Entry 463 — I’m Home « POETICKS

Entry 463 — I’m Home

Just a note to say I got back from the rehab center yesterday, and after putting the stuff I brought home with me away, walked a mile–at a blazing 3 miles and hour.  But I’m not allowed to go much faster.  Running will be forbidden for another week.  Not allowed to twist, either.  I’m supposedly ahead of schedule.  I feel good about my progress.  I feel good about most everything, in fact.

Had a therapist make a house call yesterday.  He gave me some exercises that seem good ones.  Gotta do two of them once an hour, though, so I’ve been busy.  Also walked another mile and did some writing.

More tomorrow, I hope.

 

 

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Entry 625 — Keeping Track of Things « POETICKS

Entry 625 — Keeping Track of Things

I’ve done it again: lost track of something important to me, this time four or more copies of my April to the Power of the Quantity Pythagoras Times Now.  As usual in such cases I can’t imagine what I did with them.  I feel I’ve looked everywhere they could possibly be at least twice.  This time, though, I have no deadlines hanging over me, so am going to try to do something about it: I’m going to put my house in order.  So don’t expect much here for a while.

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Entry 11 — Old Man Medical News « POETICKS

Entry 11 — Old Man Medical News

This will be my first utterly blah entry–except maybe for my first, but that was not intended to do more than introduce this blog.  Anyway, just to say something, I will update you on the latest of my pharmaceutical adventures: I just ook a hydrocodone bt-ibuprofen tablet.  There’s codeine in it, so it should be pretty potent.  He prescribed it to lower the aching pain I feel in my right leg at night in bed from, we believe, sciatica.  Nothing else yet has, and it’s significantly interfered with my sleep.  I mention it mainly to stay on record as a druggie–because I don’t see why I should not be arrested for using it when those using heroin or steroids not prescribed by a doctor are not.  I’m also interested in its effect on my creativity.  I’ve always thought that the darvocept I’ve taken on and off helped it, although not so much recently.

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Entry 1259 — The Dead Career Goes On « POETICKS

Entry 1259 — The Dead Career Goes On

My career, by BigCity standards, may have hit rock bottom, but it CONTINUES: shown here is a wall of our county administration building with a few of the pieces in my latest local Arts & Humanities exhibition, which I hung this morning:

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What the heck, here’s another wall:

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3 Responses to “Entry 1259 — The Dead Career Goes On”

  1. Márton Koppány says:

    They look great, Bob! Good to see them exhibited.

    All the best,
    Márton

  2. Bob Grumman says:

    Thanks, Marton. Who knows, maybe some nut will notice them and be so impressed by them that he’ll scrawl, “Wow!” in chalk on the wall!

  3. Bob Grumman says:

    Actually, if I were really ambitious, I’d sneak in and vandalize them, at last thereby getting press coverage.

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Judy Wells « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Judy Wells’ Category

Entry 385 — My Most-Used Coinage

Monday, February 21st, 2011

On 2/21/2011 3:21 AM, Jake Berry wrote:

Bob,    Hope this finds you well. I'm working on an essay and I'd like to  use your term 'otherstream', but I want to quote your definition  of the word directly. I haven't been able to find it on the internet  and I have no idea where it might be among all my books and papers.  So how would you define it?    Best,  Jake  

Terrific hearing from you, Jake–although it makes me feel guilty by reminding me of what a horrible correspondent I’ve been for going on ten years or more.  So many people I haven’t kept in touch with but should have!  Although I do keep up with you on the Internet.

Ah, the old days when I was one of the Kings of the  . . . Otherstream because I owned my own Xerox!  I’ve had some ungood years since then.  2010 was possibly the worst year I’ve had in thirty years.  But this year, so far, is going pretty well, although right now I’m in my null zone again.

Maybe not–your e.mail has me at least partway out of it.  Great to know someone still likes my coinage, and it was fun doing my own search for it on the Internet.  I found an article about Dale Jensen and his wife, Judy Wells, in which the term was used, followed by a comment by Jack Foley (good ol’ Jack) declaring that Andrew Joron had not coined “otherstream,” Bob Grumman had!

Somewhere else some guy took credit for coining it in 1996. My guess is that I first used it around 1985, so it has just has its 25th anniversary.  If I, indeed, was the first to use it.  Who knows if I did or not.  I don’t care.  I mean, it’d be nice to know for sure some word that more than a few people use was my word, but I’m really not that big about getting credit.  I want money, not credit!

Oh, I also found out there are various businesses calling themselves “otherstream” this or that, including, I think, a broadcast network.

So, a definition.  I’ve defined it in different although similar ways.  I think I would say that “otherstream” is my adjective for kinds works of art the great majority of arts academics, well-known critics, commercial publishers and commercial magazine editors know little more than the names of, if that.  A brief definition: art that’s now taught in college classes.  For me, it means approximately but only approximately the opposite of “mainstream.”  What it’s the exact opposite of is “knownstream.”  That’s because some art is knownstream, like certain kinds of very formal verse–the sestina, say, is well-known to most literature professors but is not what you’d call a kind of mainstream poetry.  I don’t think cowboy poems are considered mainstream, either, or though fairly popular.  I used it mainly for visual poetry, sound poetry and language poetry when I began using it, but some language poetry has become mainstream.

Hope this helps.  Thanks for wanting to use the word, which I think is a useful one.  And for inspiring me to write what I have here, which I can now use for today’s entry in my blog!  Make sure to link me to your essay when it’s online, or send it to me if it’s printed–with the hundred dollar royalty fee I charge for the use of any of my coinages.  (You can use “knownstream,” also mine, for half-price.)

all best, Bob

Entry 451 — My Latest Idiocy « POETICKS

Entry 451 — My Latest Idiocy

It’s not really important: I can ask Arnold for another copy.  But that I lost it drives me almost mad with rage at my continuing stupidity.  I feel like there’s just no sense in going on.  Once again, you see, I’ve lost something.  This time it was a copy of a long piece of . . . surrealistic mathematics, I guess.  By someone French.  Arnold Skemer was kind enough to send it to me, with the french text translated.  I have the envelope it came in and the letter that came in that envelope with it.  They are right where they should be, on the table to my right as I type this.  Why the surrealistic mathematics isn’t with it, I JUST CAN’T understand.

But I do something like this at least monthly.  More times than not, I find what was missing, sometimes in less than a couple of hours.  I won’t find this.  My house is less disorganized than it’s been in years, mainly because of the filing cabinet I freed up for current items–like this, or it should be.  I recently did make a folder for just-answered snail mail, but not one for items like this.  And I have several now–a letter from my Oakland poet friend Jody Offer; some great stuff just in from Marshall Hryciuk; Marton’s little booklet The Reader which I’ve had for two months and haven’t lost, who knows why; Arnold’s letter; a little packet of great stuff by himself Andrew Topel left with me during his visit a little while ago as well as wonderful full-color things his press published that he sent me a couple of months ago.

These are what are in plain view.  Stored who knows where are many items like them previously in plain view.  As I keep telling myself, I have to getmy house in better order.  I’m sure I can, for I’m now able to chuck dead magazines–old copies of Discover or National Geographic, for instance.  I proved that last year sometime when I threw out . . . I forget what, but it was a magazine I liked but hadn’t read all my issues of, which went back twenty years or more.  I’m also ready to pack away old correspondence and zines and the like that I now have handy but never refer to.  I may finally toss old paint brushes, broken crayons, and all kinds of painting supplies I once thought I could use to make masterpieces but never did.

Wish me luck.  Before I started putting the house in order, I have to get my next column for Small Press Review done.  Yesterday I finally finished a full draft of the two-chapter essay that will close my book on the Shakespeare authorship question that I wanted to finish before going to the hospital, so I can devote myself to the column during the next five days.  Not today.  Today I spend six killing hours at (1) my dentist’s spending $140 having another chipped tooth fixed (my teeth are crumbling at an alarming rate), (2) at the hospital where I’ll be getting operated on for a class in what to expect and pre-op filling out of forms and getting blood and an chest x-ray taken, and (3) at the supermarket getting bananas, milk and six bottles of Propel, the drink I’m trying to replace Mountain Dew with.  It was too much for me.

Whee.

 

 

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Entry 480 — My Big Show « POETICKS

Entry 480 — My Big Show

It took place 10 August 2011 at the Port Charlotte Library:

 

 

One of the few who visited my table was my friend Jerry Eckert, who is responsible for the fine photographs.  One of which is the following of my curator, head librarian Alison Layne:

 

Here I am at my table:

 

Two views of my show:

Sample:

 

 

A quick summary of the affair.  I like to think of it as my First One-Man Show.  But I had only one of many tables, and during the four hours (10 AM to 2 PM) of the celebration (of the library’s 50th Anniversary), only a handful of people visited my corner of the second floor.  I wasn’t at all surprised.  Basically, all I wanted was a chance to see my works actually on display.  All my framed works but one were.  I also got a free lunch!  Nice, too, to be part of a celebration of something as important to the community as a library–one that my parents depended on 44 years ago, to boot, and that I also have taken many books out of.  It’s where the Tuesday Writers’ Group met for over ten years, as well–and that’s where I met Lee Hoffman, one of the most important persons ever in my life.

2 Responses to “Entry 480 — My Big Show”

  1. marton koppany says:

    Nice presentation, Bob! “A handful of people”: that’s a lot – at least more than I had at my reading in Budapest. :-)

  2. Ed Baker says:

    had I known that there was a free lunch
    to boot
    I’d ‘ave been there

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Entry 441 — Vocational Resume « POETICKS

Entry 441 — Vocational Resume

I missed some entries again but had a fair excuse for a change: I was working on some reviews for Small Press Review that I actually finished.  What’s below is the entry on me at some internet Writers’ Directory.  I just updated it.
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Personal Information
First Name: Bob
Last Name: Grumman
Suffix:
Nationality: American
Full Birth Date (MMDDYYYY) or Year Only: 02021941
City of Birth: Norwalk
State of Birth: [USA] Connecticut
Country of Birth: United States
Sex: M
Email: [email protected]
Career
Career: Datagraphic Computer Services, computer operator, 1971-76; Charlotte County School Board, substitute teacher, 1994-2009. Writer.
Publications
Publications: Poems (visual haiku), 1966; Preliminary Rough Draft of a Total Psychology (theoretical psychology), 1967; A Straynge Book (children’s book), 1987; An April Poem (visual poetry), 1989; Spring Poem No. 3,719,242 (visual poetry), 1990; Of Manywhere-at-Once, vol. I (memoir/criticism), 1990; Mathemaku 1-5 (mathematical poetry), 1992; Mathemaku 6-12 (mathematical poetry), 1994; Of Poem (solitextual poetry), 1994; Mathemaku 13-19 (mathematical poetry), 1996; A Selection of Visual Poems (visual poetry), 1998; min. kolt., matemakuk, 2000; Cryptographiku 1-5 (cryptographic poetry), 2003; Excerpts from Poem’s Search for Meaning (solitextual poetry), 2004; Greatest Hits of Bob Grumman (mixture of poetries), 2006; Shakespeare and the Rigidniks (theoretical psychology), 2006; From Haiku To Lyriku, 2007; April to the Power of the Quantity Pythagoras Times Now (collection of mathemaku), 2007: This Is Visual Poetry (visual Poetry), 2010; Poem Demerging (solitextual poetry), 2010. A Preliminary Taxonomy of Poetry, 2011. EDITOR: (with C. Hill) Vispo auf Deutsch, 1995; Writing to Be Seen, vol. I, 2001.
Home Address
Home Address 1708 Hayworth Rd.
City Home: Port Charlotte
State Home: [USA] Florida
Country Home: United States
Zip Code Home: 33952
Phone Home: (941) 629-8045
Business Address
Business Address PO Box 495597
City Business: Port Charlotte
State Business: [USA] Florida
Country Business: United States
Zip Code Business: 33949
Phone Business: (941) 629-8045
Subject Codes
Subject Code1: PLAYS/S C R E E N PLAYS
Subject Code2: POETRY
Subject Code3: PSYCHOLOGY
Subject Code4: LITERARY CRITICISM AND HISTORY
Subject Code5: SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
Subject Code6: NOVELS

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Entry 416 — Me an’ Marton « POETICKS

Entry 416 — Me an’ Marton

Clark Lunberry, who took the picture, too (at the college Clark teaches at, the name of which I’ve forgotten, on Saturday, 2 April 2011):

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I’m the taller one.   Marton is trying in vain to convince me of some idiotic idea of his that certain kinds of semantically meaningless texts that somehow act like language are a form of visual poetry.  Actually, we came close to agreeing, I assigning such poems tentatively to the borblur between visual poetry and textual visimagery–until I can see examples of what Marton was talking about, and bounced their author’s name off my head, without any a trace of it getting inside.  I think his over-all position on the definition of visual poetry is fairly close to mine.  Anyway, we’re still friends!

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Note: I guess I should add for the sake of those uninitiated into the way my sense of humor works, that the “idiotic” above is a joke on myself.  I automatically react with hostility to any idea I disagree with (as, I believe everyone else does), so over the years I’ve developed a habit in person of displaying a violent rage at having to deal with an idea I don’t like that’s is so excessive, it can only be taken as a joke.  I’m conveying, I hope, the fact that I do disagree but don’t take myself or my disagreement seriously.  Meanwhile, I’m letting off steam.  Because I do take everything seriously–and completely unseriously.  The “idiotic” is the print version of that.

5 Responses to “Entry 416 — Me an’ Marton”

  1. nico says:

    “certain kinds of semantically meaningless texts that somehow act like language are a form of visual poetry.”

    what’s wrong with that?

  2. nico says:

    actually, id be more interested in a report of marton’s presentation during his stay in this country.

  3. Bob Grumman says:

    As you ought to know by now, Nico, I have this absurd idea that poetry is a literary art, and therefore must have a semantic meaning. But I might have to accept certain kinds of “semantically meaningless texts that somehow act like language are a form of visual poetry” as poetry if there’s no other category for it. If it does something aesthetically interesting visually, then I’d call it “visimagery,” my word for visual art. If it is strictly textual but averbal, then, perhaps, “asemic poetry” would be the proper category for it. Justified by its having “near-words”–and having to have some category.

    As for what I put in my blog, there’s a lot of stuff I’d like to see in it but am habitually too tired to post. I should be up to saying more about my day with Marton (and Clark) eventually, but not about Marton’s presentation, because I could only afford to stay a day, so missed it. It may have been recorded, though. By now he has probably given a second presentation in Chicago. His tour includes a third city–Milwaukee, I think. Anyway, he’ll be meeting Karl Young.

    –Bob

    –Bob

  4. nico says:

    i know i stepped in your definition field, but wouldnt a “foreign” language be considered meaningless to someone without the semantic keys. though, of course, it would still be language.

    im glad to hear marton’s visiting mr young..

    thanks,

    n

  5. Bob Grumman says:

    My impulse was to joke that all poems have to be in English. But in a way, that’s true: a poem is FOR ITS ENGAGENT a collection of wrods (and perhaps other elements) that he can read. A text in Spanish is not a poem for me, but can certainly be one for a person who speaks Spanish. Just as a painting can be a work of art for someone who can see but not for someone who is blind.

    I maintain that everything has a personal definition and social definition. For me, a poem has to be in English. For the world, a poem has to be in some language more than one person can read.

    It reduces to the silly philosophical question about whether real things exist where no conscious mind can witness them. I say they do simply because it’s easier to think things are stable, and don’t disappear when no one is looking at them. But the latter could happen. It doesn’t matter, though. Existence stays exactly the same regardless of what happens.

    –Bob

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Grumman coinage « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Grumman coinage’ Category

Entry 276 — The Irratioplex

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Another day in the null zone for me, perhaps because I’m going without the pain pills I’ve been on for my bad hip as an experiment.  I played tennis this morning without any more of the slight hip pain I’ve been having with the pain pills.  That was nice but since I got home from that and a little marketing (for socks and new sneakers), I I’ve been feeling blah.  A nap didn’t help.

Meanwhile, I’m been feeling bitter about my reputation as a defender of Shakespeare.  SHAKSPER, an Internet discussion group I’m in, has for several days been discussing the proper reaction to a movie coming out called Anonymous, in which the Earl of Oxford is depicted as Shakespeare–and as Queen Elizabeth’s son–and Southampton is depicted as Oxford and Elizabeth’s son.  I think it may destroy Oxfordianism the way the preposterous codes found in Shakespeare’s plays “proving” Bacon wrote them pretty much destroyed Baconism.

What irks me is that several who comment at SHAKSPER mentioned James Shapiro’s recent book on the authorship question, and books and articles on it by others, but not my book.  No doubt I’m biased, but I consider my book the best refutation of anti-Stratfordianism in print, and the only one that presents a serious theory of what makes people become anti-Stratfordianism–whether valid or not.  Yet the Shakespeare establishment, and their little followers at the two authorship sites I participate in don’t mention me, or respond to my posts to SHAKSPER.  Maybe they don’t want it known that our side has a crank like me on it.   A crank, morover, who calls anti-Stratfordians “psitchotics.”

Nonetheless, my attempt to understand what causes reasonably intelligent people to become psitchotics where Shakespeare is concerned, and–more important–find a way to express my finding entertainingly and coherently, continues, with a minor development today, the new term “irratioplex.”  This I pronounce ehr RAH shuh plehks.  Do I misspell it?  Possibly, but “irratiplex” doesn’t do it for me.

And irratioplex is an irrational knowleplex.  There are several.  Two of them are the rigidniplex and the enthusiaplex.  I now maintain that all anti-Stratfordians are afflicted with one or the other of these two irratioplexes.  The new term allows me to couple them as victims of irratioplexes, then show how they differ from one another by virtue of their (slightly) different irratioplexes.  The rigidniks’ irratioplex is forced on them by their innate psychology; the enthusiasts’ (who are frrewenders) acquire their irratioplexes during fits of enthiuiasm, making them quickly too strong thereafter to resist.  Both irratioplexes act the same once active. both nearly impossible for their victims’ to resist.

My new strategy for the description of wacks is to concentrate on irratioplexes in general, proceed to  rigidniplexes and enthusiaplexes in general, then to how the latter two specifically enslave their victims to anti-Stratfordianism.

Entry 261 — “Magnipetry” and “Magnipoet”

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

“Magnipetry” and “magnipoet.”  maahg NIH peh tree and MAAH nih POH eht.  I know probably no one at all but I will now use them, but I’ve been needing them for years.  As I hope will be clear, they mean “superior poetry,” and “superior poet.”

My many critics will tell me that “superior poetry” and “superior poet” or like adjective/noun combinations, have been available for years, and proven satisfactory for everyone but me.  So why cram two new words for what they mean into the lexicon?  Well, for one thing, I believe important things should have names, not just descriptions, which “superior poetry” is.  (Am I really the only person in the world who believes this?  Sometimes I think so.)

I hope “magnipetry” suggests “magnificence.”  I feel it ought quite clearly to say, “large poetry,” and its derivative say  “large poet.”  Where I’ve often found myself wanting such words is in discussions of what makes a poet, when we’re talking about what makes a poet worth reading or listening to.  One always has to stick an adjective in.

Than there’s my problem with those who denounce poetry they don’t like as “not poetry,” when they have to mean they’re speaking of bad poetry.  If they aren’t, then they need a name for what the texts they are referring to are.  “Doggerel” is a good one for some but not all of it.  They can say, “This is not good poetry,” but that sounds weak to me.  They mean more than that, so we need a single name for it.

“Poetaster” is a good word for inferior poet, but it seems awkward to me, and “poetastry” isn’t (yet) a word.  Even with “poetaster,” which I’m not even sure how to pronounce, we still need a name for “good poet,” since a poetaster is a kind of poet, not a non-poet.

The real reason I suddenly made my coinages, having woken up with a headache in the middle of last night for a few minutes.  I was thinking about a long division poem I’ve made a sketch of in which I divide something (I forget what, right now) into “poetry.”  I times that by Shakespeare’s signature, and I get a graphic that’s about A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which I think is Shakespeare’s most poetic comedy, and a favorite of mine.  But there’s a remainder.  My problem is that the graphic is a poem, in my view–since it has words.  Moreover, some of the words play poetic word-games.  So there should not be a remainder.

But I really want to be divided into is “poetry of the highest order.”  I thought of various phrases for that, including, “poetry of the highest order,” but didn’t like them.  They sounded somewhat pretentious to me.  And I found nothing with more than one word in it to have the sock I wanted, the sock that “poetry,” would have if I could use it.  Hence, “magnipetry.”  It will keep most people from liking the poem as much as I’d like them to, but “poetry,” just isn’t right.

The same word will damage my long series of various long divisions of “poetry,” which I’ve always thought had the same problem this new piece has.  On the other hand, if my math poetry ever catches on, and people like my series, it’s possible the word might catch on.

While people have little trouble with new names for new things, they seem wired to reject new names for old things, even important old things that have never had a name, like visual art (which I now call “visimagery,” after auditioning more than a dozen names).  But I won’t give up trying to get the names I come up with into general usage.

It’s be nice to have a name for okay poetry that isn’t magnipetry, but I’m willing to let adjective take care of such poetry, and those who compose it.  “He’s a pretty good poet, but not a magnipoet,” for instance.  I think “magnipetry” is a good word.  I don’t think “magnipoet” is.  Dunno what to do about that, however.  I may well drop it.  The sneer, “he calls himself a poet,” for someone who writes bad poetry, “could be corrected to him think him write magnipetry.”  Hmmm, I will drop it.

Entry 245 — Varieties of Evaluceptual Types

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

Because the names of my aesthetic appreciation types, “apollonian” and “dionysian,” may connect too confusingly to Nietzsche’s similarly-named personality types, I am now calling  apollonians, dionysians and hermesians “verosolysts,” ” instinctilysts” and “expressilysts.”

Because the verosolyst evaluates poetry primarily on the basis of its truth (according to its freedom from or contamination by contradictions), I made his name out of  “veroso” of my term for “true wisdom”, or “the rational seeking of significant truths about material reality”, so a general term for philosophy, science, history, literary criticism, economics . . . and the “lyst” of “analyst.”

The instinctilyst’s name derives from the fact that he  evaluates an artwork primarily on the basis of the instinctive pleasure it affords by means of its attention to stimuli normal human beings are automatically attracted to like a 3-month-year-old happy baby.

The expressilyst is primarily concerned with how a poem presents its content, or its manner os expression, rather than with its content.  So we have the old what versus how again, this time as instinctilystic appreciation versus expressilystic appreciation.

Entry 237 — Celebratory and Illyrical Art

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

I’ve been reworking my thoughts concerning what I’m now calling “illyrical art”–art, that on the surface, seems mainly to produce pain.   I’m planning a short booklet laying out my taxonomy of poetry, which I feel needs a preliminary definition of art, among other things.  That is what the following sketch partially addresses.

Celebratory Art & Illyrical Art

Most art–just about all the art I like–celebrates the beauty of
existence.  The final claim of such art, however, is not that
existence is beautiful, but that it is beautiful enough to celebrate, or
significantly more beautiful than ugly.  Some art, which I call
“illyrical art,” seems obsessed with the ugliness of existence,
though.  It is prized by the cognescenti more than celebratory art is,
in fact, tragedy being its most common variety.  It seems to
contradict my notion that human beings are wired to seek that
which gives them pleasure, and reject as much as possible that
which gives them pain.  And I define art as that which give
aesthetic pleasure.  How can I reconcile these views of mine with
the unarguable preference of so many people for art that seems to
give little or nothing but pain?

I’ve pondered this question a good deal, concluding finally that
even illyrical art ultimately provides people with more pleasure
than pain.  It does so by providing one of five values, or (more
commonly) some mixture of one or more of these values):

The Pleasurable Details Value

1. A work of illyrical art–an effective tragedy, say–will contain
details that give aesthetic pleasure,” I need only specify that I mean
such details as the metaphors in Shakespearean tragedy, or the
melodic effects of certain sad poems–or vivid scenes or characters.
Their contrast with the painful elements in the art will increase the
pleasure they give.  These pleasurable details will rarely if ever
compensate for twork’s pain–unless one of them is a
compensatingly redeeming ending: each of Shakespeare’s
tragedies, for instance, has an ending that nullifies its tragic
message to some degree.   Life is shown restored to The Way
Things Should Be.  A good king assumes the throne.  The bad guys
are buried.  Civilization has gotten through another time of horror
bloodied but alive.

The Artistic Conquering of Evil Value

2. A work of illyrical art will cause a person the pleasure of seeing
something conquered, at least to a degree, by art–that is, by an
artist’s organization  and expression of it.  This is just another way
of saying that finding the exactly right words eloquently to evoke
elements dangerous or ugly, and arranging them in some kind of
pattern (which will “explain” the painful elements, in a manner of
speaking, or make them more coherent, more logical, than they are
in the chaos of reality)  is, of course, a way of giving the antithesis
of the beautiful a kind of beauty.  That, in turn, will give an
engagent aesthetic pleasure, although probably not enough to offset
the aesthetic pain of the work.  But with the other positive
components of the work added to it, it will–as it must to be a
successful work of art.

The Sentimental Value

3. Illyrical art may provide an engagent with a friend with whom
one shares a reaction to the pain the art concerns–a character in a
tragic play, a persona in a melancholy poem, or a reader’s
impression of the author of such a poem.  For example, an
engagent might experience Macbeth as a friend by sympathizing
with his misery over the death of his wife and his final
dissatisfaction with life (even despite the evil acts he has
performed).  The feeling that Macbeth is an ally of the engagent
against the vileness of life will then cause a pleasure possibly
superior to the pain of Macbeth’s bad end, and the pain caused by
his crimes. In other words:  tragedy causes one to experience the
anthroceptual pleasure of learning one is not alone.

The Simple Relief Value

4. Tragedy, or any artwork (or art adventure like a ride on a roller
coaster)  dealing with ugly, fearsome, horrifying or similar painful
material, can, when the artwork is escaped, result in the pleasure of
gaining safety.  I consider this the primary reason people “enjoy”
illyrical art.

The Masonchistic Pleasure

5. illyrical art acts to make the evil of life easier to take simply by
exposing us to it, in packaging that reduces its lethalness, thereby
allowing us to learn it into bearableness.  Or: “illyrical art, as
Aristotle has it, arouses pity and fear, the purgation of which
through catharsis, makes one feel better (anthroceptually).”  One
feels more fit to withstand evil after effective art.

Entry 232 — New Knowlecular Terminology!!!

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

After so many near-worthless entries, at last a really really exciting one!  A very lame school marm type at HLAS, one of my Shakespeare Authorship “Question” sites, got me thinking about rigidniplexes.  They are fixational systems rigidniks form that are the basis of the authorship theories of the most dedicated and rigidly doctrinaire anti-Stratfordians.  One of their main functions is defending the rigidnik against non-conformity.   I had always thought of them as necessarily irrational.

But it seemed to me  the school marm, Mark Houlsby (which may be a pseudonym), has one,   because of  the way he constantly gets after people for rude remarks, going off-topic, and disregard of what he thinks is grammatical correctness, as well as any view he disagrees with, which are mostly non-conformist views.   Yet Houlsby is not an anti-Stratfordian nor does he  seem any more irrational than every normal person is, just set in his narrow ways.  So, I decided there are two basic kinds of rigidniplexes, “hyperrigidniplexes” and “hyporigidniplexes,” the first being highly irrational, the second not particularly irrational.

Actually, I’ve always believed in more than one kind of rigidniplex, but I hadn’t come up with names for them I liked, and my definitions of them were vague.    Now I think I’ll call the most rigidnikal of rigidniplexes, the ones suffered by genuine psychotics, “ultrarigidniplexes.”  Such rigidniplexes are either not “sensibly” irrational, the way hyperrigidniplexes are, or are based on unreality rather than the irrational, although they are no doubt irrational as well.  For instance, an ultrarigidnik may believe unreal aliens from another dimension are after him whereas a mere hyperrigidnik will only believe, say, that no one whose parents are illiterate can become a great writer, which is idiotic but but is merely a misinterpretation of reality, wholly irrational, but not drawing on pure fantasy.

There are probably two levels of hyporigidniks–no, make that three.  Managerial hyporigidniks are the most successful rigidniks, common in the officer corps of the military, and on corporation boards, and, of course, running federal bureaucracies, or universities.  Rigidnikal enough to dominate third-raters, and hold unimaginatively to a course that has proved effective in the past, and rally others at their level, along with the masses, against non-conformity, which will include a country’s culturateurs.  Such hyporigidniks are the great defenders of mediocrity.  And here’s where this entry becomes on-topic for a blog called “Poeticks,” for among the great defenders of mediocrity are the people selecting prize- and grants-winners in poetry, and which contemporaries’ poetry should be taught, published and made the subject of widely-circulated critical essays or books.

A level below the managerial hyporigidniks are the marmly hyporiginiks.  Only slightly above-average in charactration, or basal mental energy, below average in accommodance, the engine of flexibility, imagination, creativity, but with possiblely slightly above average accelerance, or the ability to raise their mental energy when appropriate.  So, not in managerial hyporigidniks’ league, but able to construct rigidniplexeses about trivialities like table manners, spelling, etc., and lord it over milyoops.  And, in poetry, repeat the opinions of the Establishment.

Managerial hyporigidniks, I should have said, are higher in charactration than lesser hyporigidniks.  Indeed, each level of rigidniks has more charactration, and less accommodance–and smaller but more life-consuming rigidniplexes.  The lowest-level hyporigidniks have average charactration and accommodance, and variable but never inordinately high accelerance.   Peasant hyporigidniks, I call them: they form rigidniplexes that are little more than habits sensible for their position in life, and aren’t so much locked into them as too unimaginative to try anything else.

In the past, I’ve often hypothesized a kind of “pararigidniplex”–a rigidniplex formed by freewenders, who are the sanest, most intelligent people.   I now have a new name for it: “wendrijniplex.”  It’s like any other rigidniplex except for its origin, which is not caused by a person’s chronically having too much charactration and too little accommodance, but by a freewender’s having in a single instance, too much charactration and too little accommodance, his enthusiasm for a discovery of his over-riding his critical sense, and his continued pleasure in the rigidniplex it brings into being, being too great for him to break ties with it.  So it blights his intellectual existence every bit as unfortunately as a rigidnik’s rigidniplex blights his.

To be thorough, I will remind my readers (including myself) that everyone forms knowleplexes, which are mental constructs each of which provides an inter-related understanding of some fairly large subject like biology, for a layman, or the biology of mammals, or of one species of mammals, for a biologist.  A rational (although not necessarily valid) knowleplex is a “verosoplex.”  Offhand, I would say there are two kinds of irrational knowleplexes: rigidniplexes and–another new term coming up–”ignosoplex,” or a knowleplex which is basically too inchoerent to be classified as either rational or irrational.  It’s the result of ignorance.  We all have many of them, each concerning a field we are “ignosophers” about–not completely ignorant of, but not sufficiently knowledgeable about to be able to form a verosoplex–or any kind of working rigidniplex.

I’m well aware that most readers will find the above the product of an ignosopher.  It isn’t.  It’s just a pop-psychology–level very rough draft of one small knowleplex the among many making up my knowleplex of temperament, which in turn is a small knowleplex among the many making up my theory of intelligence, which is just a small portion of my theory of epistemology, which is a not-small portion of my theory of the human psychology.  Or so I keep telling myself.

Entry 229 — Reactions to my Cryptographiku

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

It turns out I was wrong when I claimed no one had ever discussed my cryptographiku in print: Geof Huth had.  I found that out in his response to the two new ones I’ve posted here a week or so and two weeks ago or so.  What he insightfully said on each occasion is now archived in this blog’s “Pages” under “Discussions of Bob Grumman’s Poetry.”

I’m still bumbling, although yesterday I did finish the book review I had to do.  I’m letting it sit today.  Tomorrow, I’ll give it a once-over and release it.   I’m not up to writing anything worthwhile here, so am posting the reactions at Geof’s blog to what he said about my latest cryptographiku, and my response to those comments:

Blogger Conrad DiDiodato said…
Geof,

your reading of Grumman’s ‘cryptographiku’ reminds me of something Derek Attridge once said about reading a work:

“We must not allow the resonances of the term “work” to echo too strongly, however; although we may admire the time and effort that has gone into an invention, what we respond to when we respond creatively and responsibly is the enduring event of invention that the labor made possible, not to the labor as such—to the work as working rather than as worked.” (“The Singularity of Literature”)

9:15 PM, September 18, 2010

Blogger John B-R said…
If – if – I consider what you’ve done, Geof, to be translation, then other translations are also possible. Here’s one:

.#####

eagle

epic

eagle

epic

gl

pic

uh

all around the world

color of flags, color of shit

failing fuckedup empire

1:31 PM, September 19, 2010

Anonymous Anonymous said…
‘good’ quote Conrad

I like-wise “pin it on”
the/an event

however: need that event
(irregardless of the/any punctuation or absence of any other
‘signification’) be an “enduring event” which we can reduce to mere mathematics and mathematical symols?

-K.

1:37 PM, September 19, 2010

Blogger VizPo-Central said…
Thanks, Geof, for your second discussion of my cyrptographiku. About the name, when coining terms for use in criticism or like fields, the aim should be clarity, not elegance, though maximizes elegance should be the second aim. When I coined my word, I couldn’t think of any better ones. But at one of my discussion groups, one who interpreted my poems used the word, “cipher.” So I now find “ciphku,” probably a better name for these kinds of poems. So, thanks for sensitizing me to the poor name enough to make me notice a word leading to what I think is a better one.

Thanks for the good comment, Conrad. I think speaking of a poem as a work can have on good side: it reminds the poem’s engagent that it wasn’t just thrown together (although these were!), so he should try not to dismiss it too easily.

Thanks for your thoughts, too, B-R–but your second interpretation is, I’m afraid, wrong. There is, so far as I can see, only one main “solution” for either poem that fits. For instance, in the first, each line should consist of one one-letter word followed by a four-letter word.

One idea I hope to follow up on is some coded text that spells one thing according to one code and another, legitimately, according to another.

Finally, K. I think you’ve hit on a central idea of each of the poems. While I don’t see anything “mere” about mathematics, in these poems, I was trying to show events not enduring–I’d rather say, enduring for only a moment–but dying from letters through numerals to nothingness.

Anyway, I’m happy that thoughts like yours occur to someone encountering my gadgets.

–Bob

Entry 203 — Random Thoughts

Friday, August 27th, 2010

Random thoughts today because I want to get this entry out of the way and work on my dissertation on the evolution of intelligence, or try to do so, since I’m still not out of my null zone, unless I’m slightly out but having trouble keeping from falling back into it.

First, two new Grummanisms: “utilinguist” and “alphasemanticry.”  The first is my antonym for a previous coinage of mine, “nullinguist,” for linguist out to make language useless; ergo, a utilinguist is a linguist out to make language useful.  By trying to prevent “poetry” from meaning no more than “anything somebody thinks suggests language concerns” instead meaning, to begin with,  “something constructed of words,” before getting much more detailed, for example.

“Alphasemanticry” is my word for what”poetry” should mean if the nullinguists win: “highest use of language.”  From whence, “Visual Alphasemanticry” for a combination of graphics and words yielding significant aesthetic pleasure that is simultaneously verbal and visual.”

I popped off today against one of Frost’s “dark” poems, or maybe it is a passage from one of them:  “. . . A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead”–the kind academics bring up to show Frost was Important, after all.   “Wow,” I said, “Wow, he confronts death!  He must be major! “  I then added, “Frost is in my top ten all-time best poets in English that I’ve read but not for his Learic Poems.”

James Finnegan then corrected me, stating (I believe) that the poem didn’t confront death but showed its effects.   I replied, “Okay, a poem about the effect of death on two people.   What I would call a wisdom poem.  I’m biased against them.  I like poems that enlarge my world, not ones that repeat sentiment about what’s wrong with it, or difficult about it.   Frost knew a lot about reg’lar folks, but I never learned anything from him about them that I didn’t already know.  In other words, I’m also somewhat biased against people-centered poems.  But mostly, I don’t go to poems to learn, I go to them for pleasure.”

I would add that I’m an elitist, believing with Aristotle that the hero of a tragedy needs to be of great consequence, although I disagree with him that political leaders are that, and I would add that narrative literature of any kind requires either a hero or an anti-hero (like Falstaff) of great consequence.

I’m not big on poems of consolation, either.

Entry 146 — Discussing Mathematics and Poetry

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino has been blogging about mathematics and poetry at his Eratio blog.  When he told me about it on the phone yesterday,  I said I’d check it out, which I’ve now done.  I left my first comment on it.  Fortunately, for once I cut what I said before hitting the button telling his blog to accept it, for my post got rejected.  I’ll try in a little while to post it again.  Meanwhile I want to post it here, to make sure it’s somewhere, and because maybe one of my two regular visitors doesn’t also read Gregory, or misses posts to it because it’s irregular, which is my excuse.

Hi, Gregory.  I’ve decided to tear into your commentary on mathematics and poetry Very Slowly, one idea at a time, to facilitate coherence.

I’ll begin with your statement that “Already (‘mathematical sentence’) (you’re) thinking analogically.”

This is where you and I first disagree, for (as revealed in our long & interesting phone conversation of yesterday) I believe numerals and mathematical symbols are part of our verbal language, just as, in my opinion, typographical symbols for punctuation or to abbreviate are.  The mathematical symbol, “+,” for instance, is just a different way of writing, “plus,” or “&.”  It therefore follows that for me, a mathematical equation is a literal sentence differing from unmathematical sentences only in the words in it.  “a – b = c,” for instance, is a very simple sentence and not significantly different from, “Mary cried when she lost her lamb.”

Obviously, it’s just a case of your opinion versus mine, but I think acceptance of my opinion makes more sense, because it keeps thing more simple than your does.  I would say that what most people mean by “words” are “general words,” while words like “sineA” or “=” are “specialized words” or mathematical words–like punctuation marks.

I think in my linguistics, these “words” are all called “textemes,” But it’s been a while since I read Grumman on the matter, so I’m not sure.

Hey, I found a glossary in which I define many terms like “texteme.”  It’s not a word but a typographical symbol: “any textual symbol, or unified combination of textual symbols–letters, punctuation marks, spaces, etc.–that is smaller than a syllable of two or more letters: e.g., ‘g,’ ‘&h(7:kk,’ ‘GH,’ ‘jd.’”  I coined the term for discussion of various odd kinds of symbols and symbol-combinations like some of those among my examples that not infrequently occur in visual or infraverbal poems.

So, I don’t have a special term for word, as I define it.  Yet.

To continue my argument in favor of my take on mathematical expression as an extension of verbal expression, not something different in kind, I would saimply ask what is special about mathematical symbols that should require us to think of them as elements of a special kind of expression?  They do nothing that ordinary verbalization can’t do, although they do it more clearly, compactly and elegantly.

Graphs would be mathematical expression–a form of visio-conceptual expression, as is written music.  Chemical diagrams but not chemical notation. . . .

I don’t see that there’s any difference between the syntax of mathematical expression (other than graphs and probably other similar things I’m not into Math enough to think of right now) and normal verbal expression.  There’s no inflection, I don’t think, in mathematical expression.  Which is a triviality.

Conclusion: we need a carefully formed taxonomy of human modes of expression.

Entry 115 — The Knowleplex

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The knowleplex is simply a chain of related memories–A.B.C.D.E., say–or a knowledge-chain. It is what we remember whenever we are taught anything, either formally at school (when our teacher tells us Washington is the capital of the United States, for instance) or informally during day-to-day experience (when we see our friend Sam has a pet cat).

There are three kinds: rigiplexes, flexiplexes and feebliplexes, the name depending on the strength of the knowleplex. One is too strong, one too weak, and the other just right. If we let A.B.C.D.E. stand for “one plus two is three,” then a person with a rigiplex “inscribed” with that, asked what one plus two is, will quickly answer, “three.” But if asked what one plus four is, he will give the same answer, because his rigiplex will be so strong it will become wholly active due only to “one plus.”

On the other hand, a person with a feebliplex “inscribed” with “one plus two is three,” asked what one plus two is, will answer “I dunno,” because his feebliplex will be so weak, even “one plus two is” won’t be enough for his knowlplex to become active. Ditto when asked what one plus four is. But the person whose knowleplex is just right–whose knowleplex is a flexiplex, that is–will answer the first question, “three,” and the second, “I dunno.”

Needless to say, this overview is extremely simplified. Even “one plus two is three” will form a vastly more complicated knowleplex than A.B.C.D.E. The strength of a given knowleplex will vary, too, sometimes a lot, depending on the circumstances when it is activated. And each kind of knowleplex will vary in strength, some feebliplexes being almost as strong as a flexiplex, for example. In fact, a feebliplex can, in time, become a rigiplex. For the purposes of this introduction to knowleplexes, however, all this can be ignored.

Entry 110 — The Three Varieties of Rhyme

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

I’ve come up with new terms for two of the three kinds of rhyme in my poetics.  One is Chyme-Rhyme for standard rhyme (e.g., “bat/cat”).  The other is  Rhyle-Rhyme for the kind of rhyme I’ve called various names, “Backward Rhyme,” being the most frequent (e.g. “bat/badge”).  My name for the third kind of rhyme in my poetics is Rim-Rhyme, the perfect name coined many years ago for it (e.g. “bat/bet”).

The new names follow the logic of “Rim-Rhyme” by demonstrating the sound of the kind of rhyme they name, but not the construction, as “Rim-Rhyme” does.   The “Chyme” of regular rhyme seems fitting, too.  As for “Rhyle,” well, it’s a kind of rhyme that riles traditionalists, and I couldn’t come up with a better “rhy-consonant” word to use.

I should haven’t to explain why I consider all three of my kinds of rhyme valid rhymes, but while some accept rim-rhyme because of Wilfred Owen, I think no one has accepted rhyle-rhyme.  But it seems sensible to call such a combination a rhyme rather than an alliteration/assonance.  And it seems sensible to call any pair or great number of unidentical syllables sharing two sounds to be rhymes.