Fieldworks: From Place to Site in Postwar Poetics

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments My debts in writing this book are vast and irredeemable. I can only ask that those who have extended themselves to me over the dozen years Fieldworks was in process accept my thanks below as a partial gesture toward their contributions and support. Perhaps more importantly, I also offer these thanks as a waiver, clearing them of liabilities for any future accidents in the swampy discursive landscape I have here fashioned. Though its prehistory can be traced back to my first encounter with Robert Smithson in the early 1990s, and the writing of Cable Factory 20 (1995–99), Fieldworks did not begin as a discrete project until the summer of 2001 when, under Smithson’s spell, I read Donald Judd’s collected writing and visited Marfa with my father, John Shaw. Two early invitations the following spring helped me get the book rolling—from Joshua Clover to speak at the 21st Century Poetics group at University of California, Berke­ ley, and from Lisa Robertson, Cate Rimmer, and Kathy Slade to give a talk at Artspeak Gallery in Vancouver. Since then invitations to publish sections of the book have been crucial . And so I thank the editors of the following journals and books: Daniel Kane (Don’t Ever Get Famous: Essays on New York Writing After the New York School), Lynne Cooke and Karen Kelly (Robert Smithson: Spiral Jetty),­ Jeremy Varon (The Sixties), Peter Nicholls and Peter Boxall (Textual Practice ), Charles Bernstein (boundary 2), Anne Dewey and Libbie Rifkin, (Among Friends: Engendering the Social Site of Poetry), and Cary Nelson, (Oxford Handbook of Modern and Contemporary Ameri­ can Poetry). I also benefitted from presenting chapter versions at lectures and conferences : at University of Chicago, Northwestern University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Tübingen in Germany, at two Orono National Poetry Foundation conferences at the University of Maine, at Diasporic Avant-­ Gardes at University of California, Irvine, at the Charles Olson Centenary Conference in Vancouver hosted by Simon Fraser University, at University of Sussex, Columbia University, and at New York University. I am extremely grateful to my hosts, respondents, and interlocutors at these events, especially: Charles Altieri, David Alworth, Una Chaudhuri, Stephen Collis, Maria Damon, Michael Davidson, Jeff Derksen, Steve Evans, Al Filreis, Ben Friedlander, Michael Golston, Lyn Hejinian, Oren Izenberg, Daniel Kane, Christina Kiaer, Aaron Kunin, Ralph Maud, John Melillo, Peter Middleton, W. J. T. Mitchell, Miriam Nichols, Aldon Nielsen, Carrie Noland, Bob Perel- xii Acknowledgments man, Jennifer Scappettone, Jonathan Skinner, and Barrett Watten, who also improved several chapters in his response to drafts. Others also made substantive contribution in response to drafts and in the editorial process: Michael Clune, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, John Guillory , Phillip Brian Harper, Robert J. C. Young, Cyrus R. K. Patell, and Dan Water­man. Susan Harris I thank for copyediting; Timothy Anderson for doing the index. Next I must thank a large group of people for aid practical, intellectual, and social, most of­ten all at once: Kevin Attell, Jimbo Blachly, ­ Merritt Bucholz , Matthew Buckingham, Gerard Byrne, Andrew Clark, Catharine Clark, Clark Coolidge, the late Robert Creeley, Martin Daughtry, Patrick Deer, Steve Dibenedetto, Stephen Duncombe, Marcella Durand, Nada Gordon, Pepe Karmel, Gloria Kury, Janike Larsen, Hank Lazer, ­Bernadette Mayer, K. Silem Mohammad, Tue Andersen Nexo, ­ Sianne Ngai, Tomás Urayoán Noel, Sarah Pierce, Frances Richard, Jerome Rothenberg, David Roth­ man, Sheila Rothman , Michelle Segre, John Shaw, Gary Sullivan, Kazys Varnelis, Tim Ventimiglia , John Waters, Heriberto Yepez, and Jason Zuzga. Later, as the project progressed, I had help from a whole new set of people locating images. These include: Amiri Baraka, Mel Bochner, Wesley Chenault, Matthew Coolidge, Mark Dion, Emily Ruotolo and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, Art Fitzpatrick, Elyse Goldberg and James Cohan Gallery , Tim Gray, Renée Green, Tim Saltarelli and Elizabeth Dee Gallery, Peter Hale, Nancy Holt, Claes Oldenburg and the Claes Oldenburg Studio, Ron Padgett, Raymond Pettibon and David Zwirner Gallery, Jennifer Roberts, Martha Rosler, Maime Tinkler and Mitchell, Innes & Nash Gallery, the Shom­burg Library, Tamiment Library at New York University, Mierle Laderman ­ Ukeles, Eleanore Hopper and Ronald Feldman Gallery, Anne Waldman , and Lewis Warsh. New York University generously provided me leave on several occasions while Fieldworks was in progress. My greatest debts, though, are to Cosmo Clark-­ Shaw, Luca Clark-­ Shaw, and Emilie Clark. ...