Entry 1207 — The Experioddicist, July 1993, P.4
Note: I consider Geof’s poem a masterpiece–one of more than a few he’s done I wish I’d done.
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Category: Bob Grumman
Entry 380 — Slowly Getting Somewhere, I Hope « POETICKS
Entry 380 — Slowly Getting Somewhere, I Hope
What I’m trying to somewhere with is “Mathemaku for a Vacant Lot.” What follows is its subdividend-product-in-progress. I think it’s almost there but I want to let it sit for a while. The rest of the poem is fairly set. I may fuss a bit with the look of the texts but not their content.
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Mathematical Poetry Specimen « POETICKS
Archive for the ‘Mathematical Poetry Specimen’ Category
Entry 1759 — A Possibly Finished Poem
Saturday, March 21st, 2015
Ooops, the above is not my final version, this is:
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Entry 1709 — I Done A New Math Pome!!!!
Friday, January 30th, 2015
The following is an accident, whether a happy one or a disappointing one, who knows. What happened was that I was looking through my digital files for a poem for Bill Michele and came across the divisor and dividend of this one in a folder labeled, “Long Division Problems Worth Attacking.” I immediately wanted to attack it. What’s below is the result (so far–I’m not sure whether it needs more work or not):
I think I was in the mood to work on it because of my thinking about HSAM yesterday. It may be my first autobiographical long division poem. The only unauthentic thing in it is the divisor. Actually, they may well have been there, hard to imagine they would not have been. But they’re not in my memory of the episode. Extremely sentimental, yes? It’s very simple but perhaps still “difficult” for many . . . Will it nonetheless make me famous?
I’d sorta like to do more poems like it, but have no ideas for any yet.
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Entry 1604 — Almost Finished
Saturday, October 18th, 2014
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Here’s my “light” poem again:
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I felt that “faereality” was strained as my divisor. I wanted light becoming Apollo, whom I consider a god of rationality, times a kind of reverse of rationality, and faereality was certainly that, but it felt wrong. I believe now that what was wrong with it was that it opposed reality as well as rationality, and I don’t think of Athens as being significantly unreal. I considered using “intuition” or “intui-tiveness,” but felt they were to abstract. Then I thought of “X,” representing the unknown. It could stand for anything, which made it an easy choice–but also a kind of cop-out. So I made it a window on a part of faereality, or (happy) magic. I could take Athens as being to a degree magical, but only to the small degree I thought my fragment of faereality would give it. As I write this, I’m no longer sure I was right.
In any case, I soon felt my “X” was too lazy a choice. At that point, I remembered the version of “mystery” I’d used in my “Odysseus Suite,” and re-used elsewhere. I thought I might use it times X as my divisor. When I found it, though, I saw it already had an “x!” I changed it slightly to what it is here. It worked pretty well, I thought, for the amazing rise of Athens was as mysterious as it was magical. And both opposed rationality. The rest of my term worked, too–the combination of “idea” and “dream,” the hint of “yesterday, ” and the allusion to my poem about Odysseus, specifically the portion of it about his homecoming was a lucky bonus.
I now think I was right about including magic in my divisor. No great event is without that. The allusion back to several poems of mine that “faereality” is part of, is a nice extra, too. Speaking of that, I began to make more of the fact that I was using so many things in this poem from other poems of mine: just about the whole of the divisor, but also the idea of stacked terms from more than one poem of mine, including in particular the one with the swans in it the preceded this one. I began to think that I might by now, without thinking about it, have developed a sort of set visiopoetic mathematical terms. What, I wondered, if I were to begin consciously making such terms and repeating them through a sequence as a way of knitting it more effectively together. Inter-textuality. Something to think about . . .
As for this particular poem, it still needs a background, and I probably need to color “Athens.” I may have all its essential components right, though.
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Note: Yesterday I saw my GP and he felt my problems with the my legs were due to various back problems we already knew about but considered minor. He still feels my problem is minor but no longer so minor as to ignore, so he prescribed physical therapy. I’ll be signing up for it on Monday. I’m to go back to him if there are no signs of its helping in two weeks.
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Entry 1603 — Thoughts and a Story
Friday, October 17th, 2014
The following is from an email I sent to Karl Kempton in reply to a thoughtful response of his to my entry of today, the 16th:
Still walking on partial legs. Being the kind of person I am, I’m thinking maybe what’s screwing me up is polio: in fact, I’m hoping it’s that instead of what I’m sure it is: brain cancer–although I had some kind of scan of my brain when I went to the hospital a month or so ago about this same problem and it was negative.
One interesting thing: I’ve sort of given up on myself–and it’s a kind of release: I’m just doing things I like to do, the heck with the things I think I should do. Fortunately most of the things I like best to do may be worth doing, like an essay I’m writing about my “Mathemaku No. 10,” which is on the cover of the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts. I’m calling the essay, “The Story of My One Almost-Famous Poem” (“almost-famous” because it got into a college textbook, then into a hard-cover mathematics poetry anthology and finally into the JMA). I’m trying to depict the lot of the invisible poet.
Here’s the essay I was working on–which I find too cut and dry, so I guess it’s a rough draft:
The Story of my One Almost-Famous Poem
by Bob Grumman
The poem above was first published in a micropress publication containing just 7 poems of mine called, simply, Mathemaku 6-12. The press (which I term a “micropress” because too small in readership to be considered a “small press”) was “tel-let,” the publisher was John Martone, the poems involved were what I considered to be mathematical haiku—i.e., short lyrical poems in which a metaphorically significant mathematical operation, like the long division of “Mathemaku No. 10,” was carried out.
John had previously published the first five of my mathemaku in 1992 in a collection called, yes, Mathemaku 1-5. Mathemaku 13-19 came out in 1996. Like me, John was what people call “an experimental poet”—and I call “an otherstream poet,” meaning basically a poet seeking poetic fulfillment in a different stream than the one most poets do. Hence, we were both getting published in the same very few magazines receptive to unconventional poetry. I don’t remember now how it came about, but a correspondence developed between us. Soon after that, I used my micropress, the Runaway Spoon Press, to publish some of his poems, and he reciprocated by publishing some of mine . . . or vice versa. Such is the way it generally is in the micropress: it’s either self-publication or publication by colleagues who like what one is doing.
During the next ten or fifteen years, “Mathemaku No. 10” got re-published a few times, mostly at my poetry blog, poeticks.com, or elsewhere on the Internet. Eventually, came its publication (as a visual poem, which it is not) in the college textbook the half-page I’ve reproduced is from. Interestingly, I was supposed to get paid for my contribution with a copy of the book, but never did, nor did anyone replay to the letters I sent the publisher about what I thought was a minor mix-up. I eventually bought a second-hand softcover copy of the thing from Amazon.
It’s not a visual poem in my view, incidentally, because the heart and the two pieces of arithmetical paraphernalia are the only things in it that are not purely verbal, and they are all symbols with specific meanings, just like words, much more than suggestive visual images, so I consider them to be acting primarily as words, albeit pictorial.
The textbook was printed in an edition of over a hundred thousand, I believe. And one student actually wrote me about my poem! A year later it was included in the only other hardbound book I’ve ever had anything in: an anthology called Strange Attractors, edited by Sarah Glaz and JoAnne Growney, who were among the poets writing mathematics-related poems that I had recently met at a conference for such people in Washington, D.C., having by then encountered some of them on the Internet.
As a result of my friendship with Sarah, my poem made its final splash (so far!) with an appearance on the cover of the March-June 2014 issue of Journal of Mathematics and the Arts (with an essay on “visiomathematical poetry and a book review by me inside!) that Sarah had been the guest-editor of.
And here, in this essay, is my poem yet again. But it can’t possibly make me more almost-famous, can it?
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Entry 1602 — Long Division of Athens
Thursday, October 16th, 2014
Here’s my latest, unfinished:
The neato recreation of Ancient Athens in my poem was stolen from www.sikyon.com. It is copyrighted by Ellen Papkyriakou/ Anagnostou, with all rights reserved. If I’m still around in 2015, I’ll try to get permission from her to use it here. Still here, you wonder? Well, I think my nervous system is about to go. Lou Gehrig’s disease? I don’t know. I seem to only be half in touch with the lower part of my legs, especially after sitting for a half-hour or more. It’s as though they are on the way to being asleep. I can still walk on them, but if I jog a few paces, I feel the left one beginning to give way. I will be seeing my regular doctor Friday. A week or so after that I have an appointment with the surgeon who did my hip replacement. My hip now feels about the way it did when I went to him to get the replacement. Whether that’s related to my leg problem, I don’t know. It’s quite interesting. Needless to say, I give myself only a fifty-fifty chance to make it into 2015, but that’s just me, always sure of the worst when anything like this happens to me, but sure of the best when it happens to anybody else. Anyway, I’m proud of myself for finally converting my notes for the thing above into a semi-finished product. Gotta add color, and I may change the divisor, but don’t feel up to it right now (15 October, 2 P.M.).
Nota Morbeedissima: if I don’t never finish the above, I’d be grateful is someone else did, following how I done my swan one. Actually, I would not be able to be grateful, but you know wot I mean.
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Entry 1597 — My Swan Poem, Finished
Saturday, October 11th, 2014
I finished this at around 5 P.M, yesterday, and immediately stuck it here. I plan to comment on it tomorrow, when perhaps I’ve calmed down a little about how terrific it is.
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Entry 1589 — “Homage to Debussy”
Friday, October 3rd, 2014
A month or two ago, I suddenly had ideas for poems that I took notes on. Seeing the notes yesterday when hunting for something else I never found, I saw enough of the poem below to work it out. I made the version below this morning. It’s not finished. I want to think a little more about it. I feel “reason” and “intuition” need inner colors. I hope an idea for a background occurs to me, although I wouldn’t say it needs one. The interior of “dreams,” by the way, consists of a fragment of “faereality” from other poems using that, with the coloring shown here. My clever little way of alluding faery magic into this poem’s idea of a dream.
Conclusion: my career as a poet ain’t over quite yet, I guess. The one thing that bothers me about my few recent works is how little visimagery counts in them.
Observation: whenever I get intensely into one project, I seem to flood with ideas for others. Nice, but the danger is my getting distracted into four or five completing projects. But I did finish the second-to-last draft (for some reason, I just don’t want to use “penultimate”) of my novel yesterday. And I swear I’ll get the final draft done before 2015.
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Entry 1586 — “Moonlight Equation”
Tuesday, September 30th, 2014
intuition + reason = moonlight + pond
I’m bringing the poem above back from an earlier but recent entry because when I just happened to see it Sunday night, it made me realize a virtue of mathematical poetry I hadn’t thought of before: that an simple equation in the form a + b = c + d strongly suggests each of the terms has a different value than the others; hence a must be part c and part d, which means the reader has an extra meaning to muse about: in my poem, just how much moonlight, for instance, is intuition, and how much reason. Ditto for each of the others. In other words, “intuition + reason = pond” would be a nice poem, but not nearly as loaded as “intuition + reason = moonlight + pond.” To over-argue my point, the three-term poem consists of one mathematical idea, the other of five mathematical ideas.
No more for this entry. I’m having another tired of my tired days, but just got through another chapter of my book, one I don’t think I made more than two or three changes to.
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Entry 1568 — Me ‘n’ Riesman, Part 2
Friday, September 12th, 2014
After more reading of The Lonely Crowd, I’ve decided I’m very much inner-directed, according to Riesman’s description of the type. I got him wrong when I though his inner-directed type was similar to my rigidnik. I now an unsure how his autonomous type differs from his inner-directed type. According to Riesman, many of his readers, including colleagues of his, confused the two. I now see why–and Riesman himself seems to consider it a natural mistake. (He is excellently self-critical, it seems to me, but has surprising blind spots: for instance, about the possibility of innate psychological tendencies: he mentions such a possibility every once in a while, but quickly drops the subject, seeming to take social determinism the only important kind of determinism in the main body of his book–or so my impression is after not going very far in it.)
I’m also wondering how Riesman’s other-directed types ultimately differ from his tradition-directed types. Possibly, I just thought, because their memories coincide with their environmental input? They pray to whomever their tribal god is only partly because they’ve been trained to, but mostly because everyone else in the tribe is. The inner-directed person prays to his god because of his indoctrination entirely: he more or less has to because he is part of Riesman’s inner-directed society and thus not sure of having the right people to imitate.
The autonomous person will differ from the inner-directed person only in that he will be much more likely to question his indoctrination.
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Last night while lying in bed hoping for sleep to come, I suddenly had a few ideas for poems, two of which follow:
intuition + reason = moonlight + pond
I’m not sure whether they’re finished or not, or whether, if finished, they’re keepers or not.
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Entry 1540 — A New Work of Mine at Truck
Saturday, August 16th, 2014
Just an announcement today as I ccontinue to try to get my current reviews out of the way (and do seem to slowly be succeeding in doing so). Go here to see “An Evening in June, 1952,” a nostalikuical long division about (sob) my lost boyhood, mostly the part of it spent in boys’ adventure books, but also actual times camping out. Click once on my poem to see a better version of it.
The codes are simple, but I’ve put hints that help down at the far right, if you need them. Further hints available for $12 apiece at HINTS, 1708 Hayworth Road, Port Charlotte FL 33952. (Note, for those of you keeping score: yes, it is a Major Poem.) (Note, for any knownstreamer accidentally here who laughs at the presumption of my declaration, I dare you to present a cogent argument against it. Not that my declaration isn’t intended as a joke, but only in part. I absolutely believe it. I don’t think all or even most, of my poems are major, but if–at my age–I didn’t feel some were it would indicate that I’ve completely wasted my life.)
(((b=a, 5=e)))
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Cryptographiku « POETICKS
Archive for the ‘Cryptographiku’ Category
Entry 1760 — Another New Poem
Sunday, March 22nd, 2015
Title: Cryptographiku in Praise of the Imagination
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Entry 1205 — The Experioddicist, July 1993, P.2
Friday, September 6th, 2013
Entry 1018 — My Latest Cryptographiku
Monday, February 18th, 2013
I may be leaving the field of mathematical poetry for cryptographic poetry. Two whole new cryptographic poems so far this year! I may have ideas for more, but I’m not sure. Anyway, this one is the one I used the idea of a double code on. The same clues obtain except that the grid-colors I used this time are the negatives of the ones I used for my Basho cryptographiku. I needed the black background.
It works as a partially asemic visual poem, I think. It’s also a Wordsworthian pantheistic poem. A Major Poem–you bedder buhlieve it!!! It’s title, by the way, is “Cryptographiku for Mother Nature.”
Note: See the Page to the right called “‘Cryptographiku for Mother Nature” Clues’” if you need help solving the cryptogram.
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Entry 1016 — Final Revision?
Saturday, February 16th, 2013
Damn, I did it again: failed to set an icon to “public” to post an entry. So this is two days late.
I thought I was finished with this thing, but came up with new thoughts about its layering: that the splash should be on top of the pond. I also felt I could make a better use of the idea of the top layer’s being a coded text. I have a new cryptographiku employing it half done that I hope soon to be able to take care of a blog entry with. Anyway, below is what I hope is the final version of “Cryptographiku for Basho, No. 1″:
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Entry 1012 — Basho Poem, Last Visit
Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
I suddenly realized yesterday that I had my secret messages reversed: the one I thought should be the lower was above the other (as I visualize the piece). So I redid the poem. I dropped “and,” while I did so to suggest that what followed might be thought of as the pond, or an illustration of it–as it is intended to be a metaphor for it.
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Entry 1011 — Back to My Cryptographiku
Monday, February 11th, 2013
I reduced the size of the message in code. Very Minor, it would seem, but I think it improves the thing significantly! It looks better to me, but the main thing is that it suggests through its reduced size, the secret nature of the message. Historical note: when I first made a cryptographiku ten or more years ago, I thought I was really on to something. Within a year or two, I already felt I’d exhausted the form. I’d made six or seven cryptographic poems, and used coded material in a few other poems. I did think the cryptophor (coding employed metaphorically) was an effective device that might remain in the poetry tool kit, but that a poem whose central aesthetic effect depended on one had little future. I still think it may not, but my Basho poem is a new use of the form so gives me hope others will be able to find other new ways of using it.
Psychologically, I find it interesting that I suddenly, pretty much out of nowhere, had the idea for this new kind of cryptophor of mine (which, I will now reveal, involves a method of coding two messages at once–to suggest layers of hidden meanings rather than just a single under-meaning) after giving up on the device. My experience suggests how long it can take the subconscious to take an invention, my cryptophor, one step further. At least five years.
In this poem, to continue, the cryptophor suggests the entrance into another world that Basho’s frog’s dive is, and without anyone’s plunge into real, or equivalents of, ponds . . . I think its meaningfulness makes my poem at least a good one, and its metaphoric use of “doubling coding” makes it important enough to be considered major. If I’m wrong, all my poetry has been a waste of time. Oh, except for the pleasure of creativity I’ve derived from it. But I have a need to make a significant contribution to the culture of my time, not just do things I enjoy, although I’d see no point in making significant contributions to the culture of my time if I didn’t get creative pleasure from the process. If that were possible: I don’t think anyone can do anything of cultural value doing something he doesn’t enjoy. (Something verosophical or artistic.)
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Entry 1010 — Major or Worthless?
Sunday, February 10th, 2013
Okay, everybody, I claim that this poem, “Cryptographiku for Basho,” which I finished this morning after having the preliminary idea for it several days ago, is either a Major Poem or worthless:
For obvious reasons, I tend to go for the former (and I’m not on any pills at the moment). Discussion on this should follow tomorrow.
(Note: I now have a category you can click to below that has a clue in it for solving this poem–but it will appear under this entry, too.)
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Entry 950 — Pronouncements & Blither, Part 11
Wednesday, December 12th, 2012
Here’s a letter (slightly revised since, of course, I never can write an error-free letter) which I sent to the Editors of The Times-Picayune almost ten years ago, with an accompanying note:
1708 Hayworth Road
Port Charlotte FL 33952
27 April 2003
To the Editors of The Times-Picayune:
While I was pleased to see a poem of mine discussed in your newspaper, as it was April 13 in Sonny Williams’s review of the anthology The Other South, it would have been nicer if the poem’s title and all four of its six-letter words were spelled ryte. Here, again, is the poem, “Cryptographiku for Wallace Stevens”:
spsjpi
vxqqhu
cwuvmn
winter
Since the poem is obviously written partly in code (because of its title and the strange spellings of its words), spelling its third word as “cwuvmm,” as your paper had it, is not minor.
I would have appreciated it, too, if Williams had not also misrepresented (and misspelled part of) a passage he quotes from my contributor’s note. He claims I explain “that the poem is one of (my) ‘more sophisticated ‘cryptographers’ (i.e., texts encrypted for some metaphorical purpose) and that I’ll leave to the reader to puzzle out.” What I actually said was, “(My) other two cryptographic poems (one of them the poem quoted) contain more sophisticated ‘cryptophors’ (i.e., texts encrypted for some metaphorical purpose) that I’ll leave it to the reader to puzzle out.”
That’s sloppy reporting, but nowhere near as intellectually irresponsible as Williams’s leaving out what I said just before the misquoted remark. Regarding my first cryptographiku (i.e.,
“cryptographic haiku”) in the anthology, “Cryptographiku No.1,” whose text, in its entirety is, “at his desk, the boy,/ writing his way into “b/ wywye tfdsfu xpsme,” I said, “(this) simply depicts a boy writing a message in code. My hope is that a reader, in solving the poem’s (very simple) code, will experience the joy of working with codes; but the coded material is intended also to speak metaphorically of the boy’s writing his way into a secret world, of making/finding a world that is to the conventional one what an encrypted message is to a normal one.” In other words, I wasn’t being as high-handed with my readers as I feel Williams insinuated.
I have a number of other problems with Williams’s review but will leave them for another time. I do thank him for bringing attention to an anthology I feel extremely good about being in.
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Needless to say, I never heard back from them. Another day in the life of the poet without credentials.
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Entry 224 — The Key
Friday, September 17th, 2010
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. 19.16.r.9.n.g.
. s.u.m.m.e.r.
. a.u.20.21.m.14.
. 23.9.14.20.5.18.
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Entry 223 — “Short-Lived Cryptographiku”
Thursday, September 16th, 2010
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. Short-Lived Cryptographiku
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. #####
. 1 .#.9.#.#
. 1 .#.15.5.#
. a .2.i.18.4
. a .16.o.e.13
. a i
. a o e
. a
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Sorry, no clues–except to say that its solution is straight-forward. I have no idea whether it’s worth figuring out or not, but I had to put something in this entry. (I hope a better title eventually occurs to me.)
Entry 373 — “Cursive Mathemaku No. 1″ « POETICKS
Entry 373 — “Cursive Mathemaku No. 1″
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The past few days, I’ve been trying to get my mathemaku numbered and filed in order. I’m up to Number 49. Don’t know what Number 50 is. It will take time to arrange the rest of my mathemaku. I’ll have to go through a lot of diary and blog entries. I rarely date finished print-outs, but often date rough drafts, especially the first ones.
For the heck of it, I rated my first 49: 16 of them I consider first-rate, 25 okay, and 8 not too hot. I’ll probably keep them since sometimes others get something out of works one doesn’t think of oneself.
Anyway, the above turned up at position 34. I’d forgotten about it and don’t think I ever posted it, so here it is. It’s one of the ones I rate “okay.” At the time I made it, I thought cursive mathemaku would be a fine vein for me to follow up on, but I did only this one–and my “Long Division of Haiku,” which is one of my 8 disappointing children.
Further notes about my first 49 mathemaku: they actually consist of probably something like 80 mathemaku since they include six or seven sequences, one of them quite long, The Long Division of Poetry. I’m sure I’ve done over a hundred mathemaku by now, but I doubt that I’m up to “Mathemaku No. 100″ yet.
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Entry 584 — An & & My Full Triptych « POETICKS
Entry 584 — An & & My Full Triptych
It seems that almost every time I seem to be getting productive, something knocks me down. This time it’s only a lost entry–this one, that I was trying to correct some detail of and lost in the process–without realizing it, so was not able to try to find the lost material by backing up until it was too late. So now I have to spend an hour or so, restoring what I can recall of what was here two days ago.
One item was this by Moribund Face:
And all three of my frames of “Triptych for Tom Phillips”:
About the ampersand, I commented something about how it expressed the essence of “andness.” I loved the way its bird regurgitated what looked like all of itself, while looking to continue “anding” forever. I said little about my full triptych except that if you click on them, you’ll see a larger image of them which may be helpful although still very small–and in black&white. The original frames are each eleven by seventeen. Oh, one thing I did point out was that the frames are about, “departure,” “journey” and “arrival,” and are intended to be about them in the largest sense, but particularly about them with regard to arriving–for either an engagent of it or its author.
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Sunday, 4 October 2011. Sunday is hazy to me now, three days in the past as it is. I played tennis early in the morning–badly. I didn’t return to my Shakespeare book, but evidentally got a blog entry posted, and probably wrote an exhibition hand-out or two.
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Entry 1204 — The Exerioddicist, July 1993, P.1 « POETICKS
Entry 1204 — The Exerioddicist, July 1993, P.1
While looking for a poem for use in my Scientific American blog, I came across the following, an issue of Jake Berry’s 4-page The Experioddicist from July 1993 that was entirely devoted to Me:
I think it pretty danged fine, and not entirely self-centered, for it has criticism of material by others. I hope that by holding down the control button and clicking the + button, you can get an enlargement you can read. My next three blog entries will have the other three pages–and give me extra time to work on other things.
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Humor « POETICKS
Archive for the ‘Humor’ Category
Entry 1151 — Grumman Cartoon
Sunday, July 14th, 2013
I have not done much cartooning during the past twenty years, and I was never too ept at it, hence the cartoonic poorness of the following:
The text is from my first cryptographic poem. It was about a boy writing a coded message.
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Entry 1137 — 2 More Shrigley Cartoons
Sunday, June 30th, 2013
Entry 1136 — Something for New Yorker Cartoon Fans
Saturday, June 29th, 2013
I’m trying to get an essay done, so want this entry out of the way as fast as possible. Ergo, I’m just posting the following link. I probably shouldn’t, because I’m sure it will make this entry my most popular one ever, but . . . I’m no big fan of the New Yorker, either. Nonetheless, here’s the link: the New Yorker. If you have any kind of sense of humor, you’ll be glad you did.
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Entry 1134 — David Shrigley Cartoons
Thursday, June 27th, 2013
2 cartoons by David Shrigley from the October 2012 issue of ARTnews (because I’m in my null zone again):
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Entry 1104 — Footnote Humor
Wednesday, May 29th, 2013
Oops, I suddenly seem to be succumbing to the politicodementia I suffer fiercely from from time to time but do my best to conceal, so please excuse the long, large ellipsis I’ll need to recover
(The above was deleted from the entry to my Scientific American blog I just finished. I was afraid the ellipsis would be too difficult to reproduce the way I wanted it–and proved to be here. It was supposed to be right next to “recover”–with this to its immediate right: 1 Consequently, I had to delete the following footnotes, as well.)2
1 Thanks to Marton Koppany, my ellipsis-trainer, for the success of the above: it gave me all the time I needed to recover.2
2 I just remembered that footnotes also indicate exponents. Result: I’m suddenly taken with the question of what “)” cubed would equal. Would it take one to the apeiron?3
3 See Irving’s “Where?”4
4 Warning: I’m now seriously considering an entry consisting of nothing but footnotes. They are too much fun! (Blame Knit Witted, whose Very Funny footnotes are an important influence on me.)5
5 This footnote was not among them. I’m adding it to explain that my lapse into politicodementia had to do with a joke about “gerontophobia: that’s still in the entry, although as dumb as the jokes above–which I nonetheless think funny enough to put here.
As for the apeiron, you can read about that in my Scientific American blog.
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Entry 1085 — Desecration, Twice
Friday, April 26th, 2013
Entry 467 — Pushing the Asemic Envelope
Friday, July 15th, 2011
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Noteless Asemic Opera
Verbal Asemic Poem for Geof Huth
Standard Asemic Poem
Clearly, if a poem can be asemic, an asemic poem can be verbal. The point remains: to create forward-going art requires only that you seriously misname what you are doing. And that’s it for this lesson in automotive mechanics, folks. Come back tomorrow for something more entertaining by Ed Baker.
Entry 466 — Basho Makes the Funnies
Sunday, July 10th, 2011
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.
Entry 424 — A Non-Haiku
Saturday, April 16th, 2011
Over at Otherstream Unlimited people are posting opinions and other stuff in short texts they are calling “haiku” simply because they consist of three lines, a seven-syllable one in the middle of two five-syllable ones. There’s a lot more to haiku than that. So I posted the following to the group:
. haiku seem stupid
. only to those dumb enough
. to think this is one
Suchoon Mo then commented:
.
. ha ha ha ha ha
. ha ha ho ho ha ha ha
. ho ho ha ha ha!
I may get something of consequence done today, but not here.
language poetry specimen « POETICKS
Archive for the ‘language poetry specimen’ Category
Entry 1207 — The Experioddicist, July 1993, P.4
Sunday, September 8th, 2013
Note: I consider Geof’s poem a masterpiece–one of more than a few he’s done I wish I’d done.
.
Entry 942 — “eapt,” by (surprise!) John M. Bennett
Tuesday, December 4th, 2012
The following poem John M. Bennett posted yesterday to Spidertangle and elsewhere, at once struck me as among the very best of the huge number of superior poems he has done. Partially out of laziness, but partially also to give others a chance to reflect on the poem without the temptation of seeing what I have to say about it and possibly being deflected from their own equal or better discoveries, I am going to just let it sit here uncritiqued today.
eapt
flooded haphtic duu
stt’s yr nodte nude
)label streaming( to )ss
ed( cash an )slo
shshed( where the
moumouthless lungch
“lost’s tea cher” )fol
ded yellp(
sot ,dusty
.
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.
this i like. keep it. do no touch ups.
A very beautiful piece!
Thanks:
Nico–but I’m itching to make one very small change! I probably won’t. IF I do, I promise not to mess with it otherwise.
Marton. Yours and Nico’s encouragement is much appreciated. Your eyes are as good as they come. I hope you get me to do a few more cursive poems. I’ve let some ideas wander in but they so far have all kept going.
–Bob
I like this. I think the cursive really flows well with the illustration. Would like to see more of these.
Thanks, Kevin. This one has now gotten three compliments. I did try to do another cursive but it turned off into something else. I do want to try more, though.