First an addition to my taxonomy of awarenesses: I’ve decided to give what I was temporarily calling the “X-ceptual Awareness” one of the names I previously considered, then junked, “the Magniceptual Awareness.” My problem with it was that it was too similar to “the Supraceptual Awareness,” the name I had given to my system’s over-all awareness. I made that problem go away by simply changing “Supraceptual Awareness” to “Cerebral Awareness.” Pretty clever, wot? It makes sense since both the Practiceptual Awareness and the Magniceptual Awareness are in, or mostly in, the cerebrum. And I’m comfortable with the idea of a Sub-Cerebral Awareness located in the cerebellum and other parts of the brain, as well as various places in the secondary nervous system.
Next, a Noun cement that I hope will will cause those of you feeling guilty about getting all this blog’s incredible brilliance for free to express your gratitude with money–to someone on food stamps (due to his actual economic situation, not lies about it, although I did not report the $200 I made as a writer last year in my 2013 request to continue on the dole, nor will I report the $350! I made as a writer this year on my upcoming request). You can do this by sending me $5 or more for an autographed numbered copy of a limited edition of 4 More Poem Poems. It just came off the press. Only 8 copies printed, each with a different cover from the others–in fact, I have just decided to paste a unique original visual image on each cover. (Note: I really think $20 would be reasonable for anyone who is paying that or more for a subscription to any poetry-related magazine whatever.) I claim that no one who likes Joycean foolery with the language and surrealism will find at least one of the poems delightful. And there iz not one (1) but two (2) dreadfully wicked attacks in the collection on our country’s poetry gate-keepers–but only in passing! Remember, Posterity will really be angry with you for not sending me any money!
To take advantage of this Fabulous Offer, send check & your name&address to:
Bob Grumman
1708 Hayworth Road
Port Charlotte FL 33952
Sorry for the begging, folks. I’m really not badly off: I still have credit cards that will allow me to borrow over ten thousand dollar before I max them. I just used on of the cards for $1500, in fact–to have some company try to get the data in an external drive of mine that went bad about a year ago, and has the only copies of a few of my poems, and a lot of my only copies of others’ poems including four or five of Guy Beining’s the originals of which are lost. But I thought it’d be fun to play marketeer for a little while. And at least I didn’t bold-face the above.
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Okay, now to what seems to me an interesting question I just wondered into (note: it’s near impossible now for me not to qualify every opinion of mine in some way like this) while discussing Karl Kempton’s current central project, an exhaustively researched history of visual poetry from pre-history on: what poem should be considered the world’s first major full-scale visual poem? Very subjective, I fear, because of the difficulty in defining both a full-scale poem (for me, to put it simply, it would be a poem that’d be mediocre or worse if not for what it does visually) and a major poem.
I have no idea what poem is but don’t think any of Mallarme’s was because not depending on the visual for anything truly central to them. Nor Apollinaire’s, which seem primitive to me, although I’d have to look at them again to be sure. Such a poem would have to have a highly significant and original visual metaphor at its core to get the prize, in my opinion. Nothing before the twentieth century that I know about does. I think I’d aware the prize to something by Cummings (although I’m not sure what, and he may not have composed what I’d call a full-scale visual poem); if not Cummings, then Grominger’s “silence,” but not with confidence because I don’t know what other superior visual poems came before it.
Here’s a related question I didn’t send Karl: what poet could be said to have been the world’s first serious, dedicated, lyrovisual poets, by which I mean poet who concentrated a fairly substantial portion of his thoughts and energy to lyrovisual poetry–as opposed to Lewis Carroll who (1) was not a lyrical visual poet and (2) wrote light visual poems (which were nonetheless an important contribution to poetry, or Mallarme or Herbert, neither of whom composed more than a few poems that could be called visual–or, from my standpoint, made primary visual poems, or poems whose visual content was at least as important aesthetically as its verbal content.
I’m not even sure Cummings would qualify for consideration since he did not compose all that many poems I’d call primary visual poems. I’d have to go through my volume of his complete poetry to be sure of this, though. So, we have a preliminary question: what poets devoted a fairly substantial portion of his thoughts and energy to lyrovisual poems. My impression is that Kenneth Patchen was one of them. I think Apollinaire probably was, too. Most of the concrete poets seem to have been. I know I’ll annoy a number of you with my next pronouncement: it is that fewer and fewer people calling themselves visual poets devote much, or any, time to the composition of visual poems, preferring to make textual designs (and mostly doing extremely well at it).
Now another addition, this to my thoughts about urceptual personae:
It occurred to me that I made no attempt in yesterday’s entry to indicate the biological advantage of having . . . ursonae, so I’ll try to do that now. I’ll need to go into some detail about the way an urceptual persona is created. For an example, I’ll use the urnemy (no, I’m just foolin’ around: I won’t make that my new name for “the urceptual enemy”). When a baby first sees its father, it will automatically be thrust into its socioceptual awareness[1] where its urceptual persona recognition mechanism is. This mechanism will activate the baby’s urceptual other—due to such stimuli as the father’s face and arms. The father will be unfamiliar to it (probably, although he may have experienced enough of him while in the womb for him to be familiar; or perhaps any face will be familiar enough not to cause the baby pain, or even to cause it pleasure; assume here, though, that the father is unfamiliar to the baby, maybe because he has a beard and is first encountered while he is sneezing or farting). Since the unfamiliar causes pain according to my theory, and pain caused by another person has to be one of the stimuli causing the activation of a person’s urceptual enemy, the baby’s urceptual enemy will become active.
The baby will withdraw as much as possible from its enemy, the father, because urceptual personae automatically activate appropriate certain reflexive behavior. This is value #1 of an urceptual persona.
At this point, I am going to drop the urceptual enemy for not being as good a choice as an example as I first thought. I’ll go instead to the urceptual father. In the scenario I began, the father will almost certainly not continue to activate the baby’s urceptual enemy for long, if he even does so when the baby first encounters him. The baby’s mother will probably be with the father and say something like, “Here’s your daddy, Flugwick (or whatever the kid’s name is),” in a momvoice, accompanied by a mom smile, and many another mo0mfeature, so neutralize the father’s unfamiliarity. And the father will smile and say something in a gentle voice and perhaps, tickle the kid under the chin—certainly something likely to seem pleasant to the kid. In short, little Flugwick’s urceptual persona recognition mechanism will soon activate its urceptual father (I now think a baby will recognize the first male it encounters as its father—but be able to correct the error before long—rather than as a friend; if my hypothesis turns out valid, it will be easy to determine exactly what happens.
Be that as it may, eventually the baby will (in normal circumstance) automatically perceive its father as both a certain shape with a certain voice and smell—and as its urceptual father. The activation of the latter will help it more quickly react to the father appropriately. It will learn from its social environment—mainly its family—the details of appropriate reactions not instinctive like its smile will be until it learns enough to control it.
That an urceptual persona will double the ability of the real person it is attached to cause reactions is it second extremely important biological value. For one thing, this will make people more important than almost anything else to a person, which would obviously help a species survive.
What might be as important to a person as people? Here’s where my superspeculative nature takes over from my speculative nature. The goals a person shoots for may become as important to a person as others, or even himself Beauty, for an artist. As I’ve already tried to demonstrate, an artist will almost surely be motivated to some small or large degree to create an object of beauty to gain others’ approval. But simply to create something of beauty for its own sake can very well be his main motive, or even his only motive. I’m back to the magniceptual awareness where one might go to concentrate on beauty free of interpersonal concerns. Where I increase my speculativeness is in thinking puberty may open a person’s magniceptual awareness—give him doors into it, or significantly increase his doors into it. I strongly suspect a male’s magniceptual awareness is significantly large than a female’s. Just as a female’s anthroceptual awareness is much larger than a male’s. Of course, feminists will take this to be an insult to women, but I don’t see it as that. Well, as a male, I have to think of what I am as superior to females, but nonetheless trying to be objective about it, there’s no reason to say that interpersonal matters require less talent than impersonal matters.
The joke is that all this will be moot when asexual computers take over the world, reproducing like protocytes—with ecstasy. But who knows, they may be us.
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[1] According to Me, among everyone’s ten major awarenesses[2] (so far) is an anthroceptual awareness, which consists of two sub-awarenesses, the egoceptual awareness which is where a person experiences himself as an individual, and the socioceptual awareness, where he experiences himself as a member of his society. Each of these is one of the “intelligences,” in Howard Gardner’s writings on the subject.
[2] A major awareness is an awareness just under one of the primary awarenesses on my taxonomical chart of the awarenesses.
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