Edgar Allen Poe « POETICKS-

Archive for the ‘Edgar Allen Poe’ Category

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

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Explication « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Explication’ Category

Entry 783 — A Conceptually-Treated Text

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

I’m having another off-day, so will take care of this entry with the following paragraph from one of my early columns for Small Press Review. I’m hoping for more examples of this sort of thing so I can write a major essay on it.

Conceptually-Treated Texts

Basinski also contributes a version of “The Tell-Tale Heart” that lists all of Poe’s words in alphabetical order. This, for me, yields nothing less than the subconscious mind of the story, eerily achieving a narrative interest in its own right as it blends or clashes with what Poe wrote–as in the following passage: “shriek shriek shrieked shrieked shutters silence silence simple since since single single singularity sleep slept slept slight slight slipped…” or “how how however human” followed by 120 instances of “I.”

Internet Reservation

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Entry 778 — Back to “Fact”

Saturday, June 23rd, 2012

I now have a reaction to the following:

Fact

By Craig Dworkin

Ink on a 5.5 by 9 inch substrate of 60-pound offset matte white paper. Composed of: varnish (soy bean oil [C57H98O6], used as a plasticizer: 52%. Phenolic modified rosin resin [Tall oil rosin: 66.2%. Nonylphenol [C15H24O]: 16.6%. Formaldehyde [CH2O]: 4.8%. Maleic anhydride [C4H2O3]: 2.6%. Glycerol [C3H8O3]: 9.6%. Traces of alkali catalyst: .2%]: 47%): 53.7%. 100S Type Alkyd used as a binder (Reaction product of linseed oil: 50.7%. Isophthalic acid [C8H6O4]: 9.5%. Trimethylolpropane [CH3CH2C(CH2OH)3]: 4.7%. Reaction product of tall oil rosin: 12.5%. Maleic anhydride [C4H2O3]: 2.5%. Pentaerythritol [C5H12O4]: 5%. Aliphatic C14 Hydrocarbon: 15%): 19.4%. Carbon Black (C: 92.8%. Petroleum: 5.1%. With sulfur, chlorine, and oxygen contaminates: 2.1%), used as a pigmenting agent: 18.6%. Tung oil (Eleostearic acid [C18H30O2]: 81.9%. Linoleic acid [C18H32O2]: 8.2%. Palmitic acid [C16H32O2]: 5.9%. Oleic acid [CH3(CH2)7CH=CH(CH2)7COOH]: 4.0%.), used as a reducer: 3.3%. Micronized polyethylene wax (C2H4)N: 2.8%. 3/50 Manganese compound, used as a through drier: 1.3%. 1/25 Cobalt linoleate compound used as a top drier: .7%. Residues of blanket wash (roughly equal parts aliphatic hydrocarbon and aromatic hydrocarbon): .2%. Adhered to: cellulose [C6H10O5] from softwood sulphite pulp (Pozone Process) of White Spruce (65%) and Jack Pine (35%): 77%; hardwood pulp (enzyme process pre-bleach Kraft pulp) of White Poplar (aspen): 15%; and batch treated PCW (8%): 69.3%. Water [H2O]: 11.0%. Clay [Kaolinite form aluminum silicate hydroxide (Al2Si2O5[OH]4): 86%. Calcium carbonate (CaCO3): 12%. Diethylenetriamine: 2%], used as a pigmenting filler: 8.4%. Hydrogen peroxide [H2O2], used as a brightening agent: 3.6%. Rosin soap, used as a sizer: 2.7%. Aluminum sulfate [Al2(SO4)]: 1.8%. Residues of cationic softener (H2O: 83.8%. Base [Stearic acid (C18H36O2): 53.8%. Palmitic acid (C16H32O2): 29%. Aminoethylethanolamine (H2-NC2-H4-NHC2-H4-OH): 17.2%]: 10.8%. Sucroseoxyacetate: 4.9%. Tallow Amine, used as a surfactant: 0.3%. Sodium chloride [NaCl], used as a viscosity controlling agent: .2%) and non-ionic emulsifying defoamer (sodium salt of dioctylsulphosuccinate [C20H37NaO7S]), combined: 1.7%. Miscellaneous foreign contaminates: 1.5%.

NOTES: “Fact” is an exact list of ingredients that make up a sheet of paper, hence the blunt title of the work. It’s a self-reflexive, deconstructed meditation on the act of writing and of publishing, with an emphasis on the materiality of language. Each time Dworkin displays the poem, he researches the medium on which it’s being viewed, changing the list of ingredients. It’s a flexible work in progress, sometimes manifesting itself as a list of the ingredients that make up a Xerox copy, other times listing the composition of an lcd display monitor.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

I read it as a lyrical evocation of language turning into communicated meaning, leaving behind the mere physical ink which had held it on a sheet of paper whose materiality is emphasized to a magnificent extreme by a dense list of its chemical ingredients (and, in highly technical terminology, their purposes), thus connecting the reader to such final dichotomies as content/form, motion/stasis, creativity/ sterility, metaphysics/science, ethereality/plainness, emotionality/ passiveness, adventure/stagnation, and–most of all–spirituality/ corporeality . . . Under all of it at the same time is an expression of the glorious complexity of the universe, one sheet of which is depicted as the ground of the meaning that the ink contains. Or: the huge reality which is all matter in balance with the huge meaningfulness language magicks out of it.

I don’t think it has anything to do with the materiality of language–the material ink and paper aren’t language, they just contain language.

Walmart Online Shopping

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Entry 691 — About my Piano Mathemaku

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

I’ve brought back the above because one of my friends in visual poetry brought it up back-channel, inspiring the following beginning attempt at an explication (although it’s only mine, I have to emphasize, and I’m not being sarcastic):

A lot of what I do is surrealism: multiplications, for instance, that make surrealistic sense to me. The basic idea of the above is that a piano and all it represents (music, the creative process, self-expression, something to play, etc.) times a mountain and a fortress that is merged with the mountain and what it represents—power, unchangingness, seriousness, intimidation, etc., or the antithesis of what the piano represents, equals a painting of boats that represents a sea journey, but also a musical composition (theme and variation, a kind of fugue in spots–think of the boats as melodies), a game, happiness, as well as various associations with Paul Klee, from whom I stole the boats (although I’ve changed them)—also a progression from dimness into color. This journey, I contend, is similar to the brook’s journey to the spring flowers the brook’s water will nourish into being. All the journey of boats needs, surrealistically, exactly to equal the coming of spring, is the remainder, which is the word “mystery” made mysterious and added to by other words and elements—a magic word, you might say. I feel I’m ignoring scientific logic for emotional logic. Can’t help it, is my only defense. But I hope an engagent will find my dividend to be a pleasant short poem, and the graphic a pleasant picture—at least in its final larger size—and touched up.

A thought: what if someone played a mountain fortress on a piano, and the music that resulted came out as pictures? What would they look like? The whole idea is absurd, but . . .

Meanwhile, today I broke free of my egocentricity to come up with the Truly Brilliant, However Simple, Idea that I can use my new gallery (in my dentist’s waiting room) for exhibitions of works other than my own! That way I could work up from the classics of visual poetry almost anyone would like to what I and my most advanced friends are doing in the field. Basically, I have three walls. What I think I may do is devote one to classics like Cummings’s falling leaf poem; the second to my earliest, most accessible visual poems, and the third to my “Odysseus Suite,” if I can get it to satisfy me, something I’m still working on but making progress, I think–and two other recent ones. The one above and my “Seaside Mathemaku,” which several people have liked.

Discount Travel Coupons

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Entry 206 — Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Over at the Forest of Arden, I had a lot of trouble figuring out Shakespeare’s Sonnet 97, then suddenly put together an explication of it I liked so much, I’m posting it here.

Sonnet 97

How like a Winter hath my absence beene
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare?
What freezings haue I felt, what darke daies seene?
What old Decembers barenesse euery where?
And yet this time remou’d was sommers time,
The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widdowed wombes after their Lords decease:
Yet this aboundant issue seem’d to me,
But hope of Orphans, and vn-fathered fruite,
For Sommer and his pleasures waite on thee,
And thou away, the very birds are mute.
Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere,
That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters neere.

* * * * *

Okay, here beginnith my explication:

How like a Winter hath my absence beene
From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting yeare?
What freezings haue I felt, what darke daies seene?

What old Decembers barenesse euery where?
the quickly passing year, is like being in winter.
Coldness, darkness, December’s bareness seem
everywhere to me, as everyone agrees. Vendler
adds that Shakespeare is picturing an “imaginary
winter.” He isn’t. He’s just making a simile.

And yet this time remou’d was sommers time,

The time we’ve been apart was summer.
Still straightforward and undebatable.

The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widdowed wombes after their Lords decease:
NoSweatShakespeare, a website with sonnet analyses, put
an “and” at the beginning of this. I wouldn’t, but the
“and,” which I’d previously thought of, too, then discarded
helped me accept this as just a continuation of the previous line:

I missed, Joe, Sally . . . The speaker was gone during the
end of summer and much of autumn. . . So, to backtrack:

And yet this time remou’d was sommers time,
The teeming Autumne big with ritch increase,
Bearing the wanton burthen of the prime,
Like widdowed wombes after their Lords decease:

The time I have been away from you was
summer followed by autumn, which was
bearing a good crop like women bearing dead
husbands’ offspring.

Yet this aboundant issue seem’d to me,
But hope of Orphans, and vn-fathered fruite,

However fine the autumn, abundant and promising
seemed to me a dreary place for orphans and fruit
no love-making had produced, which is about
as nearly everyone would have it, I’m sure.

For Sommer and his pleasures waite on thee,

For, imaginatively, it’s still summer, because the realest
summer although it wasn’t exactly hers) is still waiting for
the addressee’s to continue.

Confession: I got the contrast of what’s imagined, what real,
from Vendler.

And thou away, the very birds are mute.
Or if they sing, tis with so dull a cheere,
That leaues looke pale, dreading the Winters neere.

Back in the real world, where it’s autumn, the birdies
and the leafies are sad, thinking about the nearness
of winter.

Have I more or less finally gotten it? Regardless, I feel
quite buoyed to have come up with what I did. Later I
discovered Robert Stonehouse had much the same
interpretation as mine, but I think I did better on
“summer/ Autumn” and “summer waits” than he,
so remain happy about my achievement.

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Michael Basinski « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Michael Basinski’ Category

Entry 1623 — 2 from Snap

Thursday, November 6th, 2014

Two pages from the collection by Mike Basinski I’m calling Snap:

Posted in Michael Basinski, visual poetry | No Comments »

Entry 1622 — Snap

Wednesday, November 5th, 2014

Here are the back and front covers of one of the books from a series published by Dan Waber almost every one of which is major:

Needless to say, none of the books in this series has gotten any attention from any critic reaching more than a hundred readers.
.

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Entry 1189 — 10 Important American Othersteam Poets

Wednesday, August 21st, 2013

Ten Important American Othersteam Poets

John E. Bennett

Karl Kempton

Guy Beining

K.S. Ernst

Marilyn Rosenberg

Carol Stetser

John Martone

Scott Helmes

Karl Young

Michael Basinski

My list’s title demonstrates one reason I’m so little-known a commentator on poetry: it doesn’t scream that it’s of the ten best American Otherstream Poets, just a list of a few important ones. What makes them “otherstream?” The fact that you’ll almost certainly not find them on any other list of poets on the Internet.

This entry is a bit of a reply to Set Abramson–not because I want to add these names to his list but because two of the names on it have been doing what he calls metamodern poetry for twenty years or more, as far as I can tell from my hazy understanding of his hazy definition by example of metamodern poetry. Both are extraordinary performance poets mixing all kinds of other stuff besides a single language’s words into their works. I would suggest to Seth that he do a serious study of them, or maybe just Bennett, whose work is more widely available on the Internet, and who frequently uses Spanish along with English in it. It would be most instructive to find out how metamodern Seth takes Bennett to be, and what he thinks of him. Warning: Bennett’s range is so great that it’s quite possible one might encounter five or ten collections of his work that happen to be more or less in the same school, and less unconventional than it is elsewhere, so one might dismiss him as not all that innovatively different.

Which prompts me to e.mail John to suggest that he work up a collection that reveals something of his range by including one poem representative of each of the major kinds of poetry he composes. So, off am I to do just that

Vistaprint.com

Posted in John M. Bennett, Literary Opinion, Michael Basinski, Seth Abramson | 3 Comments »

Entry 783 — A Conceptually-Treated Text

Thursday, June 28th, 2012

Conceptually-Treated Texts

Internet Reservation

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Entry 782 — Kinds of Otherstream Poetry, No. 1

Wednesday, June 27th, 2012

Otherstream Poetries

At present one of my projects is to write a sort of summary of all my 110 Small Press Review columns, which go back to 1993, adding comments as I go along. As I write about my first ones, several things strike me: one is how terrific some of my discussions of poems were; a second is how genuinely good most of the microzines that were my main subject were; third—a crusher—how many times I mistakenly thought the mainstream was finally going to open a gate for us. The Otherstream remains as outside the BigWorld as it’s always been, I fear. What amazes me is that not one poet in what I consider the Otherstream has broken into prominence the way Ginsberg, for instance, did. Or Andy Warhol, the Ginsberg of visimagery. Nor has a critic writing about the Otherstream become widely recognized for his expertise the way Dana Gioia did with his obtuse essay on the state of American Poetry that appeared in the Atlantic in the early nineties, and is still being discussed.

Enough whining. What my project has made me want to do as a side-project is write short essays about the different kinds of Otherstream Poetry there are, since it seems to me there is a lot of confusion about that.

Infraverbal Poetry

One is a kind I long ago dubbed “infraverbal poetry” because it’s poetry whose poetic effect is generated by what is done inside words rather than in between them, in sentences. I believe it was invented by E. E. Cummings. Certainly, it was first used effectively by Cummings. His use of it has been recognized even by such out-of-touch publications as The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, which quotes the following:

The encyclopedia considers this a specimen of concrete poetry, which it is, but it is also a specimen of infraverbal poetry. What counts in the former are visioaesthetic effects, in the latter verboaesthetic effects, in this case the breaking up of the word, “loneliness” into “l,” “one,” “l,” again, and “iness,” or “one-ness.” Seemingly trivial laid out bare like that, but much more subtle in context, where it is also part of a visual metaphor for a falling leaf.

Cummings was an infraverbal poet long before he composed his poem about loneliness. Someday I hope to do a history of infraverbality which would surely feature many of his infraverbal adventures. Right now, though, I want to move to a living poet, Mike Basinski, whom I wrote about in my fifth column for Small Press Review.

Mike had had some poems in Poetry USA, a short-lived attempt to cover the whole spectrum of contemporary poetry. Among them was his 4-frame “Odalisque” series, which I described as follows: “In each frame of this a ring of words and near-words surrounds a giant O. The near-word at the top of ‘Odalisque No. 1’ nicely demonstrates what an infra-verbal technique can accomplish. The near-word is “rammar,” the infra-verbal technique simple subtraction, the result a sudden ‘discon- cealment’ of a secret (and, to me, strangely enchanting) symmetry, which rattles the reader into full engagement with ‘grammar,’ ‘ram,’ ‘mar,’ and ‘mirror’–as sounds and signs, by themselves and intermingled.

“In ‘Odalisque No. 4,’ Basinski circles his O with twenty words containing a v–or V. What makes this interesting is that many of these words wouldn’t normally have a v in them–”vords,” for instance. This would undoubtedly seem a silly game to Gioia and his readers, but for me it was (yes) thrilling to experience a ‘down’ sharpened to ‘dovn,’ a ‘water’ turned Germanic and fatherly as ‘vater,’ and such unmodified words as ‘wives’ and ‘aggressive’ as suddenly alien objects, speared into—or about to spear outward. Or, best of all, to find between ‘wildevness’ and ‘festival,’ and opposite ‘wives,’ the wonderfully expanded ‘luVst.’”