields reveals the cock's crest. . Stars still shine at dawn. . The cock's crest suits him like a blouse. . Stripped down he greets the day. . A first laugh drives the stars away. . His gold crest soon turns white. [5] Final White There were "romantic" words to end with -- "tree" or "house" (0r "treehouse") -- before he got into another "novel." March was as sharp as "vinegar" & there were some longhaired "schoolboys" writing "verses." Did they notice how white a "thing" the "snowbird" was when they saw it after "school?" Also that "basil" would grow best in "sand" -- that "love" could be "sweet" as "cherries," not like "vinegar?" With Eloisa "dead," there was a "grandmother" who sewed her "lips" shut. That made a "springtime" for "dead" Eloisa, with her "name" lit up by "candles," and "girls" who looked like "baby dolls" blowing "white feathers" toward her. O little "rose" inside your "convent," said another, bring a "bottle" for the "dead" down to their "boat." "Mockorange" is the little "secret" we perpetually write about. **************************************** from What to Whisper Until It Rains Short Poems 1963-1972; Revised 1989 & 1992 in a few short lines Word Press and Light and Dust Books, 1993 by Karl Young wind rises and falls then stops for a second leaving a hole in it this is the moment to find what is real and ride with it forever **************************************** A REVIEW OF _WEST OF MASS_ Jim McCrary; Tansy Press, Lawrence, KS; 1992. One of the best, most recent publications to come out of the Kansas Magic Realism School is Jim McCrary's, West Of Mass. True to the heritage of ritualistic regionalism that gave us vortex landscapes where the episodic nerve was wired to fast association, the Hobohemian experience of the beanery and the tough flat noir of Belle Starr and Salt Chunk Mary lives again. After all, the Turk left Coronado stuck out there, and every good magician knows how to create a legend when nothing else is happening. It is no wonder that Burroughs lives in Lawrence, and encouraged this production. The illustrations by S. Clay Wilson will alert the readers to what scenes may follow. "Hippy Jim" might now be drinking red beer at Sporty's, with a half-white Kickapoo, but we still taste the flavor of the old Rock Chalk Cafe, or the years and names before that, which keeps that realism wired; as in his description of the Dalton brothers putting on show in Coffeyville, "The term wired/applied to any other than/ Emmett, Bob, Grat and Bill/ is ludicrous. Look it up pal. Look it up." He asks the reader for the freedom that clarifies kicks... or there's always Charlie Starkweather, or Bat, or Jessie, or those hair-triggered legends of his poems. He deliberately pushes pathos to the flash point where he gets inside the "wired" and doesn't just ingest wired as a metaphoric caffeine/amphetamine past-beat familiarity, but rather a metaphor for the magic realism like in the wires that the storm left sparking and shooting around on the ground, as if he "Can't lay anything down/ there is no down left." Though some of his poems require that special Kansas wild esoteric-humor to fully appreciate, most of them bring it right home as his "S&L Updated," in which he has Bonny and Clyde come down on a bank with Neil Bush behind the desk. Or his "Quien Es (?) Indeed," which is illustrated by a great S. Clay Wilson rendition of the classic portrait of Billy the Kid and his past and current lovers, full of holes or not, "Here stands William Bonney/ like a lot of us/ at the apex of a career/ and in the middle of a dilemma..." Some of his most accessible poems mimic the conversations of cowhands playing a little poker or crawling into the bunk: "Film Noir" With a name like "Sundance" how could you be anything but a "kid" and sleep with anyone but a fellow named "Butch." Jim McCrary works the Kansas idiom into his realism and draws special attention to associative levels of meanings or double meanings, reminding us of a Kansan who doesn't want to waste any words, or a gunfighter who lets his riding (reading) partner take it any way he wants it. In His poem, "Doc" he uses Doc Holliday's last words, "This is Funny" to comment: "No doubt about it/ the man had a way/ with/ shotguns/ and metaphysics. copyright 1993 Charles Plymell **************************************** ORALITY >> LINEARITY fowler thoughts after reading Doug Brent As I started looking into things about InterNet I ran into an off-line magazine called INTERTEK which contained an article by Doug Brent that I found thought provoking. I e- mailed the editor and asked to re-print it in GRIST On-Line and he referred me to the author who was amenable. At the same time I learned from Mr. Brent that the article had already been e-published in EJournal a couple of years ago and that a lively discussion had been going on in that journal about some of the issues Mr. Brent had raised. Just a few months ago when I began putting the idea of GRIST On- Line together the figure for the estimated number of InterNet users that I ran into was 3 million. Last week the Wall Street Journal said 14 million, and growing at the rate of a million a month. So...maybe some of us haven't caught up with what was happening on the Net in 1991...so...Mr. Brent's article is made available again in the GRIST directory at ftp etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist. For those who wish to review the discussion in EJournal they can easily do so by getting back issues from listserv@albannyv1.edu. bitnet. Get the index to all issues by sending e-mail to that address with the message being only EJRNL INDEX. What happens when/if we abandon linearity? Can we imagine it? Linearity is our structure. How do we re-structure? Must we have structure? Can we tolerate a higher degree of unstructuredness >> chaos? Should we try? Why? A new business manager abandons his desk and hits the road, connected by phone, fax and laptop. Present and future success hinges on his ability to manage a networked set of entities and their non-linear possibilities (profitably). The vertical course of raw resource to final product, a single manufacturing stream, is re-examined in order to discover the possiblties for branching at every node in the process. Branching is synergistic, is innovation. The process is successful if it results in a *proliferation* of products. Explosion/fragmentation/nichefication. The Net is such a process. A facilitator, not of unification, but of diversification, Balkenization. Yet, interconnectedness _seems_ to be enhanced and isolation _seems_ to be overcome. But empowerment of the individual is diminished, even as s/he *feels* more secure, knowing there are other like individuals all over the world with whom one can interact (via the network) at will makes one feel warm. Why would government(s) try to limit the process of fragmentation? For the more diffuse the voice of the people, the easier it is to control the fundamental processes that generate wealth and security for the few. Governmental agencies may feel a need to monitor the activity on the Net, but only for the purpose of making sure nothing is happening that might result in a concrete, physical coalescence, an eruption in the streets. Governments are dislodged by physical means. Until the people organize they are free to theorize at will. Thus, the Net reshapes our consciousness by providing us with an endless, solitary connection to a glowing tube as the substitute for the finite, more difficult connection to a physical human being. The context-starved and love-starved citizen must have that daily net-fix, her/his only feeling of connectedness all day long. Our challenge today is not to predict where we are going, but to become fully aware of where we have already come to. Daily we are told that the Net is going to produce profound changes in our consciousness, our way of thinking, our ways of interacting. Change has already occurred. Change is a present, on-going phenomenon. It is not something that is *going to* happen; it is the difference between what we did previously and what we do today; between how we did it 10 years ago and how we do it now. During the time it takes to make a prediction--to gather data, generate a model, run the model, analyze the results, fine-tune the model-- change is constantly occurring. It is much more important to be aware of the subtle, incremental steps that are occurring day-to-day than to speculate about the world of 2058. Why? Because of the breakdown of linearity. Prediction is a linear tool which presupposes the ability to see cause-effect-cause. In a branching universe the neither the entry point/path through nor the outcome/exit point is not predictable. In geo-politics we see the reality of unpredictability. No one formulates policy because there is nothing stable enough to base a policy on. Solutions are not even attempted; containment is a difficult enough goal. "Leaders" no longer attempt to direct or control events; they only attempt to keep them from getting totally out of hand. They act on the edges. Consider the analogy of the hypertexual, interactive novel wherein there is no set beginning point and no set denouement. If each path through the material is unique, what is the theme, what is the moral of the story, what is the content? Does not the idea that there are multiple stories, multiple lessons to be learned, reflect the form of our consciousness today? What then is the morality that arises out of the networked situation? One thing does not cause another. All things are _multi_: multi-sided, multi-caused. All things are connected. (Therefore, one-on-one cause/effect cannot be true.) Connectedness reflects some degree or another of dependence = responsibility. Responsibility leads to sharing and sharing is facilitated by connection. Has that happened to you? Have you experienced that? Are you different from yesterday? It is possible to construct a set of events such that there are an unpredictable number of unique paths....perhaps not unpredictable (because created, therefore bounded) but that the number of possibilities may be so large as to be unrealizable in one person's lifetime (for instance). But the concept of path is linear; there is no path _through_ a network; there are only paths around, within a network. How do you get out of a network? Yet a network is bounded; or it is not bounded. A work, a creation, is generally not thought of as unbounded. Paintings have edges, symphonies begin and end very specifically; novels, stories, essays, poems all begin and end. *AND TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY DO, THEY NO LONGER REFLECT REALITY!* **************************************** "Elements in the electronic writing space are not simply chaotic; they are instead in a perpetual state of reorganizaion. They perform patterns, constellations, which are in a constant danger of breaking down and combining into new patterns." J. Bolter, Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing, Fairlawn, N.J.: Eflbaum, 1991. **************************************** FiCus comments: I see possible impacts on artistic expression. Like a net where messages with "the 7 words" are scrubbed (Prodigy?) Even subterfuge, cant, dialect, etc., will eventually give way to the daemons with joyous LexEngines parsing our messages faster than we can type. 'Bout that time we'll be treated to "quantification" of emotional response as expressed through body "language", utterance and hormone levels scanned by roadside MRI, flyby eeg, the reflectance FTIR...the results fed to virtual adjudicatory devices peering at your irises and ZAP...[or perhaps BLONG!] **************************************** While searching for unique expressions of the Network possibilities I was referred to a group calling themselves *Nous Refuse*. I asked Joe Amato, facilitator for the collective, to describe what they were up to. His (and their) response follows. *Nous Refuse* (as compiled by Joe Amato, with a little help from his friends) Earlier this year---29 January to be exact---I contacted a number of my closest net contacts to see if they would be interested in getting together electronically to exchange work under the general rubric "writing." Online writing, scholarship, manifesto, fiction, poetry, what have you. Not discussion per se, but this too---only all to be transmitted & received as an ongoing exchange, again, of writing. From my original post: My sense of it is that the writing would speak, not simply for, but to itself. Not more textual solipsism/incest/ parasitism, but more like self-referential interactive text---each work building off of the others, growth by virtue of an online interchange of textuality. The result---Nous Refuse (& take it any way you like). The list of contributors has fluctuated somewhat, as one might expect. Work has right along been forwarded to me, & I've redistributed to the rest of the group, unedited (& initially archived on my machine). Most of the work has been poetic, has been written in lines. What Nous Refuse *is*, however, is at any instant shaped by what it might be. From the standpoint of writing, it might be just about anything, depending on who contributes what. That I think of it (& have 'advertised' it) more as an electronic writing collective than as a publication has something to do with its limited appeal. That is, not everybody has the time or inclination to generate pixels that will ultimately not be registered as tenure-track phenomena. & in any case, a few of the folks on the list are not academics. To my knowledge, the range of academic contributors-lurkers includes tenured faculty & graduate students (& undergraduates are always welcome---there may even be a few on the list). But it's a somewhat unorthodox band of, presently, forty or so persistent souls, even in terms of known reputations: a number of contributors (or lurker-contributors) are well-known for their (print) poetry, a number for their electronic work. & a number of the rest are from non-writing fields per se. Nice mix. The result is quirky, irregular, ventures into the unfamiliar, unexpected. An online group renga. A cut-up. A rant. As with most electronic lists, the number of actual contributors is a relatively small percentage of the number in the collective. (We're not doing too bad, though: lurkers currently outnumber contributors at approx. two or three to one.) To give some idea of how the work posted to Nous Refuse tends to work against the conventional grain: having posted (to Nous Refuse) GRIST's request for a piece describing who/what we are, here's what two contributors posted in response (the first from Forrest Richey, the second from Jeremy J. B. Nguyen): sending out (reading in) words (arranged) thoughts (coded in words) expressable as ASCII only relayed thus delayed and (largely?) un-edited answering others' sendings a stately ping pong game staid on accounta organization/line impedance dancing (slow and measured) pushing toward the day we can jack in and FLY! brushing neurons with the Net-ters illusory(?) COMyounication foundlings virtually no more _voices in the choir_ & ===================================== | jeremy is a discarded toaster by the | | side of the road. others often place | | cold slices of bread or other edible | | materials into the slots and after a | | period of adjustment they pop out as | | something different, sometimes eaten | | up and sometimes merely licked a few | | times but sometimes burnt to a crisp | ====================================== yet often they never come out at all It's worth mentioning here that the editor/publisher of GRIST, John Fowler, himself posted a note regarding his potential contribution to *this* piece. In it, he hits on an interesting aspect of net interaction. Here's John: I appreciate being added to the group but I have some hopefully unfounded fears that some members may not appreciate having an editor/publisher lurk- ing about. I don't have a clear understanding of what you're all up to so maybe I'm just showing my midwestern, semi-paranoid background. But I don't want to be barging in or inhibiting anything that is going on. What John's remarks highlight is the fact that Nous Refuse (& other such net workings) permits an online, public exchange between both the editor/publisher function & the contributor-author function. In this instance, the editor/publisher's modesty(-"paranoia") precludes a contribution per se---but the fact remains that John's public statement of his self-perceived role in the group (& I prompted him to allow me to repost to the group what was originally a post solely to yours truly) situates him in a somewhat different (non?)hierarchical relationship with potential contributors to his publication. & it thereby opens the door (window?) to a somewhat more relaxed conception of what the editorial/publishing function is all about, blurring the distinction between this latter & potential contributors in the event John should himself choose to contribute. If John *does* contribute---indeed, even when he contributes as above----his contributions will mark out his personal aesthetics (& politics etc) in the public domain. & in terms of Nous Refuse, such a domain consists of an online, interactive dialogue between writers. So ysee, you never know just what to expect from this crew, whether resistance ('we refuse,' in so many words) or compatibility ('new refuse'). & this makes the exchange, from my pov, that much more vital, that much less hemmed in by the conventions of conventional such 'meeting places,' that much more attuned to the dynamics of exchange itself. An emphasis on process, that old buzzword, but with a fairly sophisticated, working sensibility as to more traditional conceptions of poetic 'presence' (probably as a result of the slippery locale of espace) & marketplace (once again, Nous appeals to those who simply aren't satisfied with customary consumer outlets). Where we're headed---well, no place, exactly. There's a Beat premise here (with its corresponding quasi-libertarian, American mythology) in this conception of moving right along---though I would like to think that "the road" in this case extends outward to permit for active participation by women (still, representing only one quarter of Nous) & likewise partakes of potentially global traffic patterns. (One of the contributors, Chris Bigum, resides in Australia---a point made painfully evident to me when, upon my posting a "summer update," Chris kindly jogged me that it was just beginning to get cold down under!). Which is not to gloss the underlying issue of access, the fact that only the more industrialized nations presently allow for these sorts of (spontaneous?) writing/virtual communities. But the result has been, for me at least, incredibly rewarding. My personal agenda having much to do with trying to stay a/live in my profession (I'm one of the academic-bound contributors)---& I'm talking equal amounts survival & meaningfulness---I couldn't ask for a more exciting locale. And hell---where ELSE might I go as public as I please with my keystrokes? I'll conclude this piece of writing with my more poetic response to what 'we' on Nous Refuse are all about (posted, self-indulgently, in response to my own posting!). Feel free to write in & contribute your own noninklings (just give me a jingle, JAMATO@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU): work that continues to open out into a world that continues to open out into itself, and in this opening there is a closing within the individual, the species: can we find within this work the working intelligence, can we find the opening that brings with it its parts and wholes, that brings with it at all times more and less than itself the work of closing, the work without continuing, from individual to the individual the work of the species that is as well the work of a whole of which it is itself a part? can we find within ourselves the opening into this work, this work that opens into a world, continuing at all times to fold into itself, to give us the work of closing, the work that opens past? & the current list of contributors, in abcdisorder: Marleen Barr, Charles Bernstein, Chris Bigum, Michael Blitz, Don Byrd, Wes Chapman, Eric Crump, Laurence Davies, Nate Dorward, Luigi-Bob Drake, Nancy Dunlop, David Durand, John Fowler, Chris Funkhouser, William Gardner, Loss Pequeno Glazier, Carolyn Guyer, Pierre Joris, Michael Joyce, Robert Kelly, Andrew Levy, Justin McHale, Jenny Miller, Stuart Moulthrop, Jeremy Nguyen, Derek Owens, Martha Petry, David Porush, Neil Randall, Forrest Richey, Martin Rosenberg, Armand Schwerner, Kenneth Sherwood, Paul Southworth, Juliana Spahr, Kali Tal, Patricia Thompson, Katie Yates ... . . . . . Hey, why am I still t/here? Well, after posting the entire piece to Nous for comments/editing etc, I rec'd the following from Robert Kelly... As always, Robert's words pushed the envelope that much further, and in a somewhat different direction... Here they are, another provisional (r)end(er)ing:) somewhere along this way to say these 2 things, that Nous Refuse and Grist and all that we see on the screen are (and must/shd be) strictly beside the point, therein their liberty (I will not say libertarian, with the comfortable gentleman-farmer ex-hippie sense that bears) and once they get to be the point, then they are not to be discerpted from those means they right now get around and past and (in general) through to us and, secondly, that they share with cyperprose etc the angerous charm of being in essence virtualities, fictional in essence, and therefore (in this kalpa, thus) corresponding to the noumenal urge ours since Proclus, that is, we have turned our back to the sea. In order to speak to one another. This sorority. **************************************** DDT and the DreamWorld BBS fowler Bill Paulauskas, incognito editor of Dada Tennis and proprietor of the DreamWorld BBS, appears and disappears in distorted re-incarnations and RL fluctuations; lurks in the background. What of his cohorts? those whose works he has chosen to publish; what are they doing? playing in the sandbox of words? (as one of them said) DDT = DaDa Tennis; DaDa Tennis, a net game played with words; return the serve from the automatic server or serve yourself a salad of crisp green vowels; never shirk a chance to verbalize a verb or nounalize a noun and never stop to think. Boing, boing, boing-boing, boing, they go--back and forth--the only sense the sound, the only sound in the mouth, the only mouth in the groin. Dada/surrealism, experimental work, language poetry and collaboration taken from the DreamWorld. With chilling graphics interspersed. Stretch from Jake Berry's icons to word-mush of the master pulp. Jump in. Individual pieces in the current issue seem to me to be overwhelmed by the extensive selection of collaborat(ive)(ed)(ion) work. To my mind, that is good. For it is the collaborative pieces that seem most nearly about to take off. However, as I read on through the sections, I feel slowly brought down; the energy doesn't rise for me. And I have to admit, I missed structure (blush, blush). It's good to see this writing pulled out of the BBS setting where getting a handle on what's going on requires a major commitment. Seeing the results of "editing/splicing" is worth the struggle of trying to be there. A situation worth getting involved in. The comparison between the activities of the *Nous Refuse* group and their approach to interaction and the results at DDT is--mmmmmmmmm--instructive.... The engagement in intertexuality achieved by DDT/Dreamstate is perhaps the goal of Nous Refuse? We would be interested in seeing their reaction to one another if/after they take a look at each other, if they haven't already. DDT is available from Dreamstate Press, Box 10, Woodhaven, NY 11421; DreamWorld BBS is at MODEM (718) 849-3232. **************************************** ++MAIL ART++E-MAIL++MAG/ZINE++INTERNET++ ++MAIL ART++E-MAIL++MAG/ZINE++INTERNET++ ++MAIL ART++E-MAIL++MAG/ZINE++INTERNET++ The following piece is included as a continuing provocation for the discussion of what e-mail, what a Net mag-zine, what a writing or a publishing collective might be--the form it/they might take in the InterNet context. In what follows please freely substitute e.g., "e-mail" or "Net-zine" for "mail art" or "exhibition", and/or, e.g., "InterNet" for "the mails", "poems" for "art". How strong are the analogies? What is Mail Art? from "Global Mail", a thrice yearly listing of over 470 Mail Art activities in more than 35 countries compiled, maintained and published by Ashley Parker Owens, soapbox@well.sf.ca.us or 72162.1573@compuserve.com. A COPY OF THE CURRENT ISSUE OF GLOBAL MAIL MAY BE FOUND AT etext.archive.umich.edu/pub/Poetry/Grist. Mail art is art that goes all over the world through the use of the mails. It is international in scope. The "art" is the ongoing exchange between artists, sort of like a performance work or "happening." A mail art show usually consists of disposable art that is sent through the postal system for the purposes of an exhibition and publication. The works are unjuried (uncensored) and not returned. The purpose of a mail art show is to present the diversity of human expression informally. Artists and non-artists can all participate. This allows artists to increase their visibility to non- traditional audiences; it expands the public's conception of what art can be; and it allows individuals to express themselves without taking account of their artwork's marketability or "quality." Mail art has a certain purity and equality to it. It crosses many art world boundaries, because it is non- hierarchical and focuses on the process instead of the final product. Mail art is not bought or sold, reducing the middle man functions of the art world. It is its own currency. Mail art is cross-cultural. It is inclusive of all colors, ages, languages, sizes, able-bodiedness, and nationalities. There is no chance of rejection, because everything is opened, studied, and read. Time and attention are assured for those whose voices need it. How do I participate? *you can send artwork to mail art show organizers so it can be exhibited. You should (eventually) receive in return printed documentation with a list of all participants. You can later use these lists to contact individuals on your own, or to send out invitations if you have your own show. *you can exchange works with those seeking exchanges. *you can do "add to and return" exchanges. This is when you start an image and ask someone else to add to it and return it to you. This is done with photocopies and originals. *you can submit material to compilation magazines. You generally send a specific number of copies to the organizer, which they then collate with other contributions and send back to you as a zine. Compilation magazines usually have specific size requirements. *you can go the Chain Mail route. This works just like other chain letters, however, no money is involved, and no bad luck happens if you break the chain. It's just good clean fun. When your name gets to the top of the list, you will receive artwork from others. This may not work well for you if you move around a lot. Usually it takes almost a year for your name to get up to the top of the list. *you could have your own mail art show. (This is only a partial list of options. Other possibilites include fax, audio, video, and zine submission projects). How do I do my own mail art show? 1. Participate in every mail art show you can. This provides you with the necessary contacts. It also gives you an idea of the variety of documentation and exhibitions. 2. Think hard on whether you want to do a show, which requires a lot of attention in finding a space, hanging the show, press releases, openings, etc. Maybe a zine format would be better, where you display the work by pasting it into pages and making a little book which you would send out with the list of names and addresses. 3. Once you make the decision to have a show, you need to do the following: *Give yourself plenty of time. Two years is suggested. *Think of a theme. This isn't a necessity, but it may make a more interesting show. *Design invitations and send them out to every mail art address you can find. *Don't forget to put a due date, and your return address on the invitation. *Advertise. Go for free advertising whenever possible (ie Global Mail). *Seek out places to have the exhibition. It does not have to be in a gallery. Look at coffee shops, book stores, art spaces, display windows, etc. Once you have a potential space, examine the walls carefully. Will you be able to run staples through it? *As the names come in, record them immediately in one notebook. Print clearly! *If you have a computer, I recommend building a database and recording into it directly. *Contact the owners of the space to see if you can work out an arrangement. *After coming up with a space and date, start developing a press release which you will send out one or two months before the opening. You also may want to design some invitations to the show and send them out. *Hang the exhibition. It is easiest to staple the works to the wall. If you are using a display window, tape works best. *After the show, figure out what to do with the work. It can be recycled or given away. *Send out the documentation with list of addresses. What are the mail art "rules?" No returns. Send out free documentation with a list of participants w/addresses. No rejections. Send stamps when requesting copies of zines. No censorship. No money/No fees. Apply sufficient postage. **************************************** Date: 22 Aug 93 09:53:17 EDT From: Cathryn.L.Welch@Dartmouth.EDU Cathryn L. Welch) Subject: Networker Telenetlink To:fowler@mindvox.phantom.com Dear John, Chuck Welch (Crackerjack Kid) here! Thank you for the invitation to contribute to GRIST On-line. Indeed, I am interested in the future of interactive mail and e-mail art. Since 1991 I've been exploring these relationships, participating in projects like Artur Matuck's 1991 Reflux Project, which was a conduit for linking Telenetlink between mail art and the Internet's telematic communities. When I helped organize the Decentralized Worldwide Networker Congresses in 1992 (NC92), I was the only mail artist using Internet to introduce mail artists to the world of telecommunication. With the enlisted help of a few other mail artists I succeeded in establishing a Telenetlink e-mail network. I proposed a Networker Databank (1991) to be mail art's first on-line networker archive, The Networker Databank. This on-line archive of over 500 materials from the NC92 year is situated at the University of Iowa's Alternative Traditions In the Contemporary Arts Archive. But in a larger sense, my goal is to make this archive accessible through BBS', on-line electronic journals, matrixes, and electronic zines such as your own electronic zine. I'd like to submit the following proposal to first appear in GRIST On-line. I'm also preparing an essay which explains the proposal in greater detail. I should have that ready in a week or two. But in the meantime, I'd like to invite you to actively participate in the formation of the Networker Telenetlink 1995. What are some networker objectives you'd like to see implemented? How might we use GRIST to be an active tool for bridging the world of snail mail art and telematic e-mail art? Finally, would GRIST make the entire Networker Databank available in an on-going capacity, not only to it's readers but as a networking tool transported to sister-networks and publications? [yes, the Editor] I look forward to hearing from you in the days ahead. best, Chuck Welch **************************************** NETWORKER TELENETLINK 1995 THE CONGRESS BODY LEFT IN 1992/A SPIRIT NETWORKS NOW/THE SPIRIT LIVES IN EVERYONE/WE MET-A-NETWORK INFANT/A MEDIA-CHILD WAS BORN/TELENETLINK IS ITS NAME/IT LIVES IN NETLAND NOW/THE FUTURE OF THE NETWORKER IS TELENETLINKED/MAIL ART IS EMAILART/FAXMAIL ART/EMBRACE THE CHILD/TELENETLINK IN '95! OPEN OBJECTIVES Objectives for a NETWORKER TELENETLINK YEAR in 1995 are open for discussion through August 1994. Possibilities??? Embrace the telematic medium and explore its parameters, develop a local-global community, exchange cultural communications, interconnect the parallel network worlds of mail art and telematic art through INTERNET, Compuserve, America Online, Bitnet, and other connected e-mail gateways, place networker archives on-line, experiment with telematic technology, fax, exhibit, interact in public and private forums, merge media: mail and email, and enact networker ideals envisioned for the millenium. CRACKERJACK KID SEND OBJECTIVES, STRATEGIES, E-VENTS, E-MAIL, TO CATHRYN.L.WELCH@DARTMOUTH.EDU. NETWORK MAIL ART TO CRACKERJACK KID, PO BOX 978, HANOVER, NH 03755 Responses will appear in upcoming issues of "Netshaker" zine Deadline: August, 1994 **************************************** SPUNK PRESS MANIFESTO @ S P U N K P R E S S The excuse for the existence of SPUNK PRESS is the desire of some individuals to see alternative literature continue to flourish, but this time online! The policy of SPUNK PRESS is to act as an independent publisher of works converted to, or produced in, electronic format and to spread them as far as possible on the Internet and in the BBS society free of charge. The work may not necessarily originate from someone with net access. The major interest of SPUNK PRESS is alternative literature and anarchist material, both old, converted, and newly produced. We want to help zine editors, flypost authors and others who desire a wider audience to convert or to produce their works in an electronic format and give them the opportunity to use our distribution channels, FTP sites, mailing lists and whatever other means we might have within our powers. We welcome fanzines, pamphlets, books and portions of books, articles, manifestos, quotations, interviews, bibliographies, reviews, posters, and other material, both in-print and out-of-print. You can snarf what we have published so far from: red.css.itd.umich.edu (IP Number: 141.211.182.91) /poli/Spunk/texts This manifesto and other internal Spunk Press documents can be found in /poli/Spunk/info; in particular, there is an introduction to the archive in /poli/Spunk/info/ Introduction. To submit material, get the file /poli/Spunk/ info/How.To.Submit from the FTP site mentioned above or contact the editorial collective. If you do not have ftp access, you can get documents by sending electronic mail requests to a mail server (such as ftpserv@lysator.liu.se). Type "help" in the body of the message for instructions to change and list directories, and retrieve files from the archive. To get on our mailing list send a note to spunk-list- request@lysator.liu.se. The mailing list is the forum for decision making at SPUNK PRESS, but if there is no clear consensus, or the consensus is at variance with anarchist ideas, the collective decides. The collective is composed of people with a reasonable commitment to doing some aspect of the work at SPUNK PRESS, and will be extended to those who are like-minded. So you can be a part of the coordination of actions taken. If you would like to reach the editorial collective of SPUNK PRESS, write to: Mikael Cardell cardell@lysator.liu.se Linkoping SWEDEN Ian Heavens ian@spider.co.uk Edinburgh SCOTLAND Chuck Munson @macc.wisc.edu c/o Practical Anarchy, PO Box 173 Madison, WI 53701-0173 U.S.A Jack Jansen ack.jansen@cwi.nl Amsterdam HOLLAND Spunk Press Manifesto Version 1.023rd December 1992 **************************************** The Second Annual Poets House POETRY PUBLICATION SHOWCASE October 16 through October 30, Exhibit hours 11-5 -- Free An exhibit of new poetry releases from across the nation and a festival of events celebrating the diversity of this year's poetry DISPLAYS OF NEW POETRY RELEASES An opportunity to view the current state of the art: books from commercial, university and small presses PANEL DISCUSSION SERIES: ISSUES IN POETRY PUBLISHING - Anthologies and the Canon: The Poem, the Reader, the Market at the Millennium with Ray Gonazalez, Joan Larkin, A. Poulin, Jr., Jerry Wards and others October 19, 7:00 --Suggested Donation $8, Members Free - The Tao of Recognition: Awards and Prizes, First Books, Self-Publishing with Didi Godenhar, Bill Henderson, David Lehman, Robert Sheldon, Tree Swenson October 21, 7:00 --Suggested Donation $8, Members Free - The Future of Poetry Publishing: The Poetry Audience of the Future with Jonathan Galassi, Dana Gioia, Bob Holman, Haki Madhubuti, Luis J. Rodriguez and others October 27, 7:00 -- Suggested Donation $8, Members free Panel Discussion Series Subscription -- $15 GRAND FINALE READING: Friday, October 29, 7:00 --Suggested Donation $8, Members Free with Malkia Cyril, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Leroy Quintana, John Yau and others POETS HOUSE, 72 SPRING STREET , NY, NY 10012 (212) 431-7920 (no modem) Library and literary resource center open Tuesday through Friday, 11:00 to 7:00; Saturday, 11:00 to 4:00. NOTHING ON E-PUBLISHING!? **************************************** VIRPO (virtualpoetry) "The long standing process of trading texts back and forth becomes transformed into a process of merging texts into new wholes...." D. Brent This is/will be a regular, monitored, *department* of non-dead-ends where x-plorations may take PLace and comParison of the livin' end-RESults may be made or not. _#1:_ CREATE A NEW TEXT THE NOUNS OF WHICH ARE ONLY ALL OF THE NOUNS IN THE TEXT WHICH FOLLOWS. SEND IT TO THE EDITOR, FOWLER@PHANTOM.COM, FOR PUBLICATION IN A FUTURE ISSUE OF GRIST. Use all and only the nouns from this text: "Coco drug zero! highest security grade! moles on the move! double you see! snakes in the grass! rabble! riot! unlawful assemblies! communal insurrection! mutinous masses! turbulence! panic! goundless phobia! wide of the mark! right of the track! hypochondria! march target! direction! prince your palace! royal palace! ...password! goglach! demonstrations! protestations! provocations! much discretion! close observation! take precautions! that's it! not a word! deadly secret! ... one more thing! bear in mind! silence is golden... What's the matter now? code names! Lochness monster! comet in sight! red light! burning bright! sit tight! no fright! Yes! No! Beyond all doubt! satellite! asteroid! planetoid! Polaroid! coming fast! hostile! perfidious! menacing! momentous! fatal! stern measures! Cockadoodledoo! He's coming! completely mad! coming! look there! He's getting in! where's the guard? call the guard! Da!" from "Mysteries of the Macabre" by Gyorgy Ligeti as translated from the German by the publisher Program notes,New Juilliard Ensemble Concert, Sept. 21, 1993 **************************************** VISPO (visual poetry) a call for submission(s) What have you done with what you've got? (i.e., w/NetTools, i.e., w/whatever you can use on the Net) visually--concrete i mean we used to do some pretty interesting things on a _typewriter_ Anything publishable in ASCII a work of art? Can it be? Perhaps not. **************************************** Electronic Publishing: What is it and why does it mean Choice? Paul F. Peacock, September 1993 This article grew out of some of the interchanges that I saw on the Internet having to do with electronic publishing (ep). I thought that an article giving the perspective of somebody who is within the industry at ground level (or perhaps, more appropriately, ground zero) might be of service to people interested in ep. From a philosophical standpoint section 1.1 is the most important. One caveat: this article is an update of one I wrote in early 1993 for our electronic magazine/sampler "New Worlds". If you are reading this more than six months from September 1993 it's out of date. Contact me for an update (see Resources, section 5.0). This version has the following sections (all of which are my opinion and some of which are sub-divided): 1.0 About the Author, by the Author 1.1 Why does ep mean Choice? 2.0 Electronic publishing today 2.1 Production 2.1.1 First-rung 2.1.2 Second-rung 2.1.3 Third-rung 2.1.4 Online delivery services 2.2 What books are suitable now? 2.2.1 First-rung 2.2.2 Second-rung 2.2.3 Third-rung 2.2.4 Online delivery services 2.3 Who's buying this stuff..? 2.4 ...and why would I want to? 3.0 Why should print publishing inherit electronic publishing? 4.0 Where does this leave university presses? 5.0 Resources 6.0 Knowledge Central - EP Fantasy #1 7.0 Where does hypertext fit in? ----------------------------------- 1.0 About the author, by the author. I am a poet. I am also a computer person and have been involved with computers for over sixteen years. I started in ep focusing on publishing on regular 3.5/5.25 inch disks - what is now known as disktop (as opposed to desktop) publishing. This was because I wanted to mix my vocation with my avocation. We started up in March 1991. The name of the company is Floppyback Publishing International and we have 35 titles in our catalog ranging from six books we did for Rutgers University Press to poetry by Norman Rosten (librettist for the opera Marilyn at the New York State Opera this fall) to a thriller by Matthew Paris, originally published in 1973. We also do consulting on ep. I started in this because I saw in ep three things: 1) a way to make a living 2) a way to allow (immediately) good work that was not commercially viable to get out and 3) a means to work towards a better world through a universal availability of ideas. I am on the Board of Directors of the Digital Publishing Association and am a US representative for "The Electronic Author", a biannual magazine put out by the UK Society of Authors, the trade-union for authors in the UK. 1.1 Why does ep mean choice? Quite simply because the phrase "electronic publishing" contains within it the word "electronic". This lets the computer industry into the game. This means that everything that applies in a general way to the personal computer software industry applies to the electronic publishing industry. This means: a) for the first time there is an alternative, proven method of distribution of multiple copies of the work of an author or editor (this is how the PC software industry makes its living). This is a biggie. b) The cost of making copies of said work is very low and, theoretically, infinite (this is how the PC software industry makes its big money). c) Improvements in technical aspects of production and display of the work will come extraordinarily rapidly (in 1982 the first IBM PC was introduced - it had two diskette drives, no hard drive and cost $5,000. Today, ten years on, there are tens of millions of PCs in use, all highly developed) driving down costs even further. I.e., electronic publishing will move at the speed of the PC industry, not the print publishing industry. d) The cost barrier to entry into the business is very, very low, low enough to be met by an individual. This is another biggie. In essence, any person who has a PC and a little software can write a book and distribute it to potentially millions of people (via electronic bulletin board systems or the Internet). Assume for a moment that it is something everyone wants to read and is so distributed. Millions of people read it. Before the advent of the personal computer this simply was not possible. These are the reasons that this is such a powerful thing, with number four the main reason. Number four changes pretty much everything in the long run. 2.0 Electronic publishing today I have tried, as far as I am able, to piece together the state of the industry today and not to wander into the future. 2.1 Production I believe that the easiest way to think of ep today is as a ladder. As one goes up the ladder, cost of production increases, but so does the gee-whiz factor. Therefore: 2.1.1 First-rung Disktop (not desktop) publishing. Publication of material on 3.5" and 5.25" inch disk for IBM and compatible PCs and Apple machines. Lots of different software available. One starts with plain ASCII text and then adds graphics. The advantage of this market is that there is a massive installed base of "players" i.e., personal computers - estimates range from 40-60 million machines. Mike Weiner, President of Microlytics thinks this is a sleeper market - the cost of goods is good for anything less than 20Mb of text/graphics. (On one 3.5 inch disk we can easily fit a 1000 page book - text only, no graphics). The disadvantage is that once graphics are introduced you simply run out of memory if you intend the electronic book to run from the diskette. If you are happy to have people download onto their hard-drive it's a different story. Knowledge Adventure published a $45 interactive encyclopedia for kids which sits on the hard drive and expected to sell 500 in three months. They sold 5,000 the first day. This then naturally leads you to the next rung: 2.1.2 Second-rung CD-ROM (or Read Only Memory). Can store the equivalent of 1800 regular 5.25 inch _diskettes_. Thus entire encyclopedias can fit on one CD (as indeed they do). Standards are coming together. A much smaller installed base, but growing all the time. But the massive storage of the CD-ROM allows for sound and video clips. Prices are also dropping - Compton NewMedia sells some CDs for $29.95. Portable devices. Use smaller CD-ROMs than regular sizes or credit card-size memory cards (e.g. Franklin) which can hold up to 45Mb of compressed data. The best example here is the new SONY DD-20B, to be released in the US on October 1 1993 with a suggested retail of $399, packaged with an encyclopedia and a translator. It plays 3" CDs which can hold up to 6 hours of audio, 100,000 pages of text or 32,00 graphics. Frequently it will combine written material with the sound - so the translator disc allows you to find frequently spoken phrases and then speaks them out loud to you, in three or four different languages. The device can be connected to a TV set. Clearly this is too expensive for everyone to have and the screen display is too small but SONY is ploughing on in the right direction. Xerox has just created a 600 dpi resolution screen and when this is combined with a slightly better designed SONY hand-held device at a lower price point - watch out. SONY has leap-frogged Franklin Electronics here. 2.1.3 Third-rung CD-I. Interactive CD that plays in its own player hooked to the TV. Other esoteric devices. 2.1.4 On-line delivery services The latest Steve King short-story was available only from the online Internet bookstore for two weeks prior to its publication in paper. Viking, his publisher, intended it as an advertising gimmick but it's dangerous for them. If Mr. King makes money from the online downloading service he has got to be thinking that maybe for some work he won't go through his publisher for at all - he'll just cut a deal with the online bookstore directly... 2.2 What kind of books are suitable now? 2.2.1 First-rung Disktop publishing on floppyback: Disktop publishing is ideally geared to the publication of the single book translated from a printed book. One book fits on one disk with its associated software. To use a CD-ROM for one text-only book is overkill. I think that these are the type of books we will see on disk right now: 1) Books that are commercially unviable any other way. The good thing about disktop publishing is that it is inexpensive to produce a quality product on disk. Once produced it never goes out of print. Production cost from a final manuscript is generally less than $1,000. Cost of reproduction is tiny (less than $1) and so break-even can be down at the 80 copies level. If you sell directly there is no warehousing cost - as orders come in you just pull another copy off the disk - and since it never goes out of print you can expand your horizon for those 80 copies to, well, theoretically forever, but let's say 10 years. So if you have a book that you think will sell 8 copies a year for ten years you now have a way of publishing it (and of course the breakeven may be even less). Big trade publishers may not want to do this, but I don't think this is the case for smaller presses and individuals. This category includes poetry which is why I got into this business in the first place. 2) Books that are out-of-print that you want to make available again (really a subset of 1.) 3) Books for which the new medium offers advantages - such as global searching or linking to existing systems (better help documents) etc. 4) Books which ARE commercially viable but for which the new format allows a better price-point. This is particularly true of scholarly works which have only a small audience, so have a small print run and go out-of-print quickly, so are expensive, so have only a small audience ad infinitum. 5) Books marketed by their authors. 6) Mainstream books after they come out in paperback. At this stage, therefore, the paperback best-seller will not appear on disk. The number of players (either personal computers or hand-held or CD-ROM) is not (yet) large enough to match the market. 2.2.2 Second-rung Because of its immense storage capacity, and the power of the personal computer to manipulate data, reference works which usually require some kind of search are a natural for CD-ROM. Now you can whip through the entire twenty-six volume encyclopedia and find all references to the word "mammal" in about 1 minute. So big reference works are good for this medium. As are how-to books where animation, sound and video clips are all useful. This is where multi-media got its name. Not just words, but sound and moving pictures. Multi-media projects are being put together which did not start out as books but were conceived as electronic products. All of this production cost is, however, still fairly expensive and the bigger the project the less easy it is for the average consumer to download material (because of the length of time.) 2.2.3 Third-rung We are now out of the realm of converting books into another medium and talking about projects which could be considered only electronically. You certainly could put text alone on these mediums but what's the point? 2.2.4 Online delivery services Currently I think all the types of book that are suitable for disks would fit here as does anything interactive: i.e., where it's not downloaded but just interacted with. 2.3 Who's buying this stuff...? In the main, libraries, schools and businesses are buying CD-ROM. E.g.,. Dartmouth College Library spent 2.5 times as much on CD-ROM as books last year. Home computer users are buying CD-ROM drives mainly for their kids. The Optical Publishing Association (OPA) says the average CD-ROM duplication order has grown from 460 copies in 1990 to over 20,000 today, although this last figure is anecdotal. Franklin has sold 6 million hand-held integrated devices. The Apple Newton (an indicator of how many SONY machines may sell) is rumoured to have sold upwards of 50,000 units. The OPA estimates 5 million CD-ROM drives will be sold in 1993. 26 million Americans have home computers (more than own audio CD players). 2.4 ...and why would I want to? Currently: 1) Because it's not available any other way. 2) Because you can do things with it that a book can't do for you. 3) Because it feels more natural - the current generation that is in K6 education (the IBM personal computer was introduced in 1982) and well-versed computer literates (many of those at college). 4) Because it's more convenient - less weight, less space. See also the note on the new SONY above in section 2.1.2. Obviously as time goes by the reasons will increase as resistance based on difficulty of use or cumbersomeness decline as the technology improves. 3.0 Why should print publishing inherit electronic publishing? I hope that by now you are able to see the answer - there is no overriding reason at all. Print publishing has the potential to inherit electronic publishing, but so does the PC software industry, and that industry is moving faster than a speeding bullet while the print publishing industry is sitting on its hands. What the print publishing industry has, which the PC software industry lacks, is content. Just like fossil fuels, the copyrights that the print publishing industry holds are, potentially, only a one-time resource. For example - Microsoft Publishing approaches Mr. S. King (or in fact his agent) and says "we would like you to do your next novel on CD- ROM. We will give you the best editors money can buy (and believe us we have lots of money), more money per copy so that your take will be larger than if you went into the printed word--even if the total sales are smaller. We will even coordinate the release of this work onto many other different platforms - Franklin, CD-I and so on. And you can include pictures and scary noises. And if you want to release it in hardcover in six months go ahead." What is Mr. King going to say? And what will he say in five years when the technology is even further advanced? And what will all the other authors have to say? (NB: I left this last paragraph in because I wanted to pat myself on the back. I wrote it in early 1993 way before anyone knew what Mr. King was going to do on the Internet. Call it my reward for this article. PFP. 9/19/93) Currently the print publishing industry has access to content and good editing/preparation skills and a distribution system. The giants have money, the others none. I predict that the current crop of electronic publishers will work with print publishers on licensing deals until they understand the acquisition of content and then that will be it. And let's not forget that an individual can release a work to millions of people for next to nothing. Print publishers MUST learn how to publish electronically - how to create the physical object and distribute it. Or they will eventually bear as much relationship to the publishing business as hand-letter presses do to the publishing world today. They have a slight advantage now (if they can hold onto it, and it is not at all clear that they can) and that is their intellectual property rights. They are essentially sitting on a fossil-fuel reserve of material and are preaching caution. I cannot understand why SONY or someone just doesn't buy a small publishing house, beef up the editorial staff, shut down the printing end and just get cracking at publishing its own material. I agree entirely with those who say that printed publishing will never entirely disappear - this point of view misses the point. Printed publishing will gradually become just a tiny piece of the publishing industry. 4.0 Where does this leave university presses? In a certain sense, I think, in a quandary. I think that one has to ask the question, What is the mission? If it is the dissemination of information to as many people as possible at the lowest possible cost then there are many books that you probably currently produce that you should consider immediately switching to the electronic format, because the break-even point is that much lower, they never go out of print - provided of course that the target audience all have access to PCs. This primarily includes text-only work. I am thinking here of books of research papers and so on. And as time goes by and the technology to store and display pictures improves everything would have to go over. And, in another sense, in a good position. Because in the new electronic age "brand-name" awareness is all important. Quality is indicated by the brand-name which has value all its own. When the only visible manifestation of a work is a disk (and all disks are basically alike) the brand-name on that disk is all important. And, perhaps, for those presses that embrace the technology, happy. One can now produce more than ever before for the same cost. 5.0 Resources: Floppyback Publishing International PO Box 2084 Hoboken NJ 07030 Voice: (201) 963 3012 9-5 EST Fax: (201) 420 8751 E-Mail: Compuserve 71702,154 Internet 71702.154@compuserve.com Digital Publishing Association R. Albright Director 1160 Huffman Road Birmingham Road AL 35215 Voice: 205 853 8269 Fax: 205 853 8478 BBS: 205 854 1660 E-Mail: Compuserve 75166,2473 MCI Mail RALBRIGHT GEnie R.Albright (the DPA has a roundtable here) Internet 75166.2473@compuserve.com 6.0 Knowledge Central - EP Fantasy #1. The following material is strictly late-night fantasy reading.... I have included it just as an example of what electronic publishing can accomplish. Of course, if anyone is interested in exploring this further, drop me a line. And, of course, remember that a fantasy is not hard-edged reality. All the non-fiction material that is currently produced in book form is wasted if it cannot be accessed by electronic systems and thus linked to anything else. There is too much information being produced in the world for an individual to absorb in a 70 year life span without electronic help. The absence of such electronic help is therefore holding up the future of the human race. We now have the power to change this. In an ideal world the government would: a) recognise that data highways are as important a public good as road-ways and make available free of charge data communication networks. b) require all publishers who want an ISBN number to deposit a copy of their work in ASCII in a central location, like the Library of Congress, where it would become the electronic basis for Knowledge Central. In this concept anyone could hook into Knowledge Central and do any kind of search they wanted. They would not, of course, be able to download the work they were searching. They could only look at it on the screen. At the heart of Knowledge Central is a giant search engine which would have the capacity to search everything. Everything then would be automatically linked. If you are in a book and you put your cursor on a word, then the system will display the first hundred closest things it can think of - starting with a definition and gradually moving outwards in circles from your original starting point. You should also be able to jump to the next hundred and so on. Start with non-fiction and use the Dewey system as the guidance point. I.e., move back up levels as time goes by. The key to Knowledge Central is that the links are not embedded in the texts, which would mean a lot of work, but are created by the software that resides in Knowledge Central. For example the cursor is placed under the word "castles". If requested the software will ask questions to deduce context and then run from there. No links are embedded in the text which uses the word "castles." What will be displayed will be book titles. I.e., the first 100 titles that mention the word you chose. Or if you chose a reference you will immediately jump to that. In the beginning the system will ask, if it is unsure, Is this a title? Later on it will know automatically and, later on, Knowledge Central will publish rules that publishers will have to adhere to if they wish the search software to find them (and why would they not, since this will be free publicity). This can start in 1993 if we so desire. We have all the ASCII text already since everything now comes back from the typesetters in that form. The timescale for adding other books can be as short or as long as people desire. Knowledge Central will be accessible via the Internet. The development of the software for the Knowledge Central would be a public project and the software thus created would be in the public domain. This will create ipso facto the standard. All information created in the creation of the software will be in the public domain and continuously updated as time goes by so everyone knows everything that is going on. In one year approximately 40,000 books come into print. Assume that each book has on average 500 pages and each page needs 2K. This is 40,000 x 500 x 2,000 characters i.e., 40,000,000,000 or 40Gb of data. This is nothing for today's computer systems. It's actually probably a lot more because of the graphics but who cares even if it's 100 times more? It's all do-able. The implications of KC are staggering, not merely in what it means, but in the fact that it is do-able.... We have Prodigy, we have the Internet, we have all of our books in digitized format. Consider this...Motorola is creating the Iridium project. With a hand-held communicator connected to KC over a 14,000 baud internal radio modem anyone anywhere in the world, from the hottest desert to the deepest jungle to the highest mountain, will be able to access and search the combined knowledge base of the entire American publishing industry and, later, the world. By implication this is the storehouse of all of mankind's knowledge. And it doesn't have to sit in one place. Other countries will want to join in. It will be easy to charge for downloads from KC, to charge for overseas access. As other countries do join in, research will start for on-the-fly translation so that foreign language editions will no longer be needed. If someone wants the complete text of a book then they will pay a fee and it will be delivered to them electronically. Browsing of KC will, however, be free, since it will be over government supplied roads. And the analogy with roads follows just as surely because there will be congestion - people will leave their systems on all day and so on. 6.1 How to Start Knowledge Central (in theory). 1. Obtain space on a system capable of holding the data. 2. Write the software that will compress and search the ASCII files. 3. Get publishers to deposit ASCII files into the computer by government fiat. 4. Get the government to pay for the data lines so that connect time is truly free. 5. Launch. 6.2 Why it is impractical to do this today. Because of many things, Virginia. 6.3 How to Start Knowledge Central (in practice). Use books that are in the public domain, or out-of-print and for which the authors have no objections. All other considerations apply. Get a pilot project started. Appeal for the development of the software. Solve the problem in increments, like the Japanese. 6.4 How it will be for our Grandchildren Knowledge Central will grow to include everything - sound recordings, moving pictures and text. To prevent abuse of the sound and moving pictures systems interactivity will be limited to x minutes duration. Maybe for certain consumer products this will be entered x years after release. 6.5 What to do now? 1. Alert the media and government. 2. Start to find computer industry types who might be interested - supplying equipment and software. 3. Start to find publishers of scholarly material (and scholars) who might be interested. 6.6 What to do with material that does not exist in digital format? In a few years scanners will be here that allow us to scan everything as cheaply as dirt and as accurate as reading. Until then we take the top twenty books which are classics in their field and appeal for donations from the public to put them into Knowledge Central. In fact, this is how we will support this. People will put books into Knowledge Central as dedications for their loved ones. 7.0 Where does hypertext fit in? In this note I have written about ep in the context of the current print publishing industry. In other words, I have taken the book and extrapolated its development, in a commercial sense, into electronic media. The following paragraphs are how I currently think about hypertext and its commercial acceptance. I think the word "hypertext" has been debased. It seems to me that in the general run of things, a piece of work is now defined as hypertext when in fact (in many cases) it is a linear piece of work onto which the ability to jump from certain points to certain other points has been grafted (this is not inherently bad). This seems to me a partial implementation of hypertext in the strictest sense of the word, but if this is what the word currently means then an alternative definition is now needed. If the current definition of hypertext really means "partial net" I define a full-fledged hypertext (ffh) as a complete net. As such it cannot, by definition, be printed (put into the linear form of sequential pages) without losing its structure. There are of course lesser or greater degrees of implementation of hypertext, but I think this definition of ffh will serve. When I refer to linear- text-with-jumping-ability I will refer to partial net hypertext (pnh). Thus I currently define the implementation of hypertext in two ways: pnh for a partial implementation and ffh for a complete implementation. As publishing mechanisms exist today, ffh is ideally suited to short-entry reference works, which are nets themselves. The ultimate ffh is the humble dictionary. Other non-fiction may be suited to ffh, or some lesser degree of implementation of hypertext, i.e., pnh. The problem with current fiction is that time is an element. And time, obviously, as understood by most people who buy books today, is linear and goes only one-way (forward). Ffh does not, therefore, have a fit, although pnh may. I do not think, therefore, that the translation of current fiction into ffh is going to work. Peoples' ideas of what constitutes fiction will have to change first and I confess that I don't have a paradigm for that because, although I can think of a number of obvious advantages that hypertext gives to fiction, I cannot think of a way of getting round the always onward linear track that time requires; and so I don't see how one can implement ffh into fiction (because with a net there is no "forward" or "backward") (unless one disregards time altogether). I am not talking about pnh here. Thus I place hypertext into ep in the following way: Ffh (or the net style of organization) is a tool that can only be fully realized within ep. Current work will be electronically published with a lesser or greater degree of implementation of hypertext as fits. Ep, however, can very easily stand alone from hypertext, i.e., there are many reasons why one would want to use ep without including hypertext. Brand new non-fiction works written specifically for the electronic media will ALL include elements of hypertext, i.e., use pnh. For some, ffh will be the right way to go. Brand new fiction works written for ep may or may not include elements of hypertext. In my opinion, with an understanding that current commercially successful fiction includes a time-line, ffh faces major difficulties if it tries to be the organizational model of choice for current mainstream fiction writers. Pnh offers certain advantages to the fiction writer (adds more arrows to the author's quiver as it were) but it is not a replacement for the current organizational model which is, in essence, a one-way progression forward along a time line. Pnh obviously offers more advantages to non-fiction writers and the closer their work gets to encyclopedia-like entries the closer pnh becomes ffh. --------------------------------- Copyright Paul F. Peacock 1993 This work may be reproduced in any medium subject only to the condition it is reproduced in its entirety EXACTLY as written. **************************************** LETTERS TO THE EDITOR from Doug Blazek "Amazing how we can swim underwater or walk in thick dark air for years then suddenly emerge, change species almost, but still sign our names to our letters! ...if I had a choice between poetry magnetized before my eyes by molecular power boost or not have poetry at all, then I wish you well. Key it in kaptain!" from Carol Berge "Your letter was damn near miraculous--of course I remember GRIST." from Jerome Rothenberg "Of course I remember GRIST and Lawrence, Kansas and the 1960s--tho maybe not exactly in that order. I'm glad, anyway, to see you doing what you're doing...." from David Ignatow "Good luck with a very promising reawakening. It will benefit us all." from Ron Silliman "Of course I remember GRIST. In fact, wasn't #9 (the issue in which that [my] work appeared) the issue that was busted in San Francisco's Psychedelic Shoppe in the raid that eventually led to the prosecution of Lenore Kandel's LOVE BOOK? (I remember the Malanga centerfold, tho I may have the # wrong). GRIST was one of the very first magazines to support my writing...and it's good to hear of its resurrection."