What should I
do?
Have I exposed
myself yet?
Is revelation
on this morning’s programme?
Am I in the
right register?
Aren’t we all
registrants?
Are we defined
by separations?
Our attributes
are what?
How much of
what we are is about erasure?
Is one inside
or outside?
Are you as
preoccupied with shadows as I am?
Is the
philosophical expression quote always already end quote meaningful for you?
Do you locate
yourself at a certain position on the sexual continuum?
How about on
religious and/or philosophical continua?
Location,
location, location?
Do you ever
think about your life as a series of newly encountered,
maybe often
re-encountered crossroads
(or
roadblocks)?
If you had to
signify what is singular about yourself with a list of keywords,
what shape
would that list take?
How big or
small would your list be?
Does, he asks,
size matter?
How would you
express your sense of the relationship(s) between word and world?
Does the word
“dialectic” resonate with you?
Does your
intelligence skew in an unusual direction?
Do you have
strong feelings about “individualism,” “capitalism,” “dissent?”
What would you
do for yourself
that you
wouldn’t do for anyone else?
What might you
do for another which you couldn’t or wouldn’t do for yourself?
Why am I I and you you?
Have you ever
really thought about time and discontinuity?
What does
surrendering mean to/for you?
Do you see
food in political terms?
What are your
political boundaries?
What are your
textual/linguistic/cognitive boundaries?
How does
staring at something work on you and/or the object being attended to?
If I stand
before you, afraid, and speak…what the hell should I say?
And why should
anyone listen?
Confidence is
lord and master of the dance, no?
Writing: what
is it?
And isn’t
speech something different?
Do you see
what I am doing?
Do you see
what I am saying?
Do you hear
me?
Do you want
to?
Or do you only
want to be heard and/or seen?
Is life
precious?
Is anyone here
prescient?
Could there be
something I want to tell you?
What can be
assumed?
What can’t be
questioned?
What am I
willing to answer for?
Who would I
willingly answer to?
Who wants to
stand up and tell us a secret?
To what degree
is the way you
speak,
the ways in
which you assemble your thoughts,
a consequence
of desire?
Is all poetry
amorous?
Who do you
love?
Is timing
everything?
Where was I when?
Is
consciousness mappable?
Did I already
ask that?
Have you given
much thought to repetition?
In how many
different ways can one be said to repeat oneself?
How do you
feel
about this
continuous dystopian present
that is
happening NOW
all at once?
Do you believe
in hierarchies of experience?
Is hegemony a
word you’ve ever said out loud?
What troubles
your sleep?
Do you ever
want to be overwhelmed?
Are you
preoccupied with somehow controlling your experiences?
How important
are the choices one makes?
Art and
attention: could we think a bit about that?
Just how
important are boundaries?
How often have
you thought about what it means to blur something,
for what it
means for something/someone to be
blurred?
Who doesn’t
love the work of Nick Piombino?
What does it
mean to name names in a poem?
How much TV do
you watch?
What
constitutes enough of anything?
When one
speaks is one projecting anything more than one’s voice?
Could a voice
be said to be something akin to a shadow’s cousin?
If one adds
letters to a word or takes some out, is that a poem?
Are declared
intentions sufficient (in art or in any human exchange)?
Do you trust
what I am attempting here?
What do you
want from a poem?
Where did/does
poetry begin for you?
Is writing a
form of substance abuse?
Where are we
now in this moment?
Are we
together here?
Are you with
me, Columbus?
Isn’t this a
talk?
What’s your
favorite musical instrument?
What’s your
favorite sex act?
How do you
feel about lists and collage as forms of artistic practice?
Should I
disrobe now?
Do you, by the
way, like my t-shirt?
Would you
blank me if I asked politely?
Why is it that
right wing ideologues are such mean-spirited bastards?
Is chicken
your favorite protein?
How come I am
so often confused by my feelings?
Why is it that
I think in terms of binaries?
Are you going
to offer to explain me to myself now?
How can the
frames of a cartoon be related to the experience of life?
Why would
anyone invite me to speak anywhere?
David Baptiste
Chirot, when you rub your art into life, what do you feel?
Is evidence a
word you’ve ever used in a poem?
What about
vocabulary?
Why are words
weirdly wired into one?
Why don’t I
have rhythm?
Would you step
back a little?
Would you give
me some space?
How do you see
yourself extending in time now?
Is your
extension, in any way, a matter of anxiety?
What do you
wish might be different?
How might your
hopes, desires, be categorized?
Why am I
reluctant to take off my clothes and stand before you?
Does anyone
here want me to do something in particular?
Does being the
speaker right before the break for lunch
carry with it
any special responsibilities?
Am I an
asshole?
Can we be
friends?
Do you prefer
white or red?
Soccer or
football?
Is sucking a
situational term?
Are you overly
invested in certain speech acts?
Who wants what
and why?
Frames?
Hesitations?
Do all objects
together do anything sequentially?
Huh?
Who’s there?
Is a blank as
a place holder, or improbable place-setting,
such a
worrisome thing?
How can nature
be said to abhor anything?
Is language
the “house of
being?”
True or false?
What divided
your house?
Does anyone
here want me?
Does anyone
here want me to shut up?
Does anyone
here want to shut me up?
How do you
feel about punctuation?
Is philosophy
important to you?
Have you ever
really thought about kissing and what it means to you—not just, I mean,
as a
pleasurable activity, but in onto-epistemological terms?
Is
“onto-epistemological” a useful term for you, or does it just seem like the
usual academic horse shit?
Do you believe
poetry has social value?
Does the
expression “cultural capital” evoke poetry economics for you?
Do you love
the blues too?
Might there be
said to be many kinds of language environments? How would you describe
the language
environments you inhabit and move through?
Are you saving
questions and/or answers for me?
What sorts of
things irritate you the most?
What irritates
you the most about my “talk” today?
How do you
feel about quotation marks and semi-colons?
Whom among us
isn’t an Other’s mirror?
Are you
familiar with the psychological concept of projection?
What do you
think noise is?
How much
credence do you give to rhymes?
Do you think
Language Poetry is the Antichrist?
How do letters
and phonemes figure in your scheme of things ?
What am I to
do?
Did you hear
that Hinge-Music?
Do you feel
penetrated too?
If I could ask
you only one thing, what would you want that question to be?
What might you
collectively ask me by consensus?
A question for
Miekal And: would you write something for me about how you feel
about names
and naming?
What right now
would constitute a revolutionary act?
Have you ever
thought seriously about the writing of Karl Marx?
Do you know the
work of Brecht, Benjamin, Eagleton, Marcuse, Adorno, or to get really retro, Debs?
Would you have
liked to have had a drink with Guy Debord?
What if sexual
difference isn’t what we collectively thought?
Does the word
“interlude” rub you the right way?
How do you
like to be rubbed?
Can I rub you
now?
To borrow a
phrase: “Who’s zooming who?”
Has anyone
ever adequately approached a description of the beauty of vowel sounds?
No one?
Where?
Why are so
many of you looking at me and so many of you looking away?
Why are we
here?
What are we
doing?
Is there
something I can get for you? Maybe
a cookie?
Are you familiar
with the linguistic slash philosophical expression “performative?”
How do you
feel about fart jokes?
Would you
rather watch a documentary or a fiction movie?
What’s your
secret pleasure?
How complex is
your attitude toward narrative?
Am I, this
gimpy graceless person standing before you nervously espousing, structured like
a language?
Could I just
for a second hear you say something back?
*
So?
What now?
And where to
go from here?
What would you
like to know?
How, where, do
you find poetry?
How do you
find the ways
to do the
things you do?
Do ghosts
figure as realities for you?
Do have any
idea how preoccupied I am with pronouns?
Do you feel as
if you’re being interrogated?
Where haven’t
you been that you’d like to be?
When am I
going to be done with this?
Why can’t I
reconcile myself to routine?
Geof, can you
forgive me for subjecting you to my weaknesses for an entire year?
Do you have
any idea how hard I’ve worked to achieve a few small things?
Do you
practice self-erasure?
Do you think
you know what makes me tick?
Is desire a
word that figures importantly for you?
How is it that
I feel everything is shaky and in question?
Why don’t I
know right away what to say?
Why do I feel
so thoroughly mediated by everything/everyone?
Why do I long
to be pierced again?
Why have I
spent so much time thinking about refrains?
Would you
tattoo me with your idea of me if I tattooed you back with my idea of you?
Is reciprocity
important to you?
When I think
about Utopia I think about something approaching a sort of ongoing social orgasm, a kind of
universal pleasuring. How about you?
Who reads
what?
Why are you
angry?
How is it that
we’ve come to this particular impasse?
I want you if
not to want me to at least tolerate my need for being needed, OK?
In one of her poems
Norma Cole asks: “Where does the first person plural begin?”
Isn’t that a
fabulous question?
Truth or dare?
What is the
ethical responsibility of a poet to its audience?
What role do
you allow for nostalgia in your life?
Is this
sentence the rough draft of a train wreck?
What
certainties are possible?
Are there
words you won’t say out loud?
Are there
images and scenarios you think about obsessively?
What’s your
position on appropriative strategies of writing?
Are you a fan
of outright theft of another’s words?
Or do you feel
obligated to transform what you have taken into something which is yours?
Is, as Charles
Bernstein once riffed, intellectual property theft too?
Am I wrong to
think of my texts as desiring machines which you really ought to plug into?
Am I wrong to
conflate poetry, philosophy and stand-up comedy?
Is language a
parasite and humanity its host?
Where’s my
laugh track when I need it?
When’s my
theme song gonna cue up?
Who’s gonna
remember me (or whatever) when this season’s over?
What are the
memes of the moment?
How can one
not see repeating me’s in meme?
Is cooking a
lot like making a poem?
How fixated
are you on the alphabet?
Crag, what’s
the SCORE? What is it to be
scored, marked?
What do you
fetishize?
Whom among us
can be said to be fully present now?
Have you
watched every episode?
Have you
sussed out spectator culture?
Do you want
any part of me?
To borrow a
question from Zizek: “ So where is the parallel with capital here?”
So where is
the parallel with the view from here?
What about all
of the questions unasked, unrecognized?
Do you feel at
home in your body?
Do you think
you would feel at home in mine?
What might it
mean to be possessed?
Do you
consider your thoughts to be your own?
Do you think
of yourself as a unified Subject?
Are you
consciously inside of the picture you see?
Am I bugging
you?
Do I appear to
be some sort of outside agitator?
Am I boring
you?
Are you moved?
Are we moving
on?
Do waves truly
crash against a shore somewhere?
Am I under
water?
Am I—old nervous
speaker trick—imagining you in your underwear?
That’s
supposed to help how?
How much faith
can be put in a gesture?
How much does
faith figure in the scheme of things?
Is less more?
Do you have a
habitual way of doing things?
Do you have a
habit of trying to mix things up?
Do you lack a
sense of physical orientation?
Are you easily
lost?
Do you usually
have a sense of where you yourself and the exits are?
Do you have
good “muscle memory” or muscle Alzheimer’s instead?
Do you have
survivor skills?
Are you
fatalistic?
Are you
frequently moved to tears?
How do you
feel about subtitles, subtexts and fleeting emotions?
Are you
hormonal now?
Is your humor
“edgy?”
Is what
separates us ideological, aesthetic or sexual?
After my
blather is over, would someone tell me a story?
Does anyone
feel like interrupting me now?
Has anyone,
apart from Brecht, the Situationists and the ( I am required to insert “so-called”)
Language Poets
succeeded in
enunciating an aesthetico-political theory of praxis
as
interruption?
Intervention?
What, in your
experience, has intervened to change your world view?
Do you think
you, as individual, matter?
Do you see
anything when you see the putative me?
Is there a
collective reality which can be articulated and recognized?
What is the role
of History in everyday life?
How is it that
we are here, anxious for lunch, before the next speaker?
What are you
thinking about?
Are you
attracted to things you are afraid of?
How about
people you are afraid of? Are you
attracted to them?
Do you fetishize
scenarios or metonymies?
What derives
from sensation?
Is this a
palimpsest?
What for you
constitutes revelation?
What do you
consider to be your most fundamental belief?
What roles
have friendships played in your life?
What
responsibilities are owed to our neighbors?
From what do
you feel yourself to be inseparable?
Would you
abandon everything to follow a charismatic leader?
Do you ever
worry about the politics of language?
Does
“reception theory” trouble your sleep?
Are you
preoccupied with heuristics?
Would you
participate willingly in being colonized?
Have you ever
seen pictures of intestinal parasites?
Have you
accepted the inevitability of your own death?
Do you think
of philosophy as an academic concern?
What
constitutes everyday life for you?
Is one one’s
routine?
Sheila, and I
ask this in all seriousness, are there moments as a poet when you feel a need
to work against your gift of access, against your virtuoso abilities?
What is the
responsibility of an artist?
What
have I nailed myself to here doing this?
Is it
intelligible to ask if one subscribes to something like a ladder of forms?
What are the
contradictions you live within?
What are the
contradictions you can’t live without?
What makes
sense?
What makes you
hum?
Do you ever
seriously wonder about your own reality/irreality?
Aren’t we all
becoming Avatars?
What’s going
on?
Where are we
now with this thing we’re doing here?
Do you ever
feel stranded?
Do you ever
feel as if you’re speaking in a false accent, with bad papers, on the verge of
arrest?
Have you ever
really thought about ideology, per se?
Do you know
many show tunes?
Are there
disconnects between your inner and outer lives?
Do you have
strong feelings about the subject-object opposition?
Is it accurate
to posit a subject-object opposition?
Are you a
theory person?
Where was I?
Who are you?
To what degree
is empathy a problem?
Who mirrors
who or what and why?
When are
microcosms and macrocosms most likely to collide?
Do you yearn
for continuity?
Or are you
obsessed with this moment, with this moment, with this?
Or are you
preoccupied with the big F future?
What doesn’t
disappear?
Am I the
product of symptoms?
What is called
understanding?
What are the
stories you won’t say out loud?
What do you
see when you look out at anything, anywhere?
What do you
worry about most?
How do you
feel about being lost?
Have you given
much thought to slant rhymes like “lost” and “lust” for example?
Is punctuation
something you obsess over or something you try to avoid having to think about?
Are you awake?
Am I the sum
of my misunderstandings?
Or am I an
irreducible reminder of something I myself don’t know?
What sort of
vehicle is a relationship?
What makes us
go?
Do you think
most often in terms of subjects, the Subject, objects, or of the Thing as such?
Or of none of
the above?
What sorts of
presences can we be for one another?
Is
consciousness a language effect?
How about
amorousness?
In the name of
what?
In the name of
whom?
Are all human
exchanges essentially asymmetrical?
What does it
mean to establish something?
Are you
interested in absence? Interested,
I mean, in how absence figures in your own life, and perhaps the lives of
others?
Is absence
foundational?
Are there gaps
in your personal history which you can’t or won’t account for?
When one
appears before you and speaks, as I am speaking now, what determines your level
of attentiveness?
What do we owe
one another?
What is the
purpose of poetry?
Can language
ever be said to exist apart from experience?
Do you really
believe that there’s such a thing as asemic writing?
Shouldn’t
asemic writing have so-called attached to it?
Isn’t meaning
inescapably present in all manifestations of expression?
What’s your
social project?
What’s the one
image indelibly imprinted in your consciousness?
What’s the
sense-memory that you can’t shake?
What haunts
you?
What arouses
you?
Is there a
question which I’ve asked today that particularly pisses you off?
Are you going
to let me know about it?
What would an
image of thought look like?
Is the truth
gendered?
With what doxa
are you most preoccupied?
Toward what
and whom do you perform most irresponsibly?
Where do our
obligations lie?
To what degree
when one speaks does one speak to oneself only?
Do you think
about style?
Do you imagine
that what you do has consequence?
Do you imagine
that I don’t realize my failures, over and over again?
Ever feel like a Frankenpoet, repeatedly lurching from
laboratory to graveyard? Ever get tired of being chased by all those torch
carrying villagers?
Is a sentence always a potential zombie, robot, angel,
dominatrix, or bottom?
Am I entitled to feel the way I do, think the thoughts I
do?
Is anyone entitled to anything?
And what about consequences?
What about what happens or doesn’t happen after one does
what one does?
How do you think/feel about expectations?
How many among us know the sound of their own voice?
Ever feel ghostwritten?
Ever feel like a palimpsex?
How many sexes are you? How many would you like to be?
How many sexes are we? Has anyone even bothered to count?
What is becoming now?
Is the dissolution of the self a language effect?
Is reincarnation a syntactic exercise?
Is a poem a prayer, or what?
Am I asking you for something?
Is there something that you want from me?
Do you believe that I exist apart from you?
What’s to be done about us?
What’s to be done?
What do I know?
