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Utopia
L'utopie de Bernadette Mayer est ponctuée d'un voyage dans le temps, d'un séjour dans une communauté, d'un court passage sur un îlot rocheux flottant dans les airs et transportant des poètes marxistes autoritaires, d'une prison pour les propriétaires et de sexe en lévitation. Dans ce livre publié par United Artists Books en 1984, l'auteure nous parle autant de politique que de rapports à la propriété ou d'amour libre, tout en interrogeant la littérature utopique classique et contemporaine. Sa forme particulière est d'abord celle du style caractéristique de Bernadette Mayer, avec le flux poétique déjà présent dans Studying Anger (1975) et Memory (1976), mais aussi celle d'une volonté d'écriture collective. Chacun des chapitres du livre est composé d'un texte principal accompagné de notes rédigées aussi bien par Mayer que par d'autres poètes, argumentant contre elle, affirmant une affinité de pensée ou proposant leur propre vision utopique et poétique. On y croise Charles Bernstein, Joe Brainard, Rochelle Kraut, Lewis Warsh, Anne Waldman, Hannah Weiner, Diane Ward ou Greg Masters, tous membres de la même « New York School ». Utopia agit donc comme une forme d'instantané de la scène poétique des années 1970-1980. Le lecteur découvrira aussi Mayer convoquer et pasticher les figures tutélaires du genre, de Thomas Moore à André Breton en passant par Charles Fourier, Samuel R. Delany, Buckminster Fuller, Doris Lessing, Platon ou encore Jonathan Swift.
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Bernadette Mayer
66 books106 followersBernadette Mayer (born May 12, 1945) is an American poet, writer, and visual artist associated with both the Language poets and the New York School. Mayer's record-keeping and use of stream-of-consciousness narrative are two trademarks of her writing, though she is also known for her work with form and mythology. In addition to the influence of her textual-visual art and journal-keeping, Mayer's poetry is widely acknowledged as some of the first to speak accurately and honestly about the experience of motherhood. Mayer edited the journal 0 TO 9 with Vito Acconci, and, until 1983, United Artists books and magazines with Lewis Warsh. Mayer taught at the New School for Social Research, where she earned her degree in 1967, and, during the 1970s, she led a number of workshops at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York. From 1980 to 1984, Mayer served as director of the Poetry Project, and her influence in the contemporary avant-garde is felt widely, with writers like Kathy Acker, Charles Bernstein, John Giorno, and Anne Waldman having sat in on her workshops.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 3, 2014
Somtimes I can't help / but hate / books / that aren't written / by women / who understand / what it means to be painfully endless / who understand what it means / to write.
August 11, 2019
It’s clear our culture is obsessed with dystopia (as our present moment certainly is saturated with parallel situations), but I think this obsession also implies an obsession with Utopia. It is the flip side of the coin that rarely gets considered.
Mayer considers it. She chews it, spits it out, composts it, and after all of that: it turns into some beautiful garden of wildflowers. It’s the perfect example of how poetics are constantly emergent within politics, and perhaps more so, how poetry can serve as a liaison to imagined futures.
Most striking is the loose narrative woven throughout of all landlords being evicted in the utopia and made to live as tenants. It’s comical at some points (someone suggests they live on the moon and have to pay rent for air😂), and at other points it becomes a radical exploration of what the redistribution of wealth might look like.
Interwoven in this imagined utopia, it’s easy to see that most folks are queer, most children are raised communally, markets are non-existent, and the biggest concerns most people handle in their daily lives are cooking (often quite delicious food), cleaning, and community “work” for others.
Of course, it is all a little tongue in cheek—what utopia isn’t? There are parts that expose the desire for a “utopia” as a farce in itself.
But it’s important to note that this utopia (be it a farce or a sincerity) was generated with (and by) women, lower class folks, artists, and workers. It doesn’t come from the pen of a Sir Thomas Moore—it is a lived imagination, a “real” fiction. And that is, perhaps, somewhere to start.
Mayer considers it. She chews it, spits it out, composts it, and after all of that: it turns into some beautiful garden of wildflowers. It’s the perfect example of how poetics are constantly emergent within politics, and perhaps more so, how poetry can serve as a liaison to imagined futures.
Most striking is the loose narrative woven throughout of all landlords being evicted in the utopia and made to live as tenants. It’s comical at some points (someone suggests they live on the moon and have to pay rent for air😂), and at other points it becomes a radical exploration of what the redistribution of wealth might look like.
Interwoven in this imagined utopia, it’s easy to see that most folks are queer, most children are raised communally, markets are non-existent, and the biggest concerns most people handle in their daily lives are cooking (often quite delicious food), cleaning, and community “work” for others.
Of course, it is all a little tongue in cheek—what utopia isn’t? There are parts that expose the desire for a “utopia” as a farce in itself.
But it’s important to note that this utopia (be it a farce or a sincerity) was generated with (and by) women, lower class folks, artists, and workers. It doesn’t come from the pen of a Sir Thomas Moore—it is a lived imagination, a “real” fiction. And that is, perhaps, somewhere to start.
January 12, 2012
Exuberant. BM's Utopia sounds a lot like her living a life in New York--hanging out with friends, arranging art, taking part in and viewing art--just without anxieties of bills to pay, broken bottles, and jealousies. Somehow the algorithm can spit out a flower. Lines between work and art are unclear outside of time. It's naive without practical instructions and so a joy to read. Some notes I took:
Nobody owns the house.
I was inside somewhere
It was my mother’s house.
“I dance each morning.”
Socrates
“It would be good to have entertainments and ceremonies that were not meant to distract us but to remind us of everything all at once” (5)
“For me to attempt to be you is not the worst thing that ever happened though the psychoanalysts may try and make you be wary of such “bonding” unless it’s made by dentists on your teeth” (5)
Freedom is still a core principle of her Utopia (6)
Art given its functional place—poem as a lullaby
Sleep sleep sleep
I do I do I do
we’re all balls of ears
two by two
it’s me hot sun
blue sky at night
all knit together
darkness is light
half of one
becomes my twin
one hand is thick
the other is thin
transparent sky
lets me go through
in sleep each night
each of you
one of us is
brilliant weather
little sleep
statue mother
little sleep
statue father
someone anyone
and another
“jobs are either in the community or in the world” (28)
“maps have become much more complex than they used to be, every place is smaller and there are more places than before” (28)
“beings are travelling / all over in pajama for free” (41)
The city walls which contain all the knowledge of the world one learns by walking about the city—and elegant of calibration—locating oneself within
On arriving in Utopia, “we made lunch…no one seemed anxious to show us anything” (110).
In a play: “A fine resolution is passed that all landlords will have to go live in isolation on the fucking moon in domes where their air will be paid for and metered by a limited partnership and if they cease to pay for it, by the heavens they will die!” (112)
On returning to the more complex world—“One of the kids hit one of the others, none of them yet sleeping. I make a list of ten things never to do in the present and in the present the wind blows the rain against the love of our talking inside the house
Who is speaking?
Is there anything I can’t say?
Tell me everything
& then no end to it
as far as I see it
there’s no end to it
as far as I can see it (121)
Nobody owns the house.
I was inside somewhere
It was my mother’s house.
“I dance each morning.”
Socrates
“It would be good to have entertainments and ceremonies that were not meant to distract us but to remind us of everything all at once” (5)
“For me to attempt to be you is not the worst thing that ever happened though the psychoanalysts may try and make you be wary of such “bonding” unless it’s made by dentists on your teeth” (5)
Freedom is still a core principle of her Utopia (6)
Art given its functional place—poem as a lullaby
Sleep sleep sleep
I do I do I do
we’re all balls of ears
two by two
it’s me hot sun
blue sky at night
all knit together
darkness is light
half of one
becomes my twin
one hand is thick
the other is thin
transparent sky
lets me go through
in sleep each night
each of you
one of us is
brilliant weather
little sleep
statue mother
little sleep
statue father
someone anyone
and another
“jobs are either in the community or in the world” (28)
“maps have become much more complex than they used to be, every place is smaller and there are more places than before” (28)
“beings are travelling / all over in pajama for free” (41)
The city walls which contain all the knowledge of the world one learns by walking about the city—and elegant of calibration—locating oneself within
On arriving in Utopia, “we made lunch…no one seemed anxious to show us anything” (110).
In a play: “A fine resolution is passed that all landlords will have to go live in isolation on the fucking moon in domes where their air will be paid for and metered by a limited partnership and if they cease to pay for it, by the heavens they will die!” (112)
On returning to the more complex world—“One of the kids hit one of the others, none of them yet sleeping. I make a list of ten things never to do in the present and in the present the wind blows the rain against the love of our talking inside the house
Who is speaking?
Is there anything I can’t say?
Tell me everything
& then no end to it
as far as I see it
there’s no end to it
as far as I can see it (121)
June 1, 2019
Almost everything about this is brilliant - i especially appreciate Bernadette's considerations of what we (should) do with people who want power and violence. Also it's really funny.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews