The Weather

Poetry. "Kenneth Goldsmith is without doubt the leading conceptual poet of this time. His poetry, which draws from Fluxus, Dada, and conceptual art traditions, is clever and self aware. With now classics such as FIDGET, SOLILOQUY, and DAY (all available form SPD), he has made poetry out of the mundane and when reading his work one is forced to reconsider the stakes and the measurements of aesthetic practice. THE WEATHER, a collection of weather reports, is one more test of poetry. And what is most striking about this book is that it aces the test. There is something wonderfully celebratory and shockingly pleasant and stimulatingly interesting about reading day after day of weather gone by"--Juliana Spahr.

Conceptual artist, University of Pennsylvania instructor and WFMU radio host, Goldsmith has earned a great deal of attention for previous projects, among them Fidget (a real-time record of every motion he made in one day) and No. 111 2.7.93-10.20.96 (a gorgeous 600-page cull of words ending in "r"). This elegant new volume continues his adventures in "extreme transcription": it consists entirely of radio weather forecasts, written down every day in the course of a year (2002–2003) and set as a book with no (or minimal) changes. Even the forecasters' hesitations and stutters show up in Goldsmith's text: "And what we have here tonight is, uh, brisk conditions under partly to mostly cloudy skies, uh, relatively mild, uh, temperatures, uh, staying above freezing all across the region tonight"; "well, we're continuing to watch snow sloat... spread slowly northward, uh, through New Jersey, uh, snowing around Trenton and, eh, Princeton...." These bulletins of sun and storm accrete a kind of documentary power and a minimalist, repetitive charm. Like Goldsmith's radio work, they show an individual artist deforming and triumphing over a mass medium's attempt to reduce voice to data. After 9/11, each day's report also serves to show Goldsmith-as-transcriber, and his audience, that his city is still there. (Aug.)
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