The addition of a background, a rather simple one, and viola, my not-all-that-wonderful poem is now a masterpiece!
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Archive for the ‘Kinds of Poetry’ Category
Entry 736 — A Transformation
Saturday, May 12th, 2012Entry 735 — Another Long Division Poem Finished
Friday, May 11th, 2012It’s my “Tribute to the Arts & Humanities.” For a while I had great expectations for it; I especially liked the way my quotient came out. But I am not too satisfied with the lettering of either my dividend or the text uder it. They seem to me barely adequate, if that. If there were a good cheap graphic designer in Port Charlotte, I’d hire him to improve them. It’s not a bad poem, though–and straight-forward: the only help an engagent may need is knowing that “counter, original, spare, strange” is from Gerard Manley Hopkins–so I’m hoping it can pick up a few fans from among the sub-congnoscenti. Make that, “pre-cogniscenti.”
(Apologies: once again I posted this as “private,” having forgotten to tag it “public.” I generally keep my entries “private” so no one can see them but I until I’m satisfied with them, at which time I hit a button that makes them “public.” Ridiculously often I forget to do this, as was the case this time. No big deal, just one more reminder to me, as if I need it, that I’m a moron.)
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Entry 732 — Sloops
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012sloops
I’m super-lethargic again, and this time nor willing to take a dose of APCs. That’s because I fear my body is too screwed up to meddle with pharmaceutically–any more than my doctors are already meddling that way with it. So just a word today–”spools” spelled backwards. It’s the longest word I’ve come up with so far that is a word in both directions. I bother publicizing it so I can pontificate a bit on my belief in the value of going conceptual as a poet. I would call the above a poem if printed “sloops spools.” But it would be an extremely trivial poem because amusing only; “god dog” is much better (putting aside how many times we’ve all seen it) because it has a conceptual interest: the fact that a dog can be considered the antithesis of a god. Hence, its backwards spelling is a metaphor for its “backwards” meaning. The images conveyed by the two spellings also interact more interestingly than the images conveyed by “sloops” and “spools” One set of words is amusing; the other amusing and interesting. Too many pwoermds and related poems are only amusing.
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Entry 718 — Something by Marilyn
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012The inconcision of the snow’s translation of the day was middling me deeply into wanly incorrect answers to questions about where to drain the line. The sun is always somewhere, angry. Too many misspelled birds, speckling the past.
Hey, here’s something for misspelled eyes and brains: a work by Marilyn Rosenberg at Amanda Earl’s National Poetry Month Site.
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Entry 702 — Another by John Vieira
Sunday, April 1st, 2012
All I can say about this one at the moment is that it’s delightful. (It’s terrific, too–both visimage and poem.) I hope when my brain is working better to say something more cogent about it. Meanwhile, I’m grateful to have ssomething I like as much to fill this entry with. I’m as sleepy/ blodgy as ever, by the way, but yesterday I got 400 words of my next column for Small Press Review done, and I expect to get another 400 or more done on it today, so I’m not quite non-functional. And I do feel mildly optimistic about existence.
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Januweary
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Entry 700 — A Still Life by John Vieira
Friday, March 30th, 2012
When people wonder if anyone in the group of artists I’m associated with is at the level of–say–Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, Berryman (as Geof Huth recently did in a return comment to one of mine at his blog the other day), one of the artists I think of who seems to me to make such wondering absurd (here as poet and visimagists rather than as visual poet) is John Vieira: there are at least ten of us equal or better than the two major minor poets and one minor major poet mentioned. Yes, I include myself, even though I do realize that one cannot properly evaluate one’s own work since much of what one thinks one put into it may not be there for others (even if helped to see it). Or flaws one is sure one didn’t put into it may be there for others. Alas, my work isn’t considered worth showing up by the establishment, and my friends are all polite, so I’ll probably never learn the truth.
Anyway, here’s a sample of John’s recent work, a package of which arrived in the mail today, just in time to give me something related to poeticks for this entry. I was going to write about a cat. I still will, but not today.
One reason I love this still life of John’s is that I couldn’t quickly figure out what seemed so good about it. It’s pears as I don’t believe anyone else has ever captured them, but there’s more to it than that. Something of haiku simplicity and depth is there. The pears seems to me to just tumble off the line John has rendered them out of into being, too deliciously quickly to obscure one another. John’s poem about them matches their simplicity, and heightens the spirit of the drawing without repeating it.
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Entry 698 — An E.Mail from South America
Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
Desparate once again for something to blog about, I’m reporting today on an e.mail I got a little while ago from Jorge
Dear Bob Grumman
I hope you are fine.
While reading Writing To Be Seen, I came across your concept of visio-textual art and found it interesting in order to include in my postdoctoral research report. In Permutoria: Visio-Textual Art, the same term and concept appeared. I have bought these books when I was in the II Avant Writing Symposium held in Columbus, Ohio, where I met Crag Hill, Nico Vassilakis, John M. Bennett, Miekal And, and many others. It was a great meeting. It was a pity you couldn´t come, for it was an opportunity to meet and talk with you.
I would like you to send a copy of the text of yours where you explain your concept of visual-text art. The explanation in Writing to be seen is not complete.
Best regards from Brazil
I answered quickly. (I’m pretty good about quick answers to questions about visual poetry.)
“Nice hearing from you again, Jorge!” said I. (We’d talked a bit about visual poetry over the Internet before.) “Yes, I wish I could have been at the symposium in Columbus—I would have enjoyed meeting you. And seeing Nico in person for the first time, although he’s an old friend. I’ll try to find where I’ve discussed “visio-textual art and e.mail it to you. It may take a while because I am not well-organized and I have discussed it and related terms in various places.
“Actually, though, my own definition of it is simple: it is any work of art that contains both textual matter and matter that is wholly visual. By ‘wholly visual,’ I mean not visual merely in the way a conventional poem is since we must see it to read it, but in the way an image of a rose is. It’s not an important term for me, except to emphasize my belief that ‘visual poetry’ is not a good name for anything with both textual matter, which can be non-verbal, and visual matter because it is too inclusive to be effective, and goes against the tradition of poetry for thousands of years as something containing words.
“Feel free to ask for clarification or whatever else you may need.”
Yes, this is my standard boilerplate, but I harp on it because no one else seems to take it seriously. Visual poets don’t like narrowing terms; the academy would agree with me if they paid any attention at all to visual poetry.
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Entry 691 — About my Piano Mathemaku
Wednesday, March 21st, 2012
I’ve brought back the above because one of my friends in visual poetry brought it up back-channel, inspiring the following beginning attempt at an explication (although it’s only mine, I have to emphasize, and I’m not being sarcastic):
A lot of what I do is surrealism: multiplications, for instance, that make surrealistic sense to me. The basic idea of the above is that a piano and all it represents (music, the creative process, self-expression, something to play, etc.) times a mountain and a fortress that is merged with the mountain and what it represents—power, unchangingness, seriousness, intimidation, etc., or the antithesis of what the piano represents, equals a painting of boats that represents a sea journey, but also a musical composition (theme and variation, a kind of fugue in spots–think of the boats as melodies), a game, happiness, as well as various associations with Paul Klee, from whom I stole the boats (although I’ve changed them)—also a progression from dimness into color. This journey, I contend, is similar to the brook’s journey to the spring flowers the brook’s water will nourish into being. All the journey of boats needs, surrealistically, exactly to equal the coming of spring, is the remainder, which is the word “mystery” made mysterious and added to by other words and elements—a magic word, you might say. I feel I’m ignoring scientific logic for emotional logic. Can’t help it, is my only defense. But I hope an engagent will find my dividend to be a pleasant short poem, and the graphic a pleasant picture—at least in its final larger size—and touched up.
A thought: what if someone played a mountain fortress on a piano, and the music that resulted came out as pictures? What would they look like? The whole idea is absurd, but . . .
Meanwhile, today I broke free of my egocentricity to come up with the Truly Brilliant, However Simple, Idea that I can use my new gallery (in my dentist’s waiting room) for exhibitions of works other than my own! That way I could work up from the classics of visual poetry almost anyone would like to what I and my most advanced friends are doing in the field. Basically, I have three walls. What I think I may do is devote one to classics like Cummings’s falling leaf poem; the second to my earliest, most accessible visual poems, and the third to my “Odysseus Suite,” if I can get it to satisfy me, something I’m still working on but making progress, I think–and two other recent ones. The one above and my “Seaside Mathemaku,” which several people have liked.
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Entry 689 — My Dentist
Monday, March 19th, 2012This morning I had two cavities filled. This would not have been worth reporting here except that my dentist offered me the use of her waiting room as a gallery! It’s not the Guggenheim, but it’s step up for me–up from my current exhibition, I feel, because permanent–or at least for many months. And I’ll be able to wander in to make changes. The first piece I think I’ll hang is this one:
A version of this was here recently, but this version is slightly different, and final, I hope–except that I intend to outline the Klee images in black. What excites me about it is that I have some good ideas for a commentary on it that I hope will reach people. I’m especially hoping Dr. Angela, my dentist, and/or her associates, will connect to it, and be good explaining it to any patient curious about it. Next will be my “Odysseus Suite”–also with an explanatory commentary. I think a great advantage of this show will be that I’ll be able to insert pieces one at a time, so will have time to make good choices, and work on accompanying materials.
So, things are going well for me right now–and at a good time–yesterday I learned all my three submissions (including the piece above) failed to make the cut into a 30-piece online exhbit.
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Entry 688 — Defining Mathematical Poetry Again
Sunday, March 18th, 2012Carol Dorf got it going at New-Poetry in a reply to Stephen Russell, who had opined that mathematical poetry was a special new form of poetry: “I’m not so sure about this distinction between “mathematical” poets and other poets — poetry includes various realms of discourse — ekphrastic, poems of the natural world like most of Mary Oliver’s [ed. note: one of which we'd been discussing], poems of love and sex, poems that reference philosophy, the poetry of family life, the poetry of justice/ injustice, and yes, the poetry of the suburbs. Mathematics is just another branch of thought — I think the way poets spend their days influences what they write — so poets who are involved in mathematics, either as work, or as recreation, will bring mathematics into their poetry.”
Me: “But do they use it in their poetry, as opposed to merely discuss it? For me it’s a matter of expressive modalities: mathematical poetry’s are both verbal and mathematical (as little as the use of an exponent) whatever its subject, while a poetry whose expressive modality is only verbal is not, even if its subject is mathematics. Just as a visual poem is not a poem about about a Breughel painting but a poem that uses the kind of expressive modality painters use. Which doesn’t make one necessarily superior to the other, but does make one significantly different from traditional poetry.”
Tad Richards (who I’m sure really wanted to know) asked, “Does this include a poet like Creeley using a plus sign for “and”?
Me: “That’s where the border is, but I would say no, that the plus and minus are like the &—too widely used as verbal symbols to feel mathematical unless in a clearly mathematical context. The a does the same thing in reverse when in an algebraic equation.”
Carol returned to the discussion with: “I would argue against mathematical poems as a separate ‘school’ of poetry — one can look at mathematical content and techniques (i.e. syllabics, metrics, many traditional forms) in a variety of poems. To me, partitioning poems that involve mathematics onto their own plane is an unnecessarydivision. I think the symbols of mathematics, are just orthography — while I find the use of them in poetry interesting, those poems are not necessarily mathematical. What I think is actually the hardest part of mathematical poetry is finding accessible forms and language for mathematical ideas, and in particular higher mathematics.
Me, not really wanting to get into it yet again about mathematical poetry: “I have little more to say except that I believe that when brain scanners are sophisticated enough, they will show that what I call mathematical significantly engage both mathematical and verbal portions of the brain whereas poems about mathematics do not. I should also add that of course I’m defending my own practice, which I see, in my mathematical poems, as more than different spelling—although I also believe a focus on ‘just orthography’ leads to what I call infraverbal poetry, which seems to me about as significantly a different kind of poetry as mathematical poetry. Ooops, once started, it’s hard for me to stop—but I have one more item to add—that as a taxonomist of poetry, I see no point in classifying poems on the basis of their subject matter (except at the lowest level); to show inter-relationships that matter, you need to classify on the basis of what poems do, not what they are about.
Another ratio I thought of: The Wilderness/Civilization Ratio.
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