Looking for Work: CRITIPHORIA: A Journal of Poetry and Criticism

Edited by Stephen Paul Miller, Tim Peterson, and Cecilia Wu

Contributing Editors: Karen Alkaly-Gut, Maria Damon, Kenneth Deifik, Denise Duhamel, Peter Frank, Bob Holman, Carolee Schneemann, and David Shapiro.

Critiphoria is a journal partially funded by St. Johns University which seeks submissions of "poetry-criticism" in all its forms for a first issue to be published in late 2007. This new journal will
energize poetry and criticism through one another, exploring their intersection in the possibility of a "third genre" that grows out of such precedents as Charles Bernstein's "Artifice of Absorption,"
Stephen Paul Miller's poem reviews and essay/lectures, [Bob Perelman's "IfLife"] Lyn Hejinian's poetic nonfiction, the linguistic mysticism of David Shapiro, the autobiographical scholarship of Susan Howe, Zizek's psycho-political analyses, W.J.T. Mitchell's totemic digs, David Antin's talk poems, and a variety of dialogic critical-poetic objects (we enthusiastically anticipate new models). We will publish essays in poetic form, essays using poetic methodology, poems with critical content, pedagogy, essays concerning poetry-criticism, statements about poetic production. We also invite items of a more general nature pertinent to these topics, including essays, poems, visual art, vispo, audio, and e-poetry.

Submissions may include a statement concerning the submission and how it concerns dynamic interaction between poetry and criticism.

Critiphoria will appear at http://www.critiphoria.org, and a print edition will also be published. Subscriptions are $20/two issues. Email submissions or other correspondence to the editors: Stephen Paul Miller, Tim Peterson, and Cecilia Wu at critiphoria@gmail.com.

Comments

[Edward Mycue]

also, crag, connected to the developing piece on justine is a parallel meditation on process in the following development of the concept and it's sources of "mixed information" below: HISTORY OF MIXEDINFORMATION A CIVIL TESTAMENT misinformation? i hear it as "mixedinformation". justine jones fixel’s “sand tray” therapy, its development & interpretation of its use lead back to work of incorporations, assemblings, environments with miniature figures, furniture, the natural world & symbols, including jungian themes, household objects combined into a mixture or conglomerated arranged autobiography & family history. only so much drifts up and comes to me; maybe tomorrow, i tell my mind, which tires and yields no more today. each time something new/ old to be added—to be added & maybe subtracted, perhaps: accretion and attrition. i am revisioning here, looping backward on some primitive or primal vision quest, the kind that become formalized and discussed in cultural studies classes, the phenomenological journey that i will describe here/ now as JOURNEY FOR A WITNESS the name of the never published novel lawrence fixel wrote in those rome years 1960-63 that i first read in manuscript in 1971. is it a journey for a witness in a shifting landscape. this is/can be good or/& bad if it is thought of as ‘dissembling’—something justine fixel abhorred: a consciously altering what happened. depending on your point or viewing. it can be what propaganda means to us in the worst sense of public lying: a manipulation of truth, not just facts finally but essentially truth. so there is the disassembly or dis-assembling (‘dis’ is the lower, underworld, of disharmony, discord, associated with pluto, its god, hades), but it is also a rereading a re-visioning, a re-framing, new orchestration of old information: information, re-view, re-seen, re interpreted, an imagining the event the speech or/and physical happening from other angles, from other interlocutors’ other witnesses’. and in this journey it is the nature of witnessing and the recall of the witness, of the witnessing. here i part from ludwig wittgenstein, who said you shouldn’t speak what can’t be clearly expressed: my way is to experience what unfolds and to look at all of it as evidence. so my writing is a swiveling journey of weaving assessment/ reassessment. thus i don’t retreat from nor remove the record of my experience (no such soviet ‘erasures’)/ memory however faulty. tomorrow is another re-calling and inch by inch like a snail leaving my trail the dried goo of it may later appear in a moondream of my youth as a kind of diamond dust just as the glittery broken glass & trash did in that grungy alley behind darthmouth street in boston’s southend in 1960 when i went from denton, texas for more graduate study there. i tell whati remember & as process correct/ re-correct as each time reconnects, rebraids. i could call this memory/ meditation ‘bumps & dimples’ the way it recedes & comes forward in the convex & concave—hills& dales, lakes& streams, wells & springs of incidence & coincidence—co-inside/co-outside: the stigmata of mortality that some might consider history yet is but some scattered remains & this a civil testament of it. Edward Mycue 28 August 2007

[Edward Mycue]

crag, thought i'd update the piece on justine jones fixel who was at the heart of artistic, cultural, and literary life of san francisco for 65 years until her death aug 5 2007. it's all process and correction, addition and a sharing of information of people who knew her and her friends and of course lawrence fixel. JUSTINE JONES FIXEL & HER KIND SAN FRANCISCO by EDWARD MYCUE 1 of 3 pages she was from bingham canyon and salt lake city in utah & she loved the name (of a younger cousin) jersey justine, justine being the name given to girls all down the generations. her mom's & dad's folks were breakaway mormans. a justine said to be the youngest of joseph smith's “six” wives taken in by brigham young to the Promised Land of utah when smith was murdered in illinois . justine came to san francisco at 21 with a b.a. from the catholic women's college in salt lake city . her dad had a bar in bingham canyon (that city no longer exists because of the copper mines tunnelled underneath) & later in salt lake city and there would be poker games in their salt lake city house late into the night. her brother kendell jones ten years older had come earlier to the university in berkeley . justine went into social work, but i don't recall it that was her first job. when the war began she became a WAVE and lived with 3 others—jean broadbent, winifred lair, cecelia hurwich (“92 stairs”, says cecel, to get to their apt penthouse at 1230B washington st bet. jones & taylor in ‘the casbah” on telegraph hill). farwell taylor (who mingus wrote “farewell, farewell” for) also lived in the casbah and did that painting of justine & cecel the lifetime best pals. her palship w/ bari rolfe, mime and mime teacher, goes back to bari’s & marcel marceau years together (in the 50’s or 60’s). & warren anderson who played a beautiful piano and became kendell’s lifelong partner. after the war following an interval of modeling & partying & before getting her masters from the social welfare school, uc-berkeley, justine was a social worker, & around that time worked for Canon Kip program, still going, of the Episcopal church (canon kip was a san francisco hero of 1906 earthquake days). i recall her stories of spending nights with kids rescued, & before they were able to be placed, in the loft of the old bldg on l9th avenue and ortega that later became for decades the san francisco music conservatory (before its recent move to oak/van ness/market). therapist wings. academic articles. met larry by or in 1950's. they'd both been married years before. (larry a daughter kate frankel in los angeles--a granddaughter adrian and grandson joshua.). stayed married until he died in 2003. justine got a fulbright to italy to consult on changing their social work system at univ level etc, had extensions twice—rare, 3 years in rome 1960-63. while larry wrote. came back a year & headed for mexico for another year (looking for george price larry's best bud, & to see if they could find a way to support/live there. later learned they'd crossed w/george returning to sf where george a writing professor at sf state had returned via los angeles where he met zdena berger (price). zdena wrote TELL ME ANOTHER MORNING publ 1961 recently 2007 republd by paris press as a refound woman hero writer--abt surviving camps --she was from prague & of her wide family she, an aunt, a cousin survived world war 2.). justine when i first knew her in 1970 was teaching at uc-berkeley in the school of social work and practicing as a founding member of the family therapy center in sf (then a pioneering approach). she had a long productive life. larry used to complain that justine was a great source of misinformation, which mostly amused her because maybe only larry could be teased that way and i heard it as "mixedinformation". in her practice, justine’s “sand tray” therapy, its development and her teaching its use lead back to her work as a painter of oil on canvas to her incorporations, assemblings, environments with miniature figures, furniture, the natural world & symbols including her last great achievement “the white house”, her Venetian paintings, a series of frieze-like sculptures suffused with Jungian themes, & household objects combined into a mixed conglomeration arranged into painted autobiography and family history (much of this documented on film by al leveton). memories of justine, of larry, names that drift up, constellate & swim, a history, pantheon, honorable people. I thought of ruth witt-diamant again last night (justine & larry’s neighbor and friend who began the poetry center as san francisco state) & thanked her for all her kindnesses; oldest friend george & mary oppen through whom I met lawrence & justine fixel in 1970; of florence hegi, oldest of the family therapy group of friends & colleagues (al, eva, bob hovering over her to the very end) that justine belonged to: eva & al leveton w/ ben handleman the prime founders,& virginia belfort, sue eldredge; roz parenti, bob cantor, michael geis. neighbors too in those early days: loisand roy steinberg & julian, then 5, now a photographer; mark citret (ansel adams’ last student, then 22-- eminent now); of al and minnie (a founding member of the california communist party, related to my sister jane by marriage) and daughter laura bock down high willard street; judy pollatsek and her kids josh & jessica; the wolfe’s on farnsworth steps; al palavin; the jaeks, a nice couple w/ kids goldsworths (he at uc-sf & judy) next to ruth witt’s; & memories of anais nin when she was lodged uphill in a cottage ruth found for her; the then taos-bound dorothy kethler; & in taos, bob eliot, who built said justine the ideal house; jo lander; florida & angela who worked for the un’s fao in rome; bill minshew first met in rome; george hitchcock; cass humble; edouard roditi who often returned from france--an old schoolmate of ruth’s at uc berkeley in the 30’s; james broughton; justine van gundy who taught at sf state; her san diego cousin dianne cawood, soprano; diane scott her therapist; tom, stephanie, dante sanchez; always cecelia (“cecel”, “cese”) & b.j., lynn, rudy hurwich; larry’s nephew robbie berkelman; & “old jack” (w.w. lyman, jr.) of bayles mill—born there in napa valley 1885--ruth brought me over to meet (‘the oldest living poet’ she’d drive up to bring down to san francisco . i was her gardener & the then young poet, 35, she wanted him to connect with, his wife helen hoyt an esteemed poet who’d been asst editor to harriet monroe at poetry magazine in chicago dead a decade or more by then)(his three volumes of typed memoirs--he lived to1983 leaving a son amos hoyt at bayles mill--are in st. helena, ca public library’s locked room); & others who make their entries but who’s names now escape me but will possibly come tomorrow; folks we met, knew together--panjandrum press & poetry flash crowds & dennis koran; richard steger; lennart & sonia bruce; shirley kaufman; anthony rudolf; jo-anne rosen; laura beausoleil; david & judy gascoyne ; sybil wood/cooper; sharon coleman; gerald fleming; carl rakosi & marilyn kane. many gone before justine & so many more left because this was a woman who knew people & was interested in them: remembering her is to consider friends you make in life, who contributed to who you became, you’ve helped, who’ve helped you. final days,weeks, months, years, close were naomi schwartz , josephine moore, gail lubin, christina fisher, toby damon, andrea rubin, marsha trainer, al & eva leveton, ken meacham & pearl, wendy rosado- berkelman (larry’s sister pearl fixel berkelman’s daughter), her daughter sunya; tom sanchez; cecilia london (justine’s student at uc-berkeley who who returned to justine in those four years after larry’s death as justine’s guide/ social worker), & always stephanie sanchez, bob cantor, naomi, al & eva, george & zdena, cecel & don—friends, colleagues, confidantes. accretion. attrition. vale. Edward Mycue 28 SEPTEMBER 2007 _____________________ page 2 of 3 pages for Justine Jones Fixel (Sept. 5, 1920-Aug. 5, 2007) A SEA _CHANGE___ Fish in a net, old salts, as the wheels keep turning, a spinning plate half-dipping into the Pacific Ocean here you and I are at Land’s End on this tilting/raked stage where great ships foundered. Their sentences of life, death are unfinished symphonies; a future out there our audience who’ve sailed-in to watch a sea change, diminishing star dust a gusher pinkening milky sunrise, sunset in the gloaming thickening light a sea scar as roses silt down the sea to sleep. The wheel is round; life pushes; photography winds over time, westering, voicing the mind’s brown shale for it will take, it took a lifetime to flower, to fly, to sail this sea this widening light where I hear voices under the surface of consciousness: harmony’s memory rising up. page 3 of 3 pages Edward Mycue [email protected] P.O.Box 640543, San Francisco, CA 94164-0543 telephone (415) 922-0395

[Edward Mycue]

JUSTINE FIXEL,A SMALL HISTORY (OF MIXEDINFORMATION) she was from bingham canyon and salt lake city in utah and she loved the name (of a younger cousin) jersey justine, justine being the name given to girls all down the generations. her people, mom's and dad's folks, were breakaway mormans . a justine said to be the youngest of joseph smith's “six” wives taken in by brigham young to the Promised Land of utah when smith was murdered in illinois. justine came to san Francisco at 21 with a b.a. from the catholic women's college in salt lake city. her dad had a bar in bingham canyon (that city no longer exists because of the copper mines tunnelled underneath) and later in salt lake city and there would be poker games in their salt lake city house late into the night. her brother kendell ten years older had come earlier to the university in berkeley. justine went into social work, but i don't recall it that was her first job. when the war began she became a WAVE and lived with 3 other girls on telegraph hill. bari rolfe is dead. cecelia hurwitz is alive and a year older than justine. can't dredge up the name of the 4th. justine was a child welfare worker. got an m.a. somewhere, berkeley , plus therapist wings. was on a president's council on aging. publications. met larry by or in 50's. they'd both been married before.(larry had a daughter kate frankel--and a granddaughter adrian and grandson joshua.) justine & larry were married 50 years. justine got a fulbright to italy to consult on changing their social work system at univ level etc and had extensions twice—rare, 3 years in rome 1960-63. while larry wrote. came back a year and headed for mexico for another year (looking for geo price larry's best bud, and to see if they could somehow figure if they could find a way to support/live there--turned out later they'd crossed w/george returning to sf where he became a professor at sf state and perhaps had then already met zdena berger (?). zdena wrote TELL ME ANOTHER MORNING publ 1961 recently 2007 republd by paris press as a refound woman hero writer--abt surviving camps --she was from prague and only one who survives of her wide family.) Justine when i first knew her in 1970 was teaching at uc-berkeley in the school of social work and practicing as a founding member of the family therapy center in sf (then a pioneering approach). she had a long productive life. larry used to complain that Justine was a great source of misinformation and that amused her because maybe only larry could be teased that way and I heard it as "mixedinformation". in her practice, Justine’s “sand tray” therapy, its development and her teaching its use lead back to her work as a painter of oil on canvas to her incorporations assemblings environments with miniature figures, furniture, the natural world and symbols including her “white house”, her Venetian paintings, a series of freize-like sculptures suffused with Jungian themes, and household objects combined into a mixed conglomeration arranged into painted autobiography and family history. There for me are in my memory of Justine, and of Larry, names that drift up constellate and swim—a 37 year history—a pantheon of honorable people. I thought of ruth witt-diamant again last night (she began the poetry center as san francisco state), and thanked her for all her kindnesses. then of florence hegi, the oldest member of the family therapy group that Justine belonged to with eva and al leveton the prime founders & roz parenti, bob cantor, michael geisler(?)(and ?) and neighbors too in those early days lois and roy steinberg and julian then only 5 or 6, mark citret (another photographer, eminent now i hear, but then 22), of al and minnie (a founding member of the california communist party) and daughter laura bock down high Willard street, judy pollatsek and her kids josh and jessica, the wolfe’s on Farnsworth steps, al palavin, the jaeks. that nice couple (gold- sworths, he at uc-sf & judy?) w/kids next to ruth witt’s, and stories of anais nin when she was lodged up the hill in a cottage ruth found for her; edouard roditi who came in from france an old schoolmate of ruth’s at uc Berkeley in the 30’s, james broughton, and “old jack lyman” from bayles mill in napa valley ruth brought me over to meet (‘the oldest living poet’ she’d drive up to bring down to san Francisco. i was her gardener & the then young poet, 35, she wanted him to connect with, his wife helen hoyt an esteemed poet who’d been asst editor to harriet monroe at poetry magazine in Chicago dead a decade or more by then)(his three volumes of typed memoirs—and he lived to 100, leaving a son amos hoyt at bayles mill—are in the st. helena, ca public library’s locked room) and many others who make their entries but who’s names now escape me but will possibly come to me maybe tomorrow. plus, plus all the people we met together and knew—like the panjandrum press crowd and dennis koran of loving memory. so many gone on before Justine and so many more left because this was a woman who knew people and was interested in them. more anon. each time something new/ old to be added—to be added and maybe subtracted perhaps, accretion and attrition. I am revisioning here, looping backward on some primitive or primal vision quest the kind that become formalized and discussed in cultural studies classes, the phenomenological journey that i will describe as JOURNEY FOR A WITNESS the name of the never published novel lawrence fixel wrote in those rome years 1960-63 and that I first read in manuscript in 1971. is it a journey for a witness in a shifting landscape. this is/can be good and bad if it is thought of as dissembling, a conscious—or mostly conscious—altering of what happened. of course it depends on your point or viewing. it can be what propaganda means to us in the worst sense of public lying: manipulation of truth, not just facts finally but essentially truth. so there is the disassembly or dis-assembling (‘dis’ is the under- world, of disharmony, discord, associated with pluto its god, hades), but it is also a rereading a re-visioning, a re-framing, new orchestration of old information: information, re-view, re-seen, re interpreted, an imagining the event the speech or/and physical happening from other angles, from other interlocutors’ other witnesses’. and in this journey it is the nature of witnessing and the recall of the witness, of the witnessing. here i part from lud wittgenstein who said you shouldn’t speak of what you really didn’t “know” because my way is to experience what unfolds and to look at all of it as evidence and that is my witnessing and my writing is a swiveling journey of weaving assessment reassessment. so i can’t leave/remove the record of my experience and memory however faulty. tomorrow is another re-calling and inch by inch like a snail leaving my trail the dried slime of it may latter appear in a moonlight of my youth as a kind of diamond dust just as the glittery broken glass and trash did in that grungy alley in boston’s southend in 1960 when i went from denton, texas for more graduate study there . so I just tell what I remember and as process correct or re-correct as each time reconnects and rebraids. in the poem I wrote for my memory of her “fish in a net” (the title's yeatsian) there’s influence of dh lawrence (death ship); reference to milton also (the ‘westering’ of his lycidas); influenced for mood and the vocabulary of emotions mainly by may swenson (another western girl--utah?), elizabeth bishop, rosalie moore (grasshopper’s man, a yale younger poet’s book that w.h. auden introduced), josephine miles (‘family’ specifically), william carlos williams, ann stanford (‘our town’), english women: elizabeth jennings, stevie smith, ruth fainlight; & some bert brecht, theodore roethke --& auden and dylan thomas form a mix when i think of her. probably others. but i take responsibility for this development of a poem i've been writing in my mind and in 40 versions to the shade of our west coast ‘stranger’ poet robinson jeffers (and una his wife/muse/doppelganger) because --well, as larry said again and again : nobody gets out of here alive. it was george oppen who put me onto to larry (and justine) (& i think she was his therapist in those increasingly difficult years before it became clear he had alzheimers –justine seemed to specialize in artists and writers at the family therapy center). maybe I should just call this memory section bumps and dimples the way it recedes and comes forward in the convex and concave-- hills dales lakes streams wells and springs of incidence and coincidence—the co-inside and the co-outside this is the stigmata of mortality that some might consider history and that is but scattered remains and this a civil testament of it. Edward Mycue 23 August 2007 _____________________ for Justine Jones Fixel (Sept. 5, 1920-Aug. 5, 2007) FISH IN A NET My life is your story. A reinterpretation. The where’s and when’s keep turning. A spinning plate half-dipping into the Pacific Ocean here at Land’s End. We are on this tilting/raked stage where great ships foundered. Their great sentences of life, death— unfinished symphonies: the future out there our audience who’ve driven in to watch. Ugly is a sharp paradigm shift. Death an epistemological rupture. Praise for a tractor, dancing for chump change. Red armpits. Earth jimjams a jungle, diamond skies, long-nailed dogs cut bark, tree rats scurry in canopies. Telephone call, then a summary, a sea change, playground happenings. Alert/Vigil/ Rely/Comply/Watch/Obey: the wheel is round; life pushes. Photography winds over time, westering. Over the mind a brown shale. Everyone there is here, Justine. It will take, it took a lifetime to flower, to fly, to sail this sea this thickening light here where I hear voices under the surface of consciousness the bungled aspirations with here now leprosy as a model. Roomtone, mouthfeel, Jersey Justine, reordering parts, rationing emotions. Grim ire, harmony’s trigger, September. Ripening memories pressing upward. Death ship for new sowing. Thickening light a sea scar. Stardust, a diminishing gusher. Milk as it pinkens sunrise, sunset. Roses silt down into a lake of sleep. Edward Mycue ___________ 25 August 2007 Edward Mycue San Francisco P.O.Box 640543 San Francisco, Ca 94164-0543 [email protected] (415) 922-0395