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PONG (continued)

. . .

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20
From: Tom Devaney
To: Edwin Torres
Sent: September 2000
Subject: The Inner-view

TD: Perhaps this is a good time to ask a few questions about your poetry. (If calling your work *poetry* is the best word for it!?) One word is certainly--hybrid.

ET: Well, in a culture where communication is overloaded at every step...I've learned by now to accept that "poetry" just doesn't cover it all...but it's what people understand. Hybrid sounds like an experiment, and I'm hoping that what I do isn't looked at as mere experiment but as the thing itself. I don't think of myself as BEING a poet...I AM a poet. Where the being and the doing are conclusive of whatever exploration happens. The hybrid comes in the mingling of senses...so in effect, we're all hybrids. Combining the world into our own specific worlds.

TD: You are certainly at the cross-roads and nodes of many main and sub-arteries art/poetry/and new music worlds. It's safe to say your work confounds the category-makers.

ET: They need to be confounded! Category begets laziness. An open view is what I'm looking for...unobstructed by mere category.

TD: In an essay for Poets & Writers Magazine (April 1999) I described you in the following way: "If media critic Marshall McLuhan and Joyce's Molly Bloom had a child-raised in Spanish Harlem by rapper Snoop Doggy Dog's au pair-you'd get something approaching the genius mutt of Edwin Torres."

ET: Thank you...I am indeed a mutt of monstrous proportions...but I wasn't raised in Spanish Harlem.

TD: "The noise of the century is in his astounding meld of song, word, and sonically rich poetry."

ET: That's where my world lives...in the sonically rich texture between ear and skin. I was talking to Miguel Algarin back in April about how mainstream Puerto Ricans really have become vis-a-vis the avant garde. How Puerto Ricans have become the mainstream even though the media sez they haven't...whereas my take was more of an individual one for EACH Puerto Rican being an avant garder...his was more about the idea of Puerto Ricans. The idea of an outside force being on the inside. So he was saying about my work, how sound is the future...in his megolamaniacal way...how in the world of the sound artist, the consonant is king. Which is such a great way to look at the poetry I'm interested in. Using New York's endless inspiration as my muse, the use of sound as a secret code into our psyche, into the space between our skins...this covers wider ground than Language/Performance/Latino/Academia/Experimental poetries for me. I want to be the king of consonattas..or perhaps a pauper.

TD: It's not exactly a tidy category, if it's a category at all. Although you might also talk about how your associations with places like the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, St. Mark's Poetry Project have helped and hindered how your work is perceived and received?

okay Tom, talk soon...

Edwin

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21
From: Edwin Torres
To: Tom Devaney
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2000 7:30 AM
Subject: Your Point!

tom

wow-great to see PONG as it is so far thanks for sending it and buddhist work book will see what I give in to especially dig earlier PONG bounces back and forth don't know where to edit or not but I think we should continue a bit more the game isn't done yet let's try a few short volleys over next week or so by way of a coda then will see how best to assimilate entire conundrum of our PINGS

my shot:
communication untold by wary nuisance of brainage emails function as phone calls making 'talk' a noun not a verb--how best to understand mixage of poetry reading timeframe with online readframe; can we become a loop of time allowing openings their ground by exposing all we can in short time blips? do we prolong our lifespan by sharing most intimate details, creating space for other details? when talk becomes verb does listen follow? and finally...how are you?

yours
Edwin

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22
From: Edwin Torres
To: Tom Devaney
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2000 2:35 PM
Subject: THE THEORIST HAS NO SAMBA!

a thought...

++++++

there is a new instantism > a language of tangent = tanguage > ambient funguage > there is a modern path >invented through accidental spontaneity + of mock language sport = fractured intelligentsillys > there are sage athleticists + important children farmed out to the furthest reaches of nowness > ... > ... >

I propose a New Instantism. Take spontaneousness out of the ether and smack it into the throes of the wild screaming bastard maggot that IS poetry! I propose a New NEWness, where we refuse to comply by the aged fumblings of mere MEANING and instead descend into mere HEARING! I instigate a NEW failure of listening...so we may one day walk hand in hand with our own ears and say...THANK THE MIGHTY LOUD THAT I MAY THANK THE MIGHTY LOUD THAT I MAY THANK THE MIGHTY LOUD! I have a NEW Instantaety, a modern NEWness, a post NOWism...I have a fear...of hiding this fear, instead...I choose a revelry of failure, an opportune dimentia into the songs of my pacifism.

Let's say we level expectation with implied tension...the instant doubt appears, there is a window of possibility. What was thought to have clarity is now diffused by possibility. Is possibility the goal...or only an instant before doubt?

The New Instantists will allow possibility room to doubt itself...inventing a paranoia into the sleepless monster that is this bastard maggot poetry. The New Instantist will know that it takes a flat surface to iron out procedure, that a wrinkled pair of favorite pants will match an equally wrinkled ass...and mind, that no matter how just or unjust the outcome...the New Instantist will always be blamed for what has just happened! Occurence...being the signpost for all things instant.

To what is now
And what is never then
To what has been
And what will never now
To things all thinging
And maybe soon
To what is now
Instantly now

++++++

Inspired by Rod Smith's SubModernism movement. Not his theories but the fact that there actually IS another 'movement' in the works.

paz,
Edwin

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SPRING

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23
From: edwin torres
To: <tomdev1@earthlink.net>
Sent: Wednesday, March 14, 2001 9:05 AM
Subject: to play or not to play

tom

heyyyyyyyyy
wanted to jump[start our connection liked where our discussion was headed

found this performance magazine called Sandbox...current issue came out Nov...neat looking, good articles, small distribution...they have this idea of 'play' in artwork, something I can relate to...maybe we could work towards submitting our correspondence to them...

but main reason for email is to initiate dialogue via sense of play...allowing mind a playground for ideas to shape...does that diminish development? where air is charged by visionary sound creates intention...creates expectation...is expectation art? when does natural course of growth (improvisation) remain as memory (structure)? and...how does doughnut frosting become Krispy if it's Kremey?

Edwin

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24
From: Tom Devaney
To: edwin torres
Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2001 12:48 AM
Subject: Re: to play or not to play

edwin,

It's good to be the play-bumps, blips and real bull's-eyes. Play may be one of the ways we say-what you and I mean-by the other p-word-poetry. (Pause). (Stop). (Rewind). (Aim). (Un-steady). It's good to talk again here too since our conversation, has felt most itself when getting to ideas through our plays- power, point and otherwise.

About your reading last week at the Flying Saucer in Bklyn. (Smart and heart-felt intro by Nada G.) One of the great and terrible things about your work is that it will not be contained on the page, web or audio formats. You almost need a book-reviewer, art, dance, design and food critic each to place the great physical articulation and corporal enactment of words, sounds and gestures you often get cooking. One snippet I held on to is, "That/is a gas station/called/That Is/Esso". I also loved following and losing you several thousand times in your new poem "The energy of matter accelerated," which proves people will go with you anywhere if you got-it going on, which you do all-over the place with that one.

(the tone of worried voices I heard in my office all day was confirmed when I heard about today's stock market devastation)

playing not in a vacuum, yours,
Thomas Edison Devaney (T.E.D.)