Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Emily Hunt

I was just reading Emily Hunt re-Hummamenting of Tom Phillips's "Hummament" on Action, Yes. It's really fantastic.

Here's the beginning:

Um Um the following book
is a um um
my my
feminine
attempt to poke poke fiction.

I also wanted to call attention to Bruno K Oijer's poems from 1976 and the essay that explains some of his controversialness. Oijer is a hugely important figure in Swedish culture - not so much high culture as popular culture - a kind of Surrealist pop culture icon. His books are bestsellers and his reading tours are like pop music tours. The essay suggests an interesting moment in avant-garde studies: BKO assumed an avant-garde stance and was attacked by another kind of avant-gardists (who at that time was in control of high culture in Sweden): BKO's surreal/Mayakovsky/Beat - influenced poetry vs a collectivist/Marxist/"Sipmlicity". His poetry is deeply visceral and metaphor-proliferating; theirs boring and "factual", distrustful of poetic techniques. He was accused of irresponsibility and Americanism. Allen Ginsberg wrote a poem to him that I'll post if I find it.

Also, Bruno made these translations himself, before going to Nepal (he's become kind of mystical in the latter stages of his career).

2 Comments:

Blogger Verse said...

This is great. And strange timing, since I'm teaching A Humument this week in an art/c.w. class (a class, oddly, designed with students like Emily Hunt in mind).

10:37 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes, fantastic work! Splendid concept.

8:25 PM  

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