Crag Hill « POETICKS-

Crag Hill « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Crag Hill’ Category

Entry 1345 — Excerpts from a Masterpiece

Sunday, January 19th, 2014

The masterpiece is my Of Manywhere-at-Once. I suddenly had the brilliant thought of taking care of blog entries for the next few days with full pages of the third edition of it (the Runaway Spoon Press, 1998–the first edition was published eight years earlier, with this section the same as it is here). For once, laziness is not my reason for doing this. What is, is a need to concentrate of an essay I’m working on whose deadline will soon be on me. So: here are three consecutive pages from my book, left as is:

I think I have one or two copies of my available for sale, but they are now collectors’ copies, so I have to ask for a hundred bucks for one. But I will sign it. Its buyer will also have the satisfaction of having helped a poet keep from bankruptcy. (I’m serious–otherstreamers ought to ask for compensation at least equal to a thousandth of what celebrated tenth-raters get for absolute crap. And what can we lose since we can’t get even the cost of our raw materials for anything?)

As I posted the second of my three pages, I thought to myself (as opposed to thinking to someone else–ain’t the Englush lingo funny at times?) I really ought to save my second and third pages for my next two entries. Being nice to my readers triumphed, though, so they are all here. I do plan to use them again tomorrow. I have second thoughts about at least one part of my text, and first thoughts about what I think about it, and what was going on in my life at the time I wrote it.

Ridgid Power Tools

Posted in Bob Grumman, Crag Hill, Discussion of a Poem, Poetics, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 1233 — Rescued by an SASE

Friday, October 4th, 2013

I was in bed for the night just now (at nine, my usual bedtime), when I realized I hadn’t posted an blog entry for today! I’ve been very absent-minded since my surgical procedure on Monday. I hope that’s due to the anaesthesia I was given. In any case, thank goodness I still have contributions to the SASE mail art show Crag Hill sent me to draw on, such as this one from Crag himself, his second in the show:

Discount Clearance Deals

Posted in Crag Hill, Mail Art | No Comments »

Entry 1181 — An SASE by Crag Hill

Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

Here’s the SASE Crag Hill, who organized the project, had for it:

Is this his autobiography?

LLBean.com Free Shipping

Posted in Crag Hill, Mail Art | 1 Comment »

Entry 1004 — Back to “Evolution”

Monday, February 4th, 2013

I thought the following worth an attempt at an appreciation, so here it is again:

Actually, I may have only one thing to point out, something I would hope everyone would notice without my help: the way each of the letters of “evolution” evolves. Nine little narratives of some letter’s journey to . . . who knows where. But notice, too, some of the wonderfully clever twists Crag adds to some of the processes: such as the different ways the two o’s evolve, and, expecially, the way the one on the left takes bloats into a chain containing two clones of itself on the way to what it eventually becomes. Meanwhile, the other o is help on its way by the n–which it in turn helps.

Ah, but I’ve made a huge mistake, it seems to me. Because reading is generally from the top of a page down, I took this visualization of evolution to go from the top down. It makes much more sense to view it as beginning in uncertainty–as identical forms–and then changing upward.

I suppose it could go either way. I like it going up, though. No matter. I pronounce the poem a sure classic.

Mr Poppers Penguins

Posted in Crag Hill, Visual Poetry Specimen | 2 Comments »

Entry 1003 — A Transform by Crag Hill

Sunday, February 3rd, 2013

(Note: I had this entry ready a day or more early, then forgot to click the “public” button. I do that all the time!)

The following is another piece from Score 9; it’s called “Evolution”:

It’s one of a series of similar pieces that Crag Hill was turning out some twenty years ago he called transforms. I made a few of them myself, but no one else that I know of has, which I think a shame. It’s an excellent form he came up with, one with all kinds of possibilities–especially now that color can be added. I often lament that too few new visual poets either stick with standard concrete poetry practices, like visual onomatopoeia (forming words that look like what they denote), or leave words entirely for textual designs they call “asemic poems.” They don’t do anything with forms like Crag’s, or my long divisions.

Of course, there are problems with doing so: fear of stealing someone else’s invention, or being seen to; fear of degrading it by using it badly; a silly belief that everything one does must be 100% “new” (however ridiculously impossible that would be); or because one needs to keep up with what’s fashionable in the field. I suppose, too, there are those who just don’t connect with transforms or long division poems. I really really wish a few young poets would start seriously making long division poems. One reason for that is that I strongly suspect I’d learn from them, and maybe do a lot more with my own long divisions than I have been.

Dell computer

Posted in Crag Hill, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 387 — 2006 Discussion of a Poem by Crag Hill

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Recently, I’ve been going through the files with the graphics but not the texts of entries I made to my previous blog in search of mathemaku of mine. I want to number them all, so need a complete list of them. I think I posted just about all of them to my blog. In any event, yesterday I brought up a file for an entry (Blog959) whose visits was recorded as close to 200. Rarely did my old entries get more than 20 visits. Curious to see what was in the blog, I then brought up the file that had its text, which I think worth quoting here:

17 September 2006: Among the many intriguing items at Crag Hill’s Poetry Scorecard is this found poem of Crag’s that he posted 3 September:

From Index of First Lines Selected Poems Charles Olson

.     I come back to the geography of it,
.     I don’t mean, just like that, to put down
.     I have been an ability–a machine–up to
.     I have had to learn the simplest things

.     I live underneath
.     I looked up and saw
.     Imbued / with the light
.     I met Death–he was a sportsman–on Cole’s

.     In cold hell, in thicket, how
.     In English the poetics became meubles–furniture–
.     is a monstrance,
.     I sing the tree is a heron

.     I sit here on a Sunday
.     It’s so beautiful, life, goddamn death
.     it was the west wind caught her up, as

Amazing poem, this. I’m not a big fan of Olson’s, though I believe he is a major poet, and that some of his poems are A-1. Surely, these lines could only have been from a poet, though. I recognize one or two, but in this discussion will not look up any of them. (Oops, I realize I couldn’t look up very many of them; I do have The Maximus Poems, and several of my anthologies have poems by Olson, but I don’t have the Selected Poems.)

“I come back to the geography of it,”

Anyway, what a beginning, this return to some geography. Olson was probably only returning to a genuine geography, of the locale I feel he jabbered too much about, but here–dislocated by the line-break–“geography” can wing us to the terrain of all kinds of things, including the memory of a breakfast, banking procedures, 3 A.M., everything having a geography. Less surlogically, the word brings us to fundamentals, to the earth, to reality seen large, solid, inanimate . . .

What, I suddenly wonder, would the geography of geography be? Poems like this– effective jump-cut poems, that is–can flip us into such questions. Questions that resonate for the person flipped into them, I mean–as this one will surely not for everyone.

“I don’t mean, just like that, to put down”

Now a jump-cut leaving “geography” to simmer unconnected to any specific, and making the poem’s narrator more than a pronoun through his attempt to explain himself better. His explanation is broken off before getting anywhere, which effectually explains all the better his state of being at loose ends. A main interest is in whether he has just dropped one activity to return to the geography of whatever he’s involved in, and/or inadvertantly “put down” whatever he was doing because superficial or the like compared to geographical questions. “I have been an ability–a machine–up to”

The narrator continues trying to explain himself without finishing any of his ventures into self-analysis. I take this line to mean he’s not been personally/emotionally involved in whatever it is he’s talking about, “up to (now).” Note, by the way, how this line, with its pronounced metaphor, disturbs the quotidian tone of the previous (which, in turn, had demotically countered the academic tone of the first line).

“I have had to learn the simplest things”

Wow, no longer able (I guess) to let his machinery run his life without his involvement, the narrator has to concentrate, start from a sort of zero.

“I live underneath”

We’ve come to a new stanza. That the narrator says he lives underneath, which the lineation compels us to consider, rather than underneath something, opens a world for me. Certainly, we’re with a narrator deepening through himself (as we would expect from the poem’s consisting entirely of lines in the “i” section of an index).

“I looked up and saw”

This line seems planned to follow the one before it. This sudden strong logic out of the chaos of existence as if to reassure us that life does make sense is one of the virtues of found poetry. Again, a line-break re-locates us, in this case keeping us from a transitive verb’s object, compelling us to consider “saw” as an intransitive verb. The narrator has experienced illumination, not just seen some detail of ordinary life. No big deal if the context set us up for this sort of heightened seeing, but something of a (good) jolt in this zone of reduced context.

“Imbued / with the light”

Yikes, this sentence carries on trouble-free from the previous one.

“I met Death–he was a sportsman–on Cole’s”

The grammar now shatters the logic we seemed for a while to be in, just as “Death” shatters the text’s positive bright ambiance. I can’t help, by the way, thinking of Emily at this point. Death, however, is an absurd, trivial figure, some guy pursuing some conventional sport at some named who-cares-where.

“In cold hell, in thicket, how”

After the intrusion of a line with something of the effect of the famous porter scene in Macbeth, a new stanza, and high rhetoric electrifyingly bleakening the scene. Fascinating how “Cole” quickly colors into “cold hell,” by the way. “In English the poetics became meubles–furniture–”

Another weird shift–to the cold, densely thicketted geography of poetics (in English). “Furniture.” Something inanimate, stupid–but comfortable, for our convenience, to be used. . . . I don’t know the meaning of “meubles” but assume it’s some kind of furniture. Somehow, we are now in a man trying to explain himself in a geography/text trying to explain itself. At least, according to my way of appreciating language poems of this sort, which is partially to take them as exposures of mental states.

“is a monstrance,”

I guess we aren’t meant to sit on the chairs or put anything on the tables in the poem. We are definitely in a darkness and a confusion. “I sing the tree is a heron”

But the narrator can sing. He sings (presumably) of a tree’s resemblance to a heron. In other words, something dark (probably) and solid and motionless, like furniture, has something undark and capable of flight in it. Thus, the stanza ends hopefully, to set up the final one, which begins:

“I sit here on a Sunday”

The tone has gone quiet, conventional–but implicitly celebratory, Sunday being generally a day-off, and devoted to (generally happy) religious services. “It’s so beautiful, life, goddamn death”

The chaos of the poem is resolved with this line. The fragments we’ve been stumbling through, dark and light, are life–which is beautiful in spite of the presence of death.

“it was the west wind caught her up, as”

Because of the line before this one, I’m prepared to read this to be about a woman turned magically into a weightless angel the pleasant west wind is going to give a ride to. Chagall, at his undrippiest. I also read the awe of a man beholding a beautiful woman into the line. An image illustrating the climactic previous statement.

Okay, that was a preliminary once-through I hope some reader will get something out of. I did! Don’t know if I’ll return to it. Probably, so I can use it in a book. Don’t know if I’ll have anything better to say about it then, though.

* * * * *

I’m not ready to say more about the poem now–except that I wondered when I looked at my entry whether I’d mentioned the importance of Crag’s poem’s foundness when I discussed it. I saw I hadn’t. In my megalomaniacal opinion, I think I may be the only critic who has ever discussed the full aesthetic value of foundness. I did this in my discussion, possible two decades ago by now, of Doris Cross’s work–wonderful visual poems brought into being by painting or otherwise defacing, deleting, meddling with dictionary paintings. (I love Nietzsche not only for all he said, brilliantly, that I agree with, but for the megalomaniacal boasts he made about his accomplishments that have turned out to be valid.)

What I said in my Cross piece isn’t handy, so my comments now will probably be a bit incomplete and not as sharply expressed as what I said in it. First off, as anyone would agree and as many I’m sure have said, the quotations from Olson, add his life and writings to Crag’s poem. This is important. But what I think effective appropriation of found materials most importantly does is celebrate the essential logic of the universe. It reminds us that God is in his heaven allowing accidents to make affirmations–even for someone like I who doesn’t believe in God, and understands that accidents don’t really make affirmations, only happen so often that some of them, especially when a keen discoverer has an eye out for them, are bound to do what Crag’s collection does. Another, better way of putting it, is that we are reminded of who wonderfully well the human brain finds ways to give existence meanings, meanings that suggest Meaning.

Okay, not a view you’d think anyone would feel like a demigod for having, but it’s more than anyone else has said about foundness that I know of. And I can’t see how anyone could say it’s wrong.
.
.    Poem Consults the Vseineur
.
.            However seldom the vseineur
.            said “universe” in Poem’s hearing,
.            he accepted it,
.            however clear it always was
.    that it had misspoken.

Posted in Charles Olson, Crag Hill, Criticism, Found Poetry | No Comments »

Close Reading « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Close Reading’ Category

Entry 544 — Thoughts on “Skips”

Wednesday, October 26th, 2011

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

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

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.

Tags: haiku

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Geof Huth, haiku, James Joyce, 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.

Knowlecular Psychology « POETICKS

Archive for the ‘Knowlecular Psychology’ Category

Entry 346 — The Definition of Visual Poetry, Yet Again

Thursday, January 13th, 2011

In a comment to the entry Geof Huth made to his blog about my taxonomy, Kaz Maslanka said, “I like what I understand to be Karl Kempton and Karl Young’s definition of: ‘Visual Poetry is a Poetry that has to be seen.’ This is such a simple yet powerful definition that seems to me to be true in every case of vizpo that I have seen.”

My definition is not so simple–because while the double-Karl definition probably does cover every case of visual poetry, it fails to distinguish certain works that I do not consider visual poetry: illustrated poems and captioned or labeled visimages; ordinary poems whose visual appearance has been improved by calligraphy or special graphic touches like ornate capitals at the beginning of stanzas–poetry, in other words that has been graphically decorated enough to make it more pleasing but not enough to significantly increase its aesthetic effect; certain infraverbal texts like Joyce’s “cropse,” which must be seen to be appreciated but are not visual, if by “visual” we mean “of any special interest to the eye.” Of course, the definition works for those for whom just about any combination of textual and graphic material is visual poetry–but then we would still need a special term for artworks in which the interrelation of words and graphics causes has a significant aesthetic effect (or is intended to). For that, the double-Karl definition won’t work, and that more than any of the other combinations of text and graphics is what requires definition. Because, in my view, only that will jolt an engagent in both the reading section and the seeing section of his brain simultaneously, or nearly simultaneously.

This latter, by the way, is only one example of the way that my taxonomy of poetry is, like a proper theory of science, falsifiable. Eventually superior forms of cat-scans will be able to determine where in the brain different forms of poetry are appreciated. I claim each of the main kinds I classify will have a unique brainprint. Moreover, that brainprint will prove close to exactly what one would expect it to be: visual poems, by my definition, will have a visioverbal brainprint (which will be different from textual designs’ visiotextual brainprint); linguexclusive poems will have a purely verbal brainprint–initially, for most of them will give rise to visual imagery; avisual mathematical poems will have a purely verbomathematical brainprint, but visiomathematical poems will have a visioverbomathematical brainprint. The brainprints of more specialized poems–particular kinds of visual poems should–if my taxonomy is valid and my theory of psychology right–each have its own unique visioverbal brainprint.

One brainprint that especially intrigues is the one a cryptographic poem would have. It’d have to be verbal, of course, but also something caused by a conceptual part of the brain I haven’t worked out yet. Okay, crazy maybe, but don’t be too sure about that until it’s tested.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology, Poetics, Taxonomy | 9 Comments »

Entry 276 — The Irratioplex

Saturday, November 6th, 2010

Another day in the null zone for me, perhaps because I’m going without the pain pills I’ve been on for my bad hip as an experiment. I played tennis this morning without any more of the slight hip pain I’ve been having with the pain pills. That was nice but since I got home from that and a little marketing (for socks and new sneakers), I I’ve been feeling blah. A nap didn’t help.

Meanwhile, I’m been feeling bitter about my reputation as a defender of Shakespeare. SHAKSPER, an Internet discussion group I’m in, has for several days been discussing the proper reaction to a movie coming out called Anonymous, in which the Earl of Oxford is depicted as Shakespeare–and as Queen Elizabeth’s son–and Southampton is depicted as Oxford and Elizabeth’s son. I think it may destroy Oxfordianism the way the preposterous codes found in Shakespeare’s plays “proving” Bacon wrote them pretty much destroyed Baconism.

What irks me is that several who comment at SHAKSPER mentioned James Shapiro’s recent book on the authorship question, and books and articles on it by others, but not my book. No doubt I’m biased, but I consider my book the best refutation of anti-Stratfordianism in print, and the only one that presents a serious theory of what makes people become anti-Stratfordianism–whether valid or not. Yet the Shakespeare establishment, and their little followers at the two authorship sites I participate in don’t mention me, or respond to my posts to SHAKSPER. Maybe they don’t want it known that our side has a crank like me on it. A crank, morover, who calls anti-Stratfordians “psitchotics.”

Nonetheless, my attempt to understand what causes reasonably intelligent people to become psitchotics where Shakespeare is concerned, and–more important–find a way to express my finding entertainingly and coherently, continues, with a minor development today, the new term “irratioplex.” This I pronounce ehr RAH shuh plehks. Do I misspell it? Possibly, but “irratiplex” doesn’t do it for me.

And irratioplex is an irrational knowleplex. There are several. Two of them are the rigidniplex and the enthusiaplex. I now maintain that all anti-Stratfordians are afflicted with one or the other of these two irratioplexes. The new term allows me to couple them as victims of irratioplexes, then show how they differ from one another by virtue of their (slightly) different irratioplexes. The rigidniks’ irratioplex is forced on them by their innate psychology; the enthusiasts’ (who are frrewenders) acquire their irratioplexes during fits of enthiuiasm, making them quickly too strong thereafter to resist. Both irratioplexes act the same once active. both nearly impossible for their victims’ to resist.

My new strategy for the description of wacks is to concentrate on irratioplexes in general, proceed to rigidniplexes and enthusiaplexes in general, then to how the latter two specifically enslave their victims to anti-Stratfordianism.

Posted in Autobiographica, Grumman coinage, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 269 — Problem-Solving

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

When faced with a mess as bad as my attempt to work of how we process language is in, as shown by yesterday’s entry, and with no idea what to do about it, a sound reaction is to drop it and go on to something else, with or without exclamations of despair. Or one can try anyway to do something about it. What I think is a clever response is to think of it as A General Problem, and try to work up procedures that may be of value in solving it. That way, you can imagine that you are working out a Method of Attack which may help others, or yourself in the future–even if it fails, since then it will indicate actions not to repeat. At the same time you can deal with a possibly intractable problem from a distance that takes some of the pressure off you.

So, my first thought is to focus on one element of the problem, with my main intent being to clarify what it is and what I need to understand in order to make sense of it rather than go all out fully to explain it. First question: where to begin. To decide that, I think I need to list all the elements involved. That, in fact, was mainly what I was trying to do yesterday. (Phooey. That means I have to read what I wrote yesterday!)

Okay, thew elements seem to be the word-flows: heard, read, said (formerly “spoken,” but “said” rhymes with “read,” so I like it better) and . . . mathematical (because I can’t think of a nice short, or even long, verb to use–assuming “heard,” “read” and “said” are verbs, something unimportant but would like to know). “Mathed.” No, not really, but it’s a temptation.

My problem now is that I have this intuition that I ought to be dealing with more than the four word-flows so far named. One might be the grammatical word-flow. I want to add a rhythmical word-flow, but tend to consider rhythm too insignificant compared to the others to merit a word-flow. I don’t like “rhythmical” as an adjective here, either. Maybe I’ll try “word-beat-flow”. . .

I’m going to think about it. I may try to finish a portion of a mathemaku I’m working on, too. I was going to use it today but found it as difficult to get in shape as the linguistics. I know I can get it in shape, though–it’ll just take a lot of drudgery.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology, Linguistics | No Comments »

Entry 268 — More Thoughts on Linguistics, Sputterfully

Friday, October 29th, 2010

Gosh, kids, I’m finding out that language-Processing is pretty durned complicated. One thing that makes it so is its having to do with responding in kind to its input, something that doesn’t happen elsewhere in the brain, that I can think of right now, so now strikes me as particularly interesting. I had to take a break from thinking about it to clear my synapses. I think they’re clear now, but I still feel over-matched by my opponent. I’m not conceding the game, though.

First, another coinage: Ultilinguiceptuality. That’s where all the “word-flows” occurring in the Ultilinguiceptual Awareness, or final language-processing area in the brain, end up. I propose, very tentatively, that four word-flows can arise in the cerebrum, the heard word-flow, the read word-flow, the spoken word-flow and the mathematical word-flow.

Some of what I’m now saying may contradict previous statements of mine. But this is definitely a sketch-in-progress.

The heard word-flow starts in the auditory pre-awareness in which a syllable-identifier sensitive to sounds representing language. When the syllable-identifiers identifies an incoming datum as a syllable (which includes what I call “nulletters”–but may call “nullybles”–for pauses between syllables that are those part of the word-flow), it forms a verbiceptual percept of the datum. This percept it relays to a second linguistic-identificatioon mechanism which determines whether the percept is rhythmiceptual and metriceptual, If either, a rhythmiceptual or metriceptual percept will be fashioned, or both, and sent with the verbiceptual perceptto the verbiceptual subawareness in the linguiceptual subawareness of the Reducticeptual Awareness. The activation of the m-cells in the verbiceptual sub-awareness will be experienced as the heard word-flow.

The pre-visual awareness cointains a texteme-identifier that separates signals from stimuli that are letters and other textual data from visual data and constructs lexiceptual percepts from them which are sent to the pre-lexiceptual subawareness where a grammar identifier mechanism will tag strings of letters nouns, verbs, prepostitions and other parts of speech. At the same time the mechanism will determine the inflection to be given verbs and give them tags indicating what tense they are. The tags will actually be accompanying percepts. The linguiceptual percepts and their “tags” will end in the lexiceptual sub-awareness of the linguiceptual subawareness of the Reducticeptual Awareness, froming the the read word-flow.

When a person speaks, sensors in the neck pass on data to the dicticeptual sub-awareness where they activate m-cells having to do with the sounds the vocal cords have just made. The subject will experience the spoken word-flow. All word-flows active at a given time will join in the ultilinguistic subawareness to form the total word-flow. Here they will interact with input from most of the awarenesses in the Protoceptual Awareness to permit words to connect with what they symbolically represent.

Warning, what I’ve just written is a blur. Consider it an extreme first draft intended to show the complexities involved with trying to figure out how the brain processes language. It makes no sense. But it is now in a form I hope I can think about effectively enough to make a better clutter–to think about until I make a still better one, and so on, until I have something that makes sense. To me, if to no one else. I’ve succeeded in doing that before, so maybe I can again, although this may be the most complicated problem I’ve yet dealt with.

Later note: I forgot about the mathematical word-flow. I posit an identifier that sorts mathematical textemes from non-mathematical textemes, and sends them to a purely mathematical awareness outside the linguiceptual awareness, but sends all the mathematical textemes along with non-mathematical textemes to the linguiceptual wareness hwere they participate as words–that is, amathematically.

Also note that I am confusing stimuli with results of stimuli, and probably with transmitted energy, and neuro-transmitters. My next task, it would seem, will be getting that straightened out–because it’s a straight-forward job which should not be difficult, although it may take a while.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology, Linguistics | 3 Comments »

Entry 267 — A Project Expansion

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

A problem of people like me is the tendency of our projects to expand. A form of impracticality. It’s struck me again. I want simply to self-publish my taxonomy of poetry, mainly so my Runaway Spoon Press will get a title into print for the twenty-third year in a row, but also because it’s worth getting into print. Immediately, it became a taxonomy of more then just poetry, although I’m not sure just what more. Except that it would include things like “utilitry,” or man-made items to make life easier rather than better. And the taxonomy didn’t start with poetry or literature but at the very beginning with reality, then matter and mind.

It is now expanding through a definition of poetry that I’ve decided requires me to explain how our nervous systems process poetry . . . which requires me to describe how they process words. That now has been trying to figure out and coherently describe my theory of an innate grammar. Which, I’ve just discovered, means I must tackle the process of generalization. I’m excited by that, because I think it has led to a concept of a process that makes generalizations automatic that I hadn’t previously come close to thinking might be in the mix. If I can make my idea of it work, it would elegantly explain quite a few things that our brains do.

But it makes me fear I’ll never get my taxonomy done.

I’ll keep you informed.

Posted in Autobiographica, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 266 — The Pre-Awareness Revisited

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

Long after the first organisms with protoceptuality came into being, and some of them had developed other awarenesses, the most advanced of them found it biologically useful to split their protoceptual aware-nesses in two. One of these remained the protoceptual awareness, the other became the pre-awareness.

The Pre-Awareness gradually become quite complex in the higher species, becoming for us a sort of confederacy of primary pre-awarenesses, one for each of the senses. Each primary pre-awareness has become in turn a confederacy of specialized secondary pre-awarenesses such as the visiolinguistic pre-awareness in the visual pre-awareness and the audiolinguistic pre-awareness in the auditory pre-awareness. Each incoming perceptual cluster (or “pre-knowlecule,” or “knowlecule-in-progress,” by which I mean cluster of percepts, or “atoms of perception,” which have the potential to form full-scale pieces of knowledge such as the visual appearance of a robin, that I call “knowlecules”) enters one of the primary pre-awarenesses, from which it is sent to all the many secondary pre-awarenesses within that primary pre-awareness.

The secondary pre-awarenesses, in turn, screen the pre-knowlecules entering them, accepting for further processing those they are designed to, rejecting all others. The visiolinguistic pre-awareness thus accepts percepts that pass its tests for textuality, and reject all others; the audiolinguistic pre-awareness tests for speech; and so on. All this, remember, is as my theory describes it. However, much of conventional neurophysiuology, especially concerning mechanisms in the eyes and areas between the eyes and the visual center in the brain (which is in the occipital lobe, if I remember rightly) has established the existence of such processes, although few, probably, act too much like my hypothetical ones. Some do act like mine, processes in the eyes or just behind them, for instance, that recognize circles and lines. It is a fault of mine that I can’t match my hypothetical processes to the known ones due to lack of familiarity with conventional terminology. Another fault of mine is that I can’t draw on the evidence conventional science has turned up to support what I say about my theory’s processes. I feel my time is much more valuably spent on thinking my way to undiscovered processes, incompletely understood known processes, and how they might be organized than on work anyone in the field could do, though.

Ideally, I could call on grad students to take care of these side-jobs, or even, if grants ever went to people actually significantly furthering knowledge, take care of them myself (which I think would be fun doing) because freed from all the things that are screwing up my life because of impoverishment, including I firmly believe my bouts of blah.

Okay, that’s it for my whining–for today, at any rate.

Back to the Pre-Awareness, which I need to give its full name, to wit: “protoceptual pre-awareness. Aside from being a relay station for reports from all the senses, glands and muscles, the protoceptual pre-awareness has an area, the visual pre-awarreness, that I hypothesize as having broken off from the visual awareness fairly early on to become a visual detail-awareness center. It contained processes that identified significant visual details such as the human figure, the human face, landscape features, motion, geometrical shape, and so forth. Eventually when human beings began marking things, and the marks became ideograms and then letters, a texteme-identifier became one of the processes that evolved in the visual pre-awareness. Textemes are the smallest units of textual meaning in my linguistics. Basically letters, numerals and punctuation marks. The basis of language, and hence of poetry.

Similarly, an auditory pre-awareness evolved with a syllable-identifier sensitive to sounds representing language. This word-identifier and the texteme-identifier transmitted energy to the Linguiceptual Awareness in the reducticeptual awareness. This area is divided into lesser sub-awarenesses, five of which are the Lexiceptual, the Verbiceptual, Dicticeptual, Vocaceptual, Rhythmiceptual and Metriceptual. The first is an charge of the written word, the second of the spoken word, the third of vocalization, the fourth of the rhythm of speech and the fifth of the meter of speech. All five of the linguiceptual sub-awarenesses transmit to a further sub-awareness, the Linguassociative Awareness, which receives input from most of the awarenesses in the Protoceptual Awareness to permit words to connect with what they symbolically represent.

There are also grammatical awarenesses in the linguiceptual awareness. These are too complicated for me to deal with right now.

Posted in Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 264 — On the Ten Awarenesses, Again

Monday, October 25th, 2010

I’ve been reworking my thoughts on the ten awarenesses (or abilities or intelligences, whatever you want to call them) that I so far posit, as part of the essay I’m writing on the taxonomy of poetry I’ve devel- oped. Some of them will play role in my taxonomy. Kinds of poetry, for instance, will be partially defined by what areas of the brain–what awarenesses, that is–they primarily activate. I haven’t added much to what I previously posted here at my blog, but I added a few guesses about the evolution of the awarenesses that I consider rather interesting.

The Ten Awarenesses

I’ll begin with the protoceptual awareness because it was almost certainly the first, or “proto” awareness to evolve. Hence, it was the ancestor of the other nine awarenesses, and the one all forms of life have in some form. As, I believe, most real theoretical psychologists would agree. Some but far from all would also agree with my belief in multiple awarenesses, although probably not with my specific choice of them. It has much in common with and was no doubt influenced by Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. It is much more advanced and much less superficial than his, however.

The protoceptual awareness deals with reality in the raw: directly with what’s out there, in other words–visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory stimuli. It also deals directly with what’s inside its possessor, muscular and hormonal states. Hence, I divide it into three sub-awarenesses, the Sensoriceptual, Viscraceptual and Musclaceptual Awarenesses. The other nine awarenesses are (2) the Behavraceptual Awareness, (3) the Evaluceptual Awareness, (4) the Cartoceptual Awareness, (5) the Anthroceptual Awareness, (6) the Sagaceptual Awareness, (7) the Objecticeptual Awareness, (8) the Reducticeptual Awareness, (9) the Scienceptual Awareness, and (10) the Compreceptual Awareness.

24 May 2011 note: I may return to “fundaceptual” from “protoceptual.” I dropped “fundaceptual” to free “funda” up for use in another coinage of mine, but can’t remember now what coinage it was. I’m also considering “execuceptual” in place of “behavraceptual.”

The Behavraceptual Awareness is concerned with causing behavior, and telling you of it. It is the only awareness that does anything but store memories, and cause remembering.

At this point, I need to make a metaphysical digression. I could skip it, because it is irrelevant, but I want to be thorough. When I speak of “you,” I actually mean what I call your “urwareness,” or fundamental conxciousness of the universe, which is somehow connected to “your” body.” It does nothing but observe what your brain tells is in “your” environment and what actions “your” brain has taken. Your urwareness, no doubt, will think it was the one causing said actions, it will have had nothing to do with them, however; it will merely have observed what the brain it is attached to chose to do and did.

I believe all this because I can conceive of no way mind could have any influence on matter, since it is itself immaterial, or by definition without material effect. The question as to how it connects in any manner to anything material is leave as an Eternal Unanswerable–a simpler unanswerable since it’s only about how an awareness can be aware of matter, not about that and how it can tell matter what to do, which matter can easily do by following the law of cause and effect without any input.

But “I” am sure “you,” like my urwareness, will feel more comfortable believing that “you” initiate “your” behavior. No problem: I can, and will hereafter, drop the italics (which I’ve been dispensing with till now, anyway), and advance from the position that behavraceptual awareness is concerned with carrying out your orders and describing to you what you have made it do in each instance.

The Evaluceptual Awareness has, like the protoceptual awareness, been around forever, I believe, although–unlike the protoceptual awareness–it need not have been. It measures the ratio of pain to pleasure one experiences during an “instacon” (or instant of consciousness) and causes one to feel one or the other, or neither, depending on the value of that ratio. In other words, it is in charge of our emotional state.

The Cartoceptual Awareness tells one where one is in space and time. I imagine this was another early awareness, but not as early as the three preceding ones.

The Sagaceptual Awareness is one’s awareness of oneself as the protagonist of some narrative in which one has a goal one tries to achieve. It evolved to help motivate an organism to become aware of consequential goals such as escaping a predator or defeating and devouring prey and persist in the achievement of it, something which, again, would probably have developed early in our rise to humanhood.

The Objecticeptual Awareness is sensitive to inanimate objects. My guess is that it began a few eons after the protoceptual awareness did, in order to separate neutral entities in the environment for entities which might be predator or prey.

Sensitivity to the latter entities, as distinct from objects was the basis of what become the Anthroceptual Awareness, which has to do with our experience of ourselves as individuals and as social beings (so is divided into two sub-awareness, the egoceptual awareness and the socioceptual awareness). The “society” it is sensitive to includes many other life-forms, some of which no doubt cohabit the society of living beings, and the company of objects that the objecticaptual awareness is concerned with.

The Reducticeptual Awareness is basically our conceptual intelligence. It reduces protoceptual data to abstract symbols like words and numbers and deals with them (and has many sub-awarenesses). It would seem to have come late, biologically. On the other hand, there were probably primitive forms of it early on, such as a sense of the difference between one and many.

The Scienceptual Awareness deals with cause and effect, and may be the latest of our awarenesses to have evolved.

Finally, there is the Compreceptual Awareness,which is our awareness of our entire personal reality. I’m still vague about it, but tend to believe it did not precede the protoceptual awareness but later formed when some ancient life-form’s number of separate awarenesses required some general intelligence to co:ordinate their doings.

Posted in Awarenesses, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 252 — 12 October 2010 Report

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

I did more work on my essay concerning aesthetics. I’m burned out on it now, but it’s still not right. I have to leave it for a while. I’m burned out on about everything, it would appear. Can’t think of anything concerning poetry I feel like writing about. My heath seems okay, and I’m not sleepy. The pain pills I’ve been taking have helped with that, and with my hip, which held up moderately well earlier when I played tennis. I think I’ll need hip replacement surgery, anyway. I want to get a shot for my hip before I do, though. I’m hopeful that will be enough to get me back to feeling the way I think I should.

Possible rough draft currently taking shape:

. Poem, Nearing the Center

.
. Swans wrinkled
. against Poem’s current memory of
. Excalibur
. multiplied by lake-grey branches
. simpling deeper than winter.
. A bridge hand glows
. through a made finesse
. toward game bid and made
. in the wake of
. Brillo pads renewing the white shine
. of a toilet bowl.
. Holy smoke
. so slowly centering
. the universe
. as the next hand is dealt.
. Model T’s coming off the
. assembly line
. proving mankind
. ocean-eminent
.
.
.

Posted in Autobiographica, Knowlecular Psychology, Nothing Much, Of Poem | No Comments »

Entry 251 — “Homage to Shakespeare”

Monday, October 11th, 2010

I keep directing my Shakespeare authorship friends and enemies to this poem, but none has commented on it, that I recall. I tend to think Shakespeare fans rarely are much interested in newer forms of poetry. I made it around twenty years ago. It was the first of my visual poems to get accepted for Kaldron, the leading American visual poetry magazine of the time (but international in scope). Unfortu- nately, I can’t show it large enough for the small print to be visible her.

Here’s an annotated detail of it showing what the small print says.

Posted in Aesthetics, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Entry 250 — Going in Reverse

Monday, October 11th, 2010

I now know more about pleasure and pain than I understand. My problem, I think, is that what I know seems right, but I can’t organize it into any kind of neat, accessible package. The thing bothering me is what beauty is. I once pegged it as simply the right ratio of pleasure to pain a stimulus produces. Then I remembered something obvious to almost everyone but me: that there are stimuli that are automatically perceived by healthy minds as beautiful. Nothing wrong with two kinds of beauty, but the two seemed to me too different from one another to share a name. Next thing you know, I’d have to accept an elegant mathematical proof as beautiful. Okay in bull sessions, but not if one is concerned with useful serious communication since a term loses its linguistic value to the degree that it can be applied to significantly different things.

So, how about calling the stimulus with the proper familiarity to unfamiliarity ratio . . . ? I can’t think of anything. There’s the beauty our instincts are sensitive to, and the truth our instincts about what contradicts, what harmonizes, are sensitive to. Empathy would be what our instincts derive pleasure from when interacting with others–that which is anthroceptually pleasurable, in terms of knowlecular psychology. There’s good, too, or the pleasure–instinctive in many cases–we feel when we, or others, act in a manner we consider moral.

Okay, folks, I have to turn to neologization, again. “Assimlatry.” That is now my term for any stimulus causes that has the right r/f ratio (or “resolution/frustration” ratio, resolution being what happens when a psychevent leads to the familiar, frustration being what happens when it leads to unfamiliarity). “Assimlatrous” is the adjectival form. Yes, grotesque terms, but naming is the first step toward understanding, and essential.

There’s also the need for the instinctive pleasure one feels when achieving a goal. “Triumph” may be sufficient. No, I think “success” better. And “resolution” for “assimilatry.” No, no” “comprehension” is the perfect name for it! So, I have the following pairing on my list of kinds of pleasure and pain (with which of my theory’s awareness’s is involved in each case):

instinct-based evaluception

beauty/ ugliness: fundaceptual evaluception
empathy/ hostility: personal anthroceptual evaluception
good/ bad: moral anthroceptual evaluception
success/ failure: sagaceptual evaluception

logic-based evaluception

truth/ error: reducticeptual evaluception

experience-based evaluception

comprehension/ perplexity: combiceptual evaluception

I think I may be getting somewhere, after all. And, wow, a list of terms none of which is a coinage! (I mean aside from the names of my awarenesses.)

Posted in Aesthetics, Knowlecular Psychology | No Comments »

Dory L. Williams « POETICKS

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Entry 1699 — More Scraps

Wednesday, January 21st, 2015

Scrap #1: Yesterday’s mail included another chapbook from Mark Sonnenfeld, Check Check Done and Done, half of it devoted to poems by Mark and half to poems by Dory L. Williams. Good reading but one thing in it by Dory L. Williams really knocked me out: to me, it’s an epigram, because a statement of an opinion, so according to my taxonomy a work of informrature. Be that as it may, it’s as good an epigram as I’ve come across in years, if ever:

Covetness

If you want fame and money without real
achievement behind it, you’re not greedy enough.

Scrap #2: After I posted yesterday’s entry, I remembered a central feature of Iowa Workshop Poetry I’d intended to mention before any other, but then forgot: it’s the recognition of the potential of ordinary subject matter for tranfiguringly successful poetry–as in Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow,” and in all the best haiku. I am all for ordinary subject matter . . . but it can’t do much unless connected to archetypal matter one needs to be in one’s magniceptual awareness to be able to employ. Williams’s poem is, finally, not about a wheelbarrow anywhere near as much as it is about Beauty.

Lesson for poets: keep explicit abstracts and generalities out of your poems as Ezra tells you to, but build you poems on them as I tell you to. This, incidentally, you don’t necessarily have to consciously strive for, but you must be able to recognize when something worthily archetypal begins to show under your poem’s words so as to strengthen those words’ connection to it–and/or weaken the visibility of their path to it. The archetypal foundation of the best poems is much more often understood in their engagents’ marrow long before it’s dealt with the reasoning parts of their higher faculties, if it ever is. (Few poets have very large reducticeptual awarenesses or scienceptual awareness, which are where analysis is carried out.)

Possibly more important than the connection to the archetypal is the technique, the freshness of the technique employed to make that connection, which is usually metaphorical.

I’m just repeating old thoughts of mine, disorganizedly. Jus’ tryin’ to make it through another blog entry.
.

Posted in Dory L. Williams, Mainstream, Mark Sonnenfeld, Poetics, William Carlos Williams | No Comments »

Entry 366 — An Extra Value of Long Division Poem « POETICKS

Entry 366 — An Extra Value of Long Division Poem

I just realized something I should have realized long ago but didn’t: a huge virtue of the long division poem is that one can use it to indicate the value of its images to each other. In a long division poem I was working on last night, I suddenly saw how important the size of the remainder was. I’ve done other long division poems in which in which I consciously exploited the remainder’s small size, and I’ve often worried that my dividend might be smaller than my divisor or sub-dividend product or quotient, or even remainder. But I’ve never thought of the abstract aesthetic value of the characteristic. It’s something no other poem than a math poem can have, and that few math poems can have as clearly as a long division poem. So: hurray for me.

That’s all for today. I had hoped to post a new mathemaku, the one I sketched last night, and was very proud of. But a day of tennis then a long dental procedure–a tooth implant–did me in, and I started the day sluggish. And no longer think much of the poem.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 1st, 2011 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Mathematical Poetry, 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.

Jonathan Brannen « POETICKS

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Entry 1347 — Another Late Entry

Tuesday, January 21st, 2014

My absentmindedness is getting worse, it would seem, although it was pretty bad to begin with. Anyway, here is yesterday’s entry, just thrown together a day late. It’s some pages from Of Manywhere-at-Once that I don’t have time to comment on:

Lily of the Valley

Posted in Aesthetics, Discussion of a Poem, Jonathan Brannen, Poetics, Taxonomy, visual poetry, Visual Poetry Specimen | No Comments »

Entry 48 — Full Effectiveness in Poetry « POETICKS

Entry 48 — Full Effectiveness in Poetry

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.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 19th, 2009 at 10:47 PM and is filed under Bob Grumman, Cor van den Heuvel, Eugen Gomringer, infraverbal poetry, minimalist poetry, Poetics, visual poetry. 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 46 — Clues « POETICKS

Entry 46 — Clues

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!

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 12:00 AM and is filed under Bob Grumman, infraverbal poetry, Poetics, Robert Lax, Wallace Stevens. 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 1119 — Dead Poem « POETICKS

Entry 1119 — Dead Poem

Poem-in-progress:

I struggled with this thing most of yesterday–in my head. Just couldn’t get it right. I couldn’t choose between having the private eye and the Atlantic as its center. This morning, I kept foundering, finally giving up: hence the title of this entry. I tried to cheer myself up by think how good an instructional failure it was. Then something close to the above occurred to me that seemed to make some sense. I’m not yet satisfied with it. but may accept it into Mine Oeuvre as is.

Meanwhile, I like my private eye image. Haven’t been able to think what to do with it, though. (Thanks, Conrad, for your positive comment on it, by the way. You see the image just the way I do!)

Lensmart Contact Lense

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 13th, 2013 at 12:00 AM and is filed under From My Poetry Workshop, haiku, Mathematical Poetry Specimen, 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.

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