Geof Huth's Blog, page 45

Trapped in English, I Give Way to Glossolalia

Archival Order Song from Geof Huth on Vimeo.

On 9 December 2010, Geof Huth sings a wordless song from the location of a posted list of quotations to a southern-facing window of the third floor of his house in Schenectady, New York, while he remembers another song he sang there over the summer of the same year, and during the singing of the song he considers a book entitled "Toisaalta" by his friend Karri Kokko.

Somehow, I thought to myself, I must be able to recognize the accomplishments of my friend, the poet Karri Kokko, even given the extent to which I cannot fathom his accomplishments because they are so much creations in his cherished Finnish language, maybe the perfect language for the punner who is Karri.

Blind to the beauty of the sound of Finnish, I gave myself over to the sounds of my voice, like nonsense, but deeper in the sense that all meaning is not semantic. And with this song and these pictures, set in the process of my organizing myself to give those extractable pieces of myself away, I sing a song for Karri, the author of Toisaalta, the published version of which is grace (if that is the right word in this case), by an asemic poem of mine, so that Karri and I will always be together somewhere.

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A Song for Jonathan Jones

Tea Steeping Song from Geof Huth on Vimeo.

As Geof Huth carefully steeps a cup of Harney & Sons Ceylong Vintage Silver Tips white tea, he sings a quiet and wordless song for the benefit of Jonathan Jones.

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Three Shirts, Three Poets, Three Points (enhuthiasm, armantrout, sillimander)

Tonight, Joseph Thomas told me that one of his students, one lucky enough to have to study mIEKAL aND's and my book textistence, has extended the idea of pwoermds into an entrepreneurial realm, by opening an online shop to sell them on clothing. (Note that the real cost is for the clothing. The pwoermds are either free or reduce the overall cost of the clothing.)

The clothing comes in styles for men, women, and chidren, along with a selection of accessories and gifts. I might actually need an "enhuthiast" mug sometime, even at these inflated prices. (And this begs the question whether the price for all poetry is inflated.)

The creator of the site (a student, remember, of twenty-first century literature) created pwoermds for three poets: Ron Silliman, Rae Armantrout, and me (but not mIEKAL, maybe because he'd already pwoermded his own name, Michael Anderson, out of existence), so I am in rarefied company. (Looking at these objects, I realize that the book is not the place for pwoermds. Affixed onto objects in the world are where pwoermds should be.)

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Boxing Papers and the Brothers Stribling

Today, I finished organizing my last four years of correspondence, which I had allowed to tumble into a jumble of papers without any connection to order. I was a little surprised that I squeezed, though just barely, these files into six cubic-foot boxes, but I have to admit that most of my correspondence now is electronic, and much of my electronic correspondence isn't really correspondence anymore. The world has changed as it inexorably does, so when I donate more of my papers to the University at Albany this month more of it will be electronic than it was in the past. I will be donated huge quantities of digital audio, video, and possible photographs. I work significantly, though not entirely, as a digital artist, even if paper is the eventual form of some of what I create–so it is not surprising that I have less paper than I would back in the 1980s.

But there is still paper. I'm estimating it will be about twenty-five boxes when I'm done assembling it, with about seven or eight of those being publications, not so much those I've written, but chapbooks, small books, leaflets, cards, and magazines of poetry of all types. And I'll be retaining about a cubic foot of material I just haven't read yet. Paper still is meaningful as a medium for art and a medium for reading, so there's plenty of it in my papers.

And among the favorites of my paper records are those correspondence files. The personal letter is rare nowadays, but mailart is still quite common in my life, and I have boxes of people's work in this real. Among my favorite mailart are the activities of the brothers Stribling, Dees (a friend from college) and his brother Jay (whom I've never met). They send me postcards and sometimes other correspondence that is interesting conceptual mailart (a form that has virtually died out in favor of visual art alone), though the brothers don't see the art in what they do.

They think they're only playing, and they're playing quite avidly, adding up to about three quarters of a box of mail among the two of them, making them my two most frequent correspondents. I'm glad my records will be preserved just so these two brothers' work will be seen and appreciated in the future.

Because the only reason to save something is to use it.

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Looking Back to Look Forward

Dan Monroe, "Geoffrey II" (11 January 1984)This morning, a friend from college, from my days at Vanderbilt, Dan Monroe, sent me a spooky photograph of a poem he wrote, along with the following note:

was looking back through old writings (not that old... if you think geologically)... found a piece I had written after Vandy... for some reason, you had been in my head.

When I returned from work, I wrote Dan a short note, amazed at what he'd sent me today:

Dan, what a strange things to receive. Do you mind if I reproduce it elsewhere? The first strophe I particularly like, but it's weird to see such a thing especially after so long. Thanks for sending it and making me exist a little longer somewhere else than inside my head. Why "Geoffrey II"? Was there a "I"? Or was Chaucer no. 1?

And Dan responded fairly quickly:

Found Geoffrey I. You know... it's been so long, it's hard to tell what was in my head. You were partly an enigma to me... somebody I looked up to for a weird melange of reasons. I didn't understand YOU, but I understood your passion for words. I think the metaphor of being in Geoffrey's garden was about being in this place where words are harvested, but where they are also cut apart. I also associated the notion of poetic storytelling with Chaucer. The two were fused in the same place for a while.

Geoffry I is much less literal...more the capturing of a place... a time. But it reaches back to a place where you were still very much in my head.

Somebody reached back to me through here (facebook) the other day - somebody I'd not spoken with since high school. She had given me what was called a Nothing Book (a bound book with blank pages back before they were ubiquitous - it was 1977) I have put bits in it over the years. Randomly. Geoffrey I and II were both in there. I woke up in the middle of the night the other night and remembered she had given it to me... could see the inscription on the inside front cover just as clear as day. I dug it up from the dust of forgotten books and thumbed through it.

We all exist in our heads... but it's good to know we exist in somebody else's as well. 

Geoffrey I

Spent the morning in Geoffrey's garden:
images cut and printed,
pruned shoots, artichokes,
bulbs and withered blooms…
he created that which he loved most –
microcosm of life and death.

Kids, we used to say:
"Mother was Chinese"
(turning up eye corners)
"Father was Japanese"
(turning down eye corners)
"and I was a mixed up baby."

In an old LIFE magazine
a war baby lies mutilated
in a ditch, like vegetable
cast aside on way to market –
like kohlrabi, turnip,
withered rose…

I imagine you, belly swollen
with child -– miserable in bliss,
dying just that little bit
to give birth.

I bed beside you,
you smell still passionate,
still fearful in your eyes
of some small death.

To wake in Geoffrey's garden
next to you, is a glance
into the suns of that past
that we can grow to seed.

I like this little surprise of the day, the way it reverberates with my sense that we are more viably memories than we are humans, that we are more persistently records we leave behind than we are bodies that move through space, that way it reminds me of the past I once have, and the way it shows the surprise of the record, how finding something so old we may have already forgotten that it reminds us that we are such poor reliquaries of our own selves. Thanks to Dan for these potent reminders, which I received at the end of these many tiring months just past, which have been the months of my life when I've needed this most.

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amethyrst

eauoiseau

fathearth

wrongowrongo

The Remains of the Day

Geof Huth, "Qaracter" (7 November 2010)
Today, I went to New York City to take part in the first session of a little visual poetry workshop organized by Ari Kalinowski. The visual poet Nico Vassilakis was in town, so he and I and my family had a nice brunch while we created a few collaborative visual poems, all but one of which I accidentally erased. Rather than show the one remaining visual poem Nico and I did together, I'm presenting today a couple of my favorites of the ones I did alone. Tomorrow, maybe, I'll memorialize a little of the visual poetry workshop, but for now sleep seems the better part of valor. We walked from Penn Station to Dumbo today, not a terribly long walk, but not short either.

Geof Huth, "Aging" (7 November 2010)ecr. l'inf.