Okay, back to my cat poem.  I thought about it last night while awake at one point.  Two changes came about, which are shown.  The poem may be done except for the final work-up.  I’ll probably do it in my cursive style.

 Tough poem to work on.  Just your standard happy cat, but . . .

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.

 

Yesterday a glimmer of a mathemaku crossed my mind just when I was about convinced I was finally permanently non-creative.  I’d read an essay in praise of the piano, and I’ve always loved the piano although self-teaching myself to play Fur Elise, or whatever that standard for beginners of Beethoven’s is, was as far as I ever got.  In fact, I sometimes consider its invention the most important invention ever.  Certainly it’s in the top ten.  Competitors would be the invention of writing, the phonograph, the mathemaku . . .  I don’t include the invention of language since that was no more an invention, it seems to me, than the human voice, or upright walking. 

Anyway, yesterday (and maybe a little of the previous day), I wondered how to make a mathemaku in praise of the piano.  “The piano” would be either the poem’s dividend or sub-dividend product.  I was able to add only one of the other four elements the poem would need.  After thinking my way through three or four versions of it, I wrote, “the way an April countryside celebrates a brook’s twisting, revived consideration of it.”  I almost at once added “enthusiastic” to the adjectives modifying “consideration.”  Just now, though, I revised it to “the pleasure a countryside takes in a brook’s joyful, revived consideration of it as March turns into April.”  Then I deleted “joyful” and changed “of” to “through.”  I see a problem with this: it suggests the effect of a piano, not the piano itself.  In fact, I’m not sure what exactly it may be a metaphor for.  Stay tuned.

 

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What I hope is an improvement to what I’ve been working on (a subdividend product) is very simple.  I think it makes more sense than the previous version, for it shows my text going into somewhere else whereas previously the text went into somewhere else and came back.  It also makes for a slightly more challenging puzzle for the engagent, and my best engagents will like that. 

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After making the textual design with the sailing ship in it, I got an idea for a mathemaku featuring the ship’s entrance into the world it’s shown in as a partial metaphor for faereality.  I worked out a full sketch of the poem but haven’t converted that to an actual poem yet.  Now I’m fumbling with another faereality long division in which the following is a partial metaphor for faereality:

When I got this second idea, I immediately went megalomaniac, as I so often do, with thoughts of a Major Triumph.  In this case it would be a sequence of faereality long divisions in which faereality would symbolize the wonders of the worlds imaginative children live in.  My third frame of the sequence needs just a remainder; I should say, my sketch of my third frame just needs that.  I have no other ideas for the sequence, though.  I hope I get some–a dream that if I got at least ten, the result would be Very Accessible–and appealing to the many with my nostalgia for childhood.

Note: if you’re stumped by the extract from my poem-in-progress above, decode the following to understand it: ju jt ”cpzippe”–dpejoh jut xbz joup gbfsfbmjuz.  Hmmm, I just thought of a better spelling.  I’ll save that for tomorrow when, again, I’ll no doubt be having trouble thinking of something to put here.

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For me, one of the saddest things about my final years is how much I’m continuing to learn about making poems.  For instance, consider the value of simple decorative touches you can apply to a word in a visual poem, such as the ones in the remainder of my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes,” that I’m trying to put into exhibition-worthy shape:

Previously the letters were all black.  I changed them to brown.  That was all I thought I would do, but then I thought I might as well experiment with background colors in the manner above.  I had the change shapes a number of times, but eventually was satisfied with the above.    I didn’t learn to do this kind of thing when I worked up the remainder, but learned it more solidly–and I was old when I first learned, four or five years ago, when I did, “Mathemaku for Geof Huth”–if I remember its name correctly.  No big deal–in fact, it should be in this case since a remainder shouldn’t be to visiopoetic as to possibly detract from the core of a poem.  Just an added pleasure (if successful).

I think the reason so many old people want to teach is that, since they know they won’t have time fully to enjoy the little things they learn, they want to feel others, if they get to them early enough, will.  So listen to your elders, you young shits reading this!  (Oops, there I go again.) 

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Monday, 5 December 2011, 8 A.M.  I feel a little blah but eager to get some work done.  I just finished breakfast–after getting the blog entry for today done, and setting this one up for tomorrow.  Now to the main chore of today: putting together some stuff to show Judy at Arts and Humanities.  I thought tomorrow, when I have a doctor’s appointment near her office, would be a good time to see her for details about my show.  I want to leave a specmen for advertisement–the “Hi!” one–and maybe something else–with commentaries.

It’s now two-and-a-half hours later.  I reframed my “hi” piece–to get it into a frame with a thing on the back allowing it to be displayed on a flat surface, in this case, a counter that’s in the middle of the room my exhibition will be in.  A trivial job but one I have all sorts of trouble getting myself to do generally.  This morning, I just did it.  I haven’t taken any pills, either!  I also revised the seventh frame of my “Long Division of Poetry,” printed it, then took care of a commentary on it.

Noon Report: I did some effective work of my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes,” then used a few comments on my revision of its remainder in my next blog entry, so that’s out of the way.  I’m really humming, but I won’t be able to keep it up.

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Weeks ago I scribbled the following notes for what I thought at the time might be a series of cat poems but later decided would probably be good for onlyone cat poem.  This was during one of my poetically creative periods.  My last one, in fact.  It ended a few days after I made these notes, and a couple of others for poems also left unfinished. 

Yes, I’m still straining for entry-matter.  But I like scraps like these from other poet’s workshops so hope some of my readers will find these from me interesting.

 

The poem-in-progess is very sentimental.  The key is the word, “purr,” outlining a heart.  Maybe I’ll have a rough draft of the poem tomorrow, or even a final draft–but I’m hoping to concentrate on my Shakespeare book the rest of the day.  (It’s now 8 AM, so I’m getting this entry out of the way early!)

 

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 9th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop. 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.

Some notes from a week or so ago that I hoped to make a long division poem of.  I keep scrap paper at my bedside in case I have enough ideas I feel the need to record them while lying in bed at night.  The second sheet are my notes about the previous notes.  The poem I was preparing these notes for was to be the second in the set begun with the poem in Entrymy second long division of boyhood.  Nothing further has come of these.  Until now, when I’m having too tired a day to be able to think of anything else to put here.

For Easy Reading:

all the climbable trees and bushes for hiding in the hill our house was on

I like this but it is not worded properly and I still can’t see how to fix it–without simply sticking a second “on” into it.

a summer day three wishes more distant than Atlantis

This I find wonderful, the one really nice term I came up with.

faereality–actually a version in code that I didn’t want to take the time to work out, knowing I’d remember to later.

A continuing favored image of mine I want one day to have a cluster of poems about (and already have several).

a decoder disk fresh from the cereal box

I never had such a disk but wanted something about the making of codes that was so important to me as a boy.

secrecy (used as an exponent, an idea I dropped because–fancy this–it didn’t make mathematical sense to me)

Nothing more wonderful in boyhood than this.

an ancient tale-spinner’s path dreaming into a yes with mountains in it

A second fairly inspired term, particularly the “yes with mountains in it”

a boy’s book

Just a possible term if needed, and chosen because books were the ur-source of the best adventures of my boyhood.

I’m not bothering with the second page’s notes because none of them seem good to me–except the use of “secrecy” as a multiplier rather than as an exponent.  The idea of a map of something ridiculous to have a map of, except in a poem.

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Here’s a list I threw together for a group show in Minneapolis last year that Harriet Bart curate(or co-curated, I can’t remember which). I got my copy back a few days ago. I think the items in the show were all for sale. If so, I forget what price I put on it. Not the ten dollars that someone might have paid not because he liked it but because he thought someday some nut might be willing to pay a lot for it for some reason.

I consider it an interesting rough draft that there’s a chance I could make something of inspired. Aside from that, it’s a genuine list of ideas. I need to start making visiomathematical poems again, so have it nearby in hopes I’ll idly look it over and suddenly want to follow through on one of the ideas. Meanwhile, even though I may have posted it here already, it’s here today, which is another day on the edge of my null zone. If it gets me to make anything, I’ll post it here. Unless it’s so terrific I fear someone will steal it and make a bundle offa it. (Note, I never worry that anyone will steal anything from me: I may be wrong but I believe no one intelligent enough to think anything of mine worth stealing would steal anything of mine. Aside from that, maybe such a person could actually get something of mine to a reasonably large audience. Even if no one knew the True Author of it, I would enjoy knowing that something of mine was reaching more than my friends and relatives.

Later note: I’ll be very upset with myself if I don’t soon make something of the one with “qbfsfbkhsz” as its dividend–or should have that that since it looks like I wrote it wrong.

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Here’s what I had:

               Q Quaverful of Deedle                   Although he knew he wasn't                 responsible for the summer's cymbular round                 decline to words, Poem flickered ever-                 inxiously prior.                   The pure blue churches paying his rent                 reasingly beyond the sky,                       failed to comfort him.                 And all the science myraculously                       shimmyred more than blue in the zeal                 of their covenant with the clouds.                                  The rain laughed but did not fall.                 The ocean revised the prayer it had                      formed a small wharf of just to the left                          of Poem.

Here’s what it is at the moment:

               A Summer Day's Ascent to Words                   Poem was barely a flicker in                 the summer day's cymbularical ascent                 to words.                   The ocean began revising                 the prayer it had                      formed a small wharf of just to the left                          of Poem                   and fourteen sciences myraculously                       shimmyred more than blue in the zeal                 of their covenant with the clouds.                   Was he being epiphanied again Poem wondered.  

About all I’ve done has been to take out the stuff I don’t understand.

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Here’s what I had two days ago:

        At the First             At the first ocean-wisdom, the lazy questions of                               the dolphins, folooping around his starplug,                 centered what thoughts Poem had.              Gradually, his vocabulary wore away into warmth,             proud to the touch, and galleoned              to the top of the laughing April morning                          unnorming, unnorming, unnorming              every worn where a syllable was abled against.                  Poem was uninquiserentlyy delubricated about                  what the word,                                 “starplug”                                        meant.               Of        course he knew                                                   it wasn’t a word the way, “way” or “why” were, just a                nonciation of his high-blimeyed cre                                       ator.         Still                                    it whatted for him at the leastest least's fringe.                       Was that girl somewhere in it?  The one             in that poem of long                      ago                who was      not    at                            the whirlf?                   A potentially usable vocabulea far dis              tant but still in view, Poem              inquiserently salubricated the grrrlplug                into his deepest wayre                       duculently achime                                                          in the Agincourt of his widening kingship.                       True merry the celubriation now inned                              around the now full-faring flitter Titania                                         had choired about                                         the many-whatted girll, and all the long-agone                          youmth of a particular summmermurrrr                                                            dayyy              renorming into cockleblithe murmythry. . .

Here’s what I have now:

        Poem Among Dolphins             The lazy questions of                               the dolphins folooping around his starplug                 centered what thoughts Poem had.              Gradually, his vocabulary wore away into warmth,                    unnorming, unnorming, unnorming                     every worn where a syllable was abled against.                  But he spundered over                 what the word,                                 “starplug”                                        meant.               Of        course he knew                                                   it wasn’t a word the way, “way” or “why” were, just a                nonciation of his high-blimeyed cre                                       ator.         Still                                    it whatted for him at the leastest least's fringe.                       Was that girl somewhere in it?  The one             in that poem of long                      ago                who was      not    at                            the whirlf?                   A potentially usable vocabulea far dis              tant but still in view, Poem              inquiserently salubricated the grrrlplug                into his deepest wayre                       duculently achime                                                          in the Agincourt of his widening kingship.                       True merry the celubriation now inned                              around the now full-faring flitter Titania                                         had choired about                                         the many-whatted girll, and all the long-agone                          youmth of a particular summmermurrrr                                                            dayyy              renorming into cockleblithe murmythry    

                  galleoning up                          to the top of the laughing April morning

 

I only spent a few minutes with this.  My main change, the removal of the “galleon” passage from early in the poem to the end, was due to my thinking it was a proper climax to the poem as a whole, so inappropriate where it was.  I’ll have to let the poem sit for a few days.  My changes today were too abrupt, and I don’t have time to reflect on them.  (I have a neighbor coming over sometime to fix my oven, and not knowing when he’ll be here makes it hard for me to work on Important Things.  I need to feel I can use all the rest of a day exclusively on my writing in order to get anywhere with it.  Or, any excuse to avoid getting anywhere on it.)
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A day late with this, again because I thought I marked it “public” but had not.

I was thinking about my Poems the other day after reading the three poems in the latest issue of The New Criterion, and wondering how my Poem poems compared with them. One was a landscape in rhymes at the end of some kind of 5-beat lines that was pretty good. The second by someone else but in shorter rhymed free verse lines about a more intimate landscape featuring a glove wedged in a tennis court fence that I also liked. The third was unrhymed free verse about two scenes with commentary I found a little overwrought. One of those poems I don’t much like but can’t say has much wrong with it.

Here’s the beginning of my poem from yesterday for comparison:

        At the first ocean-wisdom, the lazy questions of                               the dolphins, folooping around his starplug,                 centered what thoughts Poem had.              Gradually, his vocabulary wore away into warmth,             proud to the touch, and galleoned              to the top of the laughing April morning                          unnorming, unnorming, unnorming              every worn where a syllable was abled against.

 

 

With no particular Poem poem in mind and, needless to say, a desire to find a way of convincing myself that my Poem poems are significantly better than the three I’ve just mentioned, and the many other very much like them except not usually rhyming that I come across in just about all the poetry magazines I’ve been reviewing for Small Press Review, I quickly came up with (1) linguistic enlargement and (2) size of the reality created as the two ingredients of my Poem poems that mainstream poems lack.

Evidence from the above of (1): “folooping,” “starplug,” “galleoned,” “unnorming” and “abled”; or a Joyceation, some kind of nonce-word, a DylanThomic noun as verb, another nonce-coinage, and an adjective as verb.  A few Joyceans that seem superior ones to me like “nonciation” and “murmythry” occur later in the poem.  Such words say my poem new, which is much more important for me than whatever it is mainstream poems are doing (and one thing they are doing mine don’t try to do although it’s a virtue, is connecting fairly quickly and directly with the majority of their readers).  Such words also tend to say my poem more compactly, by combining more than one denotation in a single word, and compactness I consider as important as freshness in a poem.

That the language of my Poem poems increases their compactness means they say more per syllable than conventional poems do; that seems to me evidence that the reality each creates is larger than the reality poems of equal length like the ones in the latest issue of The New Criterion do.

Of course, how large the reality a given poem of mine creates is a subjective matter, although I feel it can be near-objectively argued (in part) by making a list of everything it speaks of plus what it ought to connote to most people.  For the list to indicate largeness, though, some kind of near-objective, or plausible, unifying factor needs to be advanced.  I had none, I have to say, when I wrote the three poems that became thhe single one I’m now discussing.  I had an under-glimmer of a unifying mood while making the present poem that I think fairly effective: the growth of Poem’s celebratory mood of various melodic strands, so to speak, harmonizing and contrasting with each other about . . . ?

Interesting.  I think I’m understanding the poem better now.  This may be a good thing, but may be a disaster, for I believe I need to revise it, to make it more emotionally logical

More about this tomorrow.

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Today these three, composed on consecutive days during my 39 days of one spontaneous Poem poem daily:

        At the First             At the first flum of sequiserenity,             the ocean contacted Poem, wise in his aged gills as                        he was.              Folooping, inquiserenty far to                   the starboard, the silent questions of                               dolphins centered what thoughts he had.              The starplug had been breached,             so wherefore the full fare?  (Quoting elms,                   notwithstirring, as the centaurs unprimly                 maintained.                     The vocabulary wearing away into warmth,             proud to the touch, and galleoned              to the top of the laughing April morning                          unnorming, unnorming, unnorming              every worn where a syllable was abled against.                After the First             After the first flum of sequiserenity,             Poem was uninquiserenty delubricated about what              in the world the word  ,                                “starplug”                                          meant.               Of        course he knew                                                   it wasn’t a word the way, “way” or “why” were, just a                nonciation of his high-blimeyed cre                                       ator.         Still                                    it whatted for him at the leastest least.                       Was that girl somewhere in it?  The one who was      not    at                            the whirlf?     After After the First                   The vocabulea far dis              tant but still in view, Poem      inquiserently salubricated the grrrlplug         into his deepest wayre                       duculently achime                                                          in the Agincourt of his widening kingship.                       True merry the celubriation now inned                              around the now full-faring flitter Titania                                         had choired about him                                   Still                                                            the many-whatted girll, and all the long-agone                          youmth of a particular summmermurrrr    dayyy              unnorming into cockleblithe murmythry. . .

I believe two of them, perhaps all of them, were here back in May. They are here again because I plan to make a single poem of them that I’ll post tomorrow–and because I’ve had a tiring, unhappy day with losing tennis in another senior men’s league match in the middle of it at distant courts. Our bad season is getting to me, although just playing with different guys (most of whom are fun to play against, win or lose, and today’s pair was definitely that) would more than make up for the losses, if there weren’t so many of them! We’ve now been shut out 3-0 three times in a row, after winning one of three.
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A week ago, my blog entry began with:

A math poem that is resisting effectiveness (so far!): the sun times wonder, rhyming stairs up to a blazing need to be heroed over equals Zeus. Ah, I will replace the word, “sun,” with color. And “wonder” with “wUnder?”

I soon realized that either my dividend should be Apollo, the sky god, or my divisor should be the sky, which is the main thing Zeus is god of.  I preferred keeping the head god, so worked on a new divisor, coming up with versions of the following:

towering clouds nobling steepness into the latest sky

“Nobling” was in every version due to my being a sucker for make verbs of nouns and adjectives.  I haven’t gotten any further with it, but I now think that my working on it helped get me able to get a finished version of the poem in yesterday’s entry done.

Clearly, the poem’s quotient concerns the need of believers in a supreme being for a leader, so I’ve been reflecting on that lately.  Are believers born slaves?  Born partial slaves either fantasizing a supreme father for themselves, or wishing they could?  I feel I have such need, at all, but much of what I’ve read by believers seems explicitly to express a need for someone to follow.  It certainly accounts for the insane analogy of Jesus to a shepherd and his followers to sheep (insane because sheep in the real world are somewhat worse than slaves–but those able to believe nonsense rarely can think more than one step from any idea, in this case, Jesus is a shepherd, you are one of the [living] members of his flock).

Christianity abhorred self-reliance until the protestants finally allowed, then glorified, partial self-reliance–i.e., full reliance on the Good Book, but self-reliance on one’s interpretation of it.

Perhaps some cerebral mechanism activated at puberty that negates the mechanism responsible for full obedience to one’s father is a late feature of our species that so far only a small minority of us has.  Or maybe we all instinctively search for a god, but our instinct to be rational overcomes it.  Our life-view is a product of countless battles between conflicting instincts; our tribe’s life-view is the same–as is our species life-view.

My poem, so far, shows great sympathy for those instinctively desiring a sky-god to worship.  I think I do regard the sky as a god, but certainly not an anthropomorphic one–well, not a fully anthropomorphic one.  But not to worship or follow, although to revel in at times, and fear when appropriate . . . and compose poems to honor.   And the Greek gods have been subsumed in a genuine mythology, and mythology, as opposed to theology, and 700% opposed to opinions some clown doesn’t agree with, and mythology is wonderful.  So I’d love to come up with some image that is a near-approximation of my view of Zeus to use as my poem’s sub-dividend product.  Nothing even hints of occurring to me, though.

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Here’s “Poem’s Attempt to Return,” again, with some changes, including a new title:

                             Poem's Triumph  

                      o                        o                        o                        o                        o                        o                        oe                                             Poem at long last remembered himself out                          of where he had been not.                                            He was all stamens, gristle and flames,                          an archelectrical counter-sun                          circusing angrily back to his origins,                             yearning to cleanse its sky of thought                      and all the discordant music that caused it.                              And it came to pass that he succeeded, wherepon                                      Poem                        oe                        o                        o                        o                        o                        o                        o                        o

I think it’s improved but needs more work.  For one thing, the “Poem/ oe/ o,” etc., at the end is a brilliant movte, but seems to me to be using the rest of the poem rather than emerging as a result of it.  Perhaps more has to happen between “whereupon” and “Poem/ oe/ o,” etc.
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