Archive for the ‘infraverbal poetry’ Category
Entry 118 — Geof Huth’s Collected Pwoermds
Monday, March 15th, 2010
I haven’t started my trip yet. My body conked out before I could–some kind of virus, I guess. So I’m still at home. Should be leaving in a couple of days.
I was feeling too lousy to post anything here for two or three days, and wouldn’t today, either, although I feel a lot better. However, today I got a copy of Geof Huth’s NTST, the subtitle of which is the collected pwoermds of geof huth. It’s perfect for a blog entry because I can quote whole poems from it quickly, and because I found some pwoermds I can be quickly insightful about. So, here’s one page:
an/atomy
shadowl
rayns
watearth
upond
psilence
These pwoerds are absolutely representative of the many (hundreds?) pwoermds in the collection, which I mention in case anyone suspects I chose them to show him at his very best. Two thoughts: that he misspelled “psylence,” and that “shadowl” is such an especially good pwoermd that it ought to be on a page by iself. The selections on this page are intended, I’m sure, to be stand-alones, but they also look like and work as a five-line poem. That I find “sahdowl” better clearly by itself is ironic, for I’ve several times opined that while pwoermds could occasionally be terrific, they work best as part of longer poems.
Oddly, I find evidence for this (in my opinion) on the very next page of NTST:
Pebbleslight
stilllllife
I like it much better as “pebbleslight stilllllife.” Of course, with the title (and Geof defines pwoermds as one-word poems without a title), one still reads pebbles into the still life. I just like the linkage closer. I’d like a detail or two more, too–really, I’d like a full-scale haiku using “pebbleslight stilllllife.” Which is absolutely not to say I don’t extremely like the piece exactly as Geof has it.
Oh, NTST was published in England by if p then q (apparently not an offshoot of Geof’s dbqp press). Its website is at www.ifpthenq.co.uk.
Entry 71 — A Broadside from the Past
Monday, January 11th, 2010
.
I’m pretty sure this resulted from some contact I made in Chicago when there for an underground press conference. Not sure when that was. Maybe fifteen years ago. . . I’ve since lost touch with everyone named on the page. I do remember Ashley as a good kid and valuable undergrounder.
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 47 — Solution of a Cryptographiku
Friday, December 18th, 2009
The Four Seasons
.
3 31 43 73 5 67 3 61 43 67 67 19 41 13 1 11 19 7 31 5 3 12 15 21 4 19 3 18 15 19 19 9 14 7 1 6 9 5 12 4 8 21 25 33 9 30 8 28 25 30 30 16 24 14 4 12 16 10 21 9 64 441 625 1089 81 900 64 784 625 900 900 256 576 196 16 144 256 100 441 81
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Today, the solution, with an explanation, to the above.
1. Each line says, “clouds crossing a field.”
2. A reader should know from its looks and the fact that it is a cryptographiku that it is a coded text. He should try simple codes at first on all the lines, the way one would in order to solve a cryptogram. If he’s familiar with my other cryptographiku, he will know I’ve more than once used the simplest of numeric codes. Such is the case here, in line 2. The code is 1 = a, 2 = b, etc.
3. The codes used for the other lines are harder to figure out, but the lines themselves give an important clue as to what they say: they each consist of four words, the first six letters in length, the second eight, the fourth one (which would almost certainly be “a”) and the fourth five. That ought to make one guess that each repeats the decoded one. As each indeed does.
4. It should be evident that the code for the fourth line uses the squares of the numbers in the code for the third. The basis of the arrangement of numbers in the third line will probably not be easy to guess.
5. If you consider what kind of numbers are being used in a given line, and are at all mathematical, you will realize that the numbers used in line one are all primes, with the first prime, 1, representing a, the seond prime, 2, representing be, and so on.
6. The next step is trickier but also requires one to think about kind of numbers. It turns out that the numbers used for the code in line three are the non-primes in order, with first of them, 4, representing a, the second, 6, representing b.
7. The surface meaning of the lines and the kinds of coding they’ve been put in is now known. All that remains is to findif a larger meaning in intended (yes) and, if so, what it is, and what the logic behind the coding is (and the kind of coding used in a cryptographiku is, by definition, meaningful. Wallace Stevens, whom one familiar with my poetry and criticism will know is important to me, helps with the last of these questions. Stevens wrote many poems (“Man on the Dump,” for instance) meditating on the idea that winter is pure reality, summer poeticized reality. Or, winter is primary, so can be metaphorically thought of a consisting of prime numbers only. Spring, by this reasoning, can logically consist of all the (lowest) numbers, summer of oonly factorable numbers, numbers that can be reduced to simpler numbers–expanded, poeticized numbers. Autumn, the peak of the year because it yields the fruit of the year, consists of summer’s numbers squared, or geometrically increased.
8. The final meaning of the poem is derived from its repetition of the simple nature scene about the clouds. A reader aware of Robert Lax’s work (and he will, if he’s familiar with mine), will know that he has a number of poems that repeat words or phrases–to suggest, among much else, ongoingness, permanence, undisturbably serenity. My hope is that this poem will make a reader feel the change of seasons within the grand permanence that Narture ultimately is. A constant message, in different coding as the seasons change.
9. All this should lead to “Whee!”
5. The decoded text uses a technique Robert Lax pioneered in to convey a meaning I consider archetypally deep, like the meanings Lax’s similar poems have for me.
6. The final meaning of the poem is (a) Nature is eternally changing; and (b) Nature is eternally unchanging. When I saw I could make ti say that, I got a thrill! I consider this poem one of my best inventions–even though I’m not sure it works as a poem.
Have fun, kids!
Entry 46 — Clues
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
The Four Seasons
.
3 31 43 73 5 67 3 61 43 67 67 19 41 13 1 11 19 7 31 5 3 12 15 21 4 19 3 18 15 19 19 9 14 7 1 6 9 5 12 4 8 21 25 33 9 30 8 28 25 30 30 16 24 14 4 12 16 10 21 9 64 441 625 1089 81 900 64 784 625 900 900 256 576 196 16 144 256 100 441 81
.
Today, just some helpful clues toward the solution of the cyrptographiku above:
1. A cryptographiku is a poem in a code. The code chosen and the way it works has metaphorical significance. The text encoded is generally straight-forward.
2. There are three codes used here, one of them very simple, the other two simple if you are mathematical.
3. The codes were chosen to illustrate a theme of Wallace Stevens’s, to wit: winter is reality at its most fundamental, summer is winter transformed by metaphorical layering.
4. Note that each of thr three lines is the same length, and divided into three “words,” each the same length of the homologous “word” in the other two lines.
5. The decoded text uses a technique Robert Lax pioneered in to convey a meaning I consider archetypally deep, like the meanings Lax’s similar poems have for me.
6. The final meaning of the poem is (a) Nature is eternally changing; and (b) Nature is eternally unchanging. When I saw I could make ti say that, I got a thrill! I consider this poem one of my best inventions–even though I’m not sure it works as a poem.
Have fun, kids!
Entry 45 — A Cryptographiku
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Just the following new poem of mine for today for you to puzzle over:
.
The Four Seasons
.
3 31 43 73 5 67 3 61 43 67 67 19 41 13 1 11 19 7 31 5 3 12 15 21 4 19 3 18 15 19 19 9 14 7 1 6 9 5 12 4 8 21 25 33 9 30 8 28 25 30 30 16 24 14 4 12 16 10 21 9 64 441 625 1089 81 900 64 784 625 900 900 256 576 196 16 144 256 100 441 81
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Tomorrow I’ll provide clues toward its solution. One hint: it was inspired in part by certain poems by Robert Lax.
Entry 24 — Old Blog entries, Again
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
The question I battled in #632 was what to call the emotional state which is neither painful nor pleasurable. I came up with a few coinages but didn’t like any of them, and still haven’t one that I consider worth keeping. My next entry had to do with my semi-addiction to Civilization, the computer game I play too much of, and almost always lose. In #634 I returned to my quest to find a word for the feeling of no feeling and came up with a coinage so bad I refuse to tell you what it was. Next I discussed the difference between what a poem is as an object, and what it is as (I guess) a signifier–which is what most people take it only as.
Out of one of my more and more rare episodes of creativity the following mathemaku came into being, and I posted them in #636, #638 and #640:
I consider all of these unsuccessful drafts with potential that I hope to work on over the next few days. In #637 I had a variation I don’t now think much of on something of Geof Huth’s. Two entries later, this, which I no longer understand although I’m positive I did when I made it:
Which takes me to the end of another set of ten entries from my old blog.
nico 
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