Extending auteur theory over to books, what authors with years and years of titles would you say have never published at least a semi-stinker? I think, immediately, Barry Hannah, Amy Hempel. Then I start to stall…

Language Removal Services offer a sampling of people speaking in public, with the language removed, leaving the breathing, the “ums” and “ahs,” etc. Have a taste of William Burroughs, Marilyn Monroe, Louise Bourgeois, Sly, Noam Chomsky, etc., getting into themselves. [via Christian Bok’s twitter feed]

1. David Peak talks with Sam Pink. Another clarifying prism.

2. A Field Guide to Occurrences of Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Teresa in Infinite Jest

3. I may have mentioned this already, but I’ll mention it again: Dear Everybody–a brutal and gorgeous book–is now available in paperback. Or buy it from Powell’s.

Please help us welcome two new fantastic GIANTs to the fold: Evelyn Hampton, editor of Dewclaw and author of We Were Eternal and Gigantic forthcoming from Magic Helicopter Press, and Alissa Nutting, author of Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls, forthcoming from Starcherone Books. Put on your party hats!

How you can become the most important poet in America overnight.

Just finished reading Sandra Simonds’s radical and freaky-chugging Warsaw Bikini from Bloof Books. She rips. Do a look at some poems from the book at Action Yes. “Ransom Note Attached to Wolf’s Ear” alone is worth buying three books: “all the vortex neurons poured through / a diamond shaped keyhole, the back door / of black shards bleed black light.” I want to print the whole of “Let Me Out” on the all above my bed. A book of might, this.

Arianna Huffington: “Self expression is the new entertainment. We never used to question why people sit on the couch for seven hours a day watching bad TV. Nobody ever asked, ‘Why are they doing that for free?’ We need to celebrate [this desire to contribute for free] rather than question it.”

Yet we can be astounded. Before what? Before this other possibility: that the frenziedness of technology may entrench itself everywhere to such an extent that someday, throughout everything technological, the essence of technology may come to presence in the coming-to-pass of truth.

Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it.

Such a realm is art. But certainly only if reflection on art, for its part, does not shut its eyes to the constellation of truth after which we are questioning. — Martin Heidegger, “The Question Concerning Technology”

Earlier in this essay, H describes the status of art in Ancient Greece: “They [the arts] brought the presence of the gods, brought the dialogue of divine and human destinings, to radiance … It was a single, manifold revealing.”

It seems that art as such has questioned its essence, and answered: art can be anything whatsoever. But is it time for art to question technology? Not technology in its instrumental sense, but what Heidegger calls “the essence” of technology–technology as a revealing. Is it time for art to put technology on stage? Is that what we’re doing? If this is too cryptic, I apologize. I just wanted an excuse to post what I block-quoted above, which is just a beautiful moment to me.

Hey! New Yorkers: I just got word that there are still a few seats left for Stephen Elliott’s “Writing from Experience” lecture, which he will be delivering on 3/11 (ie THIS THURSDAY) at the LGBT Center on West 13th street. I’m going to be out of town on this particular day, but I have only and always heard the best things about Stephen’s classes and lectures, so if you’re around, and interested in the topic, you could do a lot worse than to give this thing a shot. Read the full description of the event here.  Buy a ticket here.

Do it now.