Today I’m reproducing #689 and #690 in full–because I think they’re pretty good discussion, but not too long.

21 December 2005: I’ve been thinking a little about varieties of infraverbality. (By “infraverbality,” the reader should remember, I mean concern with what goes on in poetry beneath the level of words; it is mainly intentional misspelling for poetic effect.) I originally listed four: fissional, fusional, microherent and alphaconceptual.

In the first, one or more words are spelled with spaces–e.g., Karl Kempton’s “g u i dance.” In the second, one or more words consist of a combination of two or more words, or near-words–e.g., Lewis Carroll’s “slithy,” which combines “sli(m)y” and “lithe.” “Portmanteu words” are what they’re usually called.

In microherent infraverablity, words are mangled almost beyond recognition for poetic effect–e.g., my own just-created “pjkoenn” to suggest a jumble with the potention to become a poem.

In alphaconceptual infraverbality, something is altered in one or more words, or near-words, to add a conceptual effect of poetic importance. It is so rare I consider the term probably superfluous. A prime example is Aram Saroyan’s, “lighght,” which depends for its main poetic effect on the concept of silent letters. Ed Conti’s “galaxyz” is another example–since it has to do with the concept of alphabetical ordering.

I realized my list was too short after Michael Rothenberg asked me to make a selection of certain kinds of infraverbal poems for his webzine. The poems were to be like Richard Kostelanetz’s “ghost-poems,” which are single words each of which contains a second single word in consecutive letters within it as “ghosts” contains “host.” I got the idea of repeating my standard ploy of doing an essay on such poems that would use so many specimens as to act as an anthology. But what to call Richard’s poems? In a sense, they are fusional in that they consist of more than one word–but extra words are not merged with them–they occur within them naturally. I consider them enough different from words like “slithy” to have their own category. It took me a while to give it a name: it’s “natural.” (How’s that for creative neologizing?)

A sixth category of infraverbality I feel would be helpful is anagrammatical–for texts with words that contain all their proper letters but are jumbled. It could be argued that they are merely a variety of microherent infraverbality, but I prefer to restrict microherence to texts that have wrong letters but are not necessarily out of order. I’ve seen examples of anagrammatical infraverbal poems. I think I’ve made a few myself. But I can’t rememember any. An obvious way to use anagrammatical material would be–Ah, I now remember that Cummings uses it famously in his grasshopper poem (where, starting with “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,” he goes in three spellings to “grasshopper”). No doubt that’s why I have come to want a separate category for it.

22 December 2005: Something that has always seemed indicative of the insularity of both formal poets and language poets is how little they steal from each other. I see no reason a strict sonnet couldn’t be written using langpo “missyntacticality” or misspellings (like “lighght”). In fact, E. E. Cummings made many langpoetic sonnets that had the right meter and rhymed. I don’t think any contemporary language poet has made any kind of formal poem using langpoetic devices. Nor has a formal poet used a langpoetic device in one of his poems, although the freeversers more and more are availing themselves of langpo tricks.

I thought of one exception: rewritten classic poems that are garbled in one way or another, e.g., my own silly, just-now-written “Shawl-eye crumbpair (the 2!) as under daze.”  It’s not uncommon for poets to use computer programs to do this.

One of my conclusions seems to hold: that formalist poets ignore the devices of language poetry, even though those devices could easily be used in their poetry without compromising the latter’s adherence to meter and other formal requirements.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 1:31 AM and is filed under E E Cummings, 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.

Today I’m reproducing #689 and #690 in full–because I think they’re pretty good discussion, but not too long.

21 December 2005: I’ve been thinking a little about varieties of infraverbality. (By “infraverbality,” the reader should remember, I mean concern with what goes on in poetry beneath the level of words; it is mainly intentional misspelling for poetic effect.) I originally listed four: fissional, fusional, microherent and alphaconceptual.

In the first, one or more words are spelled with spaces–e.g., Karl Kempton’s “g u i dance.” In the second, one or more words consist of a combination of two or more words, or near-words–e.g., Lewis Carroll’s “slithy,” which combines “sli(m)y” and “lithe.” “Portmanteu words” are what they’re usually called.

In microherent infraverablity, words are mangled almost beyond recognition for poetic effect–e.g., my own just-created “pjkoenn” to suggest a jumble with the potention to become a poem.

In alphaconceptual infraverbality, something is altered in one or more words, or near-words, to add a conceptual effect of poetic importance. It is so rare I consider the term probably superfluous. A prime example is Aram Saroyan’s, “lighght,” which depends for its main poetic effect on the concept of silent letters. Ed Conti’s “galaxyz” is another example–since it has to do with the concept of alphabetical ordering.

I realized my list was too short after Michael Rothenberg asked me to make a selection of certain kinds of infraverbal poems for his webzine. The poems were to be like Richard Kostelanetz’s “ghost-poems,” which are single words each of which contains a second single word in consecutive letters within it as “ghosts” contains “host.” I got the idea of repeating my standard ploy of doing an essay on such poems that would use so many specimens as to act as an anthology. But what to call Richard’s poems? In a sense, they are fusional in that they consist of more than one word–but extra words are not merged with them–they occur within them naturally. I consider them enough different from words like “slithy” to have their own category. It took me a while to give it a name: it’s “natural.” (How’s that for creative neologizing?)

A sixth category of infraverbality I feel would be helpful is anagrammatical–for texts with words that contain all their proper letters but are jumbled. It could be argued that they are merely a variety of microherent infraverbality, but I prefer to restrict microherence to texts that have wrong letters but are not necessarily out of order. I’ve seen examples of anagrammatical infraverbal poems. I think I’ve made a few myself. But I can’t rememember any. An obvious way to use anagrammatical material would be–Ah, I now remember that Cummings uses it famously in his grasshopper poem (where, starting with “r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r,” he goes in three spellings to “grasshopper”). No doubt that’s why I have come to want a separate category for it.

22 December 2005: Something that has always seemed indicative of the insularity of both formal poets and language poets is how little they steal from each other. I see no reason a strict sonnet couldn’t be written using langpo “missyntacticality” or misspellings (like “lighght”). In fact, E. E. Cummings made many langpoetic sonnets that had the right meter and rhymed. I don’t think any contemporary language poet has made any kind of formal poem using langpoetic devices. Nor has a formal poet used a langpoetic device in one of his poems, although the freeversers more and more are availing themselves of langpo tricks.

I thought of one exception: rewritten classic poems that are garbled in one way or another, e.g., my own silly, just-now-written “Shawl-eye crumbpair (the 2!) as under daze.”  It’s not uncommon for poets to use computer programs to do this.

One of my conclusions seems to hold: that formalist poets ignore the devices of language poetry, even though those devices could easily be used in their poetry without compromising the latter’s adherence to meter and other formal requirements.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 1:31 AM and is filed under E E Cummings, 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.