Wednesday, August 15th, 2012
I’ve probably posted this before but it’s worth a second post. I came across it while hunting for stuff to use in my mathematical poetry guest blog. It’s more of a joke than a poem, but a good joke is as valuable as a good poem:
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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.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
One of my works that I was particularly pleased with when I came across it while backing up blog entries was the following:
I have one problem with this: my only version of it is a low-resolution jpg, which I don’t know how to convert to high-resolution tif, except by simply redoing it. Any suggestions from anybody out there who knows more than I do about this kind of thing?
I didn’t re-post it only to ask for help, or because of how much I like it, but as an example of how my work as a poet has evolved. Actually, I want to show that it has evolved. That’s because Paul Crowley, the nut I most argue with on the Internet about who wrote the works of Shakespeare, seems not to believe that a poet’s style, or way of making art, evolved once he’s past his apprenticeship. Of course, he will claim I’m not a poet, and that the evidence I’m about to produce to show my evolution indicates only trivial changes, not anything like genuine evolution. I enjoy talking about my work, and analyzing any poem, so will go ahead with my demonstration, anyway.
First of all, I should state my claim: it is that over the past couple of years, my style as a poet has evolved appreciably, and that this poem illustrates it.
(1) I only began using cursive ten or fewer years ago, and never for more than a word or two. This poem and two others have all or most of their texts in cursive. Because the difference in expressiveness between print and cursive is visiopoetically meaningful to those who appreciate visual poetry, this wholesale use of cursive script counts as a significant evolution of style.
(2) My use of cursive is more elegant here than it is in mt other two recent poems making extensive use of cursive. Note, for instance, the large O, and the increased gracefulness of all the letters compared with the letters in my other two cursive poems.
(3) Twenty years ago, I didn’t bother giving my poems backgrounds. Since then I have, and have slowly been improving (but have plenty of room for further improvement). Note the harmony of the background’s shape and colors with the text, especially the O.
(4) The background has another important value–the connotations it picks up as a result of its being a variation (mostly through color changes) of the background in another poem of mine. Connecting poems of mine with others’ poems and others of my own poems is another way I’ve evolved as an artist, not doing it until perhaps twenty years ago, then only very slowly doing it to a greater and greater extent. This poem may be the first to re-use an entire background from another poem. This is not trivial, for it allows this poem to suggest “dictionary-as-temple,” the main part of the foreburden of the poem its background is from. It also should make this poem easier to enjoy, the same way the repetition in a new musical work of an old theme is usually pleasant to hear. I believe the happiness of the colors of this version of the background gains from the reminder of the different, lower-key mood evoked by the other version.
(5) The use of color in tension with greyscale is another trick new to me twenty years ago that I exploit more and more in my present works, as here (though I’ve done more with it elsewhere).
(6) I think my language has evolved over the years, too–from fairly literal to metaphorical and/or surreal. The “logic” of this piece and most of my recent pieces is not so easy to guess, which may be an unfortunate evolution, but an evolution nonetheless.
(7) You can’t tell from this image, which has been reduced in size to fit the normal computer screen, but the hard copy is larger than anything I did ten or more years ago, which is another result of evolution.
Here’s my first or second mathemaku, done thirty or more years ago, to make the profound evolution of my style more inescapable. Yet I maintain this piece is at the level of later pieces; it is simply more condensed. For one thing, it is only linguistic and mathematical. Nothing visioaesthetic happens in it. The eye is used only to recognize the symbols it contains, not to enjoy colors or shapes the way my faereality poem compels it to–i.e., not a visual poem (except inthe mindlessnesses of those for whom just about everything is a visual poem). It is short, and printed. Its words are simple to an extreme.
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Tuesday, January 10th, 2012
A little while ago (it is now around 9 P.M., 9 January) I was feeling good. I attributed this to my having gotten two naps today, one of an hour, the other of one or two hours. And I had gotten six hours of sleep last night, which is about as much as I generally get. I had just about finished backing up my blog entries and was very pleased at how good many of my poems seemed to me when I noticed them during the process. Unfortunately, I got the dates up my upcoming entries wrong, and in correcting them, lost what I had written for this entry. That pretty much wiped out my mood. I can’t stand screwing up like that, but I do it all the time!
This is a pwoermd I stole from Geof Huth’s blog–because it has become too sophisticated to accept comments from dial-ups like my computer, and I wanted to comment on it. It’s by Jonathan Jones, lately of Brussels, but a citizen himself of the United Kingdom. What I like most about it is that it’s lyrical–as too many pwoermds are not. It wouldn’t be a visual poem for me, but an illustrated poem, except that I subjectively feel “apri’ll” is producing the wonderful colors of spring it is slanted into a portion of (through sheer will-power). Hence, in my taxonomy it is an infra-verbal visual poem.
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Sunday, January 8th, 2012
Marton Koppany’s latest visual poem may be the gentlest satire on a country’s government ever, if I’m interpreting it correctly. Note the boot on the head of one of the country’s citizens, for instance–and the complete insanity of the country the cloud with an umbrella suggests. Much more is going on that I’ll let you discover without help.
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Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012
The following is a detail from a Spam ad that I got yesterday. It’s a good example of a commercialized visual poem. Effective as an eye-catcher, but not very good as a visual poem.
Below is my improved version. Certainly not yet a great work but better than the original. If you can’t see why, I’m afraid you aren’t too perceptive about the art. If you can’t see how the basic idea could be used in a far better piece, you probably aren’t an effective visual poet, or are tired.
Diary Entry
Monday, 2 January 2012, Noon. I got up late because I stayed up late last night watching my Giants fall apart, but win anyway because Dallas fell apart just in time to keep from winning. I don’t think the Giants have much hope of going far in the play-offs, but I’ll be rooting for them. And the other teams are pretty inconsistent, too, except for San Francisco and Green Bay.
I began the day by forcing myself to run. Actually, I slowly ran, then ran fast albeit not really fast, then walked. Rrrrrruuuuunnnnnn, rruunn, walk over and over until I’d gone around the middle school field four times (two miles). My stamina is still amazingly poor, but I actually genuinely sprinted when I went all out. Which is to say, I was able to pump my legs all the way up and stretch out, the way one does when sprinting. I didn’t do it fast enough to really sprint, but I did it. I was worried that I no longer could. Now it’s just a matter, I think, of getting enough stamina to push myself harder, and for longer periods. My “sprints” were only for around twenty yards or so–but maybe a whole forty once or twice. Since getting back, I posted my blog entry for today, which was easy because already done. I corrected my latest Page, “How to Appreciate a Mathemaku,” after getting a list or errors I very much appreciated from John Jeffrey. I have a lot more chores to do, but I’m already worn out. Maybe after lunch and a nap I’ll be able to get more done.
5 P.M. One more chore out of the way: filling in the size and price of my works on the exhibition contract and tags. I’m asking $200 for most of them. Highest price is $600. Two I’ll accept $100 for. I don’t expect to sell anything.
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Monday, December 19th, 2011
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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Sunday, December 18th, 2011
John M. Bennett has another major collection of poetry out. This one is called The Gnat’s Window. 78 poems. Bilingual. Closely inter-associating sequence. Amazing. I told John I’d try to do a critique of it, and I still hope to once my year-end chaos of chores is behind me, but–gah–John is one of the few poets I feel may be beyond my abilities as a critic, and he’s at his best–and therefore beyondest–in this book. Part of one of the poems, which Diane Keys has found a way to, uh, fatten, in all the best senses, with color, a piece of cloth and some cursive annotations–and the circling of “crumpy leg, is below. It’s from the back cover of John’s book.
Diary Entry
Saturday, 17 December 2011, Noon. Wow, since getting back at eleven from tennis and a McDonald’s snack, I’ve already gotten the day’s blog entry posted, which was easy because it was already done, and made a finished copy of the new version of “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” at Paint Shop. It’s not the official copy: it’s too small, and the official version will include the original cut-out fragments of magazine ads. There will also be the A&H framed version which will be in between the one I just made and the official version in size.
8 P.M. Since noon I haven’t done much. I printed out two copies of “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes” and scribbled annotations explaining the terms I will put on one that will be on display atthe exhibition. Otherwise, I continued reading started yesterday of the magazines and books I will be reviewing for Small Press Review.
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Thursday, December 8th, 2011
My friend, Richard Kostelanetz is writing (actually, revising) an essay dealing with, among other things, appropriated art. When he asked something about Tom Phillips’s A Humument, I remembered other superior examples of appropriation art such as the work on a dictionary of Doris Cross, and the following appropriation of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells” by Michael Basinski, which I thought worth posting here:
Here’s the original:
Hear the sledges with the bells–
Silver bells–
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells,–
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Hear the mellow wedding-bells,
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight
From the molten-golden notes!
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gust of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells
On the Future! how it tells
Of rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells–
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells–
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
In the essay I quoted Mike’s poem in, I called it “an amazingly loud-though-silent jangle of . . . Poe’s famous poem.” I’d add here that Basinski’s version gave me the thrill that Poe’s version, I’m sure, gave many of its first readers.
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Wednesday, 7 December 2011, Noon. I’ve partly recovered from having accidentally deleted my blog entry for Monday. A semblance of it is back up. I also posted an entry for today. I’ve done nothing else yet, but hope soon to go out to buy some frames and a pad of good-quality large paper.
Later note: I succeeded in finding two reasonably-priced frames of the kind I wanted (able to be stood up on a counter) that I bought. That took care of my pledge to do something of value for my exhibition every day, barely. Meanwhile, I sketched a new mathemaku. Then took care of this entry.
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Monday, December 5th, 2011
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.
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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Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011
There’s a Penguin anthology of twentieth-century out. It’s edited by Rita Dove. Here’s a list of the poets represented in it, with thanks to John Jeffrey for having alphabetized it:
After seeing this list, I said what I knew I’d be saying before seeing it in a comment at a blog where it had been given an “A”: “Close to worthless. The good poets in it are already amply anthologized. Whole schools of the best American poets of the last forty years of American Poetry are entirely ignored. The one with Robert Lax in it (minimalism) for just one example. The editors of POETRY will find little in it, or not in it, to complain about-–which is proof of how bad it is.”
Another ignored school, needless to say, is visual poetry, as represented by much of the work of John M. Bennett, such as this duo, “Cardboard,” that he posted just today (and he’s done scores as good):
I doubt anyone has more completely captured the essence of carboardedness–or the shuddery feel of decaying tenement rooms–than John has with these. But with strangely joyful coloring in sharp contradiction of shuddering and tenements, but somehow absolutely right. As with the poem by Gregory I seem to have abandoned, I find I need time before I’ll be able fully to appreciate these.
The Penguin anthology annoyed me, but after reflecting only briefly, it cheered me up: a comparison of its poets coming into their prime after 1950 to the poets in my crowd such as John M. Bennett could not more perfectly exemplify academic art (including, I was amused to see, the least innovative portion of what’s being called “language poetry”) versus living art. I may be deceived about the value of my work, but I know I’m not about that of my fellow visual poets. We’re the Monets, Renoirs, van Goghs, Cezannes, they the French academics.
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Tuesday, November 1st, 2011
Marton got back to me about his “cursive” yesterday, giving me enough material for a full entry.
” I was being modest, but I see that the dedication actually is important, for it connects the poem to my series, “Cursive Mathemaku.” Thinking about that connection, I thought of something else to mention about the poem–the fact that cursive writing is personal. The Nature in the poem is not a machine typing out falling leaves but an individual writing a poem with her leaves.Yesterday, Andrew Topol posted a mathematical poem by Anna Korintz at Spidertangle called, “for bob grumman,” so I had to post it here:
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Thanks, Anna and Andrew!
Oh, and I have another alphabet to present, a very lame one:
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvxyzw
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I continue to be more out of it than not, so have just this for today:
Guess who composed it.
Monday, December 5th, 2011
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.
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.
* * *
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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Saturday, December 12th, 2009
In #675, I posted Endwar’s “Ten X Ten,” having liked it so much, I assume, that I’d forgotten I’d posted it a week of so before at my blog. Under the Endwar piece, I had three mathematical poems by Kaz Maslanka, one of which is also a visual poem but too large to reproduce here without losing most of the text. One of the others has the same problem, but the one below should be readable:
Oops, you may need a magnifying glass. My choice of reproduction seems to be the size above, or four times as large. Anyway, it’s called “A Man’s Intelligence” and may be more informrature–a specimen of informratry–than poetry. Let me quote what it says: “A man’s Intelligence” equals “intelligence Quotient” divided by the product of “The measurable level of Dionysian blood transfused in a saffron masseuse boasting whispers through the cool crystal shot glass of the finest golden tequila” times “The amount of passion fueled by a young pink Venus–her hand wandering in slow circular patterns, a seemingly aimless whistle up the man’s inner thigh.”
#677 and #678 are about the Christmas mathemaku I’d done a draft of the previous year, and worked some more on at this time (December 2005), and have worked on since then, finishing it, I believe. Then a reproduction and revision of a long division poem I used in the autobiographical essay in the mainstream series of such things I got it into many years ago, without its making any difference whatever in my vocational reputation. I don’t like it well enough to reproduce it here. I had another of my mathematical poems in #680 that I don’t like enough to reproduce here.
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
Xerolage30 is the issue of mIEKAL aND and Liz Was’s Xexoxial Editions’ series of one-author collections of visiotextual art that was devoted to my work. I was looking through it for accessible purely visual poems to use in my next local exhibit. I wasn’t too happy with how little pleasure the items in it gave me, although the objective part of my brain told me they were mostly pretty good. I ended choosing eleven of the 20 or so in the collection. I’m not sure how many I’ll use–no more than seven or eight, probably, because I want half my pieces to be fairly recent mathemaku. I may not use the following, which is the (not too accessible) mathemaku I made for the cover of Xerolage30:
I think of this as sort of parallel to Yeats’s “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” for it’s a summary of what’s in Xerolage30, many of my best poems at the time of publication. The divisor is where the mid-heaven is in my astrological chart, so represents my poetic career peak. The poems in Xerolage30 times that peak equal the collage of fragments from many of the pieces in my collection, with a remainder of “mystery,” and other things from my “Odysseus Suite.”
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Friday, February 3rd, 2012
Every year Geof Huth posts some kind of “homage” to me on my birthday–which, as everyone should know is 2 February, Groundhog Day, the same as James Joyce’s and Ayn Rand’s. The same as Tom Smothers’s, too! And just a tick from Gertrude Stein’s, 3 February, I’m relieved to say. The one he just posted here may be his best yet. It consists of a series of dictionary definitions of words having to do with my personal life (such as “connecticut,” the state I was born in) and my obsession with defining poetics (and the universe). Very funny, in good part because of his cruelly accurate understanding of me.
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Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
This is the third in the series of reworkings of an old textual design I posted the first two of in Entry 637. Useful for entries I have nothing else for, which are becoming standard for me, now.
I like this but am not sure why. It holds my interest. I seriously wonder whether it indicates I have a talent for this sort of thing. It seems to me anyone could use Paint Shop to make other designs equal to or better than it. The “asemic poems” I’ve seen posted usually seem as interesting to me as it. Oh, well, I enjoy making these, so as my mind fades away, I guess I’ll continue to.
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Monday, January 23rd, 2012
At Spidertangle there’s been a discussion of how visual poetry sells. Poorly, needless to say. Along the way, John M. Bennett said, “Yes, the discussions about vispo can sometimes be interesting – a game, as you say – – – tho i think what they tend to miss is that the poetry we’re trying to create is much more than simply visuality. for me at least, the poem i try to make functions visually, sonorously, textually, conceptually, formally, metaphysically, metaphorically, ambiguously, performatively, etc etc etc and all equally importantly and at the same time. so from that perspective a discussion about vispo or soundpo or whatever misses most of the picture. or, it’s a game, something sui generis, of interest as a kind of thinking in its own category.”
I added: “Further thoughts: that there are two kinds of poetry: people poetry and a different kind I haven’t thought of a good name for. A people poem either states an opinion about human life which those who like the poem like it because they agree with the opinion; or it expresses a human feeling that those who like it empathize with. The other kind may also express an opinion and/or feeling (actually, it can’t avoid doing this to some degree), but has what I think of as larger interests of the kind John listed. The most important of these for me are aesthetic—what the elements of a given poem are doing rather than what they are saying. I think there is only a very small audience for such poetry, similar to the audience for avant garde music or mathematics.”
Sunday, January 22nd, 2012
I fooled around with a portion detached from the design I posted here yesterday for a little while, overlaying it with some oil paint brush strokes and a sailing vessel. Viola: the thing now had enough connection to reality to take on meaning–in a manner I thought very similar to what Klee’s best paintings do. It remains a textual design, though.
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Saturday, January 21st, 2012
Many of the times I’ve been as out of it as I am now, I gone to Paint Shop and thrown together some bit of non-representational visimagery. So I tried that this after noon. After I had my design, I layered an old textual visimage over it to get:
I find it interesting but tend to think anyone with access to Paint Shop or software like it could have made it.
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Friday, January 13th, 2012
Well, according to astrology, I’ve begun to decline vocationally after reaching my peak a week or two ago. It wasn’t much of a peak. I got my art on display, but doubt that more than a handful of people have looked at it, and probably no more than one or two has really looked at it. I haven’t been very productive, either. I’m going to return to my Shakespeare book today (after a little head-start last night). My intention is to either finish it, or–if I have significant trouble with it–switch to another project of mine, a non-fiction book that may be of general-interest but I’ll say no more about–to keep its theme, which is original, I think, and will be its main selling point, a secret. I will say that it’s about life in general, not about Shakespeare, psychology or poetics.
To make this entry more than a diary entry, here’s a poem of mine from a year or so ago. I posted it then, but just now made a slight change to it, making a whole new poem. I changed “full” to “certain.” I decided the implication that I’d come to understand everything was dumb. Now what kind of understanding I’d achieved is unclear, but should come across as Important. I don’t know whether this poem became visual later; I don’t think it did. I think it may work best as is, but who knows.
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Wednesday, January 11th, 2012
One of my works that I was particularly pleased with when I came across it while backing up blog entries was the following:
I have one problem with this: my only version of it is a low-resolution jpg, which I don’t know how to convert to high-resolution tif, except by simply redoing it. Any suggestions from anybody out there who knows more than I do about this kind of thing?
I didn’t re-post it only to ask for help, or because of how much I like it, but as an example of how my work as a poet has evolved. Actually, I want to show that it has evolved. That’s because Paul Crowley, the nut I most argue with on the Internet about who wrote the works of Shakespeare, seems not to believe that a poet’s style, or way of making art, evolved once he’s past his apprenticeship. Of course, he will claim I’m not a poet, and that the evidence I’m about to produce to show my evolution indicates only trivial changes, not anything like genuine evolution. I enjoy talking about my work, and analyzing any poem, so will go ahead with my demonstration, anyway.
First of all, I should state my claim: it is that over the past couple of years, my style as a poet has evolved appreciably, and that this poem illustrates it.
(1) I only began using cursive ten or fewer years ago, and never for more than a word or two. This poem and two others have all or most of their texts in cursive. Because the difference in expressiveness between print and cursive is visiopoetically meaningful to those who appreciate visual poetry, this wholesale use of cursive script counts as a significant evolution of style.
(2) My use of cursive is more elegant here than it is in mt other two recent poems making extensive use of cursive. Note, for instance, the large O, and the increased gracefulness of all the letters compared with the letters in my other two cursive poems.
(3) Twenty years ago, I didn’t bother giving my poems backgrounds. Since then I have, and have slowly been improving (but have plenty of room for further improvement). Note the harmony of the background’s shape and colors with the text, especially the O.
(4) The background has another important value–the connotations it picks up as a result of its being a variation (mostly through color changes) of the background in another poem of mine. Connecting poems of mine with others’ poems and others of my own poems is another way I’ve evolved as an artist, not doing it until perhaps twenty years ago, then only very slowly doing it to a greater and greater extent. This poem may be the first to re-use an entire background from another poem. This is not trivial, for it allows this poem to suggest “dictionary-as-temple,” the main part of the foreburden of the poem its background is from. It also should make this poem easier to enjoy, the same way the repetition in a new musical work of an old theme is usually pleasant to hear. I believe the happiness of the colors of this version of the background gains from the reminder of the different, lower-key mood evoked by the other version.
(5) The use of color in tension with greyscale is another trick new to me twenty years ago that I exploit more and more in my present works, as here (though I’ve done more with it elsewhere).
(6) I think my language has evolved over the years, too–from fairly literal to metaphorical and/or surreal. The “logic” of this piece and most of my recent pieces is not so easy to guess, which may be an unfortunate evolution, but an evolution nonetheless.
(7) You can’t tell from this image, which has been reduced in size to fit the normal computer screen, but the hard copy is larger than anything I did ten or more years ago, which is another result of evolution.
Here’s my first or second mathemaku, done thirty or more years ago, to make the profound evolution of my style more inescapable. Yet I maintain this piece is at the level of later pieces; it is simply more condensed. For one thing, it is only linguistic and mathematical. Nothing visioaesthetic happens in it. The eye is used only to recognize the symbols it contains, not to enjoy colors or shapes the way my faereality poem compels it to–i.e., not a visual poem (except inthe mindlessnesses of those for whom just about everything is a visual poem). It is short, and printed. Its words are simple to an extreme.
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Sunday, December 11th, 2011
This is a third version of the subdividend product in my division of “the the” poem:
I quite like it. I experimented with quite a few different colors, none of them seeming to work until I added the maroon, which made a huge difference for some reason. Now I have to figure out how to use it in a poem.
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Saturday, 10 December 2011, Noon. I have to get my Christmas chores–basically a Christmas letter and cards–out of the way. So I’ll be concentrating on that for a few days. I just posted my blog entry for today, and I arranged it so my second printer can print some copies of my “Christmas Mathemaku, No. 1,” which takes care of my pledge to work daily on something connected to the exhibition–but I hope to do more, like print out some copies of it. I want to try to sell a few signed copies at the A&H office. I lost the morning to tennis, and the after-tennis coffee session, this time at a Dunkin’ Donuts place. I sometimes think I should give up tennis–becauwse (1) I’m lousy at it and (2) it takes time from my cultural activities. But I’m pretty sure I need it–as a break from cultural activities, and for simply being with others. The exercise is probably good for me, too. I have to admit that it can be fun when I’m not too horrible (as I was this morning).
6 P.M. This afternoon I went out on my bike again. I got two more picture frames, some ink for my new printer ($100!) and had some things printed out–parts of my very large “Mathemaku for Scott Helmes.” Since then, I’ve put my “Christmas Mathemaku, No. 1″ into a frame. Haven’t done much else.
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Saturday, December 10th, 2011
The poem below is something I spun off the mathemaku I posted yesterday. I made it mainly because I wanted to use a complete long divion poem as a term in a larger long division–something I’ve done once before but have never been satisfied with.
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Friday, 9 December 2011, 8 A.M. Now that I’m starting to get things done, my luck has soured. A while ago I was getting ready to take the three framed works I now have for counter-display to the Arts&Humanities Council office. I could only find two. I was carrying the missing one around in my bicycle basket a few days ago. Looks like someone grabbed it. Unless I found a some incredibly stupid place to hide it from myself here. Luckily the frame was a cheap one, and the poem, which I’m sure the ones who stole it had not interest in (if they stole it for the poem, I’d be very pleased) is about the easiest of the ones I have to zap out another copy of. It’s the “Hi” one. But I’m out ten dollars or so, and have to ride out to get another frame, a wearying chore that upsets my plans for the day.
It is now a little after nine. Just as I was about to leave to get a new frame and take care of a few other errands, I found the “stolen” work. It was in a packing envelope (as I remembered it had been) and right in the chair I would naturally have put it in after getting back from the bike ride I’d had it with me on. My jacket was draped over it, but not entirely over it. I should have looked where it was as soon as I thought it lost. I’m not going senile–I’ve been doing things like that all my life. I must say, I feel a lot better. And something good came from it: needing another copy of the poem, I fooled around with it at Paint Shop and improved it. (Hey, that counts as my work for day on exhibition-related matters!)
It’s now eleven. I did some more work concerned with the exhibition: I went to the A&H office and talked to Judy, the lady in charge. I got a better idea of things from her–such as the date of the opening (3 January 2012).
5 P.M. and I’ve corrected my “A Christmas Mathemaku,” which I’ve always considered a potential crowd pleaser, and done a write-up on it. I plan to leave a framed copy of it at the Grumman Exhibition Center on Monday.
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Saturday, February 18th, 2012
I had high hopes for this one, which I composed yesterday. I even thought I might work a sequence out of it, using the Klee ship “musical theme” as the first step of a visual symphony. But I wasn’t satisfied with what I did with the ships. As I worked with them, though, I came up with a lot of minor ideas I liked. The main one was a suddenly conscious attempt to provide a metaphor for the coming of spring. But I also liked breaking up what was originally as single framed image, and changing the sizes of each unit. Grey-scaling the first two tiny ones seemed a nice touch, too. And the escape of the final ship! I didn’t like my dividend too well, either–after my initial enthusiasm for it (being a sucker for anything having to do with spring). For some reason it doesn’t seem quite there, for me. Maybe I’ll simplify it to, “a brook’s revived consideration of an April countryside.” Yes, I think I was trying for too much. . . .
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Thursday, February 16th, 2012
Thinking about what Tony Robinson had at his blog spurred me to this motto of my own (obnoxious) practice as a poetry critic: Try for maximal understanding of the nature and value of what I’m critiquing, fully committed to the advance of poetry, as I understand it, and expressed with the best balance of clarity and fresh language I can manage. I originally continued with “–with no significant suppression of emotion, regardless of the tender feelings of the hyper-offendable,” but upon reflection found that nice to say but too secondary for this motto.
Better: Using the the best balance of clarity and fresh language I can manage, try to express maximal understanding of the nature and value of what I’m critiquing, fully committed to the advance of poetry, as I see it. Ah, but I now see that “the value of what I’m critiquing” would include what the latter does to advance poetry. Ergo: Try, using the the best balance of clarity and fresh language I can manage, to express maximal understanding of the nature and value of what I’m critiquing.
And here’s a copy (an imperfect one) of my motto as a poet:
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Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
To continue my argument that the arts progress just like verosophy does (and take care of this entry with minimal effort), here’s a question: if a clone of Shakespeare had been created in 1980 and he was now a professional actor writing plays for the stage and screen, would they not be better than the ones he wrote four hundred years ago? Would he not be able to improve on what he composed then?
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Tuesday, February 14th, 2012
It’s at Anthony Robinson’s blog here.
Here’s what I said:
“Inaccessible writing” as writing not like I do, yes–and the related “incomprehensible poetry” without a hint that others may find it comprehensible–even the critic himself if he really tried. I try never to label any poem inaccessible although I will confess I can’t figure out a poem when that’s the case.
Good words on the so-called “principal aim”–but I would add that I would like to know why a poetry for the few should be denigrated. Should no one compose operas because, in Crews’s words, “most audiences will have trouble wrestling (them) into meaning?” Or cook really far-out gourmet dishes? Crews should have said he couldn’t say anything intelligent about Miller’s book, and ended his “review.”
Can’t say I think much of Crews’s example of Miller, when he’s good. Wind does have a sound, it seems to me, since–as I understand it–sound is what happens when something causes the air to vibrate which in turn causes mechanisms in the ear to vibrate. The wind, being air, would do this directly. Or, in the poem, indirectly, by causing trees to vibrate which causes the air to vibrate which causes the auditory mechanisms to vibrate. But maybe I’m wrong. In any case, all the poet seems to me to be saying is that the room is silent except for the sound of the wind in the trees.
Good question, whose ear does it appeal to. Seems to me a competent critic would say what the lines do auditorily that will tend to seem musical to most people, such as repeat words and syllables, which this passage does; but it doesn’t seem to me to do much else. The critic need not point out what I call a poem’s “melodations” as good, just point them out, since some readers may miss them–or hear them but not fully appreciate them.
I do agree with Crews that a poem needs some kind of point of stability–what I call a unifying principle–to deviate interestingly from. I’m big on titles, too, but certainly don’t think lack of one can spoil a poem. I’m not confident that Crews can recognize the most interesting unifying principles, some of them quite delayed.
Like all critics with readerships (as I believe Crews may have, for I think I’ve heard of him), he seems not to say much about poetic technique–subject matter and points of view seem to be for him all that matters in a poem.
I think you captured him quite well, young Anthony. Thanks for a report that got me involved enough for all this.
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Sunday, February 12th, 2012
Here’s Hal Johnson’s visio-infraverbal poem again:
”Lost in thought” is the simplest explication of this, but a better reading focuses on thought that is opposed, disrupted, damaged and finally sent in the wrong direction back to its futile beginning. With “ugh” and “tough” being disconcealed in the process further to suggest the losing struggle for meaning expressed. In short, a deft pwoermd. A visuaol one as well as infraverbal because you can see the word’s letters metaphorically enacting the struggle.
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Saturday, February 11th, 2012
Here’s an infraverbal poem–actually a visio-infraverbal poem–Hal Johnson posted at New-Poetry:
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Thursday, February 9th, 2012
Me Versus B. H. Fairchild and Others He quotes
Language can be a way of rescuing the hidden life, and that way is poetry. You can’t rescue any hidden life, whatever that is, with prose? Or some other art? Or science? Why wouldn’t using language to drown certain aspects of unhidden life be equally or more valuable?
Glenn Gould: “The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” And wonder is everything to a poet. It sure isn’t everything to me. It and serenity are only two of many pleasures it is the function of art to provide. Its manner of providing them is what sets it apart from verosophy and other endeavors which can, and try, to lead to wonder and serenity, and other pleasures.
Mandelstam: “We will remember in Lethe’s cold waters / That earth for us has been worth a thousand heavens.” Nice thought–but unattainable heavens to dream toward are a high good, too.
Seven propositions:
1. By way of Wittgenstein and Heidegger: A poem is a verbal construction which, through an array of rhetorical and prosodic devices of embodiment, achieves an order of being, an ontological status, radically different from that of other forms of discourse (with the exception of certain kinds of descriptive and fictional prose). I agree: a poem is a verbal construction different from almost all other verbal constructions.
2. Poetry occurs at a considerable distance from the ego. As does almost anything else I can think of, when it isn’t nothing but ego.
3. There exists an infinity of nonverbal meaning. Which the infinity of possible verbal meaning can express.
4. Science is progressive, but Art is not. It doesn’t get better; it just gets different. (The relevance and utility of all poetic forms.) See Mandestam. All the arts, like all the sciences, have become vastly superior to what they were hundreds or thousands of years ago, but anti-progressives mistake the sentimentality that becomes more and more attached to the old because of their age for aesthetic rather than nostalgiacal value. Compare the clumsy “novel” in the Bible about David with almost any competent commercial novel of today, for instance. Consider how much more of existence the best art of today is about compared with earlier art. For just one thing, today’s art has a vastly larger tradition to make allusions to than previous art had. There have been artists in the past as great as our best, but what our best have produced is significantly better than what they did in part because of the what the artists of the past did. (Note, this is a subject requiring a book.)
5. Rules are made to be broken; techniques are made to be used. (They were never rules anyway; they were techniques. The freedom of the artist, like that of the lathe machinist, is the freedom to choose those techniques, those tools, that he deems necessary for the task at hand. The refusal to use technique–and, obviously, to learn it–is the refusal to be an artist, or at least a free one.) I more or less agree with all this, but I wonder how one can avoid using some technique.
6. Form is an extension of subject matter rather than of ideology or religious belief. Every work of art requires a container; I call that container form; one calling it “an extension of subject matter,” if I understand him, needs to tell me what, then, is containing it and the subject matter it is an extension of. I don’t know what ideology and religious belief have to do with it; how would they be not subject matter?
7. Meter is not the reins to keep the horse of the poem in check; it’s the heartbeat of the horse. Drop the reins. (Clearly this is an argument for meter rather than against it.) It is almost impossible to convince poets who never bothered to learn prosody that meter is something that emerges from within the language rather than something that is imposed externally upon the language. Even conversational English is very loosely iambic. I think meter is both natural and imposed–necessarily imposed to add predictability to balance the difficult-to-accept unpredictability of horses going beyond prose that poetry at its best is.
A poet is always limited by the fact that he has to write for other human beings. Just to be argumentative, I would say that a poet’s having to write for others (and he needn’t) greatly increases his field of play. (Note that our Wilshberian’s poet writes rather than composes. It never occurs to any Wilshberian that a poem might be more than words.)
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Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
“Philogushy” is my term for “love of gush.” It’s practiced a good deal by poets. Once again I could think of nothing to post here, so I stole the excerpt below from 25 pages of journal entries by poet B.H. Fairchild that are in the latest issue of New Letters, a magazine I’m reviewing for Small Press Review. I knew nothing about Fairchild but apparently he’s very well-known, and a grant-winner.
Language can be a way of rescuing the hidden life, and that way is poetry.
Glenn Gould: “The purpose of art is the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” And wonder is everything to a poet.
Mandelstam: “We will remember in Lethe’s cold waters / That earth for us has been worth a thousand heavens.”
Seven propositions:
1. By way of Wittgenstein and Heidegger: A poem is a verbal construction which, through an array of rhetorical and prosodic devices of embodiment, achieves an order of being, an ontological status, radically different from that of other forms of discourse (with the exception of certain kinds of descriptive and fictional prose).
2. Poetry occurs at a considerable distance from the ego.
3. There exists an infinity of nonverbal meaning.
4. Science is progressive, but Art is not. It doesn’t get better; it just gets different. (The relevance and utility of all poetic forms.) See Mandestam.
5. Rules are made to be broken; techniques are made to be used. (They were never rules anyway; they were techniques. The freedom of the artist, like that of the lathe machinist, is the freedom to choose those techniques, those tools, that he deems necessary for the task at hand. The refusal to use technique-and, obviously, to learn it-is the refusal to be an artist, or at least a free one.)
6. Form is an extension of subject matter rather than of ideology or religious belief.
7. Meter is not the reins to keep the horse of the poem in check; it’s the heartbeat of the horse. Drop the reins. (Clearly this is an argument for meter rather than against it.) It is almost impossible to convince poets who never bothered to learn prosody that meter is something that emerges from within the language rather than something that is imposed externally upon the language. Even conversational English is very loosely iambic.
A poet is always limited by the fact that he has to write for other human beings.
* * * * *
Most of the other entries are at this level. some stupid, some interesting, none what I’d call a serious attempt to understand what poetry is, rather than what the effect of poetry the definer admires is. Subjective philogushy rather than objective verosophy. I’m not going to discuss any individual entries now so as to leave myself something to write about tomorrow.
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Monday, February 6th, 2012
Sunday, February 5th, 2012
Today a not-very-good copy of one of the visual poems I plan to have in my next show:
Not much to say about it except that it is inspired by one of the more famous of Wordsworth’s sonnets, which describes how the ocean, “with his eternal motion make(s)/ a sound like thunder–everlastingly.”
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Here’s yesterday’s image again:
It’s one of my mathemaku, of course. I’ve actually been working industriously on it, trying get it right enough to submit to some sort of anthology Nico Vassilakis and Crag Hill are putting together. The version above is a recent revision of my first draft of 2007, a variation on “Frame One” of my Long Division of Poetry series.
“Frame One” is similar to the top image except that its divisor is “words.” It had long bothered me because (and make sure to write this down, students, because it’s an excellent example of the way I think about my poems) its claim was that “words” squared (basically–although it’s really distorted words, or words told slant. times regular words) happened to equal an image having to do with summer rain. Why that and not, say, a Pacific sunset? Obviously, the quotient times the divisor could equal anything. That, I didn’t want. Off and on I thought about this, but could think of no way to take care of it. Until a couple of days ago, when I finally concentrated for more than a few minutes on it. I came up with several pretty good solutions, one of them changing everything in the poem but the sub-dividend product (the image).
My final solution (I hope) resulted in the above poem. All I did was add “memories of a long-ago summer day” to the quotient. That assured that the sub-dividend product would have to do with summer–that it would be, that is, a visual poem about summer. And, as a poem, it would be poetry.
No doubt in due course I’ll think of something else I find illogical about it and want to revise it again. For now, though, I’m happy with it.
Oh, I’ve made several changes to the main image in it, too. One was to combat the darkness in the top version (which wasn’t in it until I put it out here). I’m as fussy about getting my graphics looking the way I want them as I am about everything else in a poem–except the choice of font, and things I can’t do anything about with my equipment, like density of resolution.
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.