In Entry 536, I called the following a “misfire.” It made no sense to me. Coming across it again a week or so ago, I completely changed my mind: it makes perfect sense to me, now (if only meta-rationally). I now think of it as being as good as anything I’ve yet done. I also decided my “Cursive Mathemaku No. 2″ is probably better without the colored background I added to it. Sometimes, though, I actually finish a piece permanently.
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Well, according to astrology, I’ve begun to decline vocationally after reaching my peak a week or two ago. It wasn’t much of a peak. I got my art on display, but doubt that more than a handful of people have looked at it, and probably no more than one or two has really looked at it. I haven’t been very productive, either. I’m going to return to my Shakespeare book today (after a little head-start last night). My intention is to either finish it, or–if I have significant trouble with it–switch to another project of mine, a non-fiction book that may be of general-interest but I’ll say no more about–to keep its theme, which is original, I think, and will be its main selling point, a secret. I will say that it’s about life in general, not about Shakespeare, psychology or poetics.
To make this entry more than a diary entry, here’s a poem of mine from a year or so ago. I posted it then, but just now made a slight change to it, making a whole new poem. I changed “full” to “certain.” I decided the implication that I’d come to understand everything was dumb. Now what kind of understanding I’d achieved is unclear, but should come across as Important. I don’t know whether this poem became visual later; I don’t think it did. I think it may work best as is, but who knows.
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Most mathematicians have trouble with combinations of mathematics and poetry because they can’t think non-mathematically about mathematics; most poets have trouble with combinations of mathematics and poetry because they can’t think non-poetically about poetry. That is, in mathematical poetry, words are treated mathematically. This is taken as an abuse of mathematics by most mathematicians, and as an abuse of words by most poets. Segreceptuality. C. P. Snow’s two cultures. The indifference to my work, except as some kind of visual poetry that doesn’t have to make sense as words or mathematics.
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One of my works that I was particularly pleased with when I came across it while backing up blog entries was the following:
I have one problem with this: my only version of it is a low-resolution jpg, which I don’t know how to convert to high-resolution tif, except by simply redoing it. Any suggestions from anybody out there who knows more than I do about this kind of thing?
I didn’t re-post it only to ask for help, or because of how much I like it, but as an example of how my work as a poet has evolved. Actually, I want to show that it has evolved. That’s because Paul Crowley, the nut I most argue with on the Internet about who wrote the works of Shakespeare, seems not to believe that a poet’s style, or way of making art, evolved once he’s past his apprenticeship. Of course, he will claim I’m not a poet, and that the evidence I’m about to produce to show my evolution indicates only trivial changes, not anything like genuine evolution. I enjoy talking about my work, and analyzing any poem, so will go ahead with my demonstration, anyway.
First of all, I should state my claim: it is that over the past couple of years, my style as a poet has evolved appreciably, and that this poem illustrates it.
(1) I only began using cursive ten or fewer years ago, and never for more than a word or two. This poem and two others have all or most of their texts in cursive. Because the difference in expressiveness between print and cursive is visiopoetically meaningful to those who appreciate visual poetry, this wholesale use of cursive script counts as a significant evolution of style.
(2) My use of cursive is more elegant here than it is in mt other two recent poems making extensive use of cursive. Note, for instance, the large O, and the increased gracefulness of all the letters compared with the letters in my other two cursive poems.
(3) Twenty years ago, I didn’t bother giving my poems backgrounds. Since then I have, and have slowly been improving (but have plenty of room for further improvement). Note the harmony of the background’s shape and colors with the text, especially the O.
(4) The background has another important value–the connotations it picks up as a result of its being a variation (mostly through color changes) of the background in another poem of mine. Connecting poems of mine with others’ poems and others of my own poems is another way I’ve evolved as an artist, not doing it until perhaps twenty years ago, then only very slowly doing it to a greater and greater extent. This poem may be the first to re-use an entire background from another poem. This is not trivial, for it allows this poem to suggest “dictionary-as-temple,” the main part of the foreburden of the poem its background is from. It also should make this poem easier to enjoy, the same way the repetition in a new musical work of an old theme is usually pleasant to hear. I believe the happiness of the colors of this version of the background gains from the reminder of the different, lower-key mood evoked by the other version.
(5) The use of color in tension with greyscale is another trick new to me twenty years ago that I exploit more and more in my present works, as here (though I’ve done more with it elsewhere).
(6) I think my language has evolved over the years, too–from fairly literal to metaphorical and/or surreal. The “logic” of this piece and most of my recent pieces is not so easy to guess, which may be an unfortunate evolution, but an evolution nonetheless.
(7) You can’t tell from this image, which has been reduced in size to fit the normal computer screen, but the hard copy is larger than anything I did ten or more years ago, which is another result of evolution.
Here’s my first or second mathemaku, done thirty or more years ago, to make the profound evolution of my style more inescapable. Yet I maintain this piece is at the level of later pieces; it is simply more condensed. For one thing, it is only linguistic and mathematical. Nothing visioaesthetic happens in it. The eye is used only to recognize the symbols it contains, not to enjoy colors or shapes the way my faereality poem compels it to–i.e., not a visual poem (except inthe mindlessnesses of those for whom just about everything is a visual poem). It is short, and printed. Its words are simple to an extreme.
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A little while ago (it is now around 9 P.M., 9 January) I was feeling good. I attributed this to my having gotten two naps today, one of an hour, the other of one or two hours. And I had gotten six hours of sleep last night, which is about as much as I generally get. I had just about finished backing up my blog entries and was very pleased at how good many of my poems seemed to me when I noticed them during the process. Unfortunately, I got the dates up my upcoming entries wrong, and in correcting them, lost what I had written for this entry. That pretty much wiped out my mood. I can’t stand screwing up like that, but I do it all the time!
This is a pwoermd I stole from Geof Huth’s blog–because it has become too sophisticated to accept comments from dial-ups like my computer, and I wanted to comment on it. It’s by Jonathan Jones, lately of Brussels, but a citizen himself of the United Kingdom. What I like most about it is that it’s lyrical–as too many pwoermds are not. It wouldn’t be a visual poem for me, but an illustrated poem, except that I subjectively feel “apri’ll” is producing the wonderful colors of spring it is slanted into a portion of (through sheer will-power). Hence, in my taxonomy it is an infra-verbal visual poem.
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The past few days I’ve been backing up my blog entries. A little while ago I came across something extremely discouraging: a list from July 26th, 2010, of my 15 life-works-in-progress. What was discouraging was observing that I have done no work on any of them since listing them. Oddly, I left out my Shakespeare authorship book. That I have done work on–quite a bit, in fact. But I had expected to finish with that a year or more ago. I certainly hope that I’ll at least get to work on a few of these life works this year!
My excuse for not doing anything on them today is that I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon. Of late, that’s all I need to do nothing of consequence all day. But it does look like I’ll get this entry posted. I very much need to put the final touches on my response to Jake’s essay, too. That’s been sitting for three or four days, and the deadline is now less than a week away. I have a review of a novel I read to do for Small Press Review, too. Shouldn’t take long, but so difficult simply to start.
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Marton Koppany’s latest visual poem may be the gentlest satire on a country’s government ever, if I’m interpreting it correctly. Note the boot on the head of one of the country’s citizens, for instance–and the complete insanity of the country the cloud with an umbrella suggests. Much more is going on that I’ll let you discover without help.
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There’s been a discussion of “prose poetry” at New-Poetry the past day or two. I posted a few sarcastic remarks against what I consider the nullinguistic idiocy of calling prose “poetry,” and this, which I wouldn’t have bothered posting here except that I was desperate for something to post:
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Diary Entry
Friday, 6 January 2012, 4 P.M. I took one of my special pain pills a little while ago. My day seemed shot, even though I’d written what may be a semi-okay Poem poem for my blog entry. The pill may have helped. I feel a little better, and I got going on my response to Jake again. While working on it, I saw a paragraph I could cut; I always enjoy cutting. Once I’d done that, I realized the paragraph would work much better in a different spot, so I moved it. Suddenly, I thought a C essay might be a B or B+. The pill? No matter: what counts is that the essay is done–more than a week before the deadline!
An hour later. I have to assume the pill has had a good effect on me. In the past hour I revised a recent mathemaku and submitted it to Amanda Earl for her Poetry Month site; finished editing a text from a friend who is making a book of the letters she and her husband exchanged during a Phillipines/USA courtship for her family; and wrote a letter to a friend in California. I made a few Civilization moves, too.
Good news: I won’t be cluttering my entries with these doubly-null diary entries, anymore. When I began posting them, I thought my life had a chance of becoming interesting, but I’m now certain it never will.
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Poem’s Retreat
The small charity of
the imaginary summer breeze unclanking
Poem from his tired rants against
the undefeatable liturgy of the certified
was enough: he retreated into the splendor
of words mathematics had re-thundered
a hundred colors beyond the
repeatedly-beloved-when-required
solutions on the walls of the academies.
Diary Entry
Thursday, 5 January 2012, 9 P.M. I played a match in my senior men’s tennis league and was terrible–so bad, I’m close to giving up the game. I don’t know what was wrong with me. Well, we played at noon with an overhead sun right in my eyes when I served. But I was otherwise bad. I was seeing the ball double, too. That’s happened to me a couple of times in practice; this was the first time it happened while in league play. I don’t know what causes it. Stress? Easy answer. The good news of the day is that I got a good near-final draft of my reply to Jake done. I don’t think it’s quite right, but I don’t think it’ll take much more work to make it pretty good. I had nothing to post for my blog entry, so took a paragraph out of the response to Jake and posted it. Meanwhile, I got into a new game of Civilization after winning my previous one yesterday or the day before. Whee.
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I’ve been working on a response to an essay by Jake Berry. One paragraph appeals to me, so I thought I’d post it here. Got nuttin’ else. So:
I have trouble treating (the obtuseness of academics toward otherstream poetry) as even-handedly as Jake has. It seems to me to be responsible for a state of affairs in American poetry since around 1950–a kind of unstoppable Egyptification due the unification of mediocrities in the equivalent of a trade guild who control what goes in, what stays out, of the poetry anthologies that become our college English departments’ texts, and dictate and reflect what poetry is taught there, discussed in the most visible publications by the only widely influential critics, and accepted by the huge majority of poetry-accepting publications, including all of the commercially viable ones–and, worst of all–subsidized by the imbeciles running organizations like the Poetry Foundation. Their obvious aim being to protect its members from competition from non-conformingly innovative poets.
Nothing new, needless to say, but always pleasant to repeat.
Diary Entry
Wednesday, 4 January 2012, 5:30 P.M. It’s cold for Florida, around fifty, but ith a fierce wind. My heater stopped working two years ago, so I use space heaters in two rooms with the doors shut to survive the winter. When I have to use the kitchen or bathroom, I get pretty cold. So my friend Linda invited me over for brunch and warmth for part of the day. We also did some grocery shopping. That’s my main excuse for again getting nothing done, except a very poor blog entry for the day. Ah, but I am now going to put my garbage out!
Later note: I did one exhibition-related thing: I wrote a cover letter and mailed it and a news release to the editor of the local glossy that’s part of the local newspaper.
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