Category: Autobiographica

Mike Gunderloy « POETICKS

Posts Tagged ‘Mike Gunderloy’

Entry 99 — MATO2, Chapter 2.07

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

What follows is something I compiled from a mixture of writings I wrote about The World of Zines. Some of it may be repetitions of passages in published materials, and some may be material I deleted from articles that were too long for publication.  I may have published some of it, too, who knows.  In any case, it adds to my picture of the history of Factsheet Five.

Comments on The World of Zines

Mike Gunderloy had been active in the micro-press for some ten years when I joined his team, having then–at the age of 22 or so–founded Factsheet Five as a sort of “zine zine” specializing in reviewing other zines (a zine being a kind of periodical that is to small press magazines what the latter are to, well, Cosmopolitan or NewsWeek).  Factsheet Five was purely a hobby for Gunderloy at first.  Working out of his garage (or the equivalent), he gradually turned it into something resembling a real business, eventually having it printed by offset and getting it commercially distributed.  His last issue had a press run of over 10,000 copies.  That in itself wasn’t enough to bring him financial success.  What it did, though, was establish him as an authority on zines, which were the subject of the book Penguin signed him up for, The World of Zines.  And now he’s getting national press coverage–and making at least a little money.

According to one newspaper article on Gunderloy, at least one other editor has recently been directly absorbed from a zine into the BigTime: a fellow named Christian Gore.  Seven years ago, at the age of 19, Gore started a six-page zine on movies called Film Threat that is now a slickzine with a circulation of 125,000.  So, while the only sane reason to begin a zine is to say things, however privately, that the mainstream isn’t, dreaming of one day reaching a public of some size is not entirely irrational.

In any event, if you’re at all interested in zines–as a publisher or would-be publisher of one, or as just a reader–I highly recommend The World of Zines to you.  It provides excellent, if brief, reviews, such as the one that follows concerning Raleigh Clayton’s Fugitive Pope (available for $1 in cash or stamps from Raleigh Clayton Muns, 7351-A Burrwood Dr., St. Louis MO 63121), which I chose at random from the 300-plus that are discussed in The World of Zines, seems to me typical of the genre.  Here’s what Gunderloy and his co-editor Cari Goldberg Janice have to say about it:

“Life as a librarian need not be terminally dull, as Raleigh proves over and over again in these pages.  He recounts strange questions encountered at the reference desk, gives us glimpses of what it’s really like in librarian school and suggests ways to discourage masturbation in the stacks.  Along the way, bits and pieces of obscure writing are dropped in–almost as much fun as finding them serendipitously among the stacks.”

Note Fugitive Pope’s resemblance to an ongoing letter.  Such is generally what most zines resemble, though a letter usually confined to some central subject–a librarian’s life here, flying saucers (UFO) or old Norse religions (Asynjur) elsewhere.  Comics, sports, sci fi, hobbies and collecting, “hip whatnot,” travel, and–this a single category– splatter, death & other good news are just some of the other general topics the zines reviewed get into.

It is refreshing to note that Gunderloy and Janice include on their pages almost as many graphics, rants, poems and other matter culled from the zines under review as they do commentary. Hence, we’re not just told about zines, we’re meaningfully exposed to parts of them.

Contact and ordering information for every zine mentioned is included, too.  Moreover, a number of pages at the book’s end deal in detail with the nitty-grit of starting, running and circulating one’s own zine.  This should make The World of Zines highly useful, particularly for people outside the knownstream who have incorrect interests, or lack credentials, but who nonetheless want to have some kind of voice in their culture, however small.

Of course, it can’t be said that The World of Zines is perfect: every connoisseur of the field will find dozens of terrible omissions (where, for example, is my favorite zine, the subtle journal of raw coinage?!?).  Considering that there are something like 20,000 zines extant (according to the authors’ estimate, which seems sound to me), this is inevitable.  It is not important, for the object of the book is to introduce the scene it covers, not exhaustively memorialize it, and this The World of Zines does with efficiency and flair.

Here endeth the history of my involvement in Factsheet Five. Later I’ll be quoting from columns I wrote for it.

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Posted in Autobiographica, Bob Grumman | 2 Comments »

Entry 466 — Basho Makes the Funnies « POETICKS

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Entry 466 — Basho Makes the Funnies

I’m surprised Geof hasn’t posted this at his blog already, but since he hasn’t, I’ll post it here:

It’s a desecration, hence hilarious.  It’s also interesting evidence of the apparent popularity of Basho, although I doubt too many who see this strip will understand it.  Although they may still find it amusing.

Meanwhile, I was not feeling too good earlier–tired from running an errand, trying only partly successfully to mow my lawn–because of a malfunctioning mower–and doing my exercises, as well as my usual lack-of-sleep and blahness.  Then I noticed an ad I’ve seen before for a poetry contest with a first prize of $5000 in the latest issue of Poetry, which I have a review copy of.  I had been disgusted with a poem by David Ferry, winner of the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry prize given by the foundation running Poetry, and featured in this issue of the magazine.  Result, I suddenly had a yen to enter the poetry contest–with a poem that could be paraphrased as “mathematics divided into poetry equals genius with a remainder of angrily befuddled Philistines accidentally exposed.”

That only made me briefly happy.  What boosted me into a much more durable happiness was my then knocking out good drafts of four new long division poems, three of which I doubt I’ll change but which will need visimages, which will probably be abstract-expressionist.  The fourth one won’t need much more, I don’t think.  One of the others still voices my hostility toward the morons who will probably be judging this contest with a comparison of superior poetry to “locations miles away from anywhere any certified American Poet has ever visited.”

Rattle, the magazine running the contest, is asking for up to four poems, so it makes sense to enter the maximum.  I will probably replace the hostile one with another new one (only new work is allowed), then publish all five when I lose the contest to poets at Ferry’s level (15 of them, each getting $100; one will later get the big prize).  One nice thing about the contest is that the finalists will be announced no later than 15 September.  I have to get my entries in by 1 August, though.

I have no chance of the big prize but my poems will be quite verbal, so I may, by a fluke, make it into the finals, which would generate some publicity for me.

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 10th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica, Humor. 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 466 — Basho Makes the Funnies”

  1. Ed Baker says:
    10 July 11 at 8:56 PM

    this has been up for several days on Issa’s Untidy Hut

    I am fairly certain it is Watt’s translation of The Frog Poem

    which I came away with:

    so many frogs
    in one pond
    croaking

  2. Bob Grumman says:
    11 July 11 at 10:32 AM

    Now make it into a comic strip, Ed!

    Thanks for continuing to visit–and for your previous good wishes. I continue to improve–but now my lawn mower won’t work! I should make a haiku about that but won’t.

  3. Ed Baker says:
    11 July 11 at 4:24 PM

    I got one if I can find your email address will send it to you

    meanwhile I just sit out on my huge back deck
    &watch the weeds grow and my push-mower rusting.

    old push mower
    rusting
    among the weeds

  4. endwar says:
    16 July 11 at 9:38 PM

    I wonder how a comic strip like “Mutts” survives. This particular strip is actually funny, while most are not. I think it gets by on appealing to sentimental pet lovers, who just want cute dog and cat pictures, and maybe some on the the strength of its draftsmanship (though this strip is rather weak in that department, and maybe the coloring doesn’t help). And what’sh the deal with that shpeech impediment? Yeesh. Maybe it one all cats have when they learn to talk. On the other hand, i think the artist is a Buddhist, given some of the stuff he quotes in his strips, so he gets some diversity points.

    Anyway, here’s my response to that pond/frog poem, in the form of a hay(na)ku, which you can imagine William S. Burroughs reading:

    the old pond,
    a frog
    croaks.

    endwar

  5. Bob Grumman says:
    17 July 11 at 6:52 AM

    I think the drawing of Mutts is superior, intentionally reminiscent of Popeye, just right for its kind of comic strip. Much of the humor is simple enough–many puns, for example. Otherwise, I go along with your impressions.

    Poop on your debasement of the old pond haiku. Some pipple got no respeck.

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Entry 343 — Working, But Going Nowhere « POETICKS

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Entry 343 — Working, But Going Nowhere

I’m still fooling with my “Mathemaku in Praise of Reading, No. 1.”  Haven’t quite gotten it right.  I also touched up one of the five mathemaku I did for Bill Di Michele’s blog–by putting quotations marks that I thought necessary around the dividend.

Meanwhile, annoyed with more irresponsible uses of the word, “poem,” specifically either employing it to mean too many things to make it any longer useful for intelligent communication, or characterizing it sometimes interestingly but always subjectively and excessively vaguely as when Frost calls it “what is lost in translation,” I produced the following coinage: “disfinition.”  I haven’t worked up a good definition of this.  For the time being, it is simply an antonym for “definition.”

This entry was posted on Monday, January 10th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica, Grumman coinage. 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.

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Entry 236 — A Day Worthless But Happy Enough « POETICKS

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Entry 236 — A Day Worthless But Happy Enough

I had what seemed to me a lot of errands to do today.  It was also one of my three tennis days a week.  So I never expected to get anything much done.   I have so far, and probably wont.  (It’s a little after four in the afternoon.)  I feeling lethargic, as I seem always to.  But happy enough because I was able to run close to all out on the tennis court for the second time in a row.  I’m not quite up to what I consider full speed, and I still have trouble when I have to push off on my left leg.  But I feel reasonably able to play near my standard, which I would rate at slightly above average for my age.  This is the main reason for my good mood.

My errands were getting milk and bananas (I eat one banana every morning), depositing a credit card cash advance for $500 in my bank account, dropping buy to pay my dentist my monthly bill, and stopping at my general practitioner’s to get a lab appointment and an office appointment, having missed two schedule for earlier this month, how, I don’t know, but–yikes–I’m getting absent-minded of late.  Once home, I managed to write the times of the appointments down on a wall calendar I have for the very purpose but two often forget to use it.

My dentist has ordered my two recent collections of plurexpressive poetry, but I don’t want to turn them over to her until I written some notes to help her understand them, which is my next minor writing chore.  I’ve been avoiding doing it these past two days, for some reason.  I should be able to start on it tomorrow.

I had some thoughts on how much more important than subject matter in a poem techniques are, inspired by another me-in-the-minority discussion at New-Poetry.  Can’t remember much of what I had to say now, but I do remember discovering that techniques are invisible; it’s their effects that we are aware of in poems.  Ditto form.  I contended that subject matter is too often the only concern of poets, poetry readers, poetry editors and poetry critics.  Certainly almost nobody in the field considers technique more important in a poem than it, the way I do.

I also discovered that actually technique is everything in poetry, for the simple choice of subject matter is a technique.   Subject matter is also everything in a poem.

One thing I said was that it is technique that gives the subject matter of a poem its meaning.  I also opined that viewpoint is a kind of subject matter.  I guess I’d divide subject matter into primary subject matter like the summer day of “Sonnet 18,” and secondary subject matter like Shakespeare’s view of the summer day in that poem as something fine but flawed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 28th, 2010 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica, Poetics. 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.

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Alan Shapiro « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Alan Shapiro’ Category

Entry 1120 — A Tough Night

Friday, June 14th, 2013

Last night I was up between 2 and 5 because my house flooded.  A leak in my water heater.  It turned out well, though: because I can’t afford a new heater, I’ll be without hot water.  That means I don’t have a gas bill, anymore.  As for hot water, well, it’s nice to have, but it’s a luxury, like the car I’ve almost never had.  Very stressful, the leak, though–I was afraid for a while that a pipe under the house had burst.  That would have been very expensive to fix.

I don’t believe I react well to stress, but I do suspect I may have an unusually high sensitivity to the signals my brain gives off when it approaches breakdown.  Result: so far, I’ve always shut down before breaking down.  That is, I go into my null zone rather than go absolunically wacko.  My shell continues to do the everyday while the part of me that’s typing this basically gives up.  Meanwhile, Chipper, the little blue bunny rabbit who is also part of me never stops reminding me, usually subverbally, that I’ve been in the null zone before and things have always gotten better.   Dark thoughts occur, but never any plans for dark actions.

Well, I’m in my null zone again, so much so that the last two zoom-doses were unable to help me out of it.  Ergo, I’m going to tread water for a while, again.  I hope still to post one blog entry a day, but don’t expect to post any that’s more worth reading that a tweet.

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Posted in Alan Shapiro, Autobiographica | 1 Comment »

Entry 792 — Analysis of an Iowa Workshop Poem

Saturday, July 7th, 2012

Astronomy Lesson

by Alan Shapiro

The two boys lean out on the railing
of the front porch, looking up.
Behind them they can hear their mother
in one room watching “Name That Tune,”
their father in another watching
a Walter Cronkite Special, the TVs
turned up high and higher till they
each can’t hear the other’s show.
The older boy is saying that no matter
how many stars you counted there were
always more stars beyond them
and beyond the stars black space
going on forever in all directions,
so that even if you flew up
millions and millions of years
you’d be no closer to the end
of it than they were now
here on the porch on Tuesday night
in the middle of summer.
The younger boy can think somehow
only of his mother’s closet,
how he likes to crawl in back
behind the heavy drapery
of shirts, nightgowns and dresses,
into the sheer black where
no matter how close he holds
his hand up to his face
there’s no hand ever, no
face to hold it to.

A woman from another street
is calling to her stray cat or dog,
clapping and whistling it in,
and farther away deep in the city
sirens now and again
veer in and out of hearing.

The boys edge closer, shoulder
to shoulder now, sad Ptolemies,
the older looking up, the younger
as he thinks back straight ahead
into the black leaves of the maple
where the street lights flicker
like another watery skein of stars.
“Name That Tune” and Walter Cronkite
struggle like rough water
to rise above each other.
And the woman now comes walking
in a nightgown down the middle
of the street, clapping and
whistling, while the older boy
goes on about what light years
are, and solar winds, black holes,
and how the sun is cooling
and what will happen to
them all when it is cold.

 

THE IOWA WORKSHOP POEM:

1. involves quotidian, usually suburban subject matter, employing telling concrete details out of everyday life, accessibility being a key aim

the feel of the scene Shapiro depicts is suburban although sirens from “away deep in the city” can be heard, so the poem takes place either in suburbia or the outskirts of a city (and suburbia can have cities); its telling concrete details include tv programs, boys star-gazing, a woman in a street calling to her cat or dog

2. uses near-prose (i.e., free verse with few or no frills or unconventionalities of expression)

it has one simile, a nice one about “the black leaves of the maple/ where the street lights flicker/like another watery skein of stars.”

it also has a personification–“Ptolemies” as “astronomers”

no other figures of speech are in it, as far as I can make out

3. ends with a standard epiphany or anti-epiphany

here the epiphany is vague beyond subtlety but there: we human beans is just a “Name That Tune”-trivial flicker in the vastness of the universe.  The poem is a haiku, really, extended for lines and lines.

4. is genteel in vocabulary and morality

unquestionably

5. strives for anthroceptual sensitivity (i.e., sympathetic awareness of other human beings)

Very much so, the scene depicted being entirely of inter-acting people almost but not enacting a narrative

6. acts as a means to self-expression, or bringing the self to life as opposed to capturing a scene, some object or idea–never as an end in itself, as a beautiful verbal artifact

This only somewhat applies.  The self expressed is a distant observer; the scene–which includes both what’s going on and its emotional meaning–is more important than the observer.

7. the self brought to life is almost always a sensitive, politically-correct, average albeit cultured individual (the most extreme of Iowa Workshop Poems seem to be begging the reader to like the poem’s author)

Yes, behind the scene, sighing over the eternal meaninglessness of our life, but incompletely, slightly and certainly not intrusively

8. can be direct on the surface but aims for Jamesian subtlety in what its author would consider its most important passage

we know exactly what is going on; what is indirect is the meaning of it all, which I would not call Jamesianly expressed

9. is not controversial in thought or attitude, or–really–close to explicitly ideational

It doesn’t really convey a thought or attitude, simply reports, leaving it to the reader to interpret, as most good poems, and all Iowa Workshop Poems do.

10. is usually first-person

this one is not

11. is generally short–one page, although it can run  to three pages.

this is a bit longer than most, but not long

12. wouldn’t be caught dead harboring a poetic technique not in wide use by 1950 at the latest

this could not be more the case.

I do not consider my analysis an evaluation of the poem, which I consider a good, appealing one,  but one I think almost everyone interested in poetry will recognize as an Iowa Workshop poem. The best such poems are as good as the best poems of any other kind, I believe. But I distinguish between effective poems, like Shapiro’s, and important poems, like the best otherstream poems, because the latter add to the poet’s tool chest, as an Iowa Workshop does not.  Not, I should add, that no poem can be both effective and important.

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Posted in Alan Shapiro, Iowa Workshop Poem, Poem Critique | No Comments »

Entry 359 — Thoughts from the Niezschean Zone « POETICKS

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Entry 359 — Thoughts from the Niezschean Zone

I spend too much time in the grosswelt that I should be spending in the uberwelt.  I shouldn’t care what language the nullinguists want to impose on the dinglers and the subdinglers of the grosswelt but only about the extreme few inhabiting the uberwelt.  Or to inhabit the uberwelt.  Where truth counts.

Behold, is it a coincidence only that my father was a Friedrich Wilhelm like Nietzsche?  Albeit his name was anglicized to Frederick William.  In any event, I am at the moment in my Neitzschean Zone.  Even when not, though, I have trouble coming to terms with the grosswelt.  It has been hostile to me in many ways, good to me in many ways.  I sincerely would like to have increased its happiness.  Directly.  But (it would seem) the only world whose happiness I have any chance to increase, however small, is the uberwelt.

I suppose the only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane keep the fact that they consider themselves Reality’s Primary Heroes to themselves, the insane do not.  In other words, sanity equals cowardice.

My opening paragraph can be reduced to something more simple: that I ought to concern myself only with the language of poetics as a verosophy, or scientific-materialistic attempt to understand poetry, and ignore those uninterested in higher endeavors.

It was the elder of my two brothers that was named after my father, not I.  How can that be?  Nietzsche, by the way, had nothing to do with the presence of his names in our family.  Except for me, no one in it has ever to my knowledge left the grosswelt–or even tried to.  Not that any should have–our species could not survive had more than a very few done so.   Survival depends on the plod, meaningfulness on the flight.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica. 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.

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Jack Foley « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Jack Foley’ 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

Posted in Andrew Joron, Artists Mentioned in Entries, Autobiographica, Dale Jensen, Grumman coinage, Jack Foley, Jake Berry, Judy Wells | No Comments »

Entry 88 — MATO2, Chapter 1.10

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

During the next two  days I got a copy in the mail of the introductory essay Richard Kostelanetz wanted me to critique, the manuscript of a poetry collection John Bennett my press was going to publish, and letters from Jake Berry and Jack Foley.  Richard’s essay was is fairly good but I saw a number of things I counted wrong with it;.  As for John’s manuscript, it seemed fine–one poem in particular, whose main image was a car wash, I especially liked.  I wrote a short letter of full acceptance to John and a card acknowledging receipt, and suggesting he delete much of one section of his essay, to Richard.

Jack’s letter was friendly but he quickly.got on me for under-representing females and blacks (and Asiatics) in of Manywhere.  In my reply I tried to skirt the issue.  I didn’t pugnaciously tell him that my purpose was accuracy, not making the world better for members of victim-groups.  Hence, I wrote about the four canonical poets, all male, whom I admired enough to put explicitly into the sonnet my book was partly about,  and the fifth, also male, to whom the sonnet strongly alluded.  Except for a few short passages about Shakespeare and a mention or two of contemporary linguexpressive poets like Wilbur, my book is about an area of literature few women have done anything of importance in, and no blacks that I knew of at the time I wrote it.  The late Bill Keith is still the only significant black American in visual poetry I know about,  Larry Tomoyasu the only Asian American.   I don’t know whether I knew him when I wrote the first volume of my series.  I don’t believe I mentioned him in it.

The ever-amiable Jake was fully positive about my book.

Posted in Autobiographica, Jack Foley, Jake Berry, Richard Kostelanetz | No Comments »

Literary History « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Literary History’ Category

Entry 1005 — A New Poetry Anew

Tuesday, February 5th, 2013

I just found out yesterday about a discussion going on at Wikipedia about the entry on me (here). It was pretty short.  Someone not divulging his name wondered if I was notable enough for an entry, noting that “the great majority of the works are vanity/self publications (Runaway Spoon Press is this person’s own press) and tel-let was a photocopied zine that grew out of a mailing list. Other publishers are non-notable as well.”  Two of the three people responsible for the entry (as far as I know) defended me.  No more has yet been heard from the one against my entry.

Although I continue to believe an encyclopedia devoted to peer-rejected unnotables would be of more cultural value, and much more interesting, than encyclopedias like Wikipedia, which are concerned almost only with peer-accepted notables, and when once asked for data to be used in an entry on me Jesse Glass wanted to create, discouraged the enterprise, now that one is up, I got self-defensive enough to want to get its incomplete list of my credits, such as they are, updated, so spent an hour earlier today finding and revising the list I have.  This I sent to my friend Knitwitted in hopes she can get some of it inserted into my entry.

While involved in my chore, I came across the following, which I thought interesting enough to post here:

Title: A New Poetry Anew.
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Title: A New Poetry Anew.
Authors: Grumman, Bob
Descriptors: Creative Writing; Literary Genres; Lyric Poetry; Secondary Education; Teaching Methods; Text Structure; Writing Assignments; Writing Instruction
Source: Teachers & Writers, v26 n2 p1-9 Nov-Dec 1994
Peer Reviewed:
Publisher: N/A
Publication Date: 1994-00-00
Pages: N/A
Pub Types: Guides – Classroom – Teacher; Opinion Papers; Journal Articles
Abstract: Classifies the various forms that exist in a type of poetry dubbed “burstnorm” poetry, a form of lyrical poetry. Differentiates burstnorm from two other types, “plaintext” and “songmode poetry.” Describes three types of burstnorm poetry: surrealistic, pluraesthetic, and language poetry. Discusses further subtypes of each form. Presents a lesson in writing “fissional” poems. (PA)
Abstractor: N/A
Reference Count: N/A
Note: N/A
Identifiers: Poetic Forms; Visual Poetry
Record Type: Journal
Level: N/A
Institutions: N/A
Sponsors: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0739-0084
Audiences: N/A
Languages: English
Education Level: Secondary Education

This is probably the first (and so far only) bona fide academic aid for Grumman Scholars!

.

Posted in Autobiographica, Literary History | No Comments »

Entry 1002 — Background Text

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

A little while ago (under the influence of a zoom dose, which consists of a caffeine pill and a pain pill with an opium derivative in it), I wrote the following to Karl Kempton.  My next installment of my Scientific American blog will be devoted to him, you see, so I had requested a bio from him.  He sent me to his facebook bio.  I thanked him but went on to say, (and I quote it in full because my zoom-dose has me believing it a fascinating “behind-the-scenes” glimpse of what is going on up here on Mount Olympus):
 I can use this. But what I’d like more would be something with a narrative, mainly about what I would take as your quest for spiritual enlightenment and artistic fulfillment. Actually, what I would like are links to EVERYTHING WRITTEN ABOUT YOU plus the time and unlaziness to write a bio of you myself. That’s not possible but a few paragraphs that would allow . . . Well, if I were to make a bio of the kind I want about myself, it would go something like:
“My central life-journey began in earnest when I was 19, and a friend showed me EE’s falling leaf. After a four-year interruption in the air force and factory work for about a year before and after that, I self-published my little book, poemns, which contained visual haiku like (2 or 3 specimens shown). At the same time I had gotten creatively/crazily interested in the psychology of creativity and aesthetic appreciation which led to blah blah blah.”
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But if preparing a bio of me for my Scientific American blog I would only very briefly mention my theories of psychology because they really haven’t much to do with my art; but your spiritual theories, which I consider the equivalent of those, are central to your art, so are meaningful.
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Also, I’m thinking about using this entry to compare your outlook with mine—I hope in a totally neutral way, in a way calculated to demonstrate the different slants creativity with math and words can take. I don’t know yet if this will go anywhere—and will definitely publish what I come up with only if you tell me it’s all right with you.  If I do write it, I will expect a lot of feedback from you, particularly about my descriptions of where you’re coming from.
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I may be in the megalomania zone again, but right now I think our—let me call it a polyphonic interaction sometimes dissonant, sometimes concordant (wish I knew a better word for that)—is as important world-question as there is, and I think you and I could help clear a path toward the final synthesis of the two I believe possible.

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Right after sending that to him, I added,

A mention of a few fellow poets important to you would be a good way for me to boost them, however slightly, by naming them. Karl, for sure, but also Loris and Will Inman. (I seem recently to have fallen into an old man’s desire to commemorate people in danger of undeserved fading–the way I am–in spite of my simultaneous optimism that we’ll all be read about a century from now!)

 

Sometimes I do what I do,
and other times I do as I don’t
and that, you see,
is the central point;
and that, you see,
is the central point.

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Posted in Literary History | No Comments »

Entry 803 — Insulting BigName Critics

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

After Finnegan, sitemaster of New-Poetry, let New-Poetry members know that we could find essays by various critics commenting on the current state of American Poetry at the VQR Symposium yesterday, I visited the site, read some, skimmed some, then posted the following at New-Poetry:

Thanks much for this, Finnegan. All these critics and Perloff (whom I count as part of the VQR Symposium group although she withdrew from it because she has remained an important part of it, anyway) is the only one who mentions visual and performance poetry, and all she does is mention them. The most visible two poetries of the Otherstream. But that’s enough to keep me from judging her thoughts on the contem-porary poetry scene the worst in this collection. The others are too closely worthless to pick out one for worst effort.

I will admit one thing not too hard to admit: a few of these estabniks seem somewhat familiar with what they deem a new sort of poetry—conceptual poetry—a kind of poetry, if it’s poetry (and Perloff questions whether at least some texts called conceptual poetry are poems) with which I was unfamiliar. But I’ve always said in my lists of new and newish poetry that I was sure I’d missed some, and know I’ve fallen behind badly in keeping up with various kinds of cyber poetry, never felt comfortable with my take on sound poetry, and only now believe I’m coming to terms with language poetry (although I arrogantly also feel I’ve known more about it for twenty years than just about anybody writing it, or writing poetry called language poetry, including especially Ron Silliman).

From the few examples of conceptual poetry I’ve seen, I have what I think is Perloff’s view, that it’s too similar to dada to be new, and—as I said—possibly prose (of a kind I’ve named “conceprature” to go with similar taxonomical terms I’ve used for “poetry” that’s really prose, “evocature” for prose poems, and “advocature” for lineated propaganda texts. I also use “informrature” for lineated texts like names and addresses on envelopes that are clearly not poems). Having said all that, I do believe that conceptual poets-or-prosists (note: “prosists” is an ad hoc term; I want something better, preferably already in use) are cutting edge even though working in a variety of literature that’s been around a long time—because (1) they are still finding significantly new things to do in it (new to me, anyway) the same way I believe a few visual poets are still finding significantly new things to do in visual poetry, which—in its modern phase—has now been around a century, give or take a decade or two, its start being still controversial; and (2) only a very few visible critics know about them, and only one, Perloff, has so far written meaningfully about them.

I should be kinder to Perloff than I have been for the past 25 years, and will be from now on, I’m pretty sure. But nothing is harder for someone fighting against the status quo not to blow up at than another fighting against it differently (usually much less differently than its seems to both at the time).

Below is perhaps the best example of anti-Otherstream gatekeeping in the tripe Finnegan linked to, a passage from Willard Spiegelman’s hilariously-titled essay, “Has Poetry Changed? The View From the Editor’s Desk.” Its title is funny because it contains not one word about how American poetry has changed over the past 30 years or so. (Note, by the way, another change in my boilerplate: “30,” not “50” years as I so long contended. I finally realized that Ashbery and his followers were, when breaking into prominence, using techniques not in wide use at the time–although far from revolutionary.)

“Some years ago Helen Vendler said she was giving up reviewing or generally writing about new books of poetry by younger poets. She had not lost her acumen, her interest or her powers of perception; rather, she said that she lacked the right cultural frame of reference to be an appropriate audience, let alone a judge. She knew about gardens and nightingales, Grecian urns and Christian theology, but not about hip-hop or comic books, and these provide the material, or at least the glue, for many of today’s poems. Poetic subjects, voices, diction, and tone change. And forms, like subjects, change as well. She wanted to leave the critical field open to younger people like her colleague Stephen Burt, a polymath who knows the ancients and the moderns, the classics and the contemporary. He listens to indie bands and reads graphic novels. He flourishes amid the hipsters as well as the sonneteers.” Etc.

Why is this especially stupid, in my view? The idea that the main thing a critic needs to be familiar with to write about poetry is subject matter. Oh, and “voices, diction and tone.” Oops, “forms,” too. No mention of what Vendler has been drastically ignorant of since she was first writing about Ashbery: technique. Perhaps I’m wrong to consider it the most important component of poetry, but it most certainly is as important as “voices, diction and tone.”

Then there is her leaving the field open to people like Stephen Burt. A Harvard professor! And no more knowledgeable than Vendler about what’s going on in poetry now. Here’s one thing Wikipoo calls him recognized as a critic for, his definition of what I call jump-cut poetry (but long ago referred to it a few times as “elliptical”): “Elliptical poets try to manifest a person—who speaks the poem and reflects the poet—while using all the verbal gizmos developed over the last few decades to undermine the coherence of speaking selves.” I like his “all the verbal gizmos.” Does he mention even some of those invented way before his time by Cummings. I don’t know his criticism well enough to be sure the answer is no, but I’d be willing to bet ten bucks it is.

I’d be interested to know why what I’ve written here contributes less to the discussion in VQR of the current state of American Poetry than the essays in it. Anyone interested in telling me? Or even in telling me why I’m not worth telling? I’ve issued challenges like this before. No one’s yet answered one. At least one that doesn’t significantly misrepresent me, and escalate into ad hominem arguments and plain insults.

Note: I’m pretty sure that 15 or 20 years ago, one of the two times I was stupid enough to apply for a Guggenheim grant, Willard Spiegelman got one in the field I’d applied for one in. I can’t remember how he described his winning project except that it was lame, even for a mainstreamer. (Richard Kostelanetz, a former winner of a Guggenheim, had recommended me to the Guggenheimers, who then invited me to submit an application, so it wasn’t all my fault.)
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Posted in Literary History, Literary Squabbling, Poetry Criticism | 1 Comment »

Entry 563 — The Contents of Poetry Anthologies

Monday, November 14th, 2011

While doing my usual bit about how narrow in taste the most recent anthology of twentieth-century poetry was, I got to thinking, once again, just who it is that controls what goes in, what stays out, of the poetry anthologies that become our college English departments’ texts, and dictate/reflect what poetry is taught there, discussed in the most visible publications by the only widely influential critics, and accepted by the huge majority of poetry-accepting publications, including all of the commercially viable ones–and, worst of all–given money by the imbeciles running organizations like the Poetry Foundation.  In particular, I wondered what the source of the country’s current consensus as to what our best poetry is.  I know just about nothing about this.  The only thing I’m sure of is that what I consider our current best poetry has been marginalized for forty years or more–with the exception of language poetry, which finally broke through into the mainstream ten years or so ago.

Perhaps as many as fifty years ago I read an article showing how all the poetry prizes seemed to be going to the same people.  The theory expressed was that Harvard, basically, was in control, and The New Yorker was its main representative.  My impression is that the poetry of Williams, its power greatly amplified by the popularity of the rebellious beats, finally broke through the hegemony of the time–circa 1960.  Visual poetry, even then a major kind of poetry was ignored.  But so was the very much less threatening (one would think) haiku, although the beats revered it, albeit, seldom with much understanding of it.  Iowa School Poetry, really just a slight variation on the dominant poetry of the first half of the twentieth-century, came to represent, and still represents, the mainest of the mainstream poetry.

Somewhere along the line Helen Vendler started championing Ashbery.  Gradually Frank O’Hara and the New York School became acknowledged as significant.  By the eighties, with a second-rate but influential Stanford voice in Marjorie Perloff, the language school started becoming noticed.  Some of those calling themselves that, or being called that by the ignorant, became confused with the now prominent members of the jump-cut school Ashbery had merged with from the New York School.  They kept their name, and are now certified.  That many of their members were academics at prestigious universities (there are a few professors among the better visual poets but none at an Ivy League school or the like that I know of) greatly helped them to their high estate, I’m certain. 

Who besides Harvard and New York City periodicals, later joined by the Iowa University English Department, and still later by SUNY, Buffalo, contributed to the present status quo?   Well, there have been the victim groups for many years who called for recognition of their members based on numbers rather than talent.  So now most periodicals make sure to keep the percentage of female poets whose work is included close to fifty percent, for example.

I can’t think right now of any other influence on the Establishment.  The hope of people like me is that the intelligent lay public will find their way around the middle men between certified poetry and better, or at least interestingly different, poetry due to the Internet.  This is not happening to much of an extent now; the Internet is too confused.  And no one yet seems willing to help me list all the schools of current American Poetry (oh, the horror of labeling!), to facilitate discovery of the uncertified, and at least demonstrate the degree to which the academy and its braindead media mouthpieces, has constricted the width of the poetry continuum visible to the public.  Nor do I know of any book on the topic of this essay, available or planned.  I’d love to get the opinion of someone more knowledgeable than I, much more a victim of literary history than a student of it, am.  And, sure, someone more likely than a marginalized creative artist like me to be objective about it.

Diary Entry 3 P.M. Sunday 13 November 2011   I don’t know how long I’ll be able to make daily entries but am hoping to accomplish enough to deserve a log of what happens.

Today has turned out well, after all–apparently due to the hour or so of sleep I took shortly after making yesterday’s blog entry.   I felt a little better but still blah-ish.  I didn’t feel up to writing the essay on the value for a mathematical poet of multiplication that should have been my exhibition project for the day, so (here’s another lesson if how to be properly methodical), I reduced the project to something I thought even I could handle: simply outlining the essay on paper.  It went surprisingly smoothly.  I ended with what may be a complete essay needing only a tweak or two, and conversion to an illustrated computer file which I should be able to do tomorrow–or even tonight if the Giants win.  They’re my football team and they’ll be on tv in an hour.  If they lose, I’ll be too depressed to do much.  Or maybe not. 

I went right from the exhibition paper back to my Shakespeare book–the socioplex.  I did some good work on it, although all of it was editing–except for a few paragraphs solving the problem I’d gone to bed with, the unconfusion of my theory of the Urceptual Self, Other and Composite.  I hope.  A little later I wrote what’s in this entry as well as at least one good comment to an Internet discussion of the Shakespeare authorship question.  I think such comments may help me get better known, and maybe even snare me an influential friend.  I may do a little more work on the socioplex.  I’ve printed out the ten pages I had when finished with my stint earlier.

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Posted in Literary History | 2 Comments »

Entry 496 — Poetry Breakthrough No. 5

Thursday, September 8th, 2011

In my little list of breakthroughs in anglophoonic poetry, I forgot a major one, the invention of genuine language poetry, by which I mean poetry in which concerns with grammar or spelling a of central aesthetic importance.  Jump-cut poetry is (I tentatively feel) a minor change in standard free verse, surrealism just a change in subject matter.

 

Posted in Autobiographica, Literary History | No Comments »

Entry 495 — Yesterday Continued

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

First an update on my health: yesterday I saw my hip surgeon and he okayed me to go all out physically.  In other words, all I need is a week in Triple A and I can come back to bat clean-up in the Bigs.  I do feel fairly okay.  Not much sprint in my legs yet, but the doctor said the fast twitch muscles often take the longest of the muscles to return to normal.

Okay, here’s the text I posted yesterday:

               the luminescence of the ice skate
               lying where poetry in English
               made its first major ascent

I got useful feedback on this from Jerry McGuire, David Weinstock, Dave Birkumshaw and Patrick McManus, the latter two from Poetryetc. where I also posted my request.  Last line will now be something like “widened in a major way for the first time.”  I may replace “luminescence” tosomething not possibly conflicting as an image with the shine of ice.  Can’t think what yet.

Now for what I was up to.  I’d been thinking about what I was doing and not doing in my poetry.  This led somehow to consideration (again) of the major breakthroughs in anglophonic poetry.  I decided Wordsworth was the main one responsible for what I deem the first such breakthrough.  Exactly what it was took me a while to decide.  Conclusion: a adding the use of formal verse to deal with personal themes to what poets had been doing, using formal verse to deal with to a culture’s themes. Possibly also a shift from received themes to received theme and ad hoc themes.

My text had to do with Wordsworth’s use of his boyhood ice-skating in The Prelude as central to his addition to poetry in English.  I went on advance two other widenings of poetry in English: the free verse revolution and the coming of pluraesthetic poetry, or  the use of free verse to deal with themes, and the use of averbal elements to deal with themes.  I think this a neat little summary that would make my reputation if I used it as the basis of a book, and had any academic standing.  Oh, well, some academic fifty years from now will go places with it, perhaps even giving me some credit for it.

I’m not making big claims for it, incidentally,  I doubt that it’s very original.  I’ll bet I’ve expressed it more clearly than anyone before me, though.

 

 

Posted in Announcements, Literary History | 1 Comment »

Entry 442 — Contemporary Poetry

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

Poetry Between 1960 and 2010

Wilshberia, the continuum of contemporary poetry composed
between around 1960 and the present certified by the poetry
establishment (i.e., universities, grants-bestowing organizations,
visible critics, venues like the New Yorker and the American
Poetry Review) begins with formal poetry like much of Richard
Wilbur’s work.  Descent into a different lesser formality of neo-
psalmic poetry based on Whitman that Ginsberg was the most
well-known recent author of, next comes free verse that is
nonetheless highly bound to implicit rules, Iowa Plaintext Poetry;
slightly further from traditional poetry the nearprose of Williams
and his many followers who seem to try to write poetry as close to
prose as possible.  To this point, the poetry is convergent,
attempting to cohere around a unifying principle.  It edges away
from that more and more as we continue over the continuum,
starting with surrealist poetry, which diverges from the world as we
know it into perceptual disruption.  A bit more divergent is the
jump-cut poetry of the New York School, represented at its most
divergent by John Ashbery’s most divergent poems and the jump-
cut poetry of the so-called “language poets,’ which is not, for me,
truly language poetry because grammatical concerns are not to
much of an extent the basis of it

The Establishment’s view of the relationship of all other poetry
being composed during this time to the poetry of Wilshberia has
been neatly voiced by Professor David Graham.  Professor Graham
likens it to the equivalent of  the relationship to genuine baseball of
“two guys in Havre, Montana who like to kick a deer skull back &
forth and call it ‘baseball.’  Sure, there’s no bat, ball, gloves,
diamond, fans, pitcher, or catcher– but they do call it baseball, and
wonder why the mainstream media consistently fails to mention
their game.”  Odd how there are always professors unable to learn
from history how bad deriding innovative enterprises almost
always makes you look bad.  On the other hand, if their opposition
is as effective as the gatekeepers limiting the visibility of
contemporary poetry between around 1960 and 2000 to Wilshberia
has been, they won’t be around to see that opposition break down.
Unfortunately, the innovators whose work they opposed won’t be,
either.

Not that all the poets whose work makes up “the Underwilsh,” as I
call the uncertified work from the middle of the last century until
now, are innovative.  In fact, very few are.  But the most important
poetries of the Underwilsh were innovative at some point during
the reign of Wilshberian poetry.  Probably only animated visual
poetry, cyber poetry, mathematical poetry and cryptographic poetry
are seriously that now.  It would seem that recognition of
innovative art takes a generation

The poetry of the Underwilsh at its left end has always been
conventional.  It begins with what is unquestionable the most
popular poetry in America, doggerel–which, for me, it poetry
intentionally employing no poetic device but rhyme; next come
classical American haiku–the 5/7/5 kind, other varieties of haiku
being scattered throughout most other kinds of poetry–followed by
light verse (both known to academia but looked down on); next
comes contragenteel poetry, which is basically the nearprose of
Williams and his followers except using coarser language (and
concerning less polite subjects, although subject matter is not what
I look at to place poetries into this scheme of mine); performance
poetry, hypertextual poetry; genuine language poetry;
cryptographic poetry; cyber poetry; mathematical poetry; visual
poetry (both static and animated visual poetry) and sound poetry,
with the latter two fading into what is called asemic poetry, which
is either visimagery (visual art) or music employing text or
supposed by its creator to suggest textuality and thus not by my
standards kinds of poetry, but considered such by others, so proper
to mention here.

Almost all the poetries in the Underwilsh will eventually be
certified by the academy and the rest of the poetry establishment.
The only interesting questions left will be what kind of effective
poetry will then be ignored, and whether or not the newest poets to
be certified will treat what comes after their kind of poetry as
unsympathetically as theirs was treated.

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Posted in Literary History | No Comments »

Entry 356 — Something You All Should Know About « POETICKS

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Entry 356 — Something You All Should Know About

Alex Dickow, a friend of mine at New-Poetry, posted a link there to the following. Upon visiting the site, I immediately deemed it of sufficient importance to steal in totum for here:

About the Journal | Instructions for Authors | Subscriptions | Archives

Editor-in-Chief: Caleb Emmons

About the Journal The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected. Despite that apparent drawback, here are a number of reasons you may choose to submit to the JofUR:

  • You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.
  • There are no page-fees.
  • You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).
  • The JofUR is one-of-a-kind. Merely submitting work to it may be considered a badge of honor.
  • You retain complete rights to your work, and are free to resubmit to other journals even before our review process is complete.
  • Decisions are often (though not always) rendered within hours of submission.

    • Instructions for Authors The JofUR solicits any and all types of manuscript: poetry, prose, visual art, and research articles. You name it, we take it, and reject it. Your manuscript may be formatted however you wish. Frankly, we don’t care.

    After submitting your work, the decision process varies. Often the Editor-in-Chief will reject your work out-of-hand, without even reading it! However, he might read it. Probably he’ll skim. At other times your manuscript may be sent to anonymous referees. Unless they are the Editor-in-Chief’s wife or graduate school buddies, it is unlikely that the referees will even understand what is going on. Rejection will follow as swiftly as a bird dropping from a great height after being struck by a stone. At other times, rejection may languish like your email buried in the Editor-in-Chief’s inbox. But it will come, swift or slow, as surely as death. Rejection.

    Submissions should be emailed to the Editor-in-Chief. Small files only, please. Why not just send the first couple pages if it is long?

    Subscriptions An individual subscription may be secured for £120 per year (four issues). Institutional and library subscriptions are also available; prices will be provided upon enquiry. It is unknown whether the subscription will be delivered in print or as electronic content, because no one has yet ordered one.

    Archives

  • March 2009 (Vol 1, No 1) contents:

    (empty)

  • June 2009 (Vol 1, No 2) contents:

    (empty)

  • September 2009 (Vol 1, No 3) contents:

    (empty)

  • December 2009 (Vol 1, No 4) contents:

    (empty – because we were on holiday)

  • March 2010 (Vol 2, No 1) contents:

    (empty)

  • June 2010 (Vol 2, No 2) contents:

    (empty)

  • Disclaimer: Pacific University does not endorse—and is probably unaware of—this journal

    • .
    .

    Note (from Bob): I’m feeling a little bit less unhappy about being A Colossal Universal Incompetent, at least enough to feel I may continue posting daily entries here.  Warning: I expect them to be almost entirely concerned with knowlecular psychology and its taxonomical basis for a while.  Oh, and for those planning biographies of me, you need to know that I actually did spend an hour or so attacking the untidiness of my house.  What I did specifically was remove over twenty shirts with collars that were hanging in my bedroom closet and toss them in a large cardboard box on the bed I now consider my storage room.  It used to be the cats’ room.  It’s the largest bedroom in the place, with bath, now a storage closet.  I also put aside four shirts with collars to give to Good Will.  I suspect most men would throw them out but I’d wear them if it weren’t that I now rarely have any reason, like having a substitute teaching assignment, to wear shirts with collars, and I’ve never liked such shirts.  I should no doubt give away the twenty shirts I tossed in the box, too, but I’m too much of a pack rat to do that–at least right now.

    My ten or twelve best collared shirts are now all hanging in the closet here in my computer room (formerly a bedroom).  For weddings and funerals, stuff like that.  Once I’d cleared out all the collared shirts from my bedroom closet, I was able to hang up the many collarless shirts scattered through the house.  While at it, I hung my jacket and overcoat in my hall closet where they belong but rarely are–because, hey, pulling out a hanger, putting a coat on it, and the hanging it up seems like way too much trouble compared to just tossing them on a chair.

    The house is a lot less cluttered, albeit still cluttered.  I hope to get rid of some books I’ve never read and never will, although I’ll be amazed if I do.  I need to get rid of my non-functioning Xerox, too.  I’m not sure whether or not it could be repaired but am sure the cost of repairing it, if possible, would not be worth it.  My little computer printer can do just about as good a job.

    This entry was posted on Sunday, January 23rd, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica, Humor. 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.

    2 Responses to “Entry 356 — Something You All Should Know About”

    1. C. DiDiodato says:
      23 January 11 at 4:33 PM

      Bob,

      this is hilarious!

    2. Bob Grumman says:
      25 January 11 at 3:57 PM

      Glad you like it, Conrad. Caleb Emmons seems soneone who knows wutzWut, for sure.

      –Bob

    Leave a Reply

    Entry 414 — A New Term « POETICKS

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    Entry 414 — A New Term

    I have a new term to announce: “knowlecular mind-flow.”  I’m only announcing it because I have nothing else to write about here, and I’m trying again to do a daily entry.  Although that will probably stop for a week or more fairly soon as I am seeing my hip doctor tomorrow to schedule hip replacement surgery.  I figure if it doesn’t help me, I won’t be worse off than I now am (except if I become permanently, painfully crippled, which I deem highly unlikely).  I won’t be worse off since I feel I’m at the point where my bad hip just barely keeps me from enjoying walking, running and tennis, so if the operation puts me a mile further from enjoying those things, so what.  It’s like the difference between losing in the finals  at Wimbledon 6-7, 6-7, 7-6, 7-6, 100-98, and losing in the first round, 6-0, 6-0, 6-0.

    By mind-flow, by the way, I mean everything one is conscious of at a given moment.  “Thinking” means too many different things, particularly (and mainly) unvoiced words.  “Mentation” is better but tends, I think, to exclude feelings.  The best thing about “mind-flow,” modified by “knowlecular,” is that I can define it.  I need it right now for my discussion of rigidnikry in my Shakespeare authorship book.

    This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 6th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica, Grumman coinage. 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.

    Leave a Reply