Entry 332 — Not Quite a Zero-Interest Entry « POETICKS-

Entry 332 — Not Quite a Zero-Interest Entry « POETICKS

Entry 332 — Not Quite a Zero-Interest Entry

I didn’t start the new year with an explosion of productivity but did work out and complete a new mathemaku, which I like right now. It’s for Bill DiMichele’s Tip of the Knife Blog. I hope to make one to three more mathemaku for Bill but have only one idea for one in mind, and it’s very vague. The one just done came about as many of mine do: I sketched a few ideas, then decided on a final version . . . but couldn’t energize myself into going to Paint Shop to execute it. Today, I felt I had to finish it, but dawdled again. At which point my eyes strayed across a copy of my This Is Visual Poetry, and I instantly saw the cover image as perfect for my mathemaku. It’s now the remainder of the latter. It may be my first long division remainder that is the focal point of the poem it’s in. The rest of the poem is words and the long division apparati.

So, another example of my unconscious preventing me for finishing a piece my conscious mind thinks adequate until a flaw is corrected. This can only happen, I believe, for very slow workers.

I won’t show the poem here since it’s for Bill’s blog, but will provide a link to it when he posts it, which should be in a week or two.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 1st, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Autobiographica, Poetic Practice. 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.

Entry 544 — Thoughts on “Skips” « POETICKS

Entry 544 — Thoughts on “Skips”

Today (25 October) I feel in the mood to knock out a few preliminary thoughts about Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino’s “Skips.” Eventually I’ll try to work in some of his terms. Right now, I’ll just go with first thoughts–well first attempts at analysis after having read the poem several times. I’ll re-post the poem, with my comments interrupting it.

Skips

one bus,
said of certain places

Here’s the first skip: “one bus” will not strike many readers as being something likely to be “said of certain places.” But it can make sense for places isolated so having only one bus in and out each day (or week?). In any case, an image of a bus stop entered my mind.

which may, at sites, be
or, for such as certain sites

26 October: At this point we can be sure we’re in what I call a syntax poem, which is a kind of language poem (in my poetics). A syntax poem, to put it simply, a poem whose syntax is goofy. Gregory, I’m sure, has a different name for it. “Logoclastic poem,” I think may be it. A terrific word (like so many of my neologies are, but suffering, like them, from being too idiosyncratic). Gregory would also consider his poem “cubistic,” which it can’t be, for what an artwork becomes cubistic mainly by showing a scene from two or more angles simultaneously, which words can’t do. Gregory is probably presenting his scene like Stein presented many of hers, with fractional objective and subjective (often, to my taste, too subjective) descriptions repeated many times in varied form. A kind of Jamesian hesitancy to be direct. When effective–as here, I believe–it can make a commonplace scene take on enough obscurity to allow the reader the eventual joy of solving it. Or coming close enough to doing that.

a, saying, or, for standing
a, may be holding places

I still feel like I’m at a bus stop, or maybe even in a bus station. But, helped by later sections I’ve now read more than once, I find the poem discussing language, too. One reason for that is that so many of these kinds of poems do just that. But “saying” is what language does, as well as a word (or close to a word) for “so to speak.” Using words or phrases in this double way is, of course, a primary activity of poets, but language poets tend to be more interested in doing it than other poets–enough to warp their poems’ syntax to help them do it.

At this juncture I’m taking a break until tomorrow. Hey, I could say more, but I think I’ve given you students enough to think about for this session! (Note: I can’t resist putting in another plug for the value of close readings–I find it as much fun to discover something in someone else’s poem, which I feel I’ve done here [for myself, at any rate], as it is suddenly to discover something I can use in a poem of my own that I’m working on. I really feel sorry for those who can’t appreciate close readings.)

and doubtless other combinations
one bus.

and if it is but agreeable
a hand or glove or calendar

as, he was
but not in certain places

which, when sounding
just above, and, sounding just above

are gone, or, for some time
by rote or involuntary action

between highest and lowest
is present, and absent, is gone and when

that aspect, to be events
alike, in which they are alike

between highest and lowest
the features

perceived or thought about
seem suddenly, to fit

also spelled insight or solution
the use of, or, as means his present station

and doubtless other combinations
which are themselves

his means
the skin, the hair, the coat

are fairly, then, it matches, either of the two
in which, unfit variations

are discarded
are held at mutual right angles, say

as when a new hat
or sometimes used as synonyms

is part
or,

as a rule, a new hat
is considered of involuntary action

or,
in respect to suspended judgment

in which, a measure of degree
they are, so alike

being highest, possible highest
the skin, the hair, the coat

an irrepressible action
or

due to lips
and doubtless other combinations

attained by involuntary action
as when a new hat is considered part

of one’s coat
or rival, or station

Jet Blue Airlines

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Close Reading, Poetic Practice, Poetics. 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.

Entry 493 — W N E S in My PluraestheticPoetry « POETICKS

Entry 493 — W N E S in My PluraestheticPoetry

I feel I ought to keep up my blog better. So here’s another entry. I was thinking about my latest poems–about all the things I was trying for in them, worrying a bit that I was doing too congestively much, but proud, too, that so much was going on in them. One thought occurred: that my visio-mathematical poems were getting more and more visual–but at the same time more verbal. It appeared to me that thirty years ago most of my visual poems were often interesting neither visually nor verbally but only visiopoetically. Most of my mathematical poems similarly were interesting neither mathematically nor verbally, but only mathepoetically. (And almost never visually.)
I think the mathematics in my poems is conceptually interesting but never interesting as mathematics. Hence, my current visio-mathematical poems are verbal, conceptual, visual,and not significantly mathematical. Many are only very indirectly what I call anthroceptual–having to do with people. There’s no persona in the latest, for instance–it’s all about things. Their final importance, of course, has to do with their affect on people, but they strike the mind first fundaceptually only (i.e., as what they are sensually), then mesh (if the poem works) into a kind of philosophical meaning that eventually resolves itself into a universal human feeling. I think almost none of my pluraesthetic poems are directly anthroceptual. Just about all my Poem poems are. But add anthroceptuality to verbality, conceptuality and visuality as one of the four directions of my visiomathematical poems, their W N E S.

I should add that I have many non-mathematical poems that also have these four directions, a mathematical component not being necessary to make one of them conceptual.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 5th, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Poetic Practice. 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.

Entry 329 — My Poetic Practice « POETICKS

Entry 329 — My Poetic Practice

Geof Huth, like I, has too many projects going. Unlike I, however, he actually carries out commendable work on his. One of them he calls A Poetics. This us up to its 60th chapter-sized section, which makes up his latest entry to his blog. It’s easier to say what it is not than what it is, other than mostly a wide-ranging work of evocature (i.e. what nullinguists would call a “prose poem”) full of sometimes loopy but almost always fascinating, provocative thoughts about poetry, mostly concerning his own practice of that art. What it is not is a work of verosophy, or serious attempt to pin down what poetry is–nor need it be. It’s made me realize, though, that we need a term for that, “poetics” having become nullingated. My immediate and therefore only suggested term is “verosopoetics,” which is short for “versophical poetics.” I would define it as “the verosophical study of the nature and function of poetry.”

Anyway, Geof’s A Poetics has inspired me to try to work out a short comparable effort, not a poetics, but a summary of my own poetic practice. I think I can do it in one sentence:

As a poet, I try to employ words or words and other elements of expression to form texts that celebrate some significantly important aspect or portion of material reality, using a sufficient number of flow-breaks to adhere to my definition of poetry, and are reasonably coherent and sufficiently fresh in some way as to give pleasure to any sympathetic, reasonably informed and intelligent person who encounters them.

I hope I can make this less klunky. Right now I think it satisfactorily sums up everything I do as a poet, but I doubt that it can, so hope for feed-back that can help me take care of that. One thing that’s intentionally not in it is anything about making the world a better place, except by increasing the number of objects in the world that give pleasure. Peace and the abolition of things like oppression and hunger are fine things to strive for, but outside my interests as a poet.

Later Note: The above is not my idea of how what “proper” poetic practice, only about why I try for as a poet. Also, “some significantly important subject” is some subject significantly important to me.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Poetic Practice. 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.

Poetic Practice « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Poetic Practice’ Category

Entry 791 — “. . . in the Age of Vendler”

Friday, July 6th, 2012

The following is from 1995–yes, 17 years ago (but slightly changed in three places):

Poem, as a Poet in the Age of Vendler    Sometimes,  frustrated by a bouldering  of some sky he was trying to daisle  a fresh noise through,  Poem envied the traipsers  of never fully-specified ladymoods  who monopolized the highest praise  of the tenured  and regretted the balls  that kept him mythodically direct  technically venturesome,  and socio-economically marginal--  even as he knew  in his heart of hearts  how trivial the appreciation of the academy was  compared to where he was going, however ineptly.

What amuses me (and I knew it at the time) is that it’s about 90% an Iowa Workshop Poem. To show how this is so, we have to turn to my 2000 description of the “100% Iowa Workshop Poem” (which I’ve revised today, but not greatly):

It is a poem that:

1. involves quotidian, usually suburban subject matter, employing telling concrete details out of everyday life, accessibility being a key aim

2. uses near-prose (i.e., free verse with few or no frills or unconventionalities of expression)

3. ends with a standard epiphany or anti-epiphany

4. is genteel in vocabulary and morality

5. strives for anthroceptual sensitivity (i.e., sympathetic awareness of other human beings)

6. acts more as a means to self-expression, or bringing the self to life than to capture a scene, some object or idea–and is never an end in itself, as a beautiful verbal artifact

7. the self brought to life is almost always a sensitive, politically-correct average, if cultured, individual (the most extreme of Iowa Workshop Poems seem to be begging the reader to like the poem’s author)

8. can be direct on the surface, but aims for Jamesian subtlety in what its author would consider its most important passage

9. is not controversial in thought or attitude, or–really–close to explicitly ideational

10. is usually first-person

11. is generally short–one page, although it can run to three pages

12. wouldn’t be caught dead harboring a poetic technique not in wide use by 1950 at the latest–or anything that might , if its author were capable of using it–get in the way of its accessibility

When I wrote this description, my impression was that I’d written quite a few 100% Iowa Workshop Poems myself, but when I started going through my files to find examples of them, I realized I haven’t. Even poems of mine from thirty years ago like the one below:

Saturday Interval    In the park just down the road  from the rear-view mirror factory where I work,   and about a mile from the room I rent,  I sit by myself among scattered  stonefuls of midsummer sun,  brooknoise,  and patches of daisies.  I've brought a book  but haven't bothered to open it.    From time to time Persephones climb  through the stones' slow pulse  or into the affections  of the flowering fields,  but never,  even briefly,  down  my darkening.

This certainly begins Iowanly, and has the Big Epiphany at the end, but its metaphors (and maybe that internal rhyme) prevent it from being a 100% Iowa Workshop poem. I’d still call it one. Which is not to belittle it. I’m with those who respect the Iowa Workshop Poem. It seems to me a kind of poem that, once discovered, caught on because it is biologically- right: an informal equivalent of the sonnet in that it generally summarizes a single human circumstance and caps it with a reaction, in its case, an epiphany. I suspect the sonnet and it are the size of what might be called a normal moderately-deep reflection on human existence. I’m more sure that the haiku is the size of a single rich moment plus a reaction to it. The sonnet and the Iowa Workshop Poem may be a step up in size from the haiku. Just musing. My main point is that I have nothing against the Iowa Workshop Poem–except that too many teachers, anthologists, grants-bestowers and critics act as though there’s just about no other viable kind of poem around.

The main thing to note is that the items listed need not apply to a poem for it to qualify as an Iowa Workshop Poem, just most of them. 2. and 3. must apply; it might evade 11. by its use of some new technique, but not centrally–it must seem, in general, a standard work in free verse.

All this being the case, my age of Vendler poem almost qualifies. It has 4 unconventionalities of expression to make characteristic 2 not entirely applicable to it–but still applicable enough since it is rather lacksadaisically expressed in free verse. Its subject matter isn’t all that “suburban,” but fairly close, mainly because many Iowa Workshop Poems are, like it, about composing a poem–a quotidian subject for makers and readers of this kind of poem. It is (on the surface) direct for the most part, but not quickly direct at the end; once it is uncouth–in a politically-incorrect male-chauvinist way, which makes its transgression decidedly more serious than it would otherwise have been. That and the controversial attitude the word contributes to, are what finally disqualify the poem as an Iowa Workshop Poem. Especially as its point of view is the opposite of any good Iowa Workshop Poet’s. It becomes, for me, a “contra-genteel” poem, like similar poems of Bukowski’s (which are really negative Iowa Workshop Poems).

Smart Bargains Coupon

Posted in Of Poem, Poetic Practice | No Comments »

Entry 544 — Thoughts on “Skips”

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

Skips

one bus,
said of certain places

which may, at sites, be
or, for such as certain sites

a, saying, or, for standing
a, may be holding places

and doubtless other combinations
one bus.

and if it is but agreeable
a hand or glove or calendar

as, he was
but not in certain places

which, when sounding
just above, and, sounding just above

are gone, or, for some time
by rote or involuntary action

between highest and lowest
is present, and absent, is gone and when

that aspect, to be events
alike, in which they are alike

between highest and lowest
the features

perceived or thought about
seem suddenly, to fit

also spelled insight or solution
the use of, or, as means his present station

and doubtless other combinations
which are themselves

his means
the skin, the hair, the coat

are fairly, then, it matches, either of the two
in which, unfit variations

are discarded
are held at mutual right angles, say

as when a new hat
or sometimes used as synonyms

is part
or,

as a rule, a new hat
is considered of involuntary action

or,
in respect to suspended judgment

in which, a measure of degree
they are, so alike

being highest, possible highest
the skin, the hair, the coat

an irrepressible action
or

due to lips
and doubtless other combinations

attained by involuntary action
as when a new hat is considered part

of one’s coat
or rival, or station

Jet Blue Airlines

Posted in Close Reading, Poetic Practice, Poetics | No Comments »

Entry 493 — W N E S in My PluraestheticPoetry

Monday, September 5th, 2011

I think the mathematics in my poems is conceptually interesting but never interesting as mathematics. Hence, my current visio-mathematical poems are verbal, conceptual, visual,and not significantly mathematical. Many are only very indirectly what I call anthroceptual–having to do with people. There’s no persona in the latest, for instance–it’s all about things. Their final importance, of course, has to do with their affect on people, but they strike the mind first fundaceptually only (i.e., as what they are sensually), then mesh (if the poem works) into a kind of philosophical meaning that eventually resolves itself into a universal human feeling. I think almost none of my pluraesthetic poems are directly anthroceptual. Just about all my Poem poems are. But add anthroceptuality to verbality, conceptuality and visuality as one of the four directions of my visiomathematical poems, their W N E S.

I should add that I have many non-mathematical poems that also have these four directions, a mathematical component not being necessary to make one of them conceptual.

Posted in Poetic Practice | No Comments »