Archive for the ‘Pluraphrase’ Category
Entry 569 — Sample Hand-Out for Show
Sunday, November 20th, 2011
Mathemaku for William Blake
This is one of my favorites of my own poems. Blake is not a central hero of mine, but I do like some of his poems and a lot of passages from his work, particularly the wonderful:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
In my poem the grain of sand is the dividend (that’s what you divide into, for those of you who may have forgotten the terminology—and it took me a long time to remember what was what in long division when I started making long division poems). Most of one world that might be in it is the many-color design under it. My (very loose) idea was to say that the right kind of eyesight can multiply a dreary day into a wonderful world. Add ripples, or an influence spreading out from that world, to it, and you’ll get what Blake found in a grain of sand.
I thought of the “right kind of eyesight” (or, really, over-all sensitivity) as being “unlessoned” or without much formal education and therefore able to see things in an unconventional way, like Blake did. I liked the pun the word makes with “un-lessened,” or “not reduced.” I added “lane-loving” because I think of lanes as wandery and out in the country, sure to go to interesting, happy places.
Poets are usually taught no avoid adjectives as much as possible, but I like them. That’s why I have two in my quotient (the top part) and three in my divisor (what goes into the dividend). I do try for unusual ones, though, such as “stumbled-inert,” whose meaning I hope I don’t have to spell out.
I tried to make my poem visually appealing, but carried out very few visual poetry tricks, “stum
bled” does stumble, and the day is kind of pinched; I think the ripples ripple, and the grain of sand is packed tight.
Diary for 19 November 2011, 6 P.M.: another okay day. Tennis in the morning followed by a snack and conversation with my teammates at a MacDonald’s. Back here, tired, but able after a short nap to take care of my blog and one item for my exhibition at the same time by working up a curriculum vitae for the exhibition which I could post as the day’s blog entry. I already had one of these but it was a little out-of-date, and in need of a bit of revision. It took more than on hour to take care of, for I improved it quite a bit. Still tired, I had troube getting around to my book. I spent some time, off and on, playing Civilization or reading the Tom Clancy novel I started a few days ago, to avoid the book. I finally got to it, although I didn’t do too much work on it, just enough to feel I’d done my duty. I made up a little for that by writing a good longish commentary on another of the poems that will be in my exhibit, “Mathemaku in Praise of Language.” I may get a little more work done today, but I doubt it.
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Entry 372 — Mathemaku Still in Progress
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
If I ever come to be seen worth wide critical attention as a poet, I should be easy to write about, locked into so few flourishes as I am, such as “the the” and–now in this piece, Basho’s “old pond.” I was wondering whether I should go with “the bookshop’s mood or “a bookshop’s mood” when Basho struck. I love it!
Just one word and a trivial re-arrangement of words, but I consider it major. (At times like this I truly truly don’t care that how much less the world’s opinion of my work is than mine.)
We must add another allusion to my technalysis of this poem, describing it as solidifying the poem’s unifying principal (and archetypality), Basho’s “old pond” being, for one thing, a juxtaphor for eternity. Strengthening its haiku-tone, as well. But mainly (I hope) making the mood presented (and the mood built) a pond. Water, quietude, sounds of nature . . .
Oh, “old” gives the poem another euphony/assonance, too.
It also now has a bit of ornamental pond-color. Although the letters of the sub-dividend product are a much lighter gray on my other computer than they are on this one, the one I use to view my blog.
Entry 371 — My New Mathemaku, Updated
Monday, February 7th, 2011
Updated, but probably not finished, although I consider the dividend set:
Now to my pluraphrase of this poem I have to add that the dividend is a quotation from Wallace Stevens’s “On the Dump,” one of my all-time favorite poems, so brings that poem’s concern with the nature of metaphor, (sensual) fascination with the seasons and the final essence of existence to it. It’s another fresh expression, too, because still a shock to most minds, and certainly unexpected in this poem. It also provides the poem, I think, with a unifying principle, the idea of language’s being on the precipice or “soon” to (“:”) bring one to the the making, at least to me, enough sense for a poem.
Incidentally, one thing a pluraphrase should do that I neglected to mention is determine a poem’s level of archetypality. Mine seems to me, with “the the” now in it, to do that at the highest level with the search for the meaning of existence. Stars are archetypal. The struggle to express oneself seems to me moderately archetypal.
Entry 370 — A New Mathemaku
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
It’ll be “Mathemaku Something-or-Other” when I figure out how many mathemaku I’ve now composed. Close to a hundred, I’m sure.
Frankly, I don’t know what to make of this. Whether I keep it or not will depend on what others say about it. I made it as an improvisation using “soon:,” so as not to lose the latter due to my revision of the poem it was in. The sub-dividend product is a fragment of my standard Poem poem semi-automatic imagerying.
It is, in fact, a near-perfect candidate for a pluraphrase. Which I’ll add later today.
* * * * *
Okay, here’s my pluraphrase (with thanks to Conrad Didiodato, whom made a comment to my entry for yesterday that I ought to “flesh out” my description of the pluraphrase by demonstrating its operation on some classical poem. That didn’t appeal to me, classical poems having been more than sufficiently discussed, but doing it for a poem I’d just been working on did. It ought to test as well as demonstrate the procedure–and maybe help me with my poem, which it may well have, it turns out. Time to start it.
After a note to the fore: what follows is to be taken as an attempt, an intelligent attempt, to prove a definitive pluraphrase of the poem treated, not a claim to do so.
1. According to this poem, if you divide “nowhere” by “language,” you’ll get “soon:,” with a remainder of “stars, eternally listened-to.” The poem also indicates that multiplying “language” by “soon:” equals “lavender streets slowly asked further and further into the depths of the bookshop’s near-holy mood.”
2. “soon” is an adjective indicating an event that has not yet occurred, a what-will-happen in the near future. An expectation of something interesting to come is thus connoted, a connotation emphasized by the use of the colon, a punctuation mark indicating something to follow. “Language” is the main human means of expression, communicated expression, so the metaphor, “language” times “soon:” suggests some sort message of consequence that is on the threshold of appearing. The arithmetic of the poem equates this message-to-come with “lavender streets,” or a path not likely to be real because of its color so a fairyland or dream path–through a town or city because a “street,” which has urban connotations, and because entering in some way a bookshop’s mood, which places it in a center of trade.
The street does not go in the mood but is “slowly asked” into it, “asked” serving as a metaphor for “go.” We are not told who or what is doing the asking, ever. A feature of many of the best poems is details left to puzzle the reader into subjective but potentially intriguing never quite sure answers. For instance, that here the draw of the books in the shop is strong enough to invite a street, and those on it, into the shop. It’s subtle, though, or so its slowness suggests. And a production is being made of the asking, since ordinarily to ask something takes but a moment. It’s important.
The personification of the bookshop as a creature capable of experiencing a mood clearly makes “mood” a metaphor” for “ambiance.” This ambiance is “near-holy” for some unspecified reason, probably having something to do with language, books, literature, the word. Something complex since the street apparently goes quite deeply into the mood–and, as I’ve just pointed out, slowly. With perhaps deliberation. Not on whim.
In keeping with “soonness,” the street reaches no final point, it is in the process of going somewhere. Something is building.
If “stars, eternally listened-to” is added (and the addition needn’t be metaphors since additions are not confined to mathematics) to the image of the street descending into the bookshop (or bookshop’s “mood”), we somehow get “nowhere.” Or so the arithmetic requires us to accept. Stars are (effectually, for human beings) eternal, and ‘listened-to” must be a metaphor for attended to or the like. Or a reference to the music of the spheres, making what’s going on a mystically experience. It would seem to be intended to be awe- inspiring. Hence, for it to contribute, with a perhaps questing street, perhaps questioning street, to nowhere seems a severe anticlimax, or a joke. Nothing makes sense except that the view expressed is that our greatest efforts lead nowhere. Which I don’t like. If I can improve the poem, from my point of view, by changing the dividend, which I may well do, it will demonstrate the value for a poet of a close reading of his work.
My pluraphrase is far from finished, though. We have the technalysis to get through–and, in passing, I have to say that that is a beautiful term, I must say, even if no one but I will ever use it. Melodation? Well, the euphony of “nowhere,” “slowly,” “holy,” “soon:,” “into,” “shop’s” “mood,” “to” and “star,” with the first two carrying off an assonance, and the long-u ones possibly assonant with each other, too. The “uhr”-rhymes, and backward rhyme of “lang” with “lav.” A few instances of assonance, alliteration and consonance, but no more than you’d get in a prose passage of comparable length. I would say that the pleasant sound of the sub-dividend product’s text adds nicely to its fairy-flow, but that melodation is not important in the poem. No visio-aesthetic effects are present, or anything else unusual except, obviously, the matheasthetic effects.
The mpoem’s being in the form of a long division example, the chief of these, allow the metaphors of multiplication and addition already described in the close reading–but also the over-all metaphor of a “long-division machine” chugging along to produce the full meaning of the poem. This provides a tone of inevitability, of certainty, of this is the way things truly are. The ambiance of mathematics caused by the remainder line, and what I call the dividend-shed, is in what should be a stimulating tension with the ambience of the poem’s verbal appearance–as a poem. Extreme abstraction versus the concreteness of the poetic details, science versus art, reason versus intuition. All of which makes an enormous contribution to the poem’s freshness, since very few poems are mathematical.
The final function of an artwork is to cause a person to experience the familiar unexpectedly, here with long division yielding an emotional image-complex some engagents of the poem will find familiar. Too much unfamiliarity for those without some experience of poems like this one. Which reminds me that since this poem has a standard form, at least for this poet’s work, a long-division example–and, more generally, an equation, it alludes to other poems of its kind. No other allusions seem present.
Part of the poem’s freshification, too, are “lavender street” since few streets are lavender, the idea of a street’s being “asked” into something, the idea of stars as “listened-to,” or a bookshop’s having a mood. The breaking up of the poem into five discrete images is easy enough to follow but different enough to be fresh.
That’s it for the pluraphrase. I think I’ll make the dividend “the the.” The only thing I have against that is that I’ve used that before more than once. I’ll probably do more with the look of the thing, add colors. I’ve had thoughts from the beginning of giving it a background, with words.
Entry 369 — A Discussion of the Pluraphrase
Saturday, February 5th, 2011
In his kind blog entry on me the other day, Geof Huth pointed out a difference between the two of us that got me thinking. It was that I need to know the meaning of each of my poems, whereas he doesn’t mind not knowing what a particular poem of his means, and sometimes doesn’t. As is often the case, he was half right. Certainly, I have a greater need to know the meaning of my poems than he has to know the meaning of his. Never do I expect fully to know the meaning of a poem of mine, however. Indeed, if I too quickly maxolutely grasp a poem’s meaning, I feel pretty certain it isn’t very good.
If by “understanding the meaning” we mean understanding the verbal meaning. I mean far more than that by the term, though, for one can have only a very hazy verbal understanding of some poems but a visceral understanding of them that more than makes up for it. Which I suspect Geof needs. Does a poem make sense as an arrangement of elements? Does it sound or look aesthetically pleasing in some important manner?
Zogwog. I played tennis this morning. On the way back on my bike I thought of how I was going to soar through this entry. I had what I was going to say all figured out. The result would be a description of something I call “the pluraphrase,” that I came up with twenty years or so ago. It’s basically an analysis of a poem so full that, if carried out with skill, should permanently nail a poem. I think no poem can be considered effective if no one can come up with a pluraphrase of it a reasonable number of others agree is sound and reasonably complete. Effective as a poem, I mean.
For some reason, I’m swigging every whose where, not sure why. Will try to get a grip on mineself and concentrate.
First there’s the paraphrase, which is a summary of what the poem’s words and graphics, if any, mainly denote, connote and clearly allude to via quotations, symbols or other “advertances,” as I call them. If you can’t make one for a given poem, either you or it is defective. But there is much more to a poem than what a paraphrase tells you about it.
One thing is what a close reading uncovers. Which should be everything a poem’s words and graphics, if any, denote, connote and allude to.
Finally, and in my view most important, is the pluraphrase. That’s the close reading plus the . . . technalysis, my new-today term for an analysis of what a poem does technically. To wit: its melodation, or everything regarding what it does with sound–rhyme, meter, auditory shaping–and anything that contributes to the poem’s connotational or allusional ability (which can be great–for instance, what the sonnet-shape does as an advertance to the history of the sonnet in the West); its visio-aesthetic effects, or what its visual elements beyond the conventional shape of its letters, punctuation marks and other textemes do for it decoratively or visiopoetically; its audio-aesthetic effects, or what its auditory elements beyond the conventional sound of its syllables do for it decoratively or beyond that to make it a sound poem, if that’s what it is; its linguitechnics or its appropriate misuse of grammar for aesthetically meaningful language poetry effects; its freshification (I know, I need a better term for this, but I’m ad hoccing at the moment), which in conventional poetry is primarily its use of fresh diction or subject matter–particularly in the case of surrealistic and jump-cut poetry, of fresh juxtapositions of images; mathaesthetic effects, or the use of mathematical operations on non-mathematical terms as in my mathemaku; miscaesthetic (miscellaneous aesthetic) effects or the contribution of its gustatory, olfactory, tactile, or the like in some aesthetically meaningful way.
No doubt there are elements of poetry I’ve overlooked. Let me know about them, please. I truly want to be complete.
My view, as stated, is that no poem that cannot be given a reasonably full and coherent pluraphrase can be effective. My only evaluative uncertainty is whether or not a poem for which no reasonably full and coherent close reading exists can be considered effective–as a poem. Such a text may prove sufficiently audio-aesthetically or visio-aesthetically pleasing to be considered effective as music (textual music) or visimagery (textual visimagery), but not as poetry, which needs to be verbo-aesthetically compelling to qualify as an effective poem. For instance, Gertrude Stein’s buttons, which are not poems but short pieces of evocature, would be effective as prose if they could be shown to make verbal sense. Stephen-Paul Martin did that for one of them to my satisfaction in a book whose title escapes me, and someone else did the same for another, I vaguely recall. Marjory Perloff failed to do it for a number of them. As is, the most you can say for them is that they may be somewhat effective pieces of music.
Getting back to how much a poet should know about his own poems, I don’t think he ought to make a pluraphrase of everyone of them. I haven’t of mine. But he ought to have some feel for whether a poem of his could be pluraphrased, and whether at least some of its elements were superior. I’m sure that most poets know these things in some way. Sometimes intense analysis is necessary, I think. Unless a single pleasing effect is enough for you, and you don’t care about the unifying principle I believe every poem needs to make it to the top.
My temperament is such that I enjoy analysis. I find it almost always useful. True, sometimes one’s analysis can lead one astry. More often it helps, I believe. I now believe it has with regard to the mathemaku Geof posted of mine in his little celebration of my birthday the other day. The version he posted almost convinced me I should have “soon:” as its quotient instead of “Persephone.” Last night, thanks to analysis, to trying to fathom the full meaning of the poem, I concluded I was wrong. “Persephone” is definitely better. The quotient times “mystery” is supposed to equal the springlike effect of language on the world, according to my analysis, so multiplying it by “Persephone,” the goddess of spring, will clearly allow this while multiplying it by “soon:” will not clearly do it. The idea of soon something will follow won’t suggest it to many, I don’t think. And although I tried hard to think of how language could be thought to have anything to do with “soonness,” I couldn’t. Nor did mystery. If it had, then “soon:” wouldn’t have had to. “Persephone” may be a tick too overt, but I’d rather be too clear than unclear. Besides, it’s “Persephone” in its sole hard copy publication.
* * *
On my bike, I imagined I’d be able to make this entry a wonderful source for students of poetry that no college could be without. It didn’t work out that way. I do hope to return to it sometime and improve it.
Whose sleep is the sky.
Aah, you minimalists!
But possibly yours is an equal but different version of the poem; I like Poem physically in his poems, though, and the emphasis on the time the question intrigues him. There’s even a juxtaphor (implicit metaphor) between the motion of the sky and the motion of Poem’s wonder–for me, at any rate.
It just came to my mind as a possible “answer” to Poem’s “question”. Perhaps, yes, because he was physically there.
I’m still working my way in reverse (top to bottom) on your blog, Bobby, so I may find more like these, but I think there’s something really interesting going on in “Mathemaku No. 21,” specifically in the figure after the minus sign. I like the possibilities with the reverse type creating new shapes inside those already created in the mashing up of letters.
Thanks for the look, Kevin.