POETICKS

Recently I noticed that Márton Koppány had made a favorable comment about my “Tribute to the Arts & Humanities.”  It came at a good time for me, because I had great doubts about the poem.  On the one hand, parts of it –the divisor and the quotient—seem to me stupendously good.  Too good, almost, because I’d hate for them to be wasted on a poem that had any substantial flaws.  My remainder is a safe one, trying for nothing special, so not in danger of screwing up the poem.

I was bothered quite a while by the dividend, though: “the bliss-blessédest portions of/ humankind’s long journey upward.”  A minor problem for me was my giving in to political correctness by using “humankind” instead of “mankind,” a word that sounds better to me, and as far as I’m concerned is more correct.  Actually, the best word for the context would be simply “man.”  One syllable.  That there are those who would feel excluded  by my use of that word would not bother me.  Why should I want people like that on my side?  The problem, though, is that “man” is contaminated—for  it now carries connotations even for those sane about its participation in the generic “he” that deflect one out of full appreciation of the poem as a whole, or would be in danger of doing that.

A larger problem with the passage was its describing the arts & humanities (which I hope is clearly what it speaks of) as “the bliss-blessédest (yeeks, I see that I had the accent mark in the wrong place!) portions” of human life.  Perhaps “bliss-blessédest” will seem too grandiloquent (it did, for me, for a while), but—hey—it’s a poem.  What finally made me abandon the passage, though, was the assertion that the arts & humanities were more blessed by bliss than any other human undertaking, which wasn’t fair to basketball—or, from some points of view, science.  I argued to myself that science was equal to the arts & humanities, but due to its brilliance-blessédness, not its bliss-blessédness.  Still, it finally made most sense to me to avoid arguments about which portions of life really produce the most bliss (even if I were the only one who’d ever bring one up).  So: I now have “the bliss-blesséd principalities/ the muses rule.”

I’ve left my sub-dividend product alone although I feel many will find it hypergushful.   “More lovely than the fairest morning sunlight” seems blamelessly hyperbolic to me, but “more holy . . . than the fairest morning sunlight?”  Well, it’s sincere:  using “deserving reverence” as my definition of “holy,” I can’t think of anything more holy than the affirmations our pursuit of beauty can lead to—although morning sunlight’s way of saying “life is good” comes close.

I believe that ultimately the universe is holy—a kind of over-soul—and essentially benevolent albeit helplessly so.  In other words, I don’t hold it responsible for the existence of pain—and am grateful how low a percentage of existence is marred by it.

.

Dating Sites

My latest lazy idea is to use the poems in my Poemns as the basis of long division poems.  The above uses part of the coded text from the poemn about a boy writing his way into a secret world.  I already see how to make the above more interesting: enlarge the letters and color their interiors increasingly magical . . . if I can.

.

express application

With these I’ve been trying for gorgeousness.  I think the first may have achieved that, but it’s basically all orange, and I want multiple colors.  The second shown above is one of many that kept coming out blah.  I finally made some ground toward my goal with the last two, although I have a long way to go.  Another learning experience–that I ought to have begun long ago.  I’m explorative but only slowly so.

.

Dollar Rental Cars

My latest long division poem is now, to all intents and purposes, finished.  I just improved it a great deal, I believe, by replacing its previous quotient with its previous remainder, and dropping the former (which I’m sure I’ll use in another poem, perhaps my next).  Here’s what I have:

Sometimes I take the knowledge of my readers too much for granted.  I’m sure most of you will feel insulted if I suggested you missed the quotation from Hopkins.  On the other hand, we all have surprising gaps in our literary background, so I consider myself remiss for not having pointed it out until a day after posting my entry.  Hopkins is one of the rarest kind of poet, with Dylan Thomas, Emily Dickinson, Cummings, Emerson (primarily in his essays) and almost no others, whom I consider a genius of language “counter, original, spare, strange . . .”  Shakespeare?  I’m not sure.  I think his choice of images is what was most counter, etc., in his work rather than his choice of words.  Ditto Wallace Stevens and Yeats.

.

CampingWorld Discounts

One thing peculiar about me (I think) is that while I consider my own life to have been lousy, I feel very positive about human life: in spite of our flaws, we human beings have done vastly more good for existence than evil.  Hence, the (in-progress) approximation for “the Achievements of Humankind,” or some-such, the dividend of the poem (tentative title, “A Tribute to the Arts & Humanities”) I roughed together last night in bed (while once again having trouble sleeping):

“the ways our pursuit of beauty melt into affirmations more holy and more lovely than the fairest morning sunlight”

Do I overstate it?  Walt, what do you say? I think I do, and I think I don’t care.  My text, by the way, is the product of a banged-up, empty musical staff times “the near-invisible corner of the darkness the colors of birdsong each year dream a pathway for Persephone to.”  An even worse overstatement?  Will I go with it, anyway?  I’m not sure.

My remainder will be the following, or something very close to it, I think: “a willingness to wonder together all things counter, original, spare, strange . . .”

Another instance of my inconsistency, this loudly instructive poem, considering all I continually say about the inferiority of poems that preach.

.

Kohls Coupons

This is late, for I’m still a recovering sick boy.  But, I did do a few small things to my “Cursive Poem No. 1″ yesterday that I’ve thought needed doing for a while–a few minor changes of color here and there.  While doing them, I happened to see in passing the cursive poem I composed whose dividend is “faereality.”  Later thinking about how much I liked the word, and that it was a worthy poem all by itself, I had a few nice positive thoughts about what a fine contraption my long division poem form is.  It allowed me to keep “faereality” as a stand-alone poem while at the same time sticking it into a much more elaborate (and, I believe, signally better) poem by making it the dividend of a long division poem.  I think my form may be better at smoothly allowing completely different material into it.  It is compartmentalized.  Sure, this may not be to everyone’s taste, but those who like disparate things bouncing off each other in a poem, but also want their inclusion in the poem not to seem too arbitrary, should find it an excellent means toward achieving both.  Of course, over-riding everything else is the need to make all the elements of the poem participate, finally, in a unified–or sufficiently unifed–meaning.

.

flights colorado

Note: I may have had most of what follows previously here.  In any case, the last paragraph, at least is new.  Unimportant except that it brings my commentary on this poem up-to-date.

The Odysseus Suite began with a visual poem I’d made in the nineties, shown on the left above.  I was in the mood to make a long division poem and thought I could use it as one of its terms.  For some reason, the blocks of black reminded me of ruins.  From that, it was an easy step to the second image, as what the first image would become when its “LIGHT” was removed.  I divided “LIGHT” into “MYCENAE” and got “ocean” repeated scores of times to suggest inexorably time, with a remainder of the moon shown above.  Then I added three frames to it to give my impression of the story of Odysseus.

Ten years or so later, three things about my first frame bothered me.  One was the use of “ocean,” for Odysseus had sailed the Mediterranean Sea, not an ocean.  And I wasn’t sure I liked the math of ocean times light equals ruins.  More importantly, I had come to feel that I wanted a representation of Mycenae at the beginning of the Trojan War, not as it was now.  Finally, my hero, Odysseus, was not shown.

So I used a map of the Mycenaen Empire instead of the ruins, and changed the remainder to “cries of seabirds,” to establish the importance of the sea, and help with the atmosphere of the scene.  Instead of a representation of an ocean for my quotient, I used a short part of the Iliad where Homer lists all the famed men like Agammemnon who departed those many years ago for Troy, including Odysseus.  Heroes, my logic now had it, times light equaled the dawning of the great double adventure Mycenae became eternally renowned for: the Trojan War and the mythical voyage of Odysseus.  Make that, the triple adventure, for it should include the composition of Homer’s epic poems, which I—a poet—consider an even grander adventure than Odysseus’s.

Later I felt the need to revise my first frame yet again.  It seemed to me better for the time of the Mycenaean Empire to be what was being divided into, not Mycenae itself.  Odysseus and his fellow Greek warriors times a light that I now saw as particularly primeval, slivering through huge, primitive slabs of black, conjured into being the morning of a whole era (or more than one era) not just its dominant city.  I also felt that since Mycenae was part of the sub-dividend product, the latter should not have a lesser value than the dividend.  That is, the addition of the cries of seabirds should give us more than just Mycenae.  I liked the numerical reminders of just how long ago the poem is going back, too.  In any event, it felt right that way, so that’s the way I’ve made it.

.

Buy small appliances

Just to have my Odysseus Suite fully and correctly documented here (and get another entry posted although still barely able to function), here’s what I hope is the final version of its first frame:

.

Pay Check Advance Mesa

I decided on this revision before my kidney stone attack, so don’t blame it on that. The change is to the second frame of The Odysseus Suite.  I now want it dividend to be “c. 1200 B.B.”  The ear dominated by Mycenae rather than Mycenae itself.  It makes more seense to me that way, but I’ll have to wait until my infection has receded to have the energy to make a good case that that.

.

Christian Singles