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Bart
- GenresPoetry
25 pages, chapbook
First published January 1, 1982
3 people want to read
About the author
Ron Silliman
66 books169 followersRon Silliman has written and edited 30 books to date, most recently articipating in the multi-volume collaborative autobiography, The Grand Piano. Between 1979 & 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, entitled The Alphabet. In addition to Woundwood, a part of VOG, volumes published thus far from that project have included ABC, Demo to Ink, Jones, Lit, Manifest, N/O, Paradise, (R), Toner, What and Xing. The University of Alabama Press will publish the entire work as a single volume in 2008. Silliman has now begun writing a new poem entitled Universe.
Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.
Silliman was the 2006 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere, a 2003 Literary Fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and was a 2002 Fellow of the Pennsylvania Arts Council as well as a Pew Fellow in the Arts in 1998. He lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania, with his wife and two sons, and works as a market analyst in the computer industry.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 29, 2018
The Language poets are something.
January 11, 2014
Silliman takes a labor day day trip on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and relentlessly details everything from class differences to the physical toll nonstop writing takes on the body: this is working class poetry. Read it and take a trip on your local public transpo & write.
July 12, 2025
review of
Ron Silliman's Bart
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 12, 2025
I'm on a spree of reading the Ron Silliman bks in my personal library in chronological order. I'm looking forward to the more challenging ones. I'm also glad for the easier ones, this is in the latter category. So far, everything I've reviewed has had one simple structural approach that's filled out to varying degrees. This is no exception. The last bk I read & reviewed by him was Ketjak, written in 1974. This one was written in 1976 but not published in this second printing until 1988. The 1st copyright date is 1982. Was the 1st printing then? Why such a long wait between writing & publishing?
Bart begins w/ this:
"Begin going down, Embarcadero, into the ground, earth's surface, escaltors down, a world of tile, flourescent lights, is this the right ticket, labor day, day free of labor, trains, a man is asking is there anything to see, Glen Park, Daly City, I'm going south which in my head means down but I'm going forward, she says he should turn around, off at Powell, see Union Square, see Chinatown," - p 1
I pointed out in my review of Ketjak that all the sentences end in periods, there're no question marks or exclamation marks. Here, the bk cd be sd to be one long unfinished sentence, the separating punctuation is made w/ commas, the bk ends on a comma before the time & date of writing is given, followed by 2 photos of BART trains. BART = Bay Area Rapid Transit, the subway. The whole bk was written in (a) notebk(s) while riding rapid transit.
"man gets on with a racing form in hand, looks apprehensive, you always see stress in everyone's face, it's in their eyes, how they hold their mouths, as if it took an effort to keep their lips in control, from contorting, you don't need to know them, any day, especially after work, Civic Center 12:08," - pp 3-4
"back now at Embarcadero, more people on, this has a different rhythm than buses, Duncan writes on them, anthology of literature scribed on public transit," - p 4
Duncan & Silliman in an anthology of public transit writings, that might be interesting.
What's Silliman doing?
"1:59, I'm only half-done, is that it, an act, something done deliberately, of description, which mean place, but of travel, meaning place shifts, alters, speech chain Moebius Strip, had not expected the crowd. but that's alright, this blue ink is lovely, a pleasure to watch, jotting is what I do, wander around the platform, take photos," pp 12-13
"I don't ask her name, the Daly City train comes, I get on, it's so crowded I have to stand, I keep writing, I'm much more conspicuous now, people are staring, I can't hold on and write at the same time, I nearly fall, I'm going to have to stand all the way back, we'll be back under the bay in a second, 80 mph, a man watches me write this, I remember what Einstein said when asked to explain the theory of relativity in 25 words or less," - pp 22-23
I found this simple in a way that I imagine most readers might be able to relate to. A man systematically rides the subway, jotting observations in a notebook. The formal device of having each jotting separated by a comma provides a meta-structure. This isn't exactly one of my favorite Sillimans but I like it nonetheless.
Ron Silliman's Bart
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 12, 2025
I'm on a spree of reading the Ron Silliman bks in my personal library in chronological order. I'm looking forward to the more challenging ones. I'm also glad for the easier ones, this is in the latter category. So far, everything I've reviewed has had one simple structural approach that's filled out to varying degrees. This is no exception. The last bk I read & reviewed by him was Ketjak, written in 1974. This one was written in 1976 but not published in this second printing until 1988. The 1st copyright date is 1982. Was the 1st printing then? Why such a long wait between writing & publishing?
Bart begins w/ this:
"Begin going down, Embarcadero, into the ground, earth's surface, escaltors down, a world of tile, flourescent lights, is this the right ticket, labor day, day free of labor, trains, a man is asking is there anything to see, Glen Park, Daly City, I'm going south which in my head means down but I'm going forward, she says he should turn around, off at Powell, see Union Square, see Chinatown," - p 1
I pointed out in my review of Ketjak that all the sentences end in periods, there're no question marks or exclamation marks. Here, the bk cd be sd to be one long unfinished sentence, the separating punctuation is made w/ commas, the bk ends on a comma before the time & date of writing is given, followed by 2 photos of BART trains. BART = Bay Area Rapid Transit, the subway. The whole bk was written in (a) notebk(s) while riding rapid transit.
"man gets on with a racing form in hand, looks apprehensive, you always see stress in everyone's face, it's in their eyes, how they hold their mouths, as if it took an effort to keep their lips in control, from contorting, you don't need to know them, any day, especially after work, Civic Center 12:08," - pp 3-4
"back now at Embarcadero, more people on, this has a different rhythm than buses, Duncan writes on them, anthology of literature scribed on public transit," - p 4
Duncan & Silliman in an anthology of public transit writings, that might be interesting.
What's Silliman doing?
"1:59, I'm only half-done, is that it, an act, something done deliberately, of description, which mean place, but of travel, meaning place shifts, alters, speech chain Moebius Strip, had not expected the crowd. but that's alright, this blue ink is lovely, a pleasure to watch, jotting is what I do, wander around the platform, take photos," pp 12-13
"I don't ask her name, the Daly City train comes, I get on, it's so crowded I have to stand, I keep writing, I'm much more conspicuous now, people are staring, I can't hold on and write at the same time, I nearly fall, I'm going to have to stand all the way back, we'll be back under the bay in a second, 80 mph, a man watches me write this, I remember what Einstein said when asked to explain the theory of relativity in 25 words or less," - pp 22-23
I found this simple in a way that I imagine most readers might be able to relate to. A man systematically rides the subway, jotting observations in a notebook. The formal device of having each jotting separated by a comma provides a meta-structure. This isn't exactly one of my favorite Sillimans but I like it nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews