Entry 1761 — The Final Final & Other Stuff-

Entry 1761 — The Final Final & Other Stuff

On Sunday, March 22, 2015 12:04 PM, Bob Grumman <[email protected]> posted this at NowPoetry:

The first took me over a week, the second fifteen minutes, except for a spelling correction two hours later. The first is at /2015/03/21/entry-1759, the second one day later. I’m posting them because the first is autobiographical: Peach Island actually exists in Long Island Sound fifty yards or so from the shore of Harbor View where I spent my best years (from age 7 to 12), and my poem about it has zillions of epiphanies!

The rest of the poem and all of the second poem are autobiographical only to the extent of expressing my love of fantasy stories beginning with the Grimm’s tales my mother read to me. I was almost going to call the first poem an homage to JK Rowling but it only connects to the Potter series as fantasy. I think I may try for a specific poem about Harry if my subconsciousness can come up with the necessary ingredients. Confession: while I do regard Rowling’s series highly, I want to make a poem on it mainly as a way of enlarging my audience–maybe even double it to 16.

Feedback, of course, would be appreciated. Feedback, of course, not expected. Except possibly for the Superior Two whose names I will not divulge.

* * *
On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 2:22 PM, ‘stephen russell’ via NowPoetry <[email protected]> wrote:

peach island, just offshore —
abondoned house
in the middle of the trees

Bob, I think you can delete a few words … still, fascinating ….

I’ve always thought that your work would appeal to bright pre-adolescents. I remember Bloom, in a snide remark on the Charley Rhodes show, refer to Harry Potter as “trash.” Apparently, because Potter did not measure up to E B White, the book was unworthy of his esteem.

* * *

Very interesting, Stephen–my immediate reaction to your suggestion was, doesn’t he realize I want to indicate the size of the little island? But I thought about it for a while and realized I didn’t have to! In fact, if I don’t, the reader can imagine the island any size he wants to! And the main purpose of the poem is to give the reader something to use his imagination on. So thanks!

As for Bloom, you know my opinion of him. Bloom’s contempt reminds me of Edmund Wilson’s for detective novels. As for me, the only genre novels I don’t like are romance novels, and that’s because I’m one of those horrible XY people. But I consider Rowling much better than White, even though he was an XY, she a double X.

Off to fix my poem, now.

–Bob

* * *

http://www.georgetown.edu/news/lannan-center-for-poetics-endowment-symposium-2015.html

MARCH 18, 2015 – GEORGETOWN HAS RECEIVED A $4 million gift to permanently endow its Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice as it celebrates its 25th anniversary and prepares for its annual spring symposium – featuring renowned poets, writers, intellectuals and activists – this month.

Aho, an almost perfect counter-post to mine about my new anti-social practice and unmillioned or hundreded poems. (Ain’t it turble way I takes everythin’ personal!)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2015 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Cryptographiku, From My Poetry Workshop, Infraverbal Poetry Specimen, Mathematical Poetry Specimen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Jody Offer « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Jody Offer’ Category

Entry 83 — MATO2, Chapter 1.05

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

About a week later I heard from one of my California writer friends, Moya Sinclair, who called me a little after eight in the evening sounding very cheerful and energetic. She, Annie Stanton, quite a good linguexpressive poet, Diane Walker, well-known as a television actress under her maiden name, Brewster, who had literary ambitions and was quite bright but never to my knowledge broke beyond the talented dabbler stage, and I had been a few years earlier the main members of a little writers’ group at Valley Junior College in the San Fernando Valley presided over by Les Boston, a professor there. Technically, we were doing independent studies with Dr. Boston, but in reality we friends who met weekly to discuss one another’s writing, mine at the time plays. Annie and Diane were about ten years older than I, Moya close to eighty by the time of her phone call, and she was in a convalescent home. Her circulatory system had slowly been wearing out. I fear she died there, for I never heard from her again. Both Annie and Diane died around then in their early sixties, huge unexpected losses for me.

Moya reported that Annie had been over for a visit and had left my book with her. Moya said she’d been reading parts of it and found it beautifully written, etc. She had a few adverse comments on it, too–on Geof’s word for one-word poem (“pwoermd”), for instance, but that was to be expected. Moya, for years working on an autobiographical novel, was pretty wedded to the old standards. We had a fine chat that boosted my spirits a good deal. She represented one of the main kinds of readers I hoped would like my book.

A day later I got a very positive letter from Jack Moskovitz about my book, and a lukewarm one about it from Geof. Geof, as I remember, felt I should have lightened up on the Grummaniacal coinages. I think he was right. I believe one of the things I tried to do in my two revisions of the book was to cut down on them.

The next day, according to my diary, I got lots of letters, mostly from people I sent my book to, and for the most part complimentary though Jody Offer, a California poet/playwright friend of mine, felt I got too advanced in parts–I’m sure in part because of my terminology. I was finding out, though, that my book was not as geared for non-experts as I’d hoped.

Posted in Autobiographica, Bob Grumman, Geof Huth, Jack Moscovitz, Jody Offer | No Comments »

Cor van den Heuvel « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Cor van den Heuvel’ Category

Entry 48 — Full Effectiveness in Poetry

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

I’m skipping ahead to old blog entry #796 today to make a point about my recent cryptographiku. #796 has Cor van den Heuvel’s poem:

. tundra

I go on in the entry to say I believe Eugen Gomringer’s “Silencio,” of 1954, was the first poem to make consequential visiophorically expressive use of blank space:

.                      silencio silencio silencio  .                      silencio silencio silencio  .                      silencio          silencio  .                      silencio silencio silencio  .                      silencio silencio silencio

I finish my brief commentary but then opining that van den Heuvel’s poem was the first to make an entire page expressive, the first to make full-scale negative space its most important element. Rather than surround a meaningful parcel of negative space like Gomringer’s masterpiece, it is surrounded by meaningful negative space. I’m certainly not saying it thus surpasses Gomringer’s poem; what it does is equal it in a new way.

I consider it historically important also for being, so far as I know, the first single word to succeed entirely by itself in being a poem of the first level.

Then there’s my poem from 1966:

. at his desk
. the boy,

. writing his way into b wjwje tfdsfu xpsme

This claim to be the first poem in the world to use coding to significant metaphorical effect. Anyone who has followed what I’ve said about “The Four Seasons” should have no trouble deciphering this. I consider it successful as a poem because I believe anyone reasonably skillful at cyrptographical games will be able (at some point if not on a first reading) to emotionally (and sensually) understand/appreciate the main things it’s doing and saying during one reading of it–i.e., read it normally to the coded part, then translate that while at the same time being aware of it as coded material and understanding and appreciating the metaphor its being coded allows.

I’ve decided “The Four Seasons” can’t work like that. It is a clever gadget but not an effective poem because I can’t see anyone being able to make a flowing reading through it and emotionally (and sensually) understanding/appreciating everything that’s going on in it and what all its meanings add up to, even after study and several readings. Being able to understand it the way I do in my explanation of it not enough. This is a lesson from the traditional haiku, which must be felt as experience, known reducticeptually (intellectually), too, but only unconsciously–at the time of reading it as a poem rather than as an object of critical scrutiny, which is just as valid a way to read it but different.

Posted in Bob Grumman, Cor van den Heuvel, Eugen Gomringer, infraverbal poetry, minimalist poetry, Poetics, visual poetry | No Comments »

Conrad Didiodato « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Conrad Didiodato’ Category

Entry 862 — What’s A Literary Critic?

Saturday, September 15th, 2012

There’s a discussion at leafepress.com the title of which is, “What is Literary Criticism? What is a Literary Critic?” It’s mainly between Conrad DiDiodato and John Bloomberg-Rissman, but Ed Baker takes a few potshots at the others, basically reiterating the standard belief of the romantic poet that criticism is irrelevant to poets.

The discussion annoyed me because it made no references to my criticism. Of course, I didn’t really expect it to, although Conrad knows a little of my work, but I have trouble listening to people taking tenth-rate critics seriously when my work is available. Yes, I am that arrogantly convinced of the value of my criticism. Not that I’m all that sure it’s any good, but that I am positive that it’s many orders of magnitude better than Derrida’s, say, or DeMan’s, or that moron Foucault, which these guys seem to admire (although they do seem to be familiar with a wide range of critics, some of whom I don’t take as tenth-rate, like Cleanth Brooks.

The discussion annoyed me more because, like so many such discussions, it starts nowhere, really, and splathers inconclusively severalwhere. Its central defect is absence of defined axiom-setting terms—due to the standard belief of its participants that “artworks . . . can NEVER be fully unpacked.” The truth is that any artwork can be unpacked sufficiently to satisfy any sane person. Just as the distance from my house to yours can be measured sufficiently to satisfy any sane person although it can never be measure perfectly.

This absence of defined terms allows them to say sometimes interesting things, and not worry about contradiction. And it satisfies the political need of the naïve to feel certain all beliefs are equally true/false, just as all persons are equally good/bad. The only problem with it is that it’s nonsense. This is a problem, because false beliefs are much more likely to lead to grief than true beliefs—as every knows intuitively but intellectuals keep out of their verbal awarenesses. For example, an intellectual won’t make a fifty-foot swan dive into a pool whose water he knows is frozen because his reptile brain will give him nausea at the thought of doing so. But the nausea will never work its way up into his verbal awareness and bother him with the possibility that a belief that a fifty-foot dive into a pool of solid ice is harmful is true whereas a belief that it is not harmful is false.

I know. Simplistic. But in the final analysis, true.

I began this expecting simply to answer the questions in the title of the leafepress.com discussion. No, not answer them, just scatter a few thoughts concerning them. I’ve elsewhere answered the questions pretty well, I believe, although I’m not sure when or where. Right now, however, I have one new thought (for me) about the subject: that there is an important difference between a literary critic and a literary appreciator. A literary critic tells you—make that, “tries to tell you”—everything important to know about a particular literary work based on its expressive elements alone. Which will include what is denoted, what connoted and what is explicitly alluded to. It will, I believe, also include what is implicitly alluded strongly enough for most knowledgeable engagents of the work under analysis to connect to. “Fourscore and ten years ago,” for instance, with “Lincoln’s “fourscore and ten years ago” being an explicit reference.

Hmm, I see that I’ve defined a literary critic, except that I left “literary work” undefined. So be it, for now, although it’s easy to define; it’d take too many words for me to bother doing that here (and I’ve done it elsewhere). Oh, one other minor omission: I didn’t say what it is important to know about a literary work. I’ve defined that, too. It wouldn’t take all that many words, but too many for me to bother with here.

Let me turn to what a literary appreciator is. I decided I needed the term because it seems to me my definition of the literary critic is almost identical to any new critic’s. But new critics opposed going beyond the artifact on the page or pages in analyzing it. I believe them correct to dos, but only strictly speaking. I want someone telling me about a poem, say, to tell me things about its maker, including things having little or nothing to do with the poem. Like, Wow, a guy like Ezra Pound could believe in a totally loony economics theory yet write “In a Station of the Metro!” A literary appreciator is a literary critic who also is willing to discuss all kinds of things about a poem beyond what it is as literature. He is not someone who slights literary analysis to do this. He must also avoid finding implicit allusions that aren’t there for any normal person and building wacky psychiatric interpretations out of them the way Freud did and has followers have. As basically all the French critics and their allies have in diverse ways.

Not that there isn’t a place for, say, someone who focuses on what forces in society may have influenced the final form of a poem. Such a person is neither a literary critic nor a literary appreciator; he is a sociological critic of literature.

Before I end I want to mention that I would divide literary critics into two kinds: the practical literary critic and the theoretical literary critic (unless I think of a better name). The first deals with works of literature, each mostly by itself, although he may (and usually should) connect a work to other works of its author, and to like works by others; the second does this also, but presents some kind of theory for the nature and value of a literary work—not just that rhyme is pleasurable, for instance, but why it is. Along the way he will provide a taxonomy of the kinds of literary works he deals with, and a continuing list of the techniques used in them with detailed descriptions of them, and why they are effective.

Above the two kinds of literary critics is the literary philosopher. Such a person is a serious seeker of significant final truths about literature. He will probably also be a philosopher of aesthetics, one seriously seeking significant final truths about all the arts, not just literature. My taxonomy continues upward, finally arriving at the neurophysiological theorist—who is one step below the Total Verospher, who seriously seeks significant final truths about everything!

Urp.

Just My Shopping Coupons

Posted in Bob Grumman, Conrad Didiodato, Criticism, Ed Baker, John Bloomberg-Rissman | No Comments »

Entry 153 — A Second Announcement

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

An interesting discussion of “vispo” and visual poetry that includes careful discussions of my poetic practice by Conrad Didiodato is now among this blog’s “Pages” under the category of “Discussions Of Bob Grumman’s Poetry.

Posted in Announcements, Conrad Didiodato | No Comments »

Entry 35 — Thoughts on Scatteredness « POETICKS

Entry 35 — Thoughts on Scatteredness

On Sundays, I turn off my computer at eleven in the morning and leave it off till five so people who want to talk to me on the phone can do so (which they can’t when I’m connected to the Internet because I have dial-up, and also like to stay connected to the Internet even when not using my computer so as to block junk phone calls). Ergo, since it’s quarter to eleven as I type this, I’ll soon be off the computer. I could still do a Major Entry offline, but it’s more difficult than doing it online and I’m lazy. In any case, I’m going to do a quickie today, just this, quoted in its entirety with no changes from #671:

3 December 2005:

Someone I argue with on the Internet about who wrote Shakespeare asserted that “those who achieve greatness go about their work in a markedly different way than those who achieve only mediocrity. A scattershot approach to writing, wherein one works on several ‘major projects’ (forgive me for refusing to equate the composition of King Lear with the cleaning of your house, Bob, but I don’t think I’ll even bother to come up with support for this assertion) is an indication, not that we are dealing with a major talent, but rather that we are dealing with procrastination and mediocrity.” We were arguing about a recent Biography of Shakespeare that hypothesized that he finished four different plays in one year. My opponent claimed it wasn’t possible; I that it most certainly was. I used myself as an example of a writer who had a lot of major projects going at a time. Hence, my opponent’s distinguishing “mediocrities” from Shakespeare-level artists. I mentioned getting my house organized as one of the major projects I was involved in, which accounts for his reference to “the cleaning of (my) house.”

It seems to me many culturateurs (people whose contribution to world culture was major) worked on four or more major cultural projects (a major project needn’t be cultural) during a year, and some of them worked on two or more of them simultaneously, especially composers and painters. A blurriness of recall prevents me from thinking of any particular such culturateurs except for Leonardo–who was definitely handicapped by his approach to his endeavors; I wouldn’t say it was a “scattershot approach,” but it leaned that way, for sure.

I’ve always alternated between pride in my scattershot approach and worry about it. Certainly, it’s kept me from finishing much. But, I claim, only so far. Next year, will be different. Actually, this year hasn’t been so bad, for I finished one long-in-progress play during it (and two such plays near the end of the year before). At the moment, I am at work on (1) my book on the Shakespeare authorship debate (which is more an introduction to my theory of psychology, (2) a central life’s work of mine); (3) and (4) two new plays, (5) my essay on E. E. Cummings’s Influence (which I hope will become book-length at some point), (6) these blog entries (and improvements to my blog), (7) my mathemaku sequence,The Long Division of Poetry, (8) a large mathemaku I’m tentatively calling “Mathemaku in Homage to Modern Technology,” (9) my mathemaku, in general, (10) my Poem poem sequence, (11) getting mine house in order, (12) various anthologies or zines I’ve agreed to send poems or essays to and/or guest-edit. Impressive-sounding, but I do procrastinate, and play Civilization too much. I won’t finish any of these this year, and may not ever. Nonetheless, I’ll be severely unhappy if I don’t take care of most of them next year–as well as get the next volume of Writing To Be Seen, the anthology Crag Hill and I have co-edited, into print, another major project. It remains to be seen whether or not the results will make it above mediocrity, but I’m betting on myself.

Just changed my mind–got curious as to what happened with the projects I was working on almost exactly four years ago. So, here’s the list again with my comments: At the moment, I am at work on (1) my book on the Shakespeare authorship debate (which is more an introduction to my theory of psychology (Whee, finished and self-published in two editions!);(2) a central life’s work of mine) (not sure what this was but probably finishing a complete version of my knowlecular psychology theory, which I am no closer to having done than I was four years ago); (3) and (4) two new plays (unfinished, one of them possibly lost in a computer crash, but the other at least half done): (5) my essay on E. E. Cummings’s Influence (which I hope will become book-length at some point) (I finished this as a long essay but haven’t made a book of it, which I still hope to do); (6) these blog entries (and improvements to my blog) (I have kept the blog going); (7) my mathemaku sequence,The Long Division of Poetry (I have extended this significantly since then and improved it, I believe), (8) a large mathemaku I’m tentatively calling “Mathemaku in Homage to Modern Technology” (I finished this); (9) my mathemaku, in general (I’ve continue producing mathemaku, although not as rapidly as I hoped I would back then); (10) my Poem poem sequence (It’s ongoing); (11) getting mine house in order (I think I half-did this, but it’s as disorganized as ever right now);(12) various anthologies or zines I’ve agreed to send poems or essays to and/or guest-edit (A few of these done possibly, but most not).

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 at 4:05 PM and is filed under Autobiographica, Bob Grumman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Visual Poetry Specimen « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Visual Poetry Specimen’ Category

Entry 621 — Evolution of Style

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

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.

bank account

Posted in Bob Grumman, Literary Opinion, Mathematical Poetry Specimen, Visual Poetry Specimen | 4 Comments »

Entry 620 — Getting Enough Sleep

Tuesday, January 10th, 2012

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.

Precision M4400 Laptops

Posted in Infraverbal Poetry Specimen, Jonathan Jones, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 618 — “Hungarian Vispo No. 2″

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

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.

: Hungarian Vispo No. 2

Piperlime Coupon Code

Posted in Marton Koppany, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 613 — Vispo SpamAd

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

The following is a detail from a Spam ad that I got yesterday. It’s a good example of a commercialized visual poem. Effective as an eye-catcher, but not very good as a visual poem.

Below is my improved version. Certainly not yet a great work but better than the original. If you can’t see why, I’m afraid you aren’t too perceptive about the art. If you can’t see how the basic idea could be used in a far better piece, you probably aren’t an effective visual poet, or are tired.

Diary Entry

Monday, 2 January 2012, Noon. I got up late because I stayed up late last night watching my Giants fall apart, but win anyway because Dallas fell apart just in time to keep from winning. I don’t think the Giants have much hope of going far in the play-offs, but I’ll be rooting for them. And the other teams are pretty inconsistent, too, except for San Francisco and Green Bay.

I began the day by forcing myself to run. Actually, I slowly ran, then ran fast albeit not really fast, then walked. Rrrrrruuuuunnnnnn, rruunn, walk over and over until I’d gone around the middle school field four times (two miles). My stamina is still amazingly poor, but I actually genuinely sprinted when I went all out. Which is to say, I was able to pump my legs all the way up and stretch out, the way one does when sprinting. I didn’t do it fast enough to really sprint, but I did it. I was worried that I no longer could. Now it’s just a matter, I think, of getting enough stamina to push myself harder, and for longer periods. My “sprints” were only for around twenty yards or so–but maybe a whole forty once or twice. Since getting back, I posted my blog entry for today, which was easy because already done. I corrected my latest Page, “How to Appreciate a Mathemaku,” after getting a list or errors I very much appreciated from John Jeffrey. I have a lot more chores to do, but I’m already worn out. Maybe after lunch and a nap I’ll be able to get more done.

5 P.M. One more chore out of the way: filling in the size and price of my works on the exhibition contract and tags. I’m asking $200 for most of them. Highest price is $600. Two I’ll accept $100 for. I don’t expect to sell anything.

Laptop PCs

Posted in Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 598 — “Fifty”

Monday, December 19th, 2011

This is from Geof Huth’s blog:

I liked this when I first saw it although I didn’t find it saying anything verbally. When I finally realized it said, “fifty,” I thought it accidental because I couldn’t see why it would say that. My slow mind eventually remember that Geof is now fifty-years-old, which makes this image a particularly effective representation of his present strange combination of freedom and awkward incompleteness . . . straining, yearning for something. With his ego (“I,” as Karl Kempton would be sure to notice) lost or transcended.

Diary Entry

Sunday 18 December 2011, 6 P.M. Another unproductive day. Tennis in the morning, a fine meal at Linda’s in the afternoon. A blog entry for today just taken care of a little while ago. A little work done on my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” to count as “work on preparation for the A&H exhibition.” And now I’d like to go to bed, but will probably read instead.

Small Business

Posted in Geof Huth, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 597 — Chumpy Leg

Sunday, December 18th, 2011

John M. Bennett has another major collection of poetry out. This one is called The Gnat’s Window. 78 poems. Bilingual. Closely inter-associating sequence. Amazing. I told John I’d try to do a critique of it, and I still hope to once my year-end chaos of chores is behind me, but–gah–John is one of the few poets I feel may be beyond my abilities as a critic, and he’s at his best–and therefore beyondest–in this book. Part of one of the poems, which Diane Keys has found a way to, uh, fatten, in all the best senses, with color, a piece of cloth and some cursive annotations–and the circling of “crumpy leg, is below. It’s from the back cover of John’s book.

Diary Entry

Saturday, 17 December 2011, Noon. Wow, since getting back at eleven from tennis and a McDonald’s snack, I’ve already gotten the day’s blog entry posted, which was easy because it was already done, and made a finished copy of the new version of “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” at Paint Shop. It’s not the official copy: it’s too small, and the official version will include the original cut-out fragments of magazine ads. There will also be the A&H framed version which will be in between the one I just made and the official version in size.

8 P.M. Since noon I haven’t done much. I printed out two copies of “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” and scribbled annotations explaining the terms I will put on one that will be on display atthe exhibition. Otherwise, I continued reading started yesterday of the magazines and books I will be reviewing for Small Press Review.

Friendfinder.com

Posted in John M. Bennett, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 587 — “The Bells”

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

My friend, Richard Kostelanetz is writing (actually, revising) an essay dealing with, among other things, appropriated art. When he asked something about Tom Phillips’s A Humument, I remembered other superior examples of appropriation art such as the work on a dictionary of Doris Cross, and the following appropriation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells” by Michael Basinski, which I thought worth posting here:

Here’s the original:

Hear the sledges with the bells–
Silver bells–
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,–
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

Hear the mellow wedding-bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight
From the molten-golden notes!
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gust of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells–
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells–
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

In the essay I quoted Mike’s poem in, I called it “an amazingly loud-though-silent jangle of . . . Poe’s famous poem.” I’d add here that Basinski’s version gave me the thrill that Poe’s version, I’m sure, gave many of its first readers.

* * *

Wednesday, 7 December 2011, Noon. I’ve partly recovered from having accidentally deleted my blog entry for Monday. A semblance of it is back up. I also posted an entry for today. I’ve done nothing else yet, but hope soon to go out to buy some frames and a pad of good-quality large paper.

Later note: I succeeded in finding two reasonably-priced frames of the kind I wanted (able to be stood up on a counter) that I bought. That took care of my pledge to do something of value for my exhibition every day, barely. Meanwhile, I sketched a new mathemaku. Then took care of this entry.

Gardeners Supply Company

Posted in Edgar Allen Poe, Michael Basinski, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 584 — An & & My Full Triptych

Monday, December 5th, 2011

It seems that almost every time I seem to be getting productive, something knocks me down. This time it’s only a lost entry–this one, that I was trying to correct some detail of and lost in the process–without realizing it, so was not able to try to find the lost material by backing up until it was too late. So now I have to spend an hour or so, restoring what I can recall of what was here two days ago.

One item was this by Moribund Face:

And all three of my frames of “Triptych for Tom Phillips”:

About the ampersand, I commented something about how it expressed the essence of “andness.” I loved the way its bird regurgitated what looked like all of itself, while looking to continue “anding” forever. I said little about my full triptych except that if you click on them, you’ll see a larger image of them which may be helpful although still very small–and in black&white. The original frames are each eleven by seventeen. Oh, one thing I did point out was that the frames are about, “departure,” “journey” and “arrival,” and are intended to be about them in the largest sense, but particularly about them with regard to arriving–for either an engagent of it or its author.

* * *

Sunday, 4 October 2011. Sunday is hazy to me now, three days in the past as it is. I played tennis early in the morning–badly. I didn’t return to my Shakespeare book, but evidentally got a blog entry posted, and probably wrote an exhibition hand-out or two.

Engagement Rings

Posted in Aesthetics, Bob Grumman, Infraverbal Poetry Specimen, Mathematical Poetry Specimen, Moribund Facekvetch, Visual Poetry Specimen | Comments Off

Entry 551 — John M. Bennett’s “Cardboard”

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

There’s a Penguin anthology of twentieth-century out. It’s edited by Rita Dove. Here’s a list of the poets represented in it, with thanks to John Jeffrey for having alphabetized it:

Elizabeth Alexander

Sherman Alexie

Paula Gunn Allen

A.R. Ammons

John Ashbery

W. H. Auden

Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)

Ted Berrigan

John Berryman

Frank Bidart

Elizabeth Bishop

Robert Bly

Louise Bogan

Gwendolyn Brooks

Olga Broumas

Hayden Carruth

Lorna Dee Cervantes

Marilyn Chin

Sandra Cisneros

Lucille Clifton

Judith Ortiz Cofer

Billy Collins

Gregory Corso

Hart Crane

Robert Creeley

Victor Hernandez Cruz

Countee Cullen

E. E. Cummings

Carl Dennis

Toi Derricotte

James Dickey

Stephen Dobyns

Hilda Doolittle (H.D.)

Mark Doty

Rita Dove

Norman Dubie

Alan Dugan

Paul Lawrence Dunbar

Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson

Robert Duncan

Stephen Dunn

Cornelius Eady

Russell Edson

T. S. Eliot

Louis Erdrich

B.H. Fairchild

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Annie Finch

Nick Flynn

Carolyn Forche

Robert Francis

Robert Frost

Alice Fulton

Tess Gallagher

Albert Goldbarth

Jorie Graham

Angelina Weld Grimke

Donald Hall

Barbara Hamby

Joy Harjo

Michael S. Harper

Robert Hass

Robert Hayden

Terrance Hayes

Anthony Hecht

Lyn Hejinian

Garrett Hongo

Marie Howe

Andrew Hudgins

Langston Hughes

Richard Hugo

Mark Jarman

Randall Jarrell

Robinson Jeffers

James Weldon Johnson

June Jordan

Weldon Kees

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Galway Kinnell

Carolyn Kizer

Joanna Klink

Etheridge Knight

Kenneth Koch

Yusef Komunyakaa

Maxine Kumin

Stanley Kunitz

Li-Young Lee

Denise Levertove

Philip Levine

Larry Levis

Audre Lorde

Adrian C. Louis

Amy Lowell

Robert Lowell

Thomas Lux

Nathaniel Mackey

Archibald MacLeish

Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee)

David Mason

Edgar Lee Masters

William Matthews

Heather McHugh

Claude McKay

William Meredith

James Merrill

W. S. Merwin

Jane Miller

Marianne Moore

Paul Muldoon

Harryette Mullen

Carol Muske-Dukes

Marilyn Nelson

Howard Nemerov

Naomi Shihab Nye

Frank O’Hara

Sharon Olds

Mary Oliver

Charles Olson

Gregory Orr

Michael Palmer

Carl Phillips

Robert Pinsky

Ezra Pound

Dudley Randell

Adrienne Rich

Alberto Rios

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Theodore Roethke

Muriel Rukeyser

Kay Ryan

Sonia Sanchez

Carl Sandburg

Delmore Schwartz

Frederick Seidel

Anne Sexton

Brenda Shaughnessy

Laurie Sheck

Leslie Marmon Silko

Charles Simic

Louis Simpson

Gary Snyder

Cathy Song

Gary Soto

David St. John

William Stafford

A.E. Stallings

Gertrude Stein

Gerald Stern

Wallace Stevens

Susan Stewart

Ron Stilliman

Ruth Stone

Mark Strand

James Tate

Henry Taylor

Sara Teasdale

Melvin B. Tolson

Jean Toomer

Natasha Trethewey

Reetika Vazirani

Diane Wakoski

Derek Walcott

Margaret Walker

James Welch

Roberta HIll Whiteman

Richard Wilbur

C. K. Williams

Miller Williams

William Carlos Williams

C. D. Wright

Charles Wright

Franz Wright

James Wright

Kevin Young

After seeing this list, I said what I knew I’d be saying before seeing it in a comment at a blog where it had been given an “A”: “Close to worthless. The good poets in it are already amply anthologized. Whole schools of the best American poets of the last forty years of American Poetry are entirely ignored. The one with Robert Lax in it (minimalism) for just one example. The editors of POETRY will find little in it, or not in it, to complain about-–which is proof of how bad it is.”

Another ignored school, needless to say, is visual poetry, as represented by much of the work of John M. Bennett, such as this duo, “Cardboard,” that he posted just today (and he’s done scores as good):

I doubt anyone has more completely captured the essence of carboardedness–or the shuddery feel of decaying tenement rooms–than John has with these. But with strangely joyful coloring in sharp contradiction of shuddering and tenements, but somehow absolutely right. As with the poem by Gregory I seem to have abandoned, I find I need time before I’ll be able fully to appreciate these.

The Penguin anthology annoyed me, but after reflecting only briefly, it cheered me up: a comparison of its poets coming into their prime after 1950 to the poets in my crowd such as John M. Bennett could not more perfectly exemplify academic art (including, I was amused to see, the least innovative portion of what’s being called “language poetry”) versus living art. I may be deceived about the value of my work, but I know I’m not about that of my fellow visual poets. We’re the Monets, Renoirs, van Goghs, Cezannes, they the French academics.

Promotion Codes

Posted in Visual Poetry Specimen | 2 Comments »

Enter 550 — Marton’s “Cursive” Again

Tuesday, November 1st, 2011

Marton got back to me about his “cursive” yesterday, giving me enough material for a full entry.

He pointed out the direction of the leaves is not consistent. I had not noticed it. Which is a good lead-in to one of my much-repeated dogmas: there’s more to every good poem, however seemingly simple, than even a good critic will find on his own. Marton believes that “the first and the second leaf are connected in a way which is not possible in nature.” Hence, for him, the poem is displaying “the surmounting (or appeasing) of that impossibility.” This is a reading in addition tomine, not a counter-reading since it is does not contradict my reading. (Dogma #2: there is more than one good reading of any good poem-but there is only one main reading–to which all the other readings must conform. That said, I read the change of the direction of the ellipsis to suggest oneleaf’s rebelliousness. It doesn’t want to be part of an ellipsis. Or, in my main reading, it it is eager for winter, and the other two leaves are not? as for the linkage of the leaves being impossible in Nature, I’m confused: I view their stems as touching. But is the image of a vine? These leaves don’t look like a vine’s leaves to me.

They don’t look like autumn leaves, as my main reading of the poem has it, either. But they are detached leaves, so can’t be summer or spring leaves.

Marton also reminded me that he had dedicated the poem to me. That, he added, “is an important piece of information.

” I was being modest, but I see that the dedication actually is important, for it connects the poem to my series, “Cursive Mathemaku.” Thinking about that connection, I thought of something else to mention about the poem–the fact that cursive writing is personal. The Nature in the poem is not a machine typing out falling leaves but an individual writing a poem with her leaves.

Discount Electric Fireplaces

Posted in Infraverbal Poetry Specimen, Marton Koppany, minimalist poetry, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 47 — Solution of a Cryptographiku « POETICKS

Entry 47 — Solution of a Cryptographiku

The Four Seasons

3 31 43 73 5 67    3 61 43 67 67 19 41 13    1    11 19 7 31 5  3 12 15 21 4 19    3 18 15 19 19 9 14 7    1    6 9 5 12 4  8 21 25 33 9 30    8 28 25 30 30 16 24 14    4    12 16 10 21 9  64 441 625 1089 81 900    64 784 625 900 900 256 576 196    16    144 256 100 441 81

Today, the solution, with an explanation, to the above.

1. Each line says, “clouds crossing a field.”

2. A reader should know from its looks and the fact that it is a cryptographiku that it is a coded text. He should try simple codes at first on all the lines, the way one would in order to solve a cryptogram. If he’s familiar with my other cryptographiku, he will know I’ve more than once used the simplest of numeric codes. Such is the case here, in line 2. The code is 1 = a, 2 = b, etc.

3. The codes used for the other lines are harder to figure out, but the lines themselves give an important clue as to what they say: they each consist of four words, the first six letters in length, the second eight, the fourth one (which would almost certainly be “a”) and the fourth five. That ought to make one guess that each repeats the decoded one. As each indeed does.

4. It should be evident that the code for the fourth line uses the squares of the numbers in the code for the third. The basis of the arrangement of numbers in the third line will probably not be easy to guess.

5. If you consider what kind of numbers are being used in a given line, and are at all mathematical, you will realize that the numbers used in line one are all primes, with the first prime, 1, representing a, the seond prime, 2, representing be, and so on.

6. The next step is trickier but also requires one to think about kind of numbers. It turns out that the numbers used for the code in line three are the non-primes in order, with first of them, 4, representing a, the second, 6, representing b.

7. The surface meaning of the lines and the kinds of coding they’ve been put in is now known. All that remains is to findif a larger meaning in intended (yes) and, if so, what it is, and what the logic behind the coding is (and the kind of coding used in a cryptographiku is, by definition, meaningful. Wallace Stevens, whom one familiar with my poetry and criticism will know is important to me, helps with the last of these questions. Stevens wrote many poems (“Man on the Dump,” for instance) meditating on the idea that winter is pure reality, summer poeticized reality. Or, winter is primary, so can be metaphorically thought of a consisting of prime numbers only. Spring, by this reasoning, can logically consist of all the (lowest) numbers, summer of oonly factorable numbers, numbers that can be reduced to simpler numbers–expanded, poeticized numbers. Autumn, the peak of the year because it yields the fruit of the year, consists of summer’s numbers squared, or geometrically increased.

8. The final meaning of the poem is derived from its repetition of the simple nature scene about the clouds. A reader aware of Robert Lax’s work (and he will, if he’s familiar with mine), will know that he has a number of poems that repeat words or phrases–to suggest, among much else, ongoingness, permanence, undisturbably serenity. My hope is that this poem will make a reader feel the change of seasons within the grand permanence that Narture ultimately is. A constant message, in different coding as the seasons change.

9. All this should lead to “Whee!”

5. The decoded text uses a technique Robert Lax pioneered in to convey a meaning I consider archetypally deep, like the meanings Lax’s similar poems have for me.

6. The final meaning of the poem is (a) Nature is eternally changing; and (b) Nature is eternally unchanging. When I saw I could make ti say that, I got a thrill! I consider this poem one of my best inventions–even though I’m not sure it works as a poem.

Have fun, kids!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 12:19 PM and is filed under Bob Grumman, infraverbal poetry, Poetics, Robert Lax, Wallace Stevens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Connie Tettenborn « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Connie Tettenborn’ Category

Entry 155 — Latest News & a New Version of a Poem

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

I find it amazing how badly I’m keeping my blog going. I will be worse at it over the next two weeks or so because I’ll be out of town. I’m leaving this afternoon for New York City, where I’ll spend a day or two with friends, then head for Connecticut to spend days with siblings. Eventually I’m to be at the Bowery Poetry Club for some sort of reading from 2 P.M. until 3:30 P.M. on Saturday, 10 July. The subject will be mathematical poetry.

Now for an update of the poem I have, or will have, on the wall of mathematics-related art that is now at the Bowery Poetry Club as part of the month-long event the reading I will participate in will wrap up:

I owe this version to Connie Tettenborn: her comment about my original version that its dividend, “mathematics,” ought to be switched with its quotient, “Spring,” didn’t make sense to me–but it did make me vaguely realize that I was claiming that arithmetic was of greater value than Spring, and that ain’t nothin’ of greater value than Spring. When Connie explicitly made that same point, I recognized that I had to do something, but took a day to come up with the solution above. I know think this may be one of my better poems instead of something I quickly made with a goal of being accessible. And I’ve always like the device of showing a correction.

Posted in Bob Grumman, Connie Tettenborn, Mathematical Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Enter 135 — 13’s from The Pedestal Project

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Today I’m finally starting to post what I’ve decided to call “13’s from The Pedestal Project,” by which I mean my favorites of those submissions to John M. Bennett’s and my gallery of visio-textual art at The Pedestal. I call them “13’s” because the people who created them were, so to speak, all–in my opinion–tied for thirteenth place in the competition for the twelve spots available in the gallery.

The first piece is “Fifth Grade,” by Connie Tettenborn:

When I saw this, I was biased toward it because so many of the other submissions to a gallery supposed to be of visual poetry was (tediously) not visual poetry by any reasonable definition, and this was. I was also charmed by its evocation of what fifth grade seemed to me. I found the choice of data the kids were being bombarded with interesting, too: it happened to include three pieces of knowledge of extreme importance to me all my life: the discovery of America (and I claim Columbus discovered America; Eric the Red or his son, whoever it was, who got to Newfoundland only extended the shoreline of Europe), long division and the planets (which in fifth grade were just about equal to dinosaurs and the Pyramids to me).

I liked the little kids in proper order–although I’m not sure why Connie uses the particular letter she does to represent them. Wait, they are, I now see, “e.g.’s” . . . I’m still not getting the connection . In any case, one of the kids seems not paying full attention, which is a nice touch. The idea of Knowledge coming in from some Afar that seems almost divine intrigued me, too. There’s the concept of a window into understanding, too.

In chatting over syberspace with Connie, I’ve learned that she is new to visual poetry, so deserving of special praise for doing so well to being with. Because she asked for help, I’m now going to say a few minor negative things about “Fifth Grade.” One is that I’m not sure “bah bah” fits the piece as well as “blah blah” would have, and I think “gaga” and “lala” not particularly effective. I think the choice of varied fonts good, but believe a little more could have done to the in-flow–for instance, some overlapping could have worked nicely, I think, and great difference in the size of letters.

I wondered about the use of color, finally deciding straight monochromatic, facts-only dry knowledge worked best. But use of colr and visual imagery might be something to try, too, if the artist wanted to make a sequence of variations on a theme, which her piece would be a good start to.

Posted in Connie Tettenborn, visual poetry, Visual Poetry Specimen | 2 Comments »

Book Covers « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Book Covers’ Category

Entry 1355 — A Beining Cover

Wednesday, January 29th, 2014

Going through my RASPbooks, I found I hadn’t done very many covers. The ones I did generally use samples of the works within. That’s the case here:

The pen&ink is one of several like it in the book, the mask (or whatever) is part of one of Guy’s collages. The heart is mine. An excellent cover, I think, and not a bad visimage, but 88% Beining, only 12% Grumman.

Posted in Bob Grumman, Book Covers, Guy R. Beining | No Comments »

Entry 1354 –Back Cover of S&R

Tuesday, January 28th, 2014

Oddly enough, I truly thought my description of my book would draw people to it. I still can’t understand why it hasn’t. Is my outlook on things that myuch different from everyone else’s.

Posted in Bob Grumman, Book Covers | No Comments »

Entry 1353 — Front of Shakespeare & the Rigidniks

Monday, January 27th, 2014

The book concerns the Shakespeare Authorship Question, which–for me–is how is it possible for seemingly sane people who are reasonably knowledgeable about Shakespeare and his times to believe that someone other than he wrote the works attributed to him.

Posted in Bob Grumman, Book Covers | No Comments »

Entry 1352 — My Haiku Book’s Back Cover

Sunday, January 26th, 2014

Note how unable in my blurb I am to write what all but a few would take a liking to. Self-defeating? Sure. But to do otherwise would be to lie–about my book, and about myself. Nevertheless, I still find it amazing that no one interested in the haiku has ordered a copy of my book. If Robert Hass’s name was on its front cover, hundreds of people would buy it. Many of them would proclaim it brilliant. It probably would have recouped the cost of publishing it if he’d so much as blurbed it–not, of course, that he would do so in a million years. Even were he unaware of my unkind remarks about him and his work (not that I don’t actually consider him a good, if far from great, poet, or a well-meaning critic if extremely limited a one).

Note: my book was published in 2007. Except for my very short A Preliminary Taxonomy of Poetry (2003) I’ve not published a book about poetry since.

Posted in Bob Grumman, Book Covers | No Comments »

Entry 1351 — Front of my Haiku Book

Saturday, January 25th, 2014

After I posted the front and back overs of my Of Manywhere-at-Once, Lazy Robert, one of the most influential members of the Me-What-I-Yam, suggested I could take care of four more blog entries with the front and back covers of the other two major works of mine that I published under the Runaway Spoon imprint, beginning with the ones I did for the World’s Worst-Selling Book about Haiku In America–because, I am certain, it is by far the best book on the subject yet written (in spite of many minor flaws). He not only convinced me to do this (sorry, but give me credit for warning you), but to go on and post copies of the many front covers of RASPbooks I did.

Embarrassing confession: I thought, and still think, that I am an extremely good cover-designer and that some advertising or publishing firm would see my work and trying to sign me up. I tend to think that if were even a 5% go-getter, I could have talked my way into getting some kind of job doing covers or the equivalent, but that’s just not me, unfortunately, because I would have enjoyed such a job, and had a better life than I did. I think. On the other hand, perhaps my kind of imagination wouldn’t work in the BigWorld–it may, for instance, only work with otherstream art and thinking. And I did submit cartoons, my children’s book, and greeting-card ideas to the BigWorld with no success. But I never kept at it anywhere near long enough.

Anywhere, here’s my front cover fo From Haiku to Lyriku:

Note: I consider my visimage for this cover a veritable poem–but one a viewer would need to be familiar with all the works the fragments in it are from. A nice minor poem, but one my collected works should include.
.

Posted in Autobiographica, Bob Grumman, Book Covers | No Comments »

Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem « POETICKS

Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem

. The Tide

.            A long stare smelled its way
.            past the lantern’s purpled lisp
.            against kerosene mares radiant in
.            the prenatal barn storm
.            that Poem
.            was tearing the petals off of.
.            Behind him, the Hawaiian sidewalk
.            sidled dangerously into a canasta game,
.            like misspelled lemonade
.            remembering where the jewels were.

. The tide was later than usual.
.

I threw the above together so as to have something here. Believe it or not, I then revised it! I only changed a few lines, though.

I’m beginning to think I’ll never have a blog entry with any real content again. A real disaster, Kevin Kelly is now prowling this here territory, lookin’ for poems to throttle, and he’s brutal. I could deal with him back when he lived in or around Port Charlotte, but he’s gotten a lot meaner since he moved.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 6th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Of Poem. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

5 Responses to “Entry 398 — “The Tide,” a Poem Poem”

Geof Huth says:

6 March 11 at 5:20 PM

You know that Kevin Kelly guy always reminded me of Surllama for some reason.
Bob Grumman says:

6 March 11 at 6:51 PM

I’ve always suspected they were one and the same–the two l’s in Surllama are strong evidence of it. And, of course, they are both maximally crude fellows. . . .
Kevin Kelly says:

6 March 11 at 8:17 PM

Ha, ha! Remember Todd Russell aka Huck Finch? He told me before I moved to California, something to the effect of: “Don’t let California change you, Surllama, I mean Kevin” and I remember thinking, “Nothing can change me!” … and then I became a snob. It happened about four years ago, to be exact. I’ll have to admit, it felt good to give in, like a warm bath of salt.
Kevin Kelly says:

6 March 11 at 8:20 PM

But seriously, sir, I’m trying to ONLY comment on the stuff I like (hence, the scarcity of any comments … I kid!) … and I like this here poem. I have to admit, I’ve always liked your poetry when you start talking about the tide and the phone ringing to itself, etc. My favorite line by far: “like misspelled lemonade” Good imagery! So there.
Bob Grumman says:

7 March 11 at 1:13 PM

Well, I’ve always said negative comments are more helpful than positive ones, but your positive ones have definitely been helpful. As for Huck, we’ve exchanged e.mails since you’ve left. He’s sent me invitations to the parties he yearly has, but I’ve not yet been able to get to one. You should e.mail him, or facebook him. I think he’s on Facebook.