German expressionist self portraits in poetry

As part of the exhibition "Reclaiming a Lost Generation. German Self-Portraits from the Feldberg Collection 1923-1933", Boston College German Studies professor Dr. Rachel Freudenburg delivers this reading of German Expressionist poetry, together with her students, and offers insights into its symbolic imagery.
The reading is introduced by Nancy Netzer (director of the Macmullan Museum at Boston College). Video from WGBH Forum Network.

Dr. Rachel Freudenberg and students, Boston College · German Expressionist poetry reading

poètes maudits 1: Lautréamont's "Maldoror"

Isidore Lucien Ducasse (1846 - 1870) wurde von den Surrealisten als Vorläufer reklamiert, und als einen der Ihren nachträglich vereinnahmt.

Die deutsche Übertragung der "Gesänge des Maldoror" (von Wolfgang Schmidt, erschienen 1986) kann unter folgendem Link eingesehen werden. Ebenfalls der Essay von Wolfgang Koeppen "Der Grossvater des Surrealismus":

Uni-Greifswald · Chants du Maldoror

Sound Voyages (Discography)

George during rehearsal for the Zeil 5 concert, Frankfurt-Main, in 2000 (Photo © Ralph Lichtensteiger, 2000).
Check out some of my collaborations with Ralph Lichtensteiger on CD, as well as Ralph's ever-expanding body of work - all available from musique trouvé, via mailorder at his website:

musique trouvé · CDs via mailorder

Some of the CD projects I have collaborated on are:

Triadic (2007)
The Beauty of Found Music (2007)
A Taste for the Secret (2001, released 2007)
Uglybeautycage / Dialogue with John Cage, Part 1 (2000/2001)
Uglybeautycage / Dialogue with John Cage, Part 2 (2000/2001)
Impossible Improvisations (2003)
Beginnings, Part 1 (2004)
101 Questions and Answers re John Cage (2 CDs) (2001)
Zeil 5 Concert (Live, 2000)
From Here to Emptiness & Other Compositions (2001)
Funeral Orchestra & Other Duos (2001/2002)
Louis Mink Duos (2001)
Study Pieces (2001/2002)
Unknown Centers (2002)

Study No.5 [01:02] [excerpt] :: Study Pieces (2001/2002) | By George Koehler and Ralph Lichtensteiger © 2008 by musique trouvé


Study No.4 [02:55] [excerpt] :: Study Pieces (2001/2002) | By George Koehler and Ralph Lichtensteiger © 2008 by musique trouvé


You can order these CDs via mailorder at Ralph Lichtensteiger's musique trouvé site

A Writer's Journal (3)

A KIND OF DAYDREAMING

"It annoys me, as it might any novelist, to have my own work reduced to autobiography, as though you've just written down what happened.

Often writing isn't always a reflection of experience so much as a substitute for it, an 'instead of' rather than a 'reliving', a kind of daydreaming. The relation between a life and the telling of it is impossible to unravel."

From: Hanif Kureishi - My Ear at His Heart. Reading My Father (originally published 2004, Faber & Faber, paperback edition 2005, page 11.)

Choose Something Worthwhile

Here's a poem (more a series of aphorisms, really) that is from a collection of mine called INSTRUCTION SONGS, I still think the advice offered is valid, and I suppose one could say this is a part of my artistic credo.

CHOOSE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE (Instruction Song #9)

If in doubt, choose teachings of voyagers, that are neither patriots,
nor servants of any idea or idea of community.

Choose something worthwhile that resonates with the agendas of discoverers,
forever propelling you into the unknown.

Always be suspicious of communities of any kind, especially religious communities,
for it is there that personality rackets are hatched, seductively draped around nothing.

Words are thought dust, clouding tongues and clogging up minds,
they are a fog, shrouding souls in cloaks of wishes.

Neither male nor female, human nor non-human, servant nor lord, pupil nor teacher –
nothing should you be, but a curious mind.

I am nothing but a wandering mind.

© George H.E. Koehler, 1999

Link:
lichtensteiger.de: Choose something worthwhile

Compulsive readers make compulsive writers

Here's a pithy excerpt from a Stephen King lecture to students at Yale on 21.04.2003, as found on You Tube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqp7A0B7abc



Read a lot, write a lot, agreed - you have to know your masters and practice, practice, practice till your blood runs out your fingers and out of your ears, no way of getting past that...

Prisoner of Life

The next poem is from a collection of my poems called "October Meditations":

PRISONER OF LIFE (Morning Meditation I)

The broken cobwebs in the staircase
I pass underneath each day
Float above me into empty months
Stretching into nothingness

Trying to shake echoes to life
Dry leaves blow from my avocado trees

My cut toenails
On the bathroom tiles
Lie like the cold shells
Of crickets from yesteryear

Like dead insects crushed
Between the pages
Of my notebooks, damned to become
Part of an unrequited museum of the future

Trying to shake echoes to life
All clocks have stopped

Fallen blossoms scatter in the backyard,
Crumbs lie beside my bed --
Lingering echoes
Of songs yet to be sung

The skylight in the stairwell
Cuts a slice of sky into the roof
I walk up the stairs and I walk down
I come and I go

But I come no nearer each day
To cutting some sky into my roof

In our lives, this patch of blue
We prisoners know
As sky, becomes the strongest pull
Of all our days

Days go by
In a blur --
Jungle rivers cutting their way
Toward their seas

© George H.E. Koehler 2001, 2008

My Ship Of Death Has Set Its Sails (Four Senryus)

I.
A waking up that
You can’t reverse , ending in
A dream of waking

II.
A further hymn of
Death and dying, where my ghosts
Turn to flesh and blood

III.
In windows opened
By countless books, dead poets
Wait expectantly

IV.
Now the dead have come,
Looking to me, a cripple,
For their completion

© George H.E. Koehler, ca. 2000

Instruction Piece No. 3

INSTRUCTION PIECE #3

1.
Repetition is -- allegedly -- the mother of wisdom.

2.
Are you busy being born? No?
Then you are busy dying.
To be born again and again
step forward from where you stand.

3.
Sometimes only ruthlessness reaches truth,
you insufferable dreamers.

4.
Always go too far -- truth is always beyond: beyond words, beyond gestures.

5.
Never be afraid to go too far, to transgress human nature and its myriad duplicities.

6.
The damaged receive.

7.
(Well, all candour can eventually make us sorry.)


© George H. E. Koehler, 2001

Negotiating With The Dead

The following poem is from my "October Meditations" collection:


NEGOTIATING WITH THE DEAD

As the morning light approaches,
Once more, my bedroom is peopled with ghosts
In discourse with the birds outside

Nights and days are pillowed
On my never ending stream of desire --
A maze of lingering echoes:

Anniversaries are fallen blossoms
Strewn upon the ground,
Sticking to the soles of my feet --

Tendrils of memories
Reliving the last of their lives, but
Another negotiation to turn my weak blood into wine

© George H. E. Koehler, 2001 and 2005

Creating Metafiction (1)

Are you looking at a blank page, and despairing of ever getting some words down today?
Below are just some of my many methods, which anyone can apply, in order to nudge one's poetic imagination into higher gear.
Try them out! If they help to overcome writer's block, they have served their purpose well. Even if you may only get one sentence that appeals to you out of it, for all your trouble, it'll at least start you off. And it's fun!
Applied systematically, however, these methods can lead to a more ego-freed writing that, I guarantee, will surprise you with its uncanny results.

Instalments with further methods will follow in this blog.


OPERATING WITH CHANCE (Part I)
[Version: 15.09.1993]

Question: What is the highest art?
Answer: Making the most of the raw materials of futility.


METHOD 1
1. Make lists, lists and more lists.
2. Use all devices deemed useful or necessary.
3. Use lists as prompts during improvised storytelling (tape these sessions via dicataphone, etc. or whatever)
4. Type, or rehash via typewriter or PC, etc. (= neat copy)


METHOD 2
1. Cut up all lists with scissors.
2. Jumble with cut ups of all material deemed interesting/useful and once gathered as such.
3. Place onto paper via chance operation and affix with tape. An elegant and convenient variation of steps 2 and 3 may involve the following: copy the gathered material onto one-sidedly gummed transparent folios. Cut up, peel off the back and affix cut up fragments to paper as one would a label.
4. Copy (copy machine) = 1st rough copy.
5. Delete according to chance or taste or method = 2nd rough copy. (Can be a method related to the prose content, e.g. texts from 3 authors are used, therefore every third word could be deleted, etc. or in similiar manner. Try different methods starting off with the same material to compare results obtained, and examine for the most compelling result.)
6. Re-type results / re-hash (in whichever manner developed or deemed opportune/necessary) = neat copy.


METHOD 3
Develop result of Method 1 or 2 further, by intermingling the result with other results of these or further methods.


EXAMPLES
1) for Method 1, point 1: see the text "I Like"
2) for Method 1, points 3 and 4: see my text "I Confess"
3) for Method 1 point 4: see my text "True Confessions"
4) for Method 2, point 6: see original copy of a cut-up-mesostic of mine
5) for Method 3: see my text "I Confess (Confession IV)"


VARIATIONS
Layout of cut-up/mesostic product as
1) Spiral mesostic, or
2) Carpet mesostic (See examples in: "Cageware. The Revolution of Life and Language", NeXTart, Berlin, Frankfurt/Main, New York 1993).

(c) George H. E. Koehler, 1993

Memento

Here's some more stuff from my Archives of Oblivion, this poem is from my collection called October Meditations:

MEMENTO

A mist of rain
Hides the Autumn moon
Like a stream of promises
Obscuring true desires

I sit in an empty bed
Cloaked in the sound of steady dripping

I close my unread book,
Switch off the lamp
And turn to sleep alone

In the middle of the night
I get up and sniff
The breezy sleeve
Of the Spring shirt
I wore as I once walked with her

Hoping to steal some fragrance
To soothe the Autumn thoughts
That press in my chest
Till all hours of the mornings
Until the sky grows light again

Only her promises remain
To stretch the empty bed months even longer
As spiders weave their webs
Above my head

© George H. E. Koehler, 2001

The Best Answer Is Without Sound

Here's a poem of mine which owes its inspiration, in part, to the writing experiments of the artist Brion Gysin. Another poem culled from my archives of oblivion... I'm combing through my disaster areas and finding all sorts of surprises... This one's called

PERMUTATION POEM Nr. 30

"Life has to kick you in the face
before you have a story on your
instrument."

- David Murray (1995 interview)


The best answer is without sound
Best answer without sound is the
Answer without sound the best is
Without answer the best is sound
The best sound is without answer
Sound without answer is the best
The sound is best without answer
Answer best without sound is the
Best the answer without sound is
Is without sound the best answer
Best the answer is without sound
Sound the answer is best without
Best sound is the without answer
Best sound is the answer without
Best sound answer the without is
Sound the answer best is without
Best the answer is sound without
Without sound is the best answer


© George H. E. Koehler, 1997

A Writer's Journal (2)

The struggle of writing -
Listen to novelist/journalist Calvin Trillin's views on writing, structure and on fighting for the sentences:

Curiousity Shapes The World

Check out the BigThink site, which was co-founded by Victoria Brown and Peter Hopkin (www.bigthink.com). The above video, featuring journalist and writer Calvin Trillin, can be found on this site.
This is a worldwide collaborative project, creating a growing pool of opinions anyone can tap into and respond to, and become a part of.

"We may not have all the answers, but we all seem to have the questions..." (from the "What is Big Think" feature video).
What do you have to say? What do you think?
Put forth your ideas, make your statements, air your questions.

"We're all dripping with opinion." (Cynthia McFadden, from the feature video).

Collaborations, List of

Selected Collaborations/Projects with Ralph Lichtensteiger (Music, Music-Theatre, Prose, Poetry):

60 Pages for voice and piano (1989);
Cageware - The Revolution of Life and Language Vol. 1 (a study on John Cage’s relationship with language and literature) (1990);
I LIKE (1991);
Eine Woche mit Hegel (huge fragmentary torso) (1999);
Duos No. 1-45 (1999);
Charles Ives Songs (1999) · info on Ch. Ives;
Arbeit am Mythos (body of work) (1999);
Human Apparatus (for William S. Burroughs) (1999);
Zeil 5 live-concert in Frankfurt (2000);
Funeral Orchestra & Other Duos (2000);
101 Questions and Answers re John Cage (2001);
Louis Mink Duos (2001);
1 to 16 (2nd version) for three voices, amplified violin, electronics and percussion;
1 to 23 (2nd version) for voices, amplified violin and two CD-player (2001);
Three pieces for Toru Takemitsu (2002);
Do You Think Cage I, II and III (2002);
From here to emptiness (2002);
1-440 for speaker, piano and percussion (2002) [pdf];
Thoreau kills Buddha (emptiness that surrounds) (2002);
A Taste for the Secret (2002));
A Crown of Feathers (for Pierre Boulez) (2002);
Unknown Centers (2002);
Uglybeautycage - Dialogue with John Cage (2002-2005).

Listen to me reciting "Ugly Beauty Is" (orig. text ca. 1997, new text version 2001), taken from the Ugly Beauty Cage project (UBC), a "dialogue with John Cage":


Check out Ralph's site under: www.lichtensteiger.de

Work In Progress

Work In progress:

A Novel (as yet untitled);
Treading The Dawn. or: How I Became What I Already Was (new cycle of poems);
Renovating Utopia (anthology);
Speaker's Corner (website under construction);
Musings from an amputated head (website under construction).


Future projects:

libretti for operas and musicals.

Notes By The Way (1)

In regard to my experiments in music, I prefer describing myself as an acoustic investigator or sound emitter wandering through gardens of discoveries and memories, rather than using the term musician.

My preferred manner of creating music is to compose (or improvise or react) out of the moment, akin to a stream-of-consciousness technique as used in writing, except in making music I can take part in creative processes resulting out of direct interaction.

Much as my writing can also be called a painting with words, so can my music, for it is a painting with textures of all sounds.

A Writer's Journal (1)

My writing is located somewhere between the stringent formal constraints I place upon myself, demanding a high measure of diligence and accuracy in the scouring out of maximum expression within minimal forms on the one hand, and those stream-of consciousness methods and modes born out of mood and moment on the other hand.

All formal constraints sometimes yield remarkable results when paired with a certain mischeviousness...

Bibliography (1)

Selected works from George's archives of oblivion:

- 20x2x20: Sermons Wading Through Effluvia (2000-2003)
- Agony Garden Songs (1999-2001)
- Creating Metafiction (1998-2003)
- Das Akrostichon. Essay (1990)
- Forgotten Songs (2000-2001)
- Funeral Orchestra (2000-2001)
- Glimpses into the Gardens of Eden and Gethsemane (1981)
- Haiku Forest (1975-2008, WORK IN PROGRESS)
- Hipshots From The Floating World (2007-2008, WORK IN PROGRESS)
- Instruction Songs (2002-2004)
- Life a.k.a. Metafiction: 44 Senryus & Haikus (2004)
- New Songs for Skinned People (1998-2004)
- Notes on John Cage (1989. 1990. 1994)
- October Meditations (2003-2004)
- Paradise Research Songs (1999-2001)
- Poems You See Before You Die: 100 Haikus, 8 Tankas, 108 Haigas (2008, WORK IN PROGRESS; All poems illustrated by Ray Rubeque)
- Senryu Road (1975-2008, WORK IN PROGRESS)
- Skinned Songs (1993-2003)
- Tanka Road (1975-2008, WORK IN PROGRESS)
- The True Confessions Radio Show (1996)
- Treading the Dawn (2006-2008, WORK IN PROGRESS)
- True Confessions for speaker and ambient guitars (1997)
- Undressed Ideals (2003-2004)