Life keeps hurtling forward, bursting forth. It’s spring in California, the jasmine’s come in and the streaky roses. It’s been raining hard all morning; just now it stopped abruptly. Lyn writes in My Life, “she observed that detail minutely, as if it were botanical. As if words could unite an ardent intellect with the external material world.” This is Lyn, vitally observing, drawing it all into relation, the mind and the world, botanical, passionate. Making words hold life, making words as life. “Such that art is inseparable from the search for reality,” she writes.
You can be a cruel word: On Fred Wah’s 'All Americans'
The frontispiece of the housepress edition (2002; 125 copies) of Fred Wah’s poem-series All Americans is a reproduction of a commemorative plate produced by the Standard Brewing Company. The illustrated souvenir dish, of the sort common in its time, has been photographed upright on a wooden stand. In consultation with housepress founder, editor, and publisher Derek Beaulieu, Wah chose to open his book by featuring the lithograph reprinted and colorized on this plate. The drawing itself was apparently made in 1863 — presumably the artist had been a witness not long after the execution by hanging of 38 eastern Dakota people at Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862. These death sentences, rendered hastily and prejudicially by a military court in reaction to the uprising of the eastern Dakota that had commenced in August — sentences then affirmed by Abraham Lincoln in the White House — were carried out in the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history.
The essay was commissioned by Derek Beaulieu as he prepared to celebrate 25 years of No Press and housepress. I have now received a copy of a book, entitled Paper and Thread, edited by Derek, which includes my essay about Fred Wah along with contributions by Kyle Schlesinger, Charles Bernstein, Sacha Archer, Nasser Hussain, Richard Harrison, Kit Dobson, Gregory Betts, Gary Barwin, George Bowering, Johanna Drucker, Nick Montfort, bill bissett and a number of others. The book can be purchased here. I have made a PDF version of the published essay, and a copy of the essay follows as well:
The frontispiece of the housepress edition (2002; 125 copies) of Fred Wah’s poem-series All Americans is a reproduction of a commemorative plate produced by the Standard Brewing Company. The illustrated souvenir dish, of the sort common in its time, has been photographed upright on a wooden stand. In consultation with housepress founder, editor, and publisher Derek Beaulieu, Wah chose to open his book by featuring the lithograph reprinted and colorized on this plate. The drawing itself was apparently made in 1863 — presumably the artist had been a witness not long after the execution by hanging of 38 eastern Dakota people at Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862. These death sentences, rendered hastily and prejudicially by a military court in reaction to the uprising of the eastern Dakota that had commenced in August — sentences then affirmed by Abraham Lincoln in the White House — were carried out in the largest single-day mass execution in U.S. history.