I don’t know how long this one will last–I need to go out of state to help out with one of my brothers, who is sick (as is his wife). Will be very busy–and probably not have access to a computer.
Entry 117 — Another Vacation
March 11th, 2010Entry 116 — Finally Back
March 9th, 2010All I have today is a revision of my last mathemaku:
The title of the piece is “Mathemaku in Honor of Andrea Bianco’s 1436 Map of the World.” I changed the previous quotient from “music” to a picture of a lute. My reasoning was that “music” was too general; I wanted something that said “medieval.” I’m satisfied with it now.
I’m a bit shocked to see how long it’s been since my last entry here. I thought it’d only been four or five days. I’m going to try to post more often now, maybe not daily but at least three or four times a week. The past three days I’ve woken up feeling good. I’ve been more productive though not as productive as I’d like to be. Still, I’m out of the null zone I was in.
Part of the reason for that is that my bad leg (due apparently to sciatica) is better, although I still can’t run on it to any extent. I’m optimistic that it will fully come around if I give it time and don’t play tennis again till I’m sure it’s okay. Three times I played when it seemed okay but not right, and each time suffered during the next few days.
The pain pills I’m taking for the problem are probably (alas) the main reason I’m feeling so good psychologically. Also contributing it the fact that I’m winning the game of Civilization I’m playing in! I’ve never won it at the level I’m now playing it at. This shouldn’t mean anything but it means a ridiculously lot! Winning just about any kind of competition really zings me!
That’s it for now. Hope to be back tomorrow. Will definitely be back before the week ends.
Entry 115 — The Knowleplex
February 27th, 2010The knowleplex is simply a chain of related memories–A.B.C.D.E., say–or a knowledge-chain. It is what we remember whenever we are taught anything, either formally at school (when our teacher tells us Washington is the capital of the United States, for instance) or informally during day-to-day experience (when we see our friend Sam has a pet cat).
There are three kinds: rigiplexes, flexiplexes and feebliplexes, the name depending on the strength of the knowleplex. One is too strong, one too weak, and the other just right. If we let A.B.C.D.E. stand for “one plus two is three,” then a person with a rigiplex “inscribed” with that, asked what one plus two is, will quickly answer, “three.” But if asked what one plus four is, he will give the same answer, because his rigiplex will be so strong it will become wholly active due only to “one plus.”
On the other hand, a person with a feebliplex “inscribed” with “one plus two is three,” asked what one plus two is, will answer “I dunno,” because his feebliplex will be so weak, even “one plus two is” won’t be enough for his knowlplex to become active. Ditto when asked what one plus four is. But the person whose knowleplex is just right–whose knowleplex is a flexiplex, that is–will answer the first question, “three,” and the second, “I dunno.”
Needless to say, this overview is extremely simplified. Even “one plus two is three” will form a vastly more complicated knowleplex than A.B.C.D.E. The strength of a given knowleplex will vary, too, sometimes a lot, depending on the circumstances when it is activated. And each kind of knowleplex will vary in strength, some feebliplexes being almost as strong as a flexiplex, for example. In fact, a feebliplex can, in time, become a rigiplex. For the purposes of this introduction to knowleplexes, however, all this can be ignored.
Entry 114 — “Mathemaku in Honor of Andrea Bianco’s 1436 Map of the World”
February 25th, 2010Surprise! I’m back already. May be back on vacation tomorrow, though. I’m back today because I somehow managed to produce a new mathemaku yesterday:
Mathemaku in Honor of Andrea Bianco's 1436 Map of the World
Entry 113 — Another Vacation
February 24th, 2010Guess what. I’m taking a vacation from blogging again. I’m not sure how long it will last. All I know is that I don’t seem to have anything to write about, and I lack the energy to convert the diary entries I’m planning to use in the next volume of my Of Manywhere-at-Once into anything even semi-readable. So, see you later.
Entry 111 — Certainties
February 20th, 2010I think recently I wrote of the impossibility of knowing a true absolute. It would require omniscience to do so, I believe. But that does not mean there are no true absolutes.
Just now, I realized that we can know a true absolute. When? Sorry for the anti-climax, but it’s when we have defined absolutes into a system. One such system would be mathematics. If a equals 5 and b equals 7, then it is an absolute certainty that the sum of a and b is 12. Syllogisms yield absolute truths as well in a similar way. If all men can reason and Joe is a man, it is an absolute certainty that Joe is a man. Or: it is absolutely certain that something said to fit a definition fits that definition.
In any event, I now decree a new hierarchy of certainties, listed here from most to least certain:
1. Philosophical Certainty (we can’t know of any)
2. Mathematical Certainty (e.g., 5 times 3 is 15)
3. Scientific Certainty (e.g., gravity keeps the moon from escaping the solar system)
4. Historical Certainty (e.g., Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to him)
5. Everyday Certainty (e.g., I watched Joe and Bucky play Ed and Marty in tennis this morning)
Each of these is certain, but a small step less certain than the one listed above it. Any of them may also be Philosophically Certain but we can never know if it is.
Have I now worked out something college freshmen are taught in Philosophy courses? It does seems painfully obvious to me. Yet I know that there are many who will find is too advanced to understand, including people who have taken more than an introductory college course in philosophy.
Entry 110 — The Three Varieties of Rhyme
February 17th, 2010I’ve come up with new terms for two of the three kinds of rhyme in my poetics. One is Chyme-Rhyme for standard rhyme (e.g., “bat/cat”). The other is Rhyle-Rhyme for the kind of rhyme I’ve called various names, “Backward Rhyme,” being the most frequent (e.g. “bat/badge”). My name for the third kind of rhyme in my poetics is Rim-Rhyme, the perfect name coined many years ago for it (e.g. “bat/bet”).
The new names follow the logic of “Rim-Rhyme” by demonstrating the sound of the kind of rhyme they name, but not the construction, as “Rim-Rhyme” does. The “Chyme” of regular rhyme seems fitting, too. As for “Rhyle,” well, it’s a kind of rhyme that riles traditionalists, and I couldn’t come up with a better “rhy-consonant” word to use.
I should haven’t to explain why I consider all three of my kinds of rhyme valid rhymes, but while some accept rim-rhyme because of Wilfred Owen, I think no one has accepted rhyle-rhyme. But it seems sensible to call such a combination a rhyme rather than an alliteration/assonance. And it seems sensible to call any pair or great number of unidentical syllables sharing two sounds to be rhymes.
Entry 109 — An Old Sonnet
February 17th, 2010I was around twenty when I wrote this following sonnet. A few days ago, I changed its last two lines–and, just now, line one’s “eagle eyes” to “sharpened eyes.” I have all kinds of trouble evaluating it. It may be okay or even good, but it’s so much in a long-disused style, in spite of its backwards rhyming that halfwits won’t consider rhyming, that I can’t read it with much enjoyment.
John Keats
He read of Greece; and then with sharpened eyes,
espied its gods’ dim conjurations still
in breeze-soft force throughout his native isle–
in force in clouds’ remote allusiveness,
in oceanwaves’ eternal whispering,
in woodlands’ shadowy impermanence.
Once cognizant of earth’s allure, he sought
a method of imprisonment – a skill
with which to hold forever what he saw.
The way the soil and vernal rain converge
in carefree swarming flowers, Keats & Spring
then intersected quietly in verse.
The realms he had so often visted
at once grew larger by at least a tenth.
Entry 108 — MATO2, Chapter 3.08
February 16th, 2010I’ve lost any enthusiasm I had for this project, but I’m continuing it, anyway–today with just excerpts from my diary, some of them repeating stuff I already have somewhere in this manuscript. Sorry. But who’s reading?
8:30 P.M. Thursday 30 January 1992
The mail was moderately interesting for a change: letters from Arnold Falleder and Jonathan Brannen, and forms to fill out for that international Who’s Who company that David Thomas Roberts recommended me for, and for this year’s write-up on my press in Poet’s Market.
10 P.M. Saturday 1 February 1992
I had what seemed good ideas concerning my sonnet, especially just after retiring for a nap this afternoon. Geof had said last night that he thought I was a maniac for continuing so persistently with the sonnet, but that it was a form of greatness. He also said he preferred one of the versions of the poem three or four before my “final” one better than the final one, which was what got me thinking about how to improve it again. I got awakened from my nap by a call from C. L. Champion, of all people. We talked for about two hours. He seems quite bright but is only around Surllama’s age. He was quite taken with Of Manywhere-at-Once, which was encouraging. After talking with him, and Geof, who called a second time because he needed the title of David’s book, I had another idea or two. For a while I was very happy with the new version of the sonnet but now I think only two changes good ones, and they’re both minor. I’ll probably try to think of yet more changes.
10 February 1992. I need some kind of success soon–I seem (as I’ve been thinking every once in a while for several months now) that I’ve become addicted to favorable attention, and start having withdrawel symptoms if I don’t get some kind of applause or the equivalent, however small, every week or so–like the acceptance of a poem, or a compliment about one of my essays from a colleague.
8 P.M. Tuesday 18 February 1992
I heard back from Laurel Spence. Nice letter but she didn’t seem much interested in Of Manywhere-at-Once, saying that it wasn’t the kind of book she looks for for review. She sent me a copy of one of her poetry collections–not bad, though more quotidian in subject matter and thought than I consider the best poetry to be. Self-expression much more than exploration of the language, or a quest for higher meanings. I’ve always considered her too set in her ways to be open to the full world of poetry, and her response is further evidence of the validity of my impression.
9 P.M. Thursday 20 February 1992
I got an encouraging postcard from Dana Gioia. He said he didn’t have time to start up a correspondence but that if I sent him some of my reviews and poems he would look them over and send me comments on them, when time permitted. This evening I got together a packet of things. Unfortunately I don’t have many textual poems to send him–he specified that I send him material in print. (Mediocrities always need a previous mediocrity to verify any writer’s worth before being able to devote serious attention to the writer.) If he’s got any kind of ear and/or brain, he should like my criticism, though.
9 P.M. Saturday 22 February 1992
A box of new products from Geof, without a cover letter. The latest issue of Alabama Dogshoe Moustache I particularly liked, for it had a wonderful couplingual poem by George Swede, which I quote in full, “graveyarduskilldeer.” Geof also sent me a list of the words he’s found relating to verbo-visual art. This is the skeleton of his historical dictionary of verbo-visual art. I have a few problems with it, the main one being that he includes a lot of terminology that doesn’t have anything to do with verbo-visual art, such as my own term, “alphaconceptual poetry.” He also wants to use “An” with “historical” in the title, and I hate this exception to the rule that “an” goes only before words beginning with vowels. Some of the entries seem weakly defined, but that’s no doubt because this is just a rough draft. I approve of the effort and hope I can help but it looks like it’ll require an incredibly large amount of work.
11 P.M. Monday 24 February 1992
A Letter from Len Fulton. He has decided he can’t run as it is because it is a review of a book I published. But he made up for that by inviting me to review a collection of d. a. levy stuff–and he suggested I revise my Kempton piece so it was a discussion of a kind of poetry which used Kempton’s pieces as examples. Of course, that’s how I saw the piece to begin with, but I made some changes that I hope will make it acceptable to him–and accepted his invitation to review the levy book. I also spent an hour and a half at the library helping Bernice Weiss set up the Tuesday Writers’ Group display that Bernice got Nancy, the librarian, to let us do.
9 P.M. Tuesday 25 February 1992
Metropophobobia, an otherstream store I’m sending 3 copies of Of Manywhere-at-Once and some other items on consignment.
11:30 P.M. Wednesday 26 February 1992
I worked fairly hard most of the day, but the main result was my deciding I was all screwed up about what alphaconceptuality was, and that the version of the Kempton piece that I wrote for Fulton this morning to replace the one I sent him Monday needed itself to be replaced, which I just finished doing.
10 P.M. Thursday 27 February 1992
My response to the Core Questionnaire on Visual Poetry (nothing, alas, profound, and it tired me). Next day a letter to Geof on the changes in my poetics terminology. New term: “Portmanteaual Poetry.” Plus work on my next Factsheet Five column, which I will base on my Sontag piece.
2 March: the mail was pretty good: a note from Jack Moskovitz and–surprisingly–a genial card from Dana Gioia, who said my package had arrived and he’denjoyed its contents. He also sent me, separately, a review he’d done in 1977 of a collection of haiku, and an ad for an anthology of literary essays he had a piece in. I ordered a copy of the latter and expect to write the author of the haiku book as Gioia suggested. I also wrote a short letter back to Gioia.
I spent the afternoon of 4 March at a meeting of the arts and humanities council. It was interesting but not very helpful. I wanted to try to get something done about making my press eligible for grants but no real opening for a disucssion about it presented itself. Too many people were there with competing concerns–concerns, moreover, that the majority of the other people shared, as they wouldn’t've my problems getting RASP eligible for grants. I went to the meeting with the beginning of a headache. I had planned to gulp down some aspirins before leaving but forgot to. I was pretty shot on my return and still feel mildly crappy despite having taken two aspirns at 5 followed by two alka-selzers with aspirin in them at around 6:30. In short, not a good day at all.
5 March I spent some time thinking about a proposal I hope to send the arts and humanities council about an improved artists’ and artworks’ registry. It’s something that should appeal to them, and get me better involved with them.
11 March 1992. I just finished a final revision of my response to the Core Questionnaire on Visual Poetry. My answers were pretty pedestrian but sound enough, I suppose. Next day a letter from CL Champion with a silly/amusing parody of my Sonnet–and a revision thereof!
14 March: a copy of the latest issue of the newsletter John Byrum edits, with the second excerpt from my book in it. It was reassuring to see that the series of excerpts is indeed continuing.
16 March: a letter from D. T. Roberts that was very favorable about Of Manywhere-at-Once.
10:30 P.M. Thursday 19 March 1992
The big event of the day was the coining of a new term, “textual figuration,” to replace “textual vizlation.” “Figuration” is a standard English word meaning “act or instance of representing a shape or figure,” so it’s close enough to meaning visual art to use it for that, it seems to me. A person practicing it would be a “figurateur,” I’ve decided. The relevant adjective would be, “figurational,” to distinguish it from “figurative,” which has a conflicting literary meaning.
26 March 1992. 2 filled-out data sheets for the arts-in-eduation artists’ registry, one more or less properly filled-out, the other scantily filled out in protest of the kind of information asked for; my computerized arts-registry proposal; and a brief cover-letter to Jean Martensen, the Arts & Humanities Council executive director.
10:30 P.M. Saturday 28 March 1992
A note from Len Fulton that he was using my infra-verbal poetry piece in the April issue.
10 P.M. Friday 17 April 1992
Then the incoming mail arrived and included 3 pleasant items: 2 copies of the latest issue of the
Small Press Review with my guest editorial in it.
19 April 1992: a decision I made and might actually stick to: to drop out of the arts and council, and not get involved in any new organizations such as the local writers’ group I was going to try to get to a meeting of; also the writers’ conference I was going to try to get a fellowship to. I’ve got to concentrate on getting the RASPbooks done, keeping from falling too far behind with my correspondence, continuing to get material into print here and there, and–most of all–getting my next book done. I mustn’t spread myself too thin.
8:30 P.M. Friday 1 May 1992
Todd bought 16 books, including my Of Manywhere-at-Once. He seemed nice. Apparently he’s a recovered, or recovering, druggie. Does photography and seems from the pictures he showed me to have a good eye. He goes in for road kills, though, which aren’t my favorite subject matter. He did a series of one corpse that recorded its “life” over a period of several days. It had some quite interesting moments.
Entry 107 — MATO2, Chapter 3.07
February 15th, 2010A list from my diary of my main micro-triumphs for the 1991:
(1) 4 different presses (all “micro-presses”) solicited me for material to make books of and I sent stuff they found acceptable to all four. One is to be a book of just four poems, the second a book of seven poems, and the third a book of perhaps a dozen poems. The fourth (Haw!) is (probably–the main editor accepted it but it still needs the okay of some panel under him) to be a printing of Barbaric Bart Meets Batperson and her Indian Companion, Taco. Sent Werebird to Sarasota, too. (It was turned done, needless to say. The play was accepted, then printed with the pages out of order.)
(2) Factsheet Five, the only magazine I’ve been doing a regular column for changed hands, and the new editor kept only two of the old columnists, out of ten or so: me and another guy. A minor triumph, for sure, but reassuring (until somebody else took over and dropped me).
(3) I’ve been sent forms to fill out by two Who’s Who publishers, one the standard people here in the US, the other some people in England who do an International Who’s Who. The U.S. Who’s Who is called Who’s Who in the South and Southwest and seems to be the Who’s Who one level below that company’s Who’s Who in America. I got pegged for the international one through a friend who’s gotten into it; I have no idea where the other company got my name. I’m only being considered for both but, still, any kind of recognition is encouraging. (I got into both.)
(4) Just yesterday I got a letter from a new acquaintance who wants to do an article on me for a magazine he writes for. If it comes off, and I’m sure it will, it will be the first article on me.
(5) I had some pieces in an international visual poetry show in San Luis Obispo that then went on tour. One of its stops was in New York State, where my brother Bill went to see it, reporting that due to lack of space only ten of the seventy or so artists in the show had work displayed–and I was one of them! I also had things in shows elsewhere in the U.S., and in Italy, Ireland and Australia.
(6) Two of my visual poems were reprinted in a German anthology of American visual poetry.
(7) A slick magazine called Art Papers had a survey of mail art in which I was mentioned.
(8) A quarterly poetry magazine is publishing excerpts from my Of Manywhere-at-Once–and describing me as “a nationally-known poet, critic and publisher.”
(9) A poem I co-authored is to be translated into a foreign language (Italian). (Ha, I had forgotten about that. Iti did get translated, so I’ve now been translated into at least two foreign languages, Italian and Hungarian. I’m pretty sure something of mine was translated into German, too–probably the words of a visual poem in one of the German publications I had work in.
10. 52 copies of Of Manywhere-at-Once, 2nd ed., got into print. The printer did an excellent job as far as I could tell. Of course, I found defects, but they were my fault, not the printer’s. I was quite satisfied with the book, overall.
Pretty weak. The horror of it is that I’ve done little better since.