Leslie Scalapino was born in Santa Barbara, California, and is associated with the San Francisco side of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry. She began publishing in the 70s and published continuously and prolifically until she passed in 2010. She ran O Books beginning 1986, an influential press that published work by Anne Tardos, Carla Harryman, Michael Davidson, Tom Raworth, Rodrigo Toscano, Norma Cole, P. Inman, Alice Notley, Abigail Child, Robert Grenier, Alan Davies, Ted Pearson, Judith Goldman, and many others, including several books of her own work, and the anthology collections War and Peace. Her own work spans poetry, prose, fiction, multi-media experiment, criticism, and she frequently worked collaboratively with dancers, artists, and other poets to create over the course of her lifetime an incredible body of work that is certainly one of the late 20th and early 21st century’s most influential and idiosyncratic.
Seamless Antilandscape has its origins, so to speak, in one of Scalapino’s early poems: “hmmmm,” or at least “hmmmm”‘s phenomenal effects. “hmmmm” is included in Considering how exaggerated music is (O Books, 1982) , a collection of her first three books: O and Other Poems (Sand Dollar Press, 1976), The Woman who Could Read the Minds of Dogs (Sand Dollar Press 1976), and Instead of an Animal (Cloud Marauder Press, 1978). Below is the pdf of The Woman That Could Read the Minds of Dogs where “hmmmm” was originally published (avail. at her EPC page, which I highly recommend browsing), along with a review of Considering how exaggerated music is by Fred Wah, included for historical reference.
Our text, Seamless Antilandscape, is the conclusion to R-Hu (Atelos, 2000). Scalapino describes the writing of R-Hu in a note included in the updated version of How Phenomena Appear to Unfold (Litmus Press, 2011), which I’ve scanned and included below. Seamless Antilandscape is also included there in its entirety, along with I think a good portion of R-Hu. Not unlike Lyn Hejinian’s My Life, How Phenomena Appear to Unfold also has versions and updates. Its was originally published by Potes and Poets in 1989. The R-Hu note is one such update, and it’s a helpful supplement to the “phenomenal surface” of the text-thangka poems of Seamless Antilandscape. In the note she describes how she wrote R-Hu. It was commissioned by Atelos (Lyn Hejinian and Travis Ortiz’s series of commissioned books that straddle poetic/critical modes) and coincided with a trip to Mongolia to visit Buddhist temples and the Thangkas within.
R-hu “compares the real-time Mongolian landscape to the huge wall-hangings seen in the Buddhist monasteries there, hangings duplicating the same landscape seen outside reconfigured as Buddhist life (its then-current present, at the time the particular hangings were created).” (Scalapino)
This note on the writing of R-Hu also details a few encounters with an at first nameless contemporary poetry critic who is later revealed to be Marjorie Perloff. The note gives some background to Seamless Antilandscape, which is, in part, a response to Marjorie Perloff’s essay, “Language Poetry and the Lyric Subject: Ron Silliman’s Albany, Susan Howe’s Buffalo.” Perloff’s essay is available on her website: http://marjorieperloff.blog/essays/silliman-howe/ but is better experienced as it was originally published in Critical Inquiry because it includes visual excerpts from Howe including complex lineations. I’ve included it below. I don’t think it’s at all necessary to read Perloff’s entire essay, but it’s there if you’d like to take a look at the offending passages. Seamless Antilandscape and the note on R-Hu also refer to an omnibus review Perloff wrote that includes Scalapino’s that they were at the beach (aeolotropic series) (Green Integer, 1985). I’ve also included that review here. Excerpts of that they were at the beach can be found at
Poetry.com: https://poets.org/poem/they-were-beach-excerpt
and a limited preview is available at The Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/thattheywereatbe00scalrich/mode/2up
The version of Seamless Antilandscape we’re looking at was published in a chapbook series by Spectacular Books (David Larsen and Beth Murray, San Jose, CA). It looks like it’s the fourth in the series after Tina Celona Songs & Scores, Juliana Spahr Spiderwasp or Literary Criticism and Martin Coless-Smith The Garden: A Theophany or Eccohome: A Dialectical Lyric. Spectacular books does not appear to have a web presence, and I haven’t yet found more information on them. The chapbook itself appears printed (not letterpressed), and includes a really nice either screenprinted, wood-cut, or rubber-stamp cover on cardstock that snugly wraps around a stapled interior pamphlet. It reminds me a bit of a Hogarth Books edition, often with woodcuts by Woolf’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell.
Here is a link to Scalapino’s Pennsound page, that also includes a reading of “hmmmm”:
http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Scalapino.php
And a link to a memorial reading including reflections by Lyn Hejinian to start and Robert Grenier to close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPZ-69y_C4A
And interesting to check out some Mongolian thangkas:
https://www.google.com/search?q=mongolian+thangka&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS916US916&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA99b6j5PzAhWfF1kFHczTAhoQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1272&bih=996&dpr=0.94
Also something cool included on the EPC page is a ‘flow’ of all Scalapino’s book covers.
Scalapino-Leslie_The-Woman-Who-Could-Read-the-M…
Okay, of course, this is all collateral information. Look forward to uncovering this text with you all. 😉
Brent