language poetry specimen « POETICKS

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Entry 1207 — The Experioddicist, July 1993, P.4

Sunday, September 8th, 2013

ExperioddicistPage4

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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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

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Entry 1207 — The Experioddicist, July 1993, P.4 « POETICKS

Entry 1207 — The Experioddicist, July 1993, P.4

ExperioddicistPage4

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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James Joyce « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘James Joyce’ Category

Entry 9 — Poetry Employing Irrational Language

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

I have always wondered why anyone would make much of most Dada works.  It was evident that a good number of reasonably intelligent, sensitive people have, though.   Including friends of mine who have shown themselves quite capable of fashioning works I think vastly superior to their Dada works.

Then I came upon Geof Huth’s

.              the car I didn’t notice                              isn’t there

in the recentest issue of Haiku Canada Review.   Not Dada, but certainly nonsense, or so I at first thought.  I would now term it nearsense.   As

.              the crab boils filge at blargets       in the goamy fludge

it would have been nonsense, or a literary work which uses irrational language in order to amuse (in the view of most knowledgeable people encountering it).  As

.        car didn’t (e time)s into                       bleep blegg bllllg you

it would be constersense,  or a literary work whose textual matter seems chosen for no other purpose than to cause consternation–by seeming to be nearsense but ultimately not making sense, or proving amusing.

Then there’s temporary nonsense such as Joyce’s “cropse,” which at first seems either nonsense or constersense (and will always seem constersense to Philistines) but, given time, will quite rationally if poetically say “corpse” and “crops” simultaneously in succinctly sum up all the important cycles of human existence.

I have more to say about this, particularly about why the poem by Geof Huth is nearsense, but I’m too worn-out from another tiring day to do so until (I hope) tomorrow.

Jack Moscovitz « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Jack Moscovitz’ Category

Entry 83 — MATO2, Chapter 1.05

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

About a week later I heard from one of my California writer friends, Moya Sinclair, who called me a little after eight in the evening sounding very cheerful and energetic.  She, Annie Stanton, quite a good linguexpressive poet, Diane Walker, well-known as a television actress under her maiden name, Brewster, who had literary ambitions and was quite bright but never to my knowledge broke beyond the talented dabbler stage, and I had been a few years earlier the main members of a little writers’ group at Valley Junior College in the San Fernando Valley presided over by Les Boston, a professor there.   Technically, we were doing independent studies with Dr. Boston, but in reality we friends who met weekly to discuss one another’s writing, mine at the time plays.  Annie and Diane were about ten years older than I, Moya close to eighty by the time of her phone call, and she was in a convalescent home.  Her circulatory system had slowly been wearing out.  I fear she died there, for I never heard from her again.  Both Annie and Diane died around then in their early sixties, huge unexpected losses for me.

Moya reported that Annie had been over for a visit and had left my book with her.  Moya said she’d been reading parts of it and found it beautifully written, etc.  She had a few adverse comments on it, too–on Geof’s word for one-word poem (“pwoermd”), for instance, but that was to be expected.  Moya, for years working on an autobiographical novel, was pretty wedded to the old standards.  We had a fine chat that boosted my spirits a good deal.  She represented one of the main kinds of readers I hoped would like my book.

A day later I got a very positive letter from Jack Moskovitz about my book, and a lukewarm one about it from Geof.  Geof, as I remember, felt I should have lightened up on the Grummaniacal coinages.  I think he was right.  I believe one of the things I tried to do in my two revisions of the book was to cut down on them.

The next day, according to my diary, I got lots of letters, mostly from people I sent my book to, and for the most part complimentary though Jody Offer, a California poet/playwright friend of mine, felt I got too advanced in parts–I’m sure in part because of my terminology.  I was finding out, though, that my book was not as geared for non-experts as I’d hoped.

Eugen Gomringer « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Eugen Gomringer’ Category

Entry 1553 — Back to “Silencio.”

Friday, August 29th, 2014

Another simple post so I can quickly go to one of my Major Projects. It’s from Kalligram, the one at the top being Eugen Gomringer’s famous “Silencio”:

SilenceVariation

It is slowly inspiring as many variations, including several by me, as Basho’s “Old Pond.”  Definitely one of the world’s majorest visual poems.

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Entry 740 — The Special Value of Solitextual Visual Poems

Wednesday, May 16th, 2012

In my taxonomy a solitextual visual poem is a poem consisting solely of textual elements that are significantly visioaesthetic–that is, what their text is visually is necessary to the poem’s central aesthetic effect.  A famous example is this, by Eugen Gomringer:

 I’m posting it again to illustrate two points.  One is that is has always been considered a “concrete poem,” because it consists of nothing but words, yet has a visual component absolutely necessary for it to have any appreciable aesthetic value–the visual appearance of the absence of text in one part of it.  That, of course, is what makes the poem a classic by depicting a silence greater than the silence of printed words–by, that is, surprising one encountering the poem (with the ability to appreciate it) with a sudden poetic understanding of something central to existence.

My other point occurred to me when recently reading something by Richard Kostelanetz in which he speaks of finding “that with words alone (he) can make the most powerful images available to (him).”  In context, he seems to be suggesting that these images are more powerful than those others get with works combining verbal and graphic elements.  I can’t go along with that.  However, on reflection, I saw how solitextual visual poems like Gomringer’s and Kostelanetz’s can be said to have a unique aesthetic punch compared to poems mixing graphics with text.  That’s because of the increase in the unexpectedness of whatever it is a solitextual visual poem does visioaesthetically compared to what the other kind of visual poem does.  I claim that both kinds of poems will, if successful, put an engagent in Manywhere-at-Once, or a part of the brain neither a conventional poem or conventional visimage (graphic image) is likely to put one, but the engagent will already be partway into that location upon first encountering a poem combining the visual and the verbal whereas he will only be in the verbal part of his brain until the pay-off in a purely solitextual poem, so the pay-off will come more forcefully, and probably be more intense.  The mixture of graphics and text, however, will be able to make up for the reduced intensification by increased richness–by going to a larger Manywhere-at-Once or inter-connected Manywhere-at-Onces.  Equal but different.

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Entry 48 — Full Effectiveness in Poetry

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

I’m skipping ahead to old blog entry #796 today to make a point about my recent cryptographiku. #796 has Cor van den Heuvel’s poem:

.                                               tundra

I go on in the entry to say I believe Eugen Gomringer’s “Silencio,” of 1954, was the first poem to make consequential  visiophorically expressive use of blank space:

.                      silencio silencio silencio  .                      silencio silencio silencio  .                      silencio          silencio  .                      silencio silencio silencio  .                      silencio silencio silencio

I finish my brief commentary but then opining that van den Heuvel’s poem was the first to make an entire page expressive, the first to make full-scale negative space its most important element. Rather than surround a meaningful parcel of negative space like Gomringer’s masterpiece, it is surrounded by meaningful negative space. I’m certainly not saying it thus surpasses Gomringer’s poem; what it does is equal it in a new way.

I consider it historically important also for being, so far as I know, the first single word to succeed entirely by itself in being a poem of the first level.

Then there’s my poem from 1966:

.                 at his desk
.                         the boy,

.                                writing his way into b wjwje tfdsfu xpsme

This claim to be the first poem in the world to use coding to significant metaphorical effect. Anyone who has followed what I’ve said about “The Four Seasons” should have no trouble deciphering this. I consider it successful as a poem because I believe anyone reasonably skillful at cyrptographical games will be able (at some point if not on a first reading) to emotionally (and sensually) understand/appreciate the main things it’s doing and saying during one reading of it–i.e., read it normally to the coded part, then translate that while at the same time being aware of it as coded material and understanding and appreciating the metaphor its being coded allows.

I’ve decided “The Four Seasons” can’t work like that. It is a clever gadget but not an effective poem because I can’t see anyone being able to make a flowing reading through it and emotionally (and sensually) understanding/appreciating everything that’s going on in it and what all its meanings add up to, even after study and several readings. Being able to understand it the way I do in my explanation of it not enough. This is a lesson from the traditional haiku, which must be felt as experience, known reducticeptually (intellectually), too, but only unconsciously–at the time of reading it as a poem rather than as an object of critical scrutiny, which is just as valid a way to read it but different.

Entry 598 — “Fifty” « POETICKS

Entry 598 — “Fifty”

This is from Geof Huth’s blog:

 I liked this when I first saw it although I didn’t find it saying anything verbally.  When I finally realized it said, “fifty,” I thought it accidental because I couldn’t see why it would say that.  My slow mind eventually remember that Geof is now fifty-years-old, which makes this image a particularly effective representation of his present strange combination of freedom and awkward incompleteness . . . straining, yearning for something.  With his ego (“I,” as Karl Kempton would be sure to notice) lost or transcended.

Diary Entry

Sunday 18 December 2011, 6 P.M.  Another unproductive day.  Tennis in the morning, a fine meal at Linda’s in the afternoon.  A blog entry for today just taken care of a little while ago.  A little work done on my “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” to count as “work on preparation for the A&H exhibition.”  And now I’d like to go to bed, but will probably read instead.

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Entry 409 — Thoughts on Poetics « POETICKS

Entry 409 — Thoughts on Poetics

The following is from Geof Huth’s ongoing “Poetics”:

84. Lie

Does the voice make a lie of the poem? Because a good voice can make a weak poem seem strong and a poor voice can ruin a great poem. Is the poem isolated on the page (the screen) the most accurate version of the poem, true to itself, or does the voice we use to read it in our heads also ruin great poems and resurrect the dead ones?

It comprised his blog entry for Friday.  Here’s my reply:

Interesting question.  I lean toward considering any poem on paper to its completion as the printed score of a musical composition is to its completion.

I can’t see a bad reading spoiling a good poem or good reading rescuing a bad poem, for me, but that’s because the conceptual area of my brain is much stronger than its auditory area.  So, for me, what a poem is on paper is something like 95% of what it is, completed.  For others the percentage will be lower or higher.

Since I can’t read music very well, a musical composition on paper is likely less than 15% of what it is, completed, for me.  For Beethoven, in his final years, it would have been 100%.

Similar thinking applies to the font-shape and color of a poem’s print, and the color and texture of the paper.

All this is out the window for sound poetry and visual poetry–well, not all of it for those of us for whom poetry is a verbal art requiring completion by being spoken, whether internally by the poem’s engagent or externally by either the engagent or someone else.  No more than half out the window, I would say.  For me, a verbally effective visual or sound poem can be neither completely spoiled nor completely rescued by its extra-verbal visual or auditory components–but it could be one or the other by its verbal content–as a poem.

Hey, thanks, Geof.  I’ve just written my blog entry for Sunday.

–Bob

Still later comment: I wonder if it’s possible for a bad poem to be read so well it becomes, or seems, a good poem. It seems to me that if it can be read in such a way that its sounds good, it must be good–it had whatever is needed to be beautifully voiced.

One Response to “Entry 409 — Thoughts on Poetics”

  1. karl kempton says:

    at least for me,

    the voice has nothing to do with it is the ear drums, how sharp the listener is and his/her attention span and as bob sez, the mind’s discriminating abilities as well as experience.

    a good voice can can sway an ignorant mind

    karl

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Entry 61 — 2 Poems by Geof Huth « POETICKS

Entry 61 — 2 Poems by Geof Huth

They’re from #721:

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Entry 9 — Poetry Employing Irrational Language « POETICKS

Entry 9 — Poetry Employing Irrational Language

I have always wondered why anyone would make much of most Dada works.  It was evident that a good number of reasonably intelligent, sensitive people have, though.   Including friends of mine who have shown themselves quite capable of fashioning works I think vastly superior to their Dada works.

Then I came upon Geof Huth’s

.              the car I didn’t notice                              isn’t there

in the recentest issue of Haiku Canada Review.   Not Dada, but certainly nonsense, or so I at first thought.  I would now term it nearsense.   As

.              the crab boils filge at blargets       in the goamy fludge

it would have been nonsense, or a literary work which uses irrational language in order to amuse (in the view of most knowledgeable people encountering it).  As

.        car didn’t (e time)s into                       bleep blegg bllllg you

it would be constersense,  or a literary work whose textual matter seems chosen for no other purpose than to cause consternation–by seeming to be nearsense but ultimately not making sense, or proving amusing.

Then there’s temporary nonsense such as Joyce’s “cropse,” which at first seems either nonsense or constersense (and will always seem constersense to Philistines) but, given time, will quite rationally if poetically say “corpse” and “crops” simultaneously in succinctly sum up all the important cycles of human existence.

I have more to say about this, particularly about why the poem by Geof Huth is nearsense, but I’m too worn-out from another tiring day to do so until (I hope) tomorrow.

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