Comprepoetica Biographies — B « POETICKS

Comprepoetica Biographies — B

Maura Alia Bramkamp (BRAM camp)

Poet

(street address)  266 Elmwood Ave #307
(city&state)  Buffalo, NY 14222
(e.mail address)  [email protected]</p>
(affiliations/organizations)

National Writers Union, member

Italian American Writers Union, member
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Lifetime Subscriber

(publication credits)
The Buffalo News (essays)

Amazon.com Editorial Review: Welcome To My Planet: Where English is Sometimes Spoken, by Shannon Olson

ARTVOICE (Buffalo, NY)

Buffalo Spree (Buffalo, NY)
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal (San Francisco)
Switched-On-Gutenberg (Internet Seattle-based)
Exhibition (Bainbridge Island, WA)
The Woodstock Times (Woodstock,NY)

synapse (Seattle, WA)
convolvulus
Half Tones to Jubilee (Pensacola, FL)
Signals (Olympia, WA)
tight (Guerneville, CA)
Spillway (WA)

The Healing Woman (CA)
The Wise Woman (CA)
105 Magazine (New Paltz, NY)
POETALK (CA)
cups: a cafe journal (San Francisco, CA)
Arts Journal poems & interview (Poulsbo, WA)

Coffee House Quarterly (CO)
Higher Source (Bainbridge Island, WA)
And others . . .

(list of works)

CHAPBOOK
Resculpting (Paper Boat Press,1995)

ANTHOLOGIES
<i>This Far Together</i> (Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, 1995)
<i>Go Gently</i> (The Healing Woman, 1995)
<i>Bay Area Poets Coalition 1995 Anthology</i>
<i>Husky Voices</i> (Univ of WA, MFA Anthology, 1998)

(where written up)</p>
<i>Women&#8217;s Work</i> (Seattle,WA, 1995)
<i>Arts Journal</i> (Poulsbo, WA, 1996)
<i>The Healing Woman</i> (1996)
<i>Small Press Review</i> (Pick of the Month &#038; Review, 1996)

<i>synapse</i> (review, 1996)
<i>The Kitsap Herald</i> (1995)

(contemporary poets important to Bramkamp)
Charles Simic, Jana Harris, Billy Collins, Lynda Hull (deceased),
Seamus Heaney, Lynn Emmanuel, Carolyn Kizer,
Mark Doty, Raymond Carver, Nikki Finney,

Jane Kenyon, Ai, Gillian Conoley, Patti Smith

Larry Levis (deceased), Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Nancy Willard,
Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, Carol Ann Duffy,
Marlene Nourbese Philip &#038; many others

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Colette, Muriel Rukeyser, Paul Celan,
Rilke, Rimbaud, Edward Lear, Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop,

Samuel Beckett, Eugene O’Neil, W.H. Auden, Frank O’Hara
And many more . . .

(critics important to respondent)

Eavan Boland, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich
otherwise, not particularly interested in criticism. I think going through an MFA program ruined it for me.

(tastes in poetry)  I am most drawn to narrative, lyrical, and prose poetry. Yet, I read widely and try to sample styles outside my usual references.

(impression of contemporary poetry)  Ever-changing. Expanding, shouting, fighting amongst our many selves, loud, soft, chilling,consoling, alienating, inviting.

(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)
<i>Switched-On-Gutenberg</i> (Internet)
<i>The Cortland Review</i> (Internet)
<i>SketchRadio.com</i> (Internet)

<i>Small Press Review &#038; Small Magazine Review</i> (Dust Books)
<i>The Directory of Poetry Publishers</i> (Dust Books)
<i>Directory of Literary Magazines</i> (CLMP)
.

Michael Basinski

Poet

Basinski lives at 30 Colonial Avenue, Lancaster NY 14086; his
e.mail address is [email protected]; his phone number 716 645-2917

He was born 19 November 1979 in Lisbon.  He is 6 feet tall and weighs 165 pounds.  His eyes and hair are brown, his ethnic background Polish.  He got his Ph.D. at SUNY, Buffalo.  His occupation, says he, is working, his vocations, etc.  His characterizes himself a pagan in both religion and politics.  He claims not to enjoy anything in the arts besides poetry, or have any interest in sports.  He enjoys nothing in science or philosophy, either.

In answer to the <

Maura Alia Bramkamp (BRAM camp)

Poet

(street address)  266 Elmwood Ave #307
(city&#038;state)  Buffalo, NY 14222
(e.mail address)  [email protected]</p>
(affiliations/organizations)

National Writers Union, member

Italian American Writers Union, member
The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Lifetime Subscriber

(publication credits)
<i>The Buffalo News</i> (essays)
Amazon.com Editorial Review: <i>Welcome To My Planet: Where English is Sometimes
Spoken</i>, by Shannon Olson
<i>ARTVOICE</i> (Buffalo, NY)

Buffalo Spree (Buffalo, NY)
<i>The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal</i> (San Francisco)
<i>Switched-On-Gutenberg</i> (Internet Seattle-based)
<i>Exhibition</i> (Bainbridge Island, WA)
<i>The Woodstock Times</i> (Woodstock,NY)

<i>synapse</i> (Seattle, WA)
<i>convolvulus</i>
<i>Half Tones to Jubilee</i> (Pensacola, FL)
Signals (Olympia, WA)
tight (Guerneville, CA)
Spillway (WA)

The Healing Woman (CA)
The Wise Woman (CA)
105 Magazine (New Paltz, NY)
POETALK (CA)
<i>cups: a cafe journal</i> (San Francisco, CA)
<i>Arts Journal</i>poems &#038; interview (Poulsbo, WA)

<i>Coffee House Quarterly</i> (CO)
<i>Higher Source</i> (Bainbridge Island, WA)
And others&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;

(list of works)

CHAPBOOK
<i>Resculpting</i> (Paper Boat Press,1995)

ANTHOLOGIES
<i>This Far Together</i> (Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, 1995)
<i>Go Gently</i> (The Healing Woman, 1995)
<i>Bay Area Poets Coalition 1995 Anthology</i>
<i>Husky Voices</i> (Univ of WA, MFA Anthology, 1998)

(where written up)</p>
<i>Women&#8217;s Work</i> (Seattle,WA, 1995)
<i>Arts Journal</i> (Poulsbo, WA, 1996)
<i>The Healing Woman</i> (1996)
<i>Small Press Review</i> (Pick of the Month &#038; Review, 1996)

<i>synapse</i> (review, 1996)
<i>The Kitsap Herald</i> (1995)

(contemporary poets important to Bramkamp)
Charles Simic, Jana Harris, Billy Collins, Lynda Hull (deceased),
Seamus Heaney, Lynn Emmanuel, Carolyn Kizer,
Mark Doty, Raymond Carver, Nikki Finney,
Jane Kenyon, Ai, Gillian Conoley, Patti Smith

Larry Levis (deceased), Adrienne Rich, Carolyn Forche,
Yusef Komunyakaa, Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill, Nancy Willard,
Richard Hugo, Theodore Roethke, Carol Ann Duffy,
Marlene Nourbese Philip &#038; many others

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Colette, Muriel Rukeyser, Paul Celan,
Rilke, Rimbaud, Edward Lear, Sylvia Plath,
Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop,

Samuel Beckett, Eugene O&#8217;Neil, W.H. Auden, Frank O&#8217;Hara
And many more&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;.

(critics important to respondent)

Eavan Boland, bell hooks, Adrienne Rich&#8230;
otherwise, not particularly interested in criticism. I think going through an MFA program
ruined it for me.

(tastes in poetry)  I&#8217;m most drawn to narrative, lyrical, and prose poetry. Yet, I
read widely and try to sample styles outside my usual references.

(impression of contemporary poetry)  Ever-changing. Expanding, shouting, fighting
amongst our many selves, loud, soft, chilling,consoling, alienating &#038; inviting.

(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)
<i>Switched-On-Gutenberg</i> (Internet)
<i>The Cortland Review</i> (Internet)
<i>SketchRadio.com</i> (Internet)

<i>Small Press Review &#038; Small Magazine Review</i> (Dust Books)
<i>The Directory of Poetry Publishers</i> (Dust Books)
<i>Directory of Literary Magazines</i> (CLMP)
.

<b>Michael Basinski, Poet</b>

Basinski lives at 30 Colonial Avenue, Lancaster NY 14086; his
e.mail address is [email protected]; his phone number 716 645-2917

He was born 19 November 1979 in Lisbon.  He is 6 feet tall and weighs 165 pounds.  His
eyes and hair are brown, his ethnic background Polish.  He got his Ph.D. at SUNY,
Buffalo.  His occupation, says he, is working, his vocations, etc.  His characterizes himself
a pagan in both religion and politics.  He claims not to enjoy anything in the arts besides
poetry, or have any interest in sports.  He enjoys nothing in science or philosophy, either.
In answer to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey question that asks a respondent to name
the first poem that comes to his mind right then, he said, None.

Basinski has published in many periodicals including <i>First Offense, First Intensity,
Angle, Torque(Toronto), Kiosk, Essex Street, Washington Review, Chain, Boxkite,
Leopold Bloom, Taproot, Generator, Arras, Explosive Magazine, RIF/T, Yellow Silk,
Benzine, Sure, Another Chicago Magazine, Lyric&#038;, Mirage no.4(Period)ical, Lower
Limit Speech, Juxta, Wooden Head Review, Synaesthetic, Small Press Review</i>, and
other WEB and Email magazines.

His books include: <i>[Un-Nome]</i>, The Runaway Spoon Press;  <i>Idyll</i>, Juxta
Press; <i>Heebee-jeebies</i>, Meow Press; and many others.  He has been written up in
<i>Texture, Small Press Review, Taproot Reviews, Exile, Poetic Briefs</i>, etc.

He says that the poets of yesteryear important to him are Those before the coming of
circles.  His tastes in poetry?  Glitches and witches.  His impression of contemporary
poetry? Angels and beasts.

<b>David Beaudouin, Poet</b>

Beaudouin resides with his wife, family and Dawgs at 2840 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD
21218.  His e.mail address is [email protected], his phone number is 410-467-0600.  He
was born 3 February 1951 in Baltimore.

Beaudouin got his degree in 1975 from Johns Hopkins.  His religion is Quakerism, his
main political belief, Keep right except to pass.

His credits include the following chapbooks:
<i>Catenae,
American Night,
Human Nature</i> and <i>
Gig</i>.  He was last published on the Net in <i>Enterzone</i>.

Contemporary poets of importance to him are
Bernard Welt,
Terry Winch,
Kendra Kopelke,
Kim Carlin,
Jenmny Keith,
Ron Padgett and
Anselm Hollo.  Earlier poets of importance to him are

Frank O&#8217;Hara,
Charles Olson,
Joe Cardarelli, and
Elliott Coleman.

About contemporary poetry, he says, Well, it&#8217;s a mess, but I&#8217;m not
cleaning it up this time.

He enjoys going to the movies<i>any</i> movies.  He sums up his background in
philosophy and science with the following single sentence: When I was 10, I invented the
Buddha in my bedroom.

About his life, he says, Well, it seems to be moving along.
.
.
.

<b>Thomas Bell, Poet</b>

Bell lives at 2518 Wellington Pl., Murfreesboro, TN 37128.  His telephone number is
(615)
904-2374; his e.mail addresses are [email protected] and [email protected].
Born 18 February 1943 in Milwaukee, he is married and has two children.  He is right-
handed; about this he says, I write right and draw left.  poetry depends on where
i&#8217;m coming from.  i right write and draw to an inside straight.

He describes his religious denomination as democrat.  His occupation is

psychologist, for which he got the necessary degrees from the University of Wisconsin –
Milwaukee, Marquette, and the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology.  He is also
an
editor and librarian.  He&#8217;s had work published on
paper and on the Internet.

One contemporary poet who is especially important to him is Allen Davies, and he
considers William Carlos
Williams the most important poet of the past for him.  He names no critics he favors
but throws his support to those who are experimental experiential.

Click<a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem24.html”> here</a> to
read The Flowers, one of Bell&#8217;s poems.

Visit <A HREF=”http://www.public.usit.net/trbell”>Bell&#8217;s HomeSite</a> for
more of his poems.

<b>Ken Brandon, Poet</b>

Ken Brandona painter as well as a poet (actually, both combined, much of the time)was
born 10 February 1934 in Seattle, Washington.  He now lives with his wife, Maru Bruno
Flores, in Mexico.  His mailing address is La Danza 6, San Miguel de Allende, GTO.
37700 Mexico; his phone number is (Mexico)(415)-2-7098. A graduate of the University
of Washington in Seattle, he has three children: Ansel, Mateo and Dylan.

According to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey form he filled out,
Brandon makes his living under dim eyes passes the trail market.  His religion is Zenjoko,
his political affiliation good.  As for the poets who have influenced him,</p>

<pre>

the other poets
I throw in the fire
to get hot
</pre>
His hobbies are confidential.  In answer to the survey question about what techniques and
subject matter are of value to him in poetry, he says, Technique is self without trying for
any subject matter.  Regarding contemporary poetry, he says, As I think of it, it defines
itself automatically.

Brandon is a publisher who has put out 19 issues of the zine, <i>Iz Knot</i>, as of 1997.
His work has not been much written up.  My own stuff grips my interest, he says in
response to the query on the survey about what books he reads, or movies he goes to, and
so forth.  He describes his background in philosophy and science as normal.  As for the
sports he watches or participates in, information about that, he says, is confidential.

On life-in-general, Brandon says:</p>
<pre>

finding his path less taken
misled the dead gardner
for a while
</pre>
To view an untitled sample poem by Brandon, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem31.html”>here</a>.   </p>
<b>Janet Buck</b>

Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, humor, and
essays have appeared in <i>The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Melic Review, Sapphire
Magazine, The Recursive Angel, Southern Ocean Review, Lynx: Poetry from Bath,
Apples &#038; Oranges, Oranges &#038; Apples, The Rose &#038; Thorn, San
Francisco Salvo,
Poetry Super Highway, Poetik License, Mind Fire, Astrophysicist’s Tango

Partner
Speaks, Perihelion, Oracle, Poetry Motel, Feminista!, Calliope, The Beaded
Strand,
New Thought Journal, Medicinal Purposes, 2River View, Kimera, Free Cuisinart,
In
Motion, Athens City Times, Conspire, Idling, remark, BeeHive, Gravity,
AfterNoon, A
Writer’s Choice, Niederngasse, Shades of December, Maelstrom, The Oracular
Tree,

Red Booth Review, Poetry Heaven, Tintern Abbey, Arkham, hoursbecomedays, The
Artful Mind, Oatmeal &#038; Poetry, Black Rose Blooming, Apollo Online, Masquerade,
Pigs &#8216;n Poets, Savoy, The Poet&#8217;s Edge, Allegory, GreenCross, Online
Writer,
Poetry
Cafe, Oblique, Locust Magazine, The Poetry Kit, Pyrowords, Vortex, Ceteris
Paribus,
The Suisun Valley Review, Illya&#8217;s Honey, Fires of Autumn, Orbital Revolution,

A
Little Poetry, Dead Letters, King Log, Peshekee Review, The Green Tricycle,
Pogonip,
Chimeric, Poetry Repair Shop, 3:00 AM Magazine, Wired Art from Wired Hearts</i>,
and
hundreds of print journals and e-zines world-wide.  A print collection of
Janet’s poetry
entitled <i>Calamity’s Quilt</i> is soon to be published by Newton’s Baby Press.

For a sample of her poetry, A Writer&#8217;s Prayer, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem49.html”>here</a>.
<b>Bill Burmeister (BER my stir), Poet</b>

Burmeister resides with his wife, Diana, at 8018 Lakepointe Drive, Plantation, Fla 33322.
His
e.mail address is [email protected].  A Florida native of Armenian
(mother) and German (dad) descent, he was born 22 March 1961, in St. Petersburg.  He
works as an Electronics Engineer, having gotten his bachelor&#8217;s and
master&#8217;s in that field at the University of Central Florida.  His hobbies include
reading folklore, following baseball, listening to jazz/blues music, raising plants, amateur
astronomy, good wine and cigars, and collecting stamps.

He has several works in progress (as of late October 1997): poem/play (1 yr); first
chapbook of poems; translations of a play by the (deceased) Ecuadorian poet Gonzalo
Escudero and poems from Jorge Guillen&#8217;s <i>Cantico</i>.

Among the contemporary poets important to Burmeister are
John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, A. Child, Clark Coolidge, Henry Gould, Lyn Hejinian,
Simic, J. Tate, Revell, Paz, Yau, L.Scalapino, B.Hillman, S.Howe, D.Ignatow, M.Strand,
M.McClure, B.Guest, R.Bly . . .
Earlier poets important to him include  Homer, Dante A., Milton, Shakespeare, Blake,
Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Loy, Williams (WCW), Pound, Breton,
Char, Zukofsky, Oppenheim.Celan, Loy, Joyce, T.Roethke, Carroll, Jorge Guillen, Lorca,
Neruda, Gonzalo Escudero, Spicer, Duncan, Patchen, Antonio Machado, Dickinson,
Wallace Stevens, Unamuno, Gustavo Adolpho Bequer, Beckett, D.Thomas, Muriel
Rukuyser, Rilke, J.Taggart . . .

Among critics, he particularly values the work of Blanchot, Bernstein, Perloff, Sartre,
Bachelard and Paz.

About his tastes in poetry he says, I have a fairly open, generous approach to poetry,
especially in what comes to me from the past. For poetry in the present, I look for the
writing as thinking, metaphysical, meditative, stream of consciousness, chance, new
surrealism, playfulness with language, nonsense, energetic lively language, reinvented
language, and so on. I look for innovation, but not necessarily formal innovation. What I
like most, I get from the avante-garde, but contentment with the avante-garde is an
impossibility by definition.  The avante-garde is not the beginning and the end of a
particular kind of poetry, but rather only the beginning, and maybe not the best possible at
that since a new dialogue has been begun with all of literature and history, the past as well
as a future.

As for criticism, he says, I don&#8217;t consider myself a critic as such, although
naturally, I recognize the importance of maintaining a critical ability since this has been
and will continue to be an essential part of literature.  For me, taste, appeal, enjoyment,
and enthusiasm must be considered at the personal level as much as any aesthetic, but can
never be
forced upon another as aesthetic. I tend to believe that poetry
is a lot like religion in that a kind of faith is necessary to
hold the poem together.  It seems to me that the poem is a delicate, but patient entity that
outlives time-sensitive criticism (such as identity politics and other socio-political agendas
in the guise of criticism).  Good critical writing is that which goes before or after good
writing: it informs, enlightens, and expands readership rather than merely decodes and
justifies.

Outside his field, Burmeister enjoys reading novels by James (<i>The Wings of a
Dove</i>), Faulkner (<i>The Sound and the Fury</i>)  Kafka (<i>The Trial</i>)  Gunter
Grass (<i>Cat and Mouse, Tin Drum</i>), Thomas Mann (<i>The Magic Mountain</i>),
the science fiction of G.Bear, Simak, Asimov, and D.Brin (before he choked), and Plays
by Beckett (<i>Waiting for Godot, Krapp&#8217;s last tape</i>), Gonzalo Escudero
(<i>Parallelogram</i>), the short word plays of Gertrude Stein, and the plays of
Sheakespeare.  He collects books of black &#038; white photography (Weston, Man Ray,
Irina Ionesco) and films (Wells, The Marx Brothers, D.Lynch and more).  He is also
building a collection of original paintings by Latin American painters such as the
contemporary Ecuadorian Arauz.  He listens to John Cage, experimental jazz (A.Braxton
and others) and acid jazz, and classical music.

About his interests in science and philosophy, he says, i tend (right now anyway) to be
partial toward the Spanish philo. Jose Ortega y Gassett, J.P.Sartre, Kierkegaard, Derrida,
&#038; Kant.
For philosophy of science, I have tended toward Einstein, Newton, Asimov, and Faraday.
Burmeister was educated in hard sciences up through elementary modern physics (theory
of quantuum electrodynamics, statistical mechanics, etc.), in mathematics
up through essential calculus, linear operator theory, diffential equations and boundary
value problems (applied).

In answer to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey question about the present world situation,
he says, I&#8217;m wondering for how long we can survive this ludicrous zero-sum game
known as the &#8216;Global economy.&#8217;

For a sample of Bill Burmeister&#8217;s poetry (with a brief commentary on it by
Burmeister), click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/soho/cafe/1493/poem11.html”>here</a>.

<b>Harry Burrus, Poet/Publisher</b>

Burrus lives with his wife, Megan, at 1266 Fountain View, Houston, Texas 77057-2204.
His telephone number is (713) 784-2802; his e.mail address, [email protected]

He was born in Denver, reared in St. Louis.  Moved to Houston in June 1977.  He is six
feet one and weighs 175 pounds.  His parents

were university professors.  His father was the first Pro Football player with a PHD.  He
himself holds advanced degrees in Film, Dramatic Arts, and Poetryand is active as a
collagist, photographer, screenwriter and filmmaker as well as a poet and the publisher of
<i>O!!Zone</i>, which he describes as a
modest literary-art zine.

His poetry books include:  <i>I Do Not Sleep With Strangers, Confessions of a Tennis
Pro;
Bouquet; A Game of Rules; Without Feathers; For Deposit Only; the Jaguar
Porfolio</i>; and <i>Cartouche</i>.  He has also co-edited with Peter Gravis of Black Tie
Press,

<i>American Poetry Confronts the 1990&#8217;s</i>.

Burrus&#8217;s poetry, photographs, and collages have appeared in various publications
and
exhibitions in the US and abroad.

Says Burrus about making a living, I gain dinero via photography, scripts, workshops, and
various other artistic
pursuits (and years ago as a tennis pro).

About religion and politics/nationalism (and money), he finds that most people
cannot discuss without harboring ill-feeling and/or distrust for those who
possess views different from their own.  Hence, I tend not to engage in these
areas unless it is with those capable of out of body experiences.

He has difficulty specifically determining what poets and critics and other influences have
been important to him.  The aggregation is subtle and ongoing.  Travel, for sure, is a
primary player.  On the goat path and with the
aroma of donkey dung filling the surrounding air, I witness and pick up
juxtaposition, impact, resonance, and cultural unravelings.  On these

excursions I shoot a lot of film, make journal entries, and ambient sound
recordings and always use the material.  I never know how or when or in what
form the work will appear, but it eventually does pop up somewhere, either in
poems, art of some kind like a collage, or, perhaps, a story emerges.

I am drawn to openness, curiosity, and a willingness to take chances.  I like
strong personalities.  I favor high energy and experimentation.  The seduction
has been more from artists and filmmakers, rather than poets, although a few
poets have landed a stroke or two.  A few personalities that quickly come to

mind are: Ernst, Magritte, Man Ray, Buñuel, Resnais, Cartier-Bresson,
Schwitters, Godard, Bergman, Newton, Rausenberg, Matta, Isidore Ducasse,
Pessoa, Prevert, Bowles, Wenders, and Gysin.

I tend to appreciate those engaged in multiple activities and skilled in
different pursuits.  Peter Beard and Bruce Chatwin come to mind.  Journeymen.
I enjoy Henry Miller’s writing about watercolors more than his novels.  I
enjoy the independence of his watercolors.

I make extractions from movements (Dada, Surrealism, The Beats, etc.), pulling

on the dynamism or a particular tack  something I notice that I might employ
in my work.  I may utilize or value aspects of the thinking that goes into a
work more than the work itself.  Burroughs’ and Kerouac’s and Lawrence’s
ideas, for example.  I also value their dedication.

Previously I read a lot of poetry and poetry publications, but I became
disenchanted with the likes of APR and Poetry  too much sameness.  Even

newcomers and alternative journals, which broke away from the writing school
content and were, at first, exciting and fresh, even they slowly lost their
zest and started wearing that familiar uniform.  There is, however, still
energy in various zines and micro-presses, so, choice is out there.  One must
forage for the interesting  which is the same with people.

My engagement with international visual poets, mail artists, and photographers
provides visual stimulation, plus insights into other cultures.  Myriad

personalities have opened to me and my exchange with them I eagerly maintain.
I find correspondence or working on a collage or making a photograph more
intriguing than being a spectator of some sporting event.

Burrus cites three critics who write well about their topics:  Walter Pater, John Simon, and
Marvin Bell.

The last full collection of poetry Burrus has read (as of 15 November 1997 was
Bukowski&#8217;s <i>Betting on the Muse</i>; last

non-poetry book: <i>Breaking the Maya Code</i>, by Michael Coe.

Click <a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem18.html”>here</a> to see
Blue Mirror, a poem from Burrus&#8217;s <i>A Game of Rules</i>

(name of respondent)  Brandon
(pronunciation of respondent&#8217;s name)  Carpenter
(street address)  4616 S. Rusk
(city&#038;state)  Amarillo, Tx 79110

(e.mail address)  [email protected]
(phone number)  N/A
(po-type)  Poet/Critic
(affiliations/organizations)

Denver Word Affiliate
Vocal Velocity Records

(publication credits)

Poetry Cafe
Anvil
Poetry Shelter
Pauper.com
Sharptongue

(list of works)

A flame of the heart in the hands of Dread
Discombobulate the Dissemated

Muddy&#8217;s Cafe: Out of the Mud
Sharptongue

(contemporary poets important to respondent)  Ben Ohmart
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Baudlelaire
Rimbaud
Ginsberg

Kerouac

(tastes in poetry)

Avant-Garde
Beat

(description of criticism)  Pick out the truth of the piece, show the path to find these truths
and uplift the reader, author, editor and other critics.
(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)

Realpoetic

(sample of respondent&#8217;s poetry)  members.tripod.com/Carpenter_B</p>
<hr />
</body>
</html>
.

<b>Joel Chace, Poet</b>

(pronunciation of respondent&#8217;s name)  Chase
(street address)  300 E. Seminary St.

(city&#038;state)  Mercersburg, PA  17236
(e.mail address)  [email protected]
(phone number)  717-328-3824

(affiliations/organizations)

Poetry EditorAntietam Review and 5_Trope electronic
magazine.

(publication credits)

My poems have appeared or are forthcoming  in print journals and
magazines such as the following:  <i>The Seneca Review, The Connecticut
Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Poetry Motel,  No Exit,  Pembroke
Magazine, Crazy Horse, Kudos</i> (England), and <i>Porto-Franco</i> (Romania).  I

have also published work in Electronic Magazines such as the following:
<i>Ninth St. Labs, Recursive Angel, Highbeams, Switched-on-Gutenberg,
Kudzu, Pif, The Morpo Review, Snakeskin, Slumgullion, PotePoetZine,</i>
and <i>The Experioddicist</i>.

(list of works)

Northwoods Press, in 1984, published my collection of poems entitled
<i>The Harp Beyond the Wall</i>.  Persephone Press, in 1992, published my

second book, <i>Red Ghost</i>, which won the first Persephone Press Book Award
and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in that same year.  Big Easy
Press, in 1995, brought out a collection entitled <i>Court of Ass-Sizes</i>.
In June, 1997, came a full-length collection, <i>Twentieth Century
Deaths</i>, from Singular Speech Press.  <i>The Melancholy of Yorick</i>

(Birch Brook Press) and <i>maggnummappuss</i> (nominated for a 1998 Pushcart Prize)
appeared in 1998, and a  bi-lingual edition of my poems is being prepared in Romania.

(where written up)

<i>Slumgullion, Pif, Mind Fire, A Writer&#8217;s Choice, Next,
No Exit, Grab-a-Nickel, Small Press Review</i>.

(contemporary poets important to respondent)

Jake Berry, W.D. Snodgrass, Adrienne Rich,
Jack Foley, Robert Creeley.

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)

Jack Spicer, Thomas McGrath, Muriel Rukeyser,
Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman.

(critics important to respondent)

Jack Foley, Muriel Rukeyser,
Marjorie Perloff.

For two samples of Chace&#8217;s poetry, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem48.html”>here</a>.  He&#8217;d
appreciate any feedback on it that you&#8217;d care to e.mail him.

<b>Blaise Cirelli, Poet</b>
Cirelli was born 1 January 1952 in Philadelphia.  He describes himself as having a
Buddhist leaning and being Leftist Apolitical.  His publication credits include
<i>Agniezewska&#8217;s Diary, VIA, Zaum, Blind Donkey </i>and<i> Talus and
Scree</i>, and his
etry&#8217;s been written up in the San Louis Obispo Local  newspaper.  Contemporary
poets he admires include Michael Palmer,

Lyn Hejinian, Mei Mei Bruseenbugge (spelling?), Robert Hass, Ron Padgett and Robert
Pinsky.  He also admires the work of Ezra Pound,
Homer,
William Carlos Williams,
Loraine Niedecker,
Frank O&#8217;Hara,
Shelley,
Browning and
Tennyson.
Critics important to him are

Charles Altieri,
Helen Vendler,
Marjorie Perloff and
Forest Gander.

As a reader of poetry, he enjoys Experimental, Meditative Lyric poetryand <i>not</i>
Nature (Because how can you not like nature? I&#8217;d rather be in nature than read
about it).  His impression of the current scene is that There seem to be a lot of

diocre poets getting published.

Among his favorite books are: <i>The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
<i>and</i> The
Sorrows of Young Werther</i>.  He lists two favorite movies: <i>Black Robe</i> and
<i>Il Postino</i>.  The sculpture of Henry Moore is important to him.  About philosophy
he says, I wish I could understand Wittgenstein.  On life-in-general: Some peop

are born with failure, others have it thrust upon them.  His
Favorite name for a cat: Spot (if it has spots); Favorite food: organic turnips.

For a sample of Cirelli&#8217;s poetry click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem4.html”>here</a>.

<b>Dark Poet, Poet</b>

Dark Poet&#8217;s address is 555 this isn&#8217;t real, Punta Gorda FL 33982. His
e.mail address is [email protected], his phone
number,(941) 555-9992.

(affiliations/organizations)  NA
(publication credits)  NA
(list of works)  NA
(where written up)  Conspiracy boards all over
(contemporary poets important to respondent)  na
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)  Poe
(critics important to respondent)  na
(tastes in poetry)  na</p>

You can find a sample of Dark Poet&#8217;s work by clicking <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem45.html”>here</a>.  His attitude
toward getting feedback on it: Sure.  It&#8217;s a rough draft.

<b>Catherine Daly (DAY lee), Poet</b>

Daly lives at 533 South Alandele Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90036.
Her e.mail address is [email protected], and is affiliated with
UCLA Extension and various listservs.

So far (late 1998), Daly has gotten about 80 poems into print  but has not yet had a book
published.  She has the following
manuscripts sitting around her house, however: <i>Engine No. 9, Locket, Manners in the
Colony, Dark Night</i>, and <i>The Green Hotel</i>.

The work of Barbara Guest and some of that of Barbara Hillman
has been important to her, and she likes the work of Todd Baron, Spencer Selby, Karen
Volkman, Ann Lauterbach (her favorite poetry teacher), Janet Holmes, Jeanne Marie
Beaumontthe last three of
whom have been especially supportive of her efforts.

She considers the usual suspects among the poets of yesteryear
important to her, and she admires the criticism of Susan Howe.

About poetry she says, I expect a great deal of thought and feeling to be behind a poem,
and I tend to like poems which reflect ideas.  Because I studied religion and philosophy
and math, I am particularly sensitive to the misuse of many ideas commonly placed into
these categories.

She likes her poetic narration true, not fictional.

A critic as well as a poet, Daly prefers to express critically what (she feels) the poet
attempts vs. succeeds at doing.  For example, she says, Wallace Stevens mentioned that it
was really what he attempted that pleased him about his work, but that he never achieved
anything near that in his poetry.  For a sample
of her criticism, her first book review, an impression of contemporary poetry, can be
found in <i>American Letters &#038; Commentary</i>, 10th Anniversary issue.

She thinks the American Contemporary Poetry &#8217;scene&#8217; is very much like
the alternative music scene of the 80s, and perhaps what the truly alternative music scene
still is: an incredibly generous but fragmented variety of subgenres waiting for someone
like Kurt Cobain to come along and steal all of the riffs and jam them together on a
national stage.

See Daly&#8217;s web site for links to poems of hers that have been published online:

http://members.aol.com/cadaly.</p>

<b>Michel Delville (del VIL), Critic</b>

(pronunciation of respondent&#8217;s name)  [delvil]
Delville lives at Alllée du Beau Vivier 38, 4102 Seraing, Belgium.  His e.mail address is
[email protected]; his phone number is ++ 32 4 3374386.

He has two books coming out in 1998: <i>The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and
the Law of Genre</i> (Gainesville FL: UP of Florida), and <i>J. G. Ballard</i>
(Plymouth: Northcote House).

He considers the following contemporary poets of importance:
Henri Michaux, Ron Silliman, Vasko Popa,
Miroslav Holub, Francis Ponge, Madeline Gins,
Paul Nougé, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob, Pierre Alferi,

John Cage, Peter Redgrove and Rosmarie Waldrop.

As for poets of the past, he lists Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire,
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Milton and Dante as
the heavyweights for him.

He notes four critics as being important to him: Marjorie Perloff, Roland Barthes, Frank
Lentricchia and Gérard Genette.

<b>Debra Di Blasi, Poet</b>

(pronunciation of Di Blasi&#8217;s name)  dee BLAH-see
Di Blasi&#8217;s mailing address is 5932 Charlotte St., Kansas City, MO 64110, her
e.mail address is [email protected].

(affiliations/organizations)</p>
Missouri Arts Council  Literature Panelist

PEN Center USA West  Member
The Authors Guild, Inc.  Member
The Academy of American Poets  Associate Member
The Writers Place  Member
National League of American Pen Women, Westport, MO Branch

Member  Chair, Short Story Committee</p>
publication credits

BOOKS:
* <i>Drought &#038; Say What You Like</i>, novella, New Directions Books: New
York, NY.  March 1997   winner Thorpe Menn Book Award
* <i>Prayers of an Accidental Nature</i>, short story collection,  Coffee House Press:
Minneapolis, MN.  May 1999.

* Gass Pain, hypertext essay (Dalkey Archive Press/The Center for Book Culture,
www.centerforthebook.org)
*many published short fiction, articles, essays, reviews

list of works

FICTION
* <i>What the Body Requires</i> (formerly titled <i>Reprise: Reprisal</i>), novel (See
AWARDS)

* <i>The Fourth Book</i>, short story collection, in progress</p>
SHORT STORIES
*Czechoslovakian Rhapsody Sung To The Accompaniment Of Piano.  <i>The Iowa
Review</i>.  December 2000  (See  RADIO / AUDIO and PERFORMANCE /
INSTALLATION / THEATRE)
* Blue, Recollection, and Exiles.  <i>The Prague Review</i>.  Winter 2000

*Snapshots: A Geneology.  Show + Tell anthology of Kansas City writers and artists,
Potpourri Publications: Kansas City, MO.  June 2000
*The Buck.  Potpourri  literary journal.  Fall 1996
*Blind.  New Letters literary journal.  Spring 1996
*Drowning Hard. Cottonwood literary journal. 1995  anthologized in Moondance e-zine.
1997

*I Am Telling You Lies. Sou&#8217;wester literary journal.  1995
*Chairman of the Board.  TIWA (Themes Interpreted by Writers and Artists) literary and
visual arts magazine.  1993  (See RADIO / AUDIO)
*An Interview With My Husband.  New Delta Review. 1991  anthologized in Lovers:
Writings By Women, The Crossing Press. 1992. (See AWARDS)
*Delbert.  <i>AENE literary journal</i>.  1991

*The Season&#8217;s Condition.  Colorado-North Review literary journal.  1990  (See
FILM and RADIO / AUDIO)
*Where All Things Converge. Transfer literary journal.  1989</p>
NONFICTION
*<i>The Way Men Kiss</i>,  memoir, in progress

<i>Gass Pain</i>, hypertext,  The Center for Book Culture casebook on William H.
Gass&#8217;s The Tunnel, H.L. Hix, editor.  November 2000
(www.centerforbookculture.org)</p>
Essays
Millennium Garden: Paintings by Jim Sajovic.  Published in art catalog.  September 1999.
Out of the Garden, Into the Cave.  1997  (See AWARDS)
What Three Cheers Everywhere Provide.  Anthologized in Exposures: Essays By Missouri
Women,  Woods Colt Press: Kansas City, MO,  March 1997 (See AWARDS)</p>

Articles (for SOMA arts magazine: San Francisco, CA)
We&#8217;ve Got Joe Montana.  1994
I Am Writing To You From the Middle Of Nowhere. 1990
James Rosenquist:  Seeing/Not Seeing.  1990
Diamanda Galas:  Honesty Inside A Clenched Fist.  1989

Rising From the Ash Heap of Performance Art, Rinde Eckert Takes Off.  1988
Otto Hitzberger:  Cutting Away.  1987
Miró.  1987
Jonathan Barbieri:  Missiles Across the Border.  1987</p>
Art Reviews (for <i>The New Art Examiner</i>: Chicago, IL)

Jane Ashbury.  1985.
Marilyn Propp.  1984,</p>
SCREENPLAYS / FILM
Screenplays Produced</p>
<i>Drought</i>,  16mm, 28 min.  1998 (premiere)  1993 (written)
Based on the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.

Produced by Breathing Furniture Films/Lisa Moncure &#038; Michael Leen,
Screenplay by Debra Di Blasi, Lisa Moncure, Michael Leen,  Directed by Lisa Moncure,
Photography by Michael Leen,  Sound Design by Jim McKee/Earwax Productions,
Starring Jessika Cardinahl &#038; Jack Conley,  Production esign by Megan Ricks
&#038; John Matheson,  Editing by Jennifer Jean Cacavas,  Radio Program Music by
Allen Davis.</p>
SCREENINGS:
o       National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC,  November 2000
o       Ragtag Cinema:  Columbia, MO.  June 2000
o       Universe Elle, as part of the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival:  Cannes,
France.  May 2000

* Broadcast rights purchased by Independent Film Channel.  Premiere broadcast
November 23, 1999
* Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee:  Kansas City, MO.  April 1999 (see AWARDS)
o       Göteborg Sweden Film Festival:  Göteborg, Sweden.  Feb.  1999
o       Festival Internacional de Cine de Bilbao Spain:  Bilbao, Spain.   November 1998
o       Sao Paulo Mostra Internacional de Cinama:  Sao Paulo, Brazil.  October 1998
o       Figueira da Foz International Festival of Cinema:  Lisbon Portugal.  September 1998
(See AWARDS)
o       Webster University Film Series:  St. Louis, MO.  September 1999.
o       Sarajevo International Film Festival:  Sarajevo, Bosnia.  August 1998
o       Recontres Cinemágraphiques Franco-American D&#8217;Avignon, France:
Avignon, France. June 1998 (See AWARDS)

o       Charlotte Film Festival:  Charlotte, NC.  June 1998
o       Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival:  Toronto, Canada.  June 1998 (See
AWARDS)
o       New York/Avignon Film Festival:  New York, NY.  April-May 1998
o       New York Women&#8217;s Film Festival:  New York, NY.  April 1998
o       Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival:  Taos, NM.  April 1998 (See AWARDS)
o       American Film Institute Film Festival:  Los Angeles, CA. World premiere: October
1997 </p>
<i>The Season&#8217;s Condition</i> —  Super 8, 10 min.

Based on the short story of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.
Produced and directed by Lisa Moncure,  photography by Michael Leen.  </p>
SCREENINGS:
o       Toronto Film Festival:  Toronto, Canada.  1998
o       American Film Institute Film Festival:  Los Angeles, CA.  1995
o       Bay Area Film &#038; Video Poetry Festival:  San Francisco, CA.  1994

o       Culture Under Fire Film Festival:  Kansas City, MO.  1994</p>
Screenplays in Pre-Production
<i>My Father’s Farm</i>,  original short documentary in pre-production, based on the
essay Out of the Garden, Into the Cave by Debra Di Blasi.  Produced/written/directed by
Debra Di Blasi.
<i>Intruder</i>,  short screenplay in pre-production  screenplay by Debra Di Blasi.
Producer/director Edward Stencel.</p>
Screenplays Unproduced
The Hunger Winter, original feature in progress  co-written with historian Hal Wert

The Shortest Route Home,  original short screenplay
The Walking Wounded,  original feature-length screenplay (See AWARDS)
The Significance of Dreams, original short screenplay
Taming Wild Geese —  unproduced  original feature-length screenplay
Staring Into The Sun —  unproduced  original feature-length screenplay </p>
RADIO / AUDIO</p>
<i>Czechoslovakian Rhapsody</i>,  radio adaptation from the short story of the same
title.  Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE):  Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998

Kansas City Fiction Writers: Vol. 1 — short stories (The Season&#8217;s Condition and
Chairman of the Board) recorded for double CD set, limited edition  featuring Kansas City
fiction writers.  Art Radio:  Kansas City, MO.  Release date December 1998
Dreamless Dream,  radio adaptation from the short stories Blind, Stones, and  Our
Perversions.  Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation:  Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998

An Interview With My Husband —  chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi.  Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser,  directed by
Art Suskin,  stage management by Nancy Madsen,  premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO,  October 1997
Drought — radio adaptation of the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi,  produced
and adapted by YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Corporation), Helsinki, Finland o  broadcast
premiere May 1998</p>
PERFORMANCE / EXHIBITIONS / THEATRE</p>
Unbroken View,  multimedia installation  collaboration with visual artist Sharyn O’Mara
assisted by sound designer Chris Willits.  Premiere exhibition:  Edwin A. Ulrich Museum:
Wichita, KS.   November 2000-January 2001.  Traveling to Juniata Landscape Museum:
Juniata, Pennsylvania.  September 2001.
Czechoslovakian Rhapsody,  multimedia performance based on the short story of the same
title by Debra Di Blasi.  Written/directed/produced/performed by Debra Di Blasi.
Premiere Ragtag Cinema, June 2000
An Interview With My Husband —  chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi.  Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser,  directed by
Art Suskin,  stage management by Nancy Madsen,  premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO,  October 1997</p>
(where written up)</p>
<i>The New York Times Book Review
*Publishers Weekly

*Book Forum
*ForeWord
*In Print
*The Kansas City Star</i>
many, many others</p>
contemporary poets important to Di Blasi</p>
Louise Gluck
Larry Levis (deceased)
Billy Collins

H.L. Hix
Galway Kinnell
Mark Strand
Marilyn Hacker
many, many others
poets of yesteryear important to Di Blasi
Sylvia Plath
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats

many, many others
critics important to Di Blasi: Not particularly interested in criticism
tastes in poetry: As a fiction writer, I am most fond of narrative poetry, although I enjoy
anything brilliant that contains aural lyricism.  Content is important only in that it helps
illuminate a &#8216;truth&#8217; I already know or confronts me with one I have not yet
discovered.
impression of contemporary poetry: Wonderful.  The range of styles and voices is a
pleasure.
zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary:  Virtually every serious literary journal
that publishes poetry deserves to be on this list.

</i> survey question that asks a respondent to name
the first poem that comes to his mind right then, he said, None.

Basinski has published in many periodicals including <i>First Offense, First Intensity,
Angle, Torque(Toronto), Kiosk, Essex Street, Washington Review, Chain, Boxkite,
Leopold Bloom, Taproot, Generator, Arras, Explosive Magazine, RIF/T, Yellow Silk,
Benzine, Sure, Another Chicago Magazine, Lyric&#038;, Mirage no.4(Period)ical, Lower
Limit Speech, Juxta, Wooden Head Review, Synaesthetic, Small Press Review</i>, and
other WEB and Email magazines.

His books include: <i>[Un-Nome]</i>, The Runaway Spoon Press;  <i>Idyll</i>, Juxta
Press; <i>Heebee-jeebies</i>, Meow Press; and many others.  He has been written up in
<i>Texture, Small Press Review, Taproot Reviews, Exile, Poetic Briefs</i>, etc.

He says that the poets of yesteryear important to him are Those before the coming of
circles.  His tastes in poetry?  Glitches and witches.  His impression of contemporary
poetry? Angels and beasts.

<b>David Beaudouin, Poet</b>

Beaudouin resides with his wife, family and Dawgs at 2840 St. Paul St., Baltimore, MD
21218.  His e.mail address is [email protected], his phone number is 410-467-0600.  He
was born 3 February 1951 in Baltimore.

Beaudouin got his degree in 1975 from Johns Hopkins.  His religion is Quakerism, his
main political belief, Keep right except to pass.

His credits include the following chapbooks:
<i>Catenae,
American Night,
Human Nature</i> and <i>
Gig</i>.  He was last published on the Net in <i>Enterzone</i>.

Contemporary poets of importance to him are
Bernard Welt,
Terry Winch,
Kendra Kopelke,
Kim Carlin,
Jenmny Keith,
Ron Padgett and
Anselm Hollo.  Earlier poets of importance to him are

Frank O&#8217;Hara,
Charles Olson,
Joe Cardarelli, and
Elliott Coleman.

About contemporary poetry, he says, Well, it&#8217;s a mess, but I&#8217;m not
cleaning it up this time.

He enjoys going to the movies<i>any</i> movies.  He sums up his background in
philosophy and science with the following single sentence: When I was 10, I invented the
Buddha in my bedroom.

About his life, he says, Well, it seems to be moving along.
.
.
.

<b>Thomas Bell, Poet</b>

Bell lives at 2518 Wellington Pl., Murfreesboro, TN 37128.  His telephone number is
(615)
904-2374; his e.mail addresses are [email protected] and [email protected].
Born 18 February 1943 in Milwaukee, he is married and has two children.  He is right-
handed; about this he says, I write right and draw left.  poetry depends on where
i&#8217;m coming from.  i right write and draw to an inside straight.

He describes his religious denomination as democrat.  His occupation is

psychologist, for which he got the necessary degrees from the University of Wisconsin –
Milwaukee, Marquette, and the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology.  He is also
an
editor and librarian.  He&#8217;s had work published on
paper and on the Internet.

One contemporary poet who is especially important to him is Allen Davies, and he
considers William Carlos
Williams the most important poet of the past for him.  He names no critics he favors
but throws his support to those who are experimental experiential.

Click<a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem24.html”> here</a> to
read The Flowers, one of Bell&#8217;s poems.

Visit <A HREF=”http://www.public.usit.net/trbell”>Bell&#8217;s HomeSite</a> for
more of his poems.

<b>Ken Brandon, Poet</b>

Ken Brandona painter as well as a poet (actually, both combined, much of the time)was
born 10 February 1934 in Seattle, Washington.  He now lives with his wife, Maru Bruno
Flores, in Mexico.  His mailing address is La Danza 6, San Miguel de Allende, GTO.
37700 Mexico; his phone number is (Mexico)(415)-2-7098. A graduate of the University
of Washington in Seattle, he has three children: Ansel, Mateo and Dylan.

According to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey form he filled out,
Brandon makes his living under dim eyes passes the trail market.  His religion is Zenjoko,
his political affiliation good.  As for the poets who have influenced him,</p>

<pre>

the other poets
I throw in the fire
to get hot
</pre>
His hobbies are confidential.  In answer to the survey question about what techniques and
subject matter are of value to him in poetry, he says, Technique is self without trying for
any subject matter.  Regarding contemporary poetry, he says, As I think of it, it defines
itself automatically.

Brandon is a publisher who has put out 19 issues of the zine, <i>Iz Knot</i>, as of 1997.
His work has not been much written up.  My own stuff grips my interest, he says in
response to the query on the survey about what books he reads, or movies he goes to, and
so forth.  He describes his background in philosophy and science as normal.  As for the
sports he watches or participates in, information about that, he says, is confidential.

On life-in-general, Brandon says:</p>
<pre>

finding his path less taken
misled the dead gardner
for a while
</pre>
To view an untitled sample poem by Brandon, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem31.html”>here</a>.   </p>
<b>Janet Buck</b>

Buck teaches writing and literature at the college level. Her poetry, humor, and
essays have appeared in <i>The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Melic Review, Sapphire
Magazine, The Recursive Angel, Southern Ocean Review, Lynx: Poetry from Bath,
Apples &#038; Oranges, Oranges &#038; Apples, The Rose &#038; Thorn, San
Francisco Salvo,
Poetry Super Highway, Poetik License, Mind Fire, Astrophysicist’s Tango

Partner
Speaks, Perihelion, Oracle, Poetry Motel, Feminista!, Calliope, The Beaded
Strand,
New Thought Journal, Medicinal Purposes, 2River View, Kimera, Free Cuisinart,
In
Motion, Athens City Times, Conspire, Idling, remark, BeeHive, Gravity,
AfterNoon, A
Writer’s Choice, Niederngasse, Shades of December, Maelstrom, The Oracular
Tree,

Red Booth Review, Poetry Heaven, Tintern Abbey, Arkham, hoursbecomedays, The
Artful Mind, Oatmeal &#038; Poetry, Black Rose Blooming, Apollo Online, Masquerade,
Pigs &#8216;n Poets, Savoy, The Poet&#8217;s Edge, Allegory, GreenCross, Online
Writer,
Poetry
Cafe, Oblique, Locust Magazine, The Poetry Kit, Pyrowords, Vortex, Ceteris
Paribus,
The Suisun Valley Review, Illya&#8217;s Honey, Fires of Autumn, Orbital Revolution,

A
Little Poetry, Dead Letters, King Log, Peshekee Review, The Green Tricycle,
Pogonip,
Chimeric, Poetry Repair Shop, 3:00 AM Magazine, Wired Art from Wired Hearts</i>,
and
hundreds of print journals and e-zines world-wide.  A print collection of
Janet’s poetry
entitled <i>Calamity’s Quilt</i> is soon to be published by Newton’s Baby Press.

For a sample of her poetry, A Writer&#8217;s Prayer, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem49.html”>here</a>.
<b>Bill Burmeister (BER my stir), Poet</b>

Burmeister resides with his wife, Diana, at 8018 Lakepointe Drive, Plantation, Fla 33322.
His
e.mail address is [email protected].  A Florida native of Armenian
(mother) and German (dad) descent, he was born 22 March 1961, in St. Petersburg.  He
works as an Electronics Engineer, having gotten his bachelor&#8217;s and
master&#8217;s in that field at the University of Central Florida.  His hobbies include
reading folklore, following baseball, listening to jazz/blues music, raising plants, amateur
astronomy, good wine and cigars, and collecting stamps.

He has several works in progress (as of late October 1997): poem/play (1 yr); first
chapbook of poems; translations of a play by the (deceased) Ecuadorian poet Gonzalo
Escudero and poems from Jorge Guillen&#8217;s <i>Cantico</i>.

Among the contemporary poets important to Burmeister are
John Ashbery, Charles Bernstein, A. Child, Clark Coolidge, Henry Gould, Lyn Hejinian,
Simic, J. Tate, Revell, Paz, Yau, L.Scalapino, B.Hillman, S.Howe, D.Ignatow, M.Strand,
M.McClure, B.Guest, R.Bly . . .
Earlier poets important to him include  Homer, Dante A., Milton, Shakespeare, Blake,
Wordsworth, Dickinson, Rimbaud, Apollinaire, Loy, Williams (WCW), Pound, Breton,
Char, Zukofsky, Oppenheim.Celan, Loy, Joyce, T.Roethke, Carroll, Jorge Guillen, Lorca,
Neruda, Gonzalo Escudero, Spicer, Duncan, Patchen, Antonio Machado, Dickinson,
Wallace Stevens, Unamuno, Gustavo Adolpho Bequer, Beckett, D.Thomas, Muriel
Rukuyser, Rilke, J.Taggart . . .

Among critics, he particularly values the work of Blanchot, Bernstein, Perloff, Sartre,
Bachelard and Paz.

About his tastes in poetry he says, I have a fairly open, generous approach to poetry,
especially in what comes to me from the past. For poetry in the present, I look for the
writing as thinking, metaphysical, meditative, stream of consciousness, chance, new
surrealism, playfulness with language, nonsense, energetic lively language, reinvented
language, and so on. I look for innovation, but not necessarily formal innovation. What I
like most, I get from the avante-garde, but contentment with the avante-garde is an
impossibility by definition.  The avante-garde is not the beginning and the end of a
particular kind of poetry, but rather only the beginning, and maybe not the best possible at
that since a new dialogue has been begun with all of literature and history, the past as well
as a future.

As for criticism, he says, I don&#8217;t consider myself a critic as such, although
naturally, I recognize the importance of maintaining a critical ability since this has been
and will continue to be an essential part of literature.  For me, taste, appeal, enjoyment,
and enthusiasm must be considered at the personal level as much as any aesthetic, but can
never be
forced upon another as aesthetic. I tend to believe that poetry
is a lot like religion in that a kind of faith is necessary to
hold the poem together.  It seems to me that the poem is a delicate, but patient entity that
outlives time-sensitive criticism (such as identity politics and other socio-political agendas
in the guise of criticism).  Good critical writing is that which goes before or after good
writing: it informs, enlightens, and expands readership rather than merely decodes and
justifies.

Outside his field, Burmeister enjoys reading novels by James (<i>The Wings of a
Dove</i>), Faulkner (<i>The Sound and the Fury</i>)  Kafka (<i>The Trial</i>)  Gunter
Grass (<i>Cat and Mouse, Tin Drum</i>), Thomas Mann (<i>The Magic Mountain</i>),
the science fiction of G.Bear, Simak, Asimov, and D.Brin (before he choked), and Plays
by Beckett (<i>Waiting for Godot, Krapp&#8217;s last tape</i>), Gonzalo Escudero
(<i>Parallelogram</i>), the short word plays of Gertrude Stein, and the plays of
Sheakespeare.  He collects books of black &#038; white photography (Weston, Man Ray,
Irina Ionesco) and films (Wells, The Marx Brothers, D.Lynch and more).  He is also
building a collection of original paintings by Latin American painters such as the
contemporary Ecuadorian Arauz.  He listens to John Cage, experimental jazz (A.Braxton
and others) and acid jazz, and classical music.

About his interests in science and philosophy, he says, i tend (right now anyway) to be
partial toward the Spanish philo. Jose Ortega y Gassett, J.P.Sartre, Kierkegaard, Derrida,
&#038; Kant.
For philosophy of science, I have tended toward Einstein, Newton, Asimov, and Faraday.
Burmeister was educated in hard sciences up through elementary modern physics (theory
of quantuum electrodynamics, statistical mechanics, etc.), in mathematics
up through essential calculus, linear operator theory, diffential equations and boundary
value problems (applied).

In answer to the <i>Comprepoetica</i> survey question about the present world situation,
he says, I&#8217;m wondering for how long we can survive this ludicrous zero-sum game
known as the &#8216;Global economy.&#8217;

For a sample of Bill Burmeister&#8217;s poetry (with a brief commentary on it by
Burmeister), click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/soho/cafe/1493/poem11.html”>here</a>.

<b>Harry Burrus, Poet/Publisher</b>

Burrus lives with his wife, Megan, at 1266 Fountain View, Houston, Texas 77057-2204.
His telephone number is (713) 784-2802; his e.mail address, [email protected]

He was born in Denver, reared in St. Louis.  Moved to Houston in June 1977.  He is six
feet one and weighs 175 pounds.  His parents

were university professors.  His father was the first Pro Football player with a PHD.  He
himself holds advanced degrees in Film, Dramatic Arts, and Poetryand is active as a
collagist, photographer, screenwriter and filmmaker as well as a poet and the publisher of
<i>O!!Zone</i>, which he describes as a
modest literary-art zine.

His poetry books include:  <i>I Do Not Sleep With Strangers, Confessions of a Tennis
Pro;
Bouquet; A Game of Rules; Without Feathers; For Deposit Only; the Jaguar
Porfolio</i>; and <i>Cartouche</i>.  He has also co-edited with Peter Gravis of Black Tie
Press,

<i>American Poetry Confronts the 1990&#8217;s</i>.

Burrus&#8217;s poetry, photographs, and collages have appeared in various publications
and
exhibitions in the US and abroad.

Says Burrus about making a living, I gain dinero via photography, scripts, workshops, and
various other artistic
pursuits (and years ago as a tennis pro).

About religion and politics/nationalism (and money), he finds that most people
cannot discuss without harboring ill-feeling and/or distrust for those who
possess views different from their own.  Hence, I tend not to engage in these
areas unless it is with those capable of out of body experiences.

He has difficulty specifically determining what poets and critics and other influences have
been important to him.  The aggregation is subtle and ongoing.  Travel, for sure, is a
primary player.  On the goat path and with the
aroma of donkey dung filling the surrounding air, I witness and pick up
juxtaposition, impact, resonance, and cultural unravelings.  On these

excursions I shoot a lot of film, make journal entries, and ambient sound
recordings and always use the material.  I never know how or when or in what
form the work will appear, but it eventually does pop up somewhere, either in
poems, art of some kind like a collage, or, perhaps, a story emerges.

I am drawn to openness, curiosity, and a willingness to take chances.  I like
strong personalities.  I favor high energy and experimentation.  The seduction
has been more from artists and filmmakers, rather than poets, although a few
poets have landed a stroke or two.  A few personalities that quickly come to

mind are: Ernst, Magritte, Man Ray, Buñuel, Resnais, Cartier-Bresson,
Schwitters, Godard, Bergman, Newton, Rausenberg, Matta, Isidore Ducasse,
Pessoa, Prevert, Bowles, Wenders, and Gysin.

I tend to appreciate those engaged in multiple activities and skilled in
different pursuits.  Peter Beard and Bruce Chatwin come to mind.  Journeymen.
I enjoy Henry Miller’s writing about watercolors more than his novels.  I
enjoy the independence of his watercolors.

I make extractions from movements (Dada, Surrealism, The Beats, etc.), pulling

on the dynamism or a particular tack  something I notice that I might employ
in my work.  I may utilize or value aspects of the thinking that goes into a
work more than the work itself.  Burroughs’ and Kerouac’s and Lawrence’s
ideas, for example.  I also value their dedication.

Previously I read a lot of poetry and poetry publications, but I became
disenchanted with the likes of APR and Poetry  too much sameness.  Even

newcomers and alternative journals, which broke away from the writing school
content and were, at first, exciting and fresh, even they slowly lost their
zest and started wearing that familiar uniform.  There is, however, still
energy in various zines and micro-presses, so, choice is out there.  One must
forage for the interesting  which is the same with people.

My engagement with international visual poets, mail artists, and photographers
provides visual stimulation, plus insights into other cultures.  Myriad

personalities have opened to me and my exchange with them I eagerly maintain.
I find correspondence or working on a collage or making a photograph more
intriguing than being a spectator of some sporting event.

Burrus cites three critics who write well about their topics:  Walter Pater, John Simon, and
Marvin Bell.

The last full collection of poetry Burrus has read (as of 15 November 1997 was
Bukowski&#8217;s <i>Betting on the Muse</i>; last

non-poetry book: <i>Breaking the Maya Code</i>, by Michael Coe.

Click <a href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem18.html”>here</a> to see
Blue Mirror, a poem from Burrus&#8217;s <i>A Game of Rules</i>

(name of respondent)  Brandon
(pronunciation of respondent&#8217;s name)  Carpenter
(street address)  4616 S. Rusk
(city&#038;state)  Amarillo, Tx 79110

(e.mail address)  [email protected]
(phone number)  N/A
(po-type)  Poet/Critic
(affiliations/organizations)

Denver Word Affiliate
Vocal Velocity Records

(publication credits)

Poetry Cafe
Anvil
Poetry Shelter
Pauper.com
Sharptongue

(list of works)

A flame of the heart in the hands of Dread
Discombobulate the Dissemated

Muddy&#8217;s Cafe: Out of the Mud
Sharptongue

(contemporary poets important to respondent)  Ben Ohmart
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)
Baudlelaire
Rimbaud
Ginsberg

Kerouac

(tastes in poetry)

Avant-Garde
Beat

(description of criticism)  Pick out the truth of the piece, show the path to find these truths
and uplift the reader, author, editor and other critics.
(zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary)

Realpoetic

(sample of respondent&#8217;s poetry)  members.tripod.com/Carpenter_B</p>
<hr />
</body>
</html>
.

<b>Joel Chace, Poet</b>

(pronunciation of respondent&#8217;s name)  Chase
(street address)  300 E. Seminary St.

(city&#038;state)  Mercersburg, PA  17236
(e.mail address)  [email protected]
(phone number)  717-328-3824

(affiliations/organizations)

Poetry EditorAntietam Review and 5_Trope electronic
magazine.

(publication credits)

My poems have appeared or are forthcoming  in print journals and
magazines such as the following:  <i>The Seneca Review, The Connecticut
Poetry Review, Spinning Jenny, Poetry Motel,  No Exit,  Pembroke
Magazine, Crazy Horse, Kudos</i> (England), and <i>Porto-Franco</i> (Romania).  I

have also published work in Electronic Magazines such as the following:
<i>Ninth St. Labs, Recursive Angel, Highbeams, Switched-on-Gutenberg,
Kudzu, Pif, The Morpo Review, Snakeskin, Slumgullion, PotePoetZine,</i>
and <i>The Experioddicist</i>.

(list of works)

Northwoods Press, in 1984, published my collection of poems entitled
<i>The Harp Beyond the Wall</i>.  Persephone Press, in 1992, published my

second book, <i>Red Ghost</i>, which won the first Persephone Press Book Award
and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in that same year.  Big Easy
Press, in 1995, brought out a collection entitled <i>Court of Ass-Sizes</i>.
In June, 1997, came a full-length collection, <i>Twentieth Century
Deaths</i>, from Singular Speech Press.  <i>The Melancholy of Yorick</i>

(Birch Brook Press) and <i>maggnummappuss</i> (nominated for a 1998 Pushcart Prize)
appeared in 1998, and a  bi-lingual edition of my poems is being prepared in Romania.

(where written up)

<i>Slumgullion, Pif, Mind Fire, A Writer&#8217;s Choice, Next,
No Exit, Grab-a-Nickel, Small Press Review</i>.

(contemporary poets important to respondent)

Jake Berry, W.D. Snodgrass, Adrienne Rich,
Jack Foley, Robert Creeley.

(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)

Jack Spicer, Thomas McGrath, Muriel Rukeyser,
Wallace Stevens, Walt Whitman.

(critics important to respondent)

Jack Foley, Muriel Rukeyser,
Marjorie Perloff.

For two samples of Chace&#8217;s poetry, click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem48.html”>here</a>.  He&#8217;d
appreciate any feedback on it that you&#8217;d care to e.mail him.

<b>Blaise Cirelli, Poet</b>
Cirelli was born 1 January 1952 in Philadelphia.  He describes himself as having a
Buddhist leaning and being Leftist Apolitical.  His publication credits include
<i>Agniezewska&#8217;s Diary, VIA, Zaum, Blind Donkey </i>and<i> Talus and
Scree</i>, and his
etry&#8217;s been written up in the San Louis Obispo Local  newspaper.  Contemporary
poets he admires include Michael Palmer,

Lyn Hejinian, Mei Mei Bruseenbugge (spelling?), Robert Hass, Ron Padgett and Robert
Pinsky.  He also admires the work of Ezra Pound,
Homer,
William Carlos Williams,
Loraine Niedecker,
Frank O&#8217;Hara,
Shelley,
Browning and
Tennyson.
Critics important to him are

Charles Altieri,
Helen Vendler,
Marjorie Perloff and
Forest Gander.

As a reader of poetry, he enjoys Experimental, Meditative Lyric poetryand <i>not</i>
Nature (Because how can you not like nature? I&#8217;d rather be in nature than read
about it).  His impression of the current scene is that There seem to be a lot of

diocre poets getting published.

Among his favorite books are: <i>The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment
<i>and</i> The
Sorrows of Young Werther</i>.  He lists two favorite movies: <i>Black Robe</i> and
<i>Il Postino</i>.  The sculpture of Henry Moore is important to him.  About philosophy
he says, I wish I could understand Wittgenstein.  On life-in-general: Some peop

are born with failure, others have it thrust upon them.  His
Favorite name for a cat: Spot (if it has spots); Favorite food: organic turnips.

For a sample of Cirelli&#8217;s poetry click <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem4.html”>here</a>.

<b>Dark Poet, Poet</b>

Dark Poet&#8217;s address is 555 this isn&#8217;t real, Punta Gorda FL 33982. His
e.mail address is [email protected], his phone
number,(941) 555-9992.

(affiliations/organizations)  NA
(publication credits)  NA
(list of works)  NA
(where written up)  Conspiracy boards all over
(contemporary poets important to respondent)  na
(poets of yesteryear important to respondent)  Poe
(critics important to respondent)  na
(tastes in poetry)  na</p>

You can find a sample of Dark Poet&#8217;s work by clicking <a
href=”http://www.reocities.com/SoHo/Cafe/1493/poem45.html”>here</a>.  His attitude
toward getting feedback on it: Sure.  It&#8217;s a rough draft.

<b>Catherine Daly (DAY lee), Poet</b>

Daly lives at 533 South Alandele Avenue, Los Angeles CA 90036.
Her e.mail address is [email protected], and is affiliated with
UCLA Extension and various listservs.

So far (late 1998), Daly has gotten about 80 poems into print  but has not yet had a book
published.  She has the following
manuscripts sitting around her house, however: <i>Engine No. 9, Locket, Manners in the
Colony, Dark Night</i>, and <i>The Green Hotel</i>.

The work of Barbara Guest and some of that of Barbara Hillman
has been important to her, and she likes the work of Todd Baron, Spencer Selby, Karen
Volkman, Ann Lauterbach (her favorite poetry teacher), Janet Holmes, Jeanne Marie
Beaumontthe last three of
whom have been especially supportive of her efforts.

She considers the usual suspects among the poets of yesteryear
important to her, and she admires the criticism of Susan Howe.

About poetry she says, I expect a great deal of thought and feeling to be behind a poem,
and I tend to like poems which reflect ideas.  Because I studied religion and philosophy
and math, I am particularly sensitive to the misuse of many ideas commonly placed into
these categories.

She likes her poetic narration true, not fictional.

A critic as well as a poet, Daly prefers to express critically what (she feels) the poet
attempts vs. succeeds at doing.  For example, she says, Wallace Stevens mentioned that it
was really what he attempted that pleased him about his work, but that he never achieved
anything near that in his poetry.  For a sample
of her criticism, her first book review, an impression of contemporary poetry, can be
found in <i>American Letters &#038; Commentary</i>, 10th Anniversary issue.

She thinks the American Contemporary Poetry &#8217;scene&#8217; is very much like
the alternative music scene of the 80s, and perhaps what the truly alternative music scene
still is: an incredibly generous but fragmented variety of subgenres waiting for someone
like Kurt Cobain to come along and steal all of the riffs and jam them together on a
national stage.

See Daly&#8217;s web site for links to poems of hers that have been published online:

http://members.aol.com/cadaly.</p>

<b>Michel Delville (del VIL), Critic</b>

(pronunciation of respondent&#8217;s name)  [delvil]
Delville lives at Alllée du Beau Vivier 38, 4102 Seraing, Belgium.  His e.mail address is
[email protected]; his phone number is ++ 32 4 3374386.

He has two books coming out in 1998: <i>The American Prose Poem: Poetic Form and
the Law of Genre</i> (Gainesville FL: UP of Florida), and <i>J. G. Ballard</i>
(Plymouth: Northcote House).

He considers the following contemporary poets of importance:
Henri Michaux, Ron Silliman, Vasko Popa,
Miroslav Holub, Francis Ponge, Madeline Gins,
Paul Nougé, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob, Pierre Alferi,

John Cage, Peter Redgrove and Rosmarie Waldrop.

As for poets of the past, he lists Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Charles Baudelaire,
Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Sappho, Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Milton and Dante as
the heavyweights for him.

He notes four critics as being important to him: Marjorie Perloff, Roland Barthes, Frank
Lentricchia and Gérard Genette.

<b>Debra Di Blasi, Poet</b>

(pronunciation of Di Blasi&#8217;s name)  dee BLAH-see
Di Blasi&#8217;s mailing address is 5932 Charlotte St., Kansas City, MO 64110, her
e.mail address is [email protected].

(affiliations/organizations)</p>
Missouri Arts Council  Literature Panelist

PEN Center USA West  Member
The Authors Guild, Inc.  Member
The Academy of American Poets  Associate Member
The Writers Place  Member
National League of American Pen Women, Westport, MO Branch

Member  Chair, Short Story Committee</p>
publication credits

BOOKS:
* <i>Drought &#038; Say What You Like</i>, novella, New Directions Books: New
York, NY.  March 1997   winner Thorpe Menn Book Award
* <i>Prayers of an Accidental Nature</i>, short story collection,  Coffee House Press:
Minneapolis, MN.  May 1999.

* Gass Pain, hypertext essay (Dalkey Archive Press/The Center for Book Culture,
www.centerforthebook.org)
*many published short fiction, articles, essays, reviews

list of works

FICTION
* <i>What the Body Requires</i> (formerly titled <i>Reprise: Reprisal</i>), novel (See
AWARDS)

* <i>The Fourth Book</i>, short story collection, in progress</p>
SHORT STORIES
*Czechoslovakian Rhapsody Sung To The Accompaniment Of Piano.  <i>The Iowa
Review</i>.  December 2000  (See  RADIO / AUDIO and PERFORMANCE /
INSTALLATION / THEATRE)
* Blue, Recollection, and Exiles.  <i>The Prague Review</i>.  Winter 2000

*Snapshots: A Geneology.  Show + Tell anthology of Kansas City writers and artists,
Potpourri Publications: Kansas City, MO.  June 2000
*The Buck.  Potpourri  literary journal.  Fall 1996
*Blind.  New Letters literary journal.  Spring 1996
*Drowning Hard. Cottonwood literary journal. 1995  anthologized in Moondance e-zine.
1997

*I Am Telling You Lies. Sou&#8217;wester literary journal.  1995
*Chairman of the Board.  TIWA (Themes Interpreted by Writers and Artists) literary and
visual arts magazine.  1993  (See RADIO / AUDIO)
*An Interview With My Husband.  New Delta Review. 1991  anthologized in Lovers:
Writings By Women, The Crossing Press. 1992. (See AWARDS)
*Delbert.  <i>AENE literary journal</i>.  1991

*The Season&#8217;s Condition.  Colorado-North Review literary journal.  1990  (See
FILM and RADIO / AUDIO)
*Where All Things Converge. Transfer literary journal.  1989</p>
NONFICTION
*<i>The Way Men Kiss</i>,  memoir, in progress

<i>Gass Pain</i>, hypertext,  The Center for Book Culture casebook on William H.
Gass&#8217;s The Tunnel, H.L. Hix, editor.  November 2000
(www.centerforbookculture.org)</p>
Essays
Millennium Garden: Paintings by Jim Sajovic.  Published in art catalog.  September 1999.
Out of the Garden, Into the Cave.  1997  (See AWARDS)
What Three Cheers Everywhere Provide.  Anthologized in Exposures: Essays By Missouri
Women,  Woods Colt Press: Kansas City, MO,  March 1997 (See AWARDS)</p>

Articles (for SOMA arts magazine: San Francisco, CA)
We&#8217;ve Got Joe Montana.  1994
I Am Writing To You From the Middle Of Nowhere. 1990
James Rosenquist:  Seeing/Not Seeing.  1990
Diamanda Galas:  Honesty Inside A Clenched Fist.  1989

Rising From the Ash Heap of Performance Art, Rinde Eckert Takes Off.  1988
Otto Hitzberger:  Cutting Away.  1987
Miró.  1987
Jonathan Barbieri:  Missiles Across the Border.  1987</p>
Art Reviews (for <i>The New Art Examiner</i>: Chicago, IL)

Jane Ashbury.  1985.
Marilyn Propp.  1984,</p>
SCREENPLAYS / FILM
Screenplays Produced</p>
<i>Drought</i>,  16mm, 28 min.  1998 (premiere)  1993 (written)
Based on the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.

Produced by Breathing Furniture Films/Lisa Moncure &#038; Michael Leen,
Screenplay by Debra Di Blasi, Lisa Moncure, Michael Leen,  Directed by Lisa Moncure,
Photography by Michael Leen,  Sound Design by Jim McKee/Earwax Productions,
Starring Jessika Cardinahl &#038; Jack Conley,  Production esign by Megan Ricks
&#038; John Matheson,  Editing by Jennifer Jean Cacavas,  Radio Program Music by
Allen Davis.</p>
SCREENINGS:
o       National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC,  November 2000
o       Ragtag Cinema:  Columbia, MO.  June 2000
o       Universe Elle, as part of the 53rd Cannes International Film Festival:  Cannes,
France.  May 2000

* Broadcast rights purchased by Independent Film Channel.  Premiere broadcast
November 23, 1999
* Kansas City Filmmakers Jubilee:  Kansas City, MO.  April 1999 (see AWARDS)
o       Göteborg Sweden Film Festival:  Göteborg, Sweden.  Feb.  1999
o       Festival Internacional de Cine de Bilbao Spain:  Bilbao, Spain.   November 1998
o       Sao Paulo Mostra Internacional de Cinama:  Sao Paulo, Brazil.  October 1998
o       Figueira da Foz International Festival of Cinema:  Lisbon Portugal.  September 1998
(See AWARDS)
o       Webster University Film Series:  St. Louis, MO.  September 1999.
o       Sarajevo International Film Festival:  Sarajevo, Bosnia.  August 1998
o       Recontres Cinemágraphiques Franco-American D&#8217;Avignon, France:
Avignon, France. June 1998 (See AWARDS)

o       Charlotte Film Festival:  Charlotte, NC.  June 1998
o       Toronto Worldwide Short Film Festival:  Toronto, Canada.  June 1998 (See
AWARDS)
o       New York/Avignon Film Festival:  New York, NY.  April-May 1998
o       New York Women&#8217;s Film Festival:  New York, NY.  April 1998
o       Taos Talking Pictures Film Festival:  Taos, NM.  April 1998 (See AWARDS)
o       American Film Institute Film Festival:  Los Angeles, CA. World premiere: October
1997 </p>
<i>The Season&#8217;s Condition</i> —  Super 8, 10 min.

Based on the short story of the same title by Debra Di Blasi.
Produced and directed by Lisa Moncure,  photography by Michael Leen.  </p>
SCREENINGS:
o       Toronto Film Festival:  Toronto, Canada.  1998
o       American Film Institute Film Festival:  Los Angeles, CA.  1995
o       Bay Area Film &#038; Video Poetry Festival:  San Francisco, CA.  1994

o       Culture Under Fire Film Festival:  Kansas City, MO.  1994</p>
Screenplays in Pre-Production
<i>My Father’s Farm</i>,  original short documentary in pre-production, based on the
essay Out of the Garden, Into the Cave by Debra Di Blasi.  Produced/written/directed by
Debra Di Blasi.
<i>Intruder</i>,  short screenplay in pre-production  screenplay by Debra Di Blasi.
Producer/director Edward Stencel.</p>
Screenplays Unproduced
The Hunger Winter, original feature in progress  co-written with historian Hal Wert

The Shortest Route Home,  original short screenplay
The Walking Wounded,  original feature-length screenplay (See AWARDS)
The Significance of Dreams, original short screenplay
Taming Wild Geese —  unproduced  original feature-length screenplay
Staring Into The Sun —  unproduced  original feature-length screenplay </p>
RADIO / AUDIO</p>
<i>Czechoslovakian Rhapsody</i>,  radio adaptation from the short story of the same
title.  Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation (YLE):  Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998

Kansas City Fiction Writers: Vol. 1 — short stories (The Season&#8217;s Condition and
Chairman of the Board) recorded for double CD set, limited edition  featuring Kansas City
fiction writers.  Art Radio:  Kansas City, MO.  Release date December 1998
Dreamless Dream,  radio adaptation from the short stories Blind, Stones, and  Our
Perversions.  Produced by Finnish Broadcasting Corporation:  Helsinki, Finland.
Broadcast premiere October 1998

An Interview With My Husband —  chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi.  Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser,  directed by
Art Suskin,  stage management by Nancy Madsen,  premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO,  October 1997
Drought — radio adaptation of the novella of the same title by Debra Di Blasi,  produced
and adapted by YLE (Finnish Broadcasting Corporation), Helsinki, Finland o  broadcast
premiere May 1998</p>
PERFORMANCE / EXHIBITIONS / THEATRE</p>
Unbroken View,  multimedia installation  collaboration with visual artist Sharyn O’Mara
assisted by sound designer Chris Willits.  Premiere exhibition:  Edwin A. Ulrich Museum:
Wichita, KS.   November 2000-January 2001.  Traveling to Juniata Landscape Museum:
Juniata, Pennsylvania.  September 2001.
Czechoslovakian Rhapsody,  multimedia performance based on the short story of the same
title by Debra Di Blasi.  Written/directed/produced/performed by Debra Di Blasi.
Premiere Ragtag Cinema, June 2000
An Interview With My Husband —  chamber theatre adaptation from the short story of
the same title by Debra Di Blasi.  Produced and adapted by Stephen Booser,  directed by
Art Suskin,  stage management by Nancy Madsen,  premiere at The Writers Place, Kansas
City, MO,  October 1997</p>
(where written up)</p>
<i>The New York Times Book Review
*Publishers Weekly

*Book Forum
*ForeWord
*In Print
*The Kansas City Star</i>
many, many others</p>
contemporary poets important to Di Blasi</p>
Louise Gluck
Larry Levis (deceased)
Billy Collins

H.L. Hix
Galway Kinnell
Mark Strand
Marilyn Hacker
many, many others
poets of yesteryear important to Di Blasi
Sylvia Plath
T.S. Eliot
W.B. Yeats

many, many others
critics important to Di Blasi: Not particularly interested in criticism
tastes in poetry: As a fiction writer, I am most fond of narrative poetry, although I enjoy
anything brilliant that contains aural lyricism.  Content is important only in that it helps
illuminate a &#8216;truth&#8217; I already know or confronts me with one I have not yet
discovered.
impression of contemporary poetry: Wonderful.  The range of styles and voices is a
pleasure.
zines, etc., that ought to be listed in the dictionary:  Virtually every serious literary journal
that publishes poetry deserves to be on this list.

2 Responses to “Comprepoetica Biographies — B”

  1. That makes sense to me but does this?

    Between two evils always pick the one you haven’t tried. :)

  2. Bob Grumman says:

    Sorry, Stephanie, but I don’t know what “makes sense” to you. Your comment isn’t attached to any single entry, for some reason. But thanks for making it–if it isn’t spam, and it seems to clever to be that.

    –Bob

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Entry 1 — 28 July 2012 « POETICKS

Entry 1 — 28 July 2012

Welcome to the first installment of my M@h*(pOet)?ica Blog. I chose its title to give fair warning of the kind of . . . unusual material it will be concerned with, to wit: poetry whose mathematical elements are as important as its verbal elements, as in the following:

It’s from a series of ten equations its author, Scott Helmes, calls “Non-additive Postulations,” which first appeared in Ernest Robson and Jet Wimp’s anthology, Against Infinity (Primary Press, 1979). Later I will attempt to show that it makes sense. Sort of. For now I leave it for those courageous enough to stick with me as something to reflect upon. Suggested topics of reflection: how is it poetry? How is it mathematics? Why should anyone bother with it, regardless of what it is?

Now for something of mine–since I’m too self-enfatuated to let any chance for self-promotion to get past me without my taking full advantage of it. It’s “The Best Investigations,” an off-shoot of my still-going series of long divisions of “poetry.” I would defend its presence on the grounds that, as an example of the level of my immersion in mathematical poetry as a poet, it should provide a good idea of my qualifications to write about such poetry (or lack thereof). It also should reveal the range of matter such poetry can contain, such as symbols from music, and stolen images from canonical painters like Paul Klee and photographs from the Hubble–to the despair of some in the academy, I fear. (Note how I get back at them in this poem, though!)

My next specimen of the kind of poems my blog will mostly be about is another long division of mine, “Mathemaku No. 4A, Original Version”:

I generally use this, my very first long division poem, in lectures on mathematical poetry as what I hope is an easy-to-follow introduction to it. My friend Betsy Franco was inspired by it to make a bunch of most excellent poems like it for children, with illustrations by Steven Salerno, such as the following:

These are from Betsy’s Mathematickles (Simon & Schuster, 2003).

Then there’s this, by Karl Kempton, the arithmetic of which could not be more simple (look for the arrow near the bottom), but the full poetic complexity of could not be greater:

To finish off my little survey, here are three more I hope will indicate the variety of the poetry this blog will treat. The first is by Charlotte Baldridge, the second by Robert Stodola (both from Against Infinity), and the third by Kaz Maslanka:

Okay, now for a little more about me—about me and mathematical poetry, that is. In elementary school I was early tabbed “gifted,” meaning I was academically one in a hundred. At the time, the population of the United States was only around 150,000,000, so that meant only a million-and-a-half others were as smart (according to the tests) as I. But I did seem quicker to pick up arithmetic than my classmates, and even got enough interested in algebra in junior high to read ahead in my textbook—until other interests intervened. When I got to high school, Sputnik had the country’s leaders worried about our technological lead, so those considered gifted, like I, were bombarded with propaganda about the value of a career in science. Hence, I, and most of my friends, immediately opted for careers in the arts or humanities.

Alarmingly non-conformist, I went further, turning my back on college with the intention of becoming a self-taught Famous Writer, like Bernard Shaw, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. I never made it. Eventually, paid to go to college by the GI Bill and able to go free in California, where I’d been living long enough to qualify as a Californian, I broke my vow never to go to college. I went full-time to Valley Junior College in the San Fernando Valley for five years, even after I’d used up my GI Bill aid.

I’d always enjoyed math, and had read a few books about it for layman, one of which got me trying to overturn Georg Cantor’s different-sized infinities; it took me several years to finally concede that I couldn’t. (At one point I even wrote Isaac Asimov about it; he wrote a postcard back saying it wasn’t an area of expertise for him, so he could not deal with whatever “refutation” of Cantor I sent him.) I tried to disprove the non-Euclidean geometries, too, taking a long time to allow that I could not. I won’t say anything about my adventures with modern physics—except that I came to be a passionate advocate of the value of all the sciences in spite of what the sputnik hysteria did to me.

Meanwhile, I remained active as a creative writer, getting just about nowhere in all genres. My work was quite conventional except for the haiku I wrote influenced by the typographic techniques of E. E. Cummings. I got nothing published but some conventional haiku that I also wrote. The haiku and Cummings. Those two things were the key to my involvement with mathematical poetry. The haiku because it is the kind of poetry that comes closest to mathematics. I say that because it is supposed to be maximally objective, with a minimum of words, the best of them tending to be almost as condensed and elegant as an effective equation.

As for the poetry of Cummings, its visual elements, as in the famous one from his Tulip and Chimneys (1923), portraying Buffalo Bill,

were the first important step in the evolution of poetry of words only to concrete poetry, which was the first variety of what I call “plurexpressive poetry” for poetry that is significantly aesthetically expressive in more than one expressive modality (or “plurally expressive”), in this case the expressive language of words and the expressive language of graphics. A half century or so later we had many such mixed kinds of poetry, including mathematical poetry . . . and visiomathematical poetry, which employs three expressive modalities, some examples of which I’ve shown here.

Next up, if enough are interested, my examinations of various mathematical poems, including the ones on display here, and my attempts to answer the questions I earlier suggested as topics of reflection. Stay tuned.

Note: all the poems here are reproduced with the permission of their authors, most of them friends of mine, with the exception of the Cummings excerpt which I believe covered by fair use (but am also sure its publishers won’t mind my using for free, if it’s not yet in the public domain as I’ve gotten such permission from them for other poems by Cummings previously, and the three poems from Against Infinity, which I got permission for in an earlier essay of mine from that anthology’s editors, the publisher no long existing, so far as I know.

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Chapter Four « POETICKS

Chapter Four

THE REST OF THE EVIDENCE FOR SHAKESPEARE

That Will Shakespeare of Stratford was the only person of the right time and place to have the same name (or nearly the same name, if you want to be ridiculous) as Will Shakespeare the actor/poet is demonstrated by direct concrete and other evidence of (1) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and places of residence with the actor/poet (London and Stratford); (2) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and an association with the river Avon with the actor/poet; (3) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and date of death with the actor/poet;  (4) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and apparent level of formal learning with the actor/poet; (4) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and writing ability with the actor/poet; (5) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and acquaintances with the actor/poet; (6) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and a face with the actor/poet; (7) The Stratford man’s sharing both a name and literary ability with the actor/poet; (8) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and vocation with the actor/poet; (9) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and a social status with the actor/poet;and, most convincing of all, (10) the Stratford man’s sharing both a name and a Stratford monument with the actor/poet.

(1) places of residence

We know that the actor/poet William Shakespeare lived at least some of his life in London. William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon also spent part of his life in London.

To begin with, on 17 August 1608, Shakespeare of Stratford sued John Addenbrooke in the Court of Record at Stratford. In the court documents Shakespeare is described as “generosus, nuper in curia domini Jacobi, nunc regis Anglie” (gentleman, recently at the court of lord James, present king of England). This indicates that the Stratford man had been living in the judicial district of London, where the poet/actor Shakespeare certainly lived.

Much weaker as evidence but still evidence the Stratford Shakespeare resided at times in London is the fact that his brother Gilbert stood in for him in 1602 in a real estate transaction in which Gilbert received a deed (which Gilbert signed) to land Will had bought from John and William Combe—which suggests Will was out of town. Similarly weak evidence is the fact that Will bought London property, the Blackfriar’s Gatehouse, in 1613.

Slightly stronger but not direct evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford lived in London are the tax records of a William Shakespeare who lived there in the early 1600s. Much stronger evidence—direct concrete evidence, in fact—that he resided at some point in London is a William Shakespeare’s recorded testimony in the Mountjoy trial of 1612 in which he stated he was of Stratford-on-Avon, and that in 1604 he was a lodger with the Mountjoy family in London (and was probably living with them a year or two earlier since he declared he’d first known Mountjoy and his son-in-law—and former apprentice—Stephen Belott around 1602).

The fact that after the death of Shakespeare of Stratford, Stratford-on-Avon smoothly and fairly rapidly became well-known as a place worth visiting for lovers of the Shakespeare’s plays and poem and has, of course, remained so to this day, is a point in favor of the supposition that the Author and the Stratford man shared that town as a hometown. So are the many anecdotes about Shakespeare the poet such as those reported by Aubrey and Rowe that place him without comment in Stratford-upon-Avon, and explicitly state that he resided in London, as well (and corroborate much else in this list)—and Thomas Fuller’s giving his birthplace as Stratford in his book, Worthies, Warwickshire (1662), for which he may have begun collecting material as early as 1643. Conclusion: the Author and the Stratford man not only shared a name but places of residence.

(2) the river Avon

Next we have the fact that both the Stratford man and the actor/poet were associated with the river Avon, which flows through the former’s hometown (and is part of that town’s name). The following excerpt from Ben Jonson’s eulogy of Shakespeare, the actor/poet in the First Folio is pertinent:

          Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were            To see thee in our waters yet appeare,            And make those flights upon the bankes of Thames,            That so did take Eliza, and our James!

Anti-Stratfordians bring up other river Avons, or point to such trivia as a house on another part of Stratford’s Avon that Oxford briefly owned and probably lived in only briefly, if at all. Regardless of that, however, it is certain (unless Jonson was lying, and there’s no evidence of that) that the Stratford man and the Author shared not only a name but a significant connection to a river named the Avon.

(3) date of death

That Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon died at the same time as William Shakespere, the poet, is indicated by a poem William Basse wrote. It was first published in 1633; but over two dozen manuscript copies of it from before that time have come down to us, and since Ben Jonson responded to it in his elegy to Shakespeare of 1623, it’s clear that it was written between 1616, the year of the Stratford Shakespeare’s death (a fact confirmed by church records), and 1623. It is called, “On Mr. Wm. Shakespeare,” and on several manuscript copies and the printed version has “he dyed in Aprill 1616” as a sub-title:

          Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh            To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie            A little nearer Spenser to make room            For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.            To lodge all four in one bed make a shift            Until Doomsday, for hardly will a fifth            Betwixt this day and that by fate be slain            For whom your curtains may be drawn again.            If your precedency in death doth bar            A fourth place in your sacred sepulcher,            Under this carved marble of thine own            Sleep rare tragedian Shakespeare, sleep alone,            Thy unmolested peace, unshared cave,            Possess as lord not tenant of thy grave,            That unto us and others it may be            Honor hereafter to be laid by thee.

Note that, even if we ignore its sub-title, the poem states that Shakespeare died after Francis Beaumont, whose death we know to have occurred in March 1616. So, the poem is direct evidence not only that a William Shakespeare wrote the Oeuvre, but that this William Shakespeare was the one who died between March 1616 and whenever Jonson wrote his eulogy for the First Folio, which was published in 1623—because Jonson’s poem, in part, is clearly a response to Basse’s poem. So it is stronger evidence that the Stratford man was the actor/poet than his name on the many title-pages it was on. Moreover, the Basse poem was written by someone who was alive for the last thirty or so years of Shakespeare of Stratford’s life, so not necessarily mere hearsay evidence.

Several texts in the First Folio of 1623 confirm a death date for the poet of before that date.  Conclusion: the Author and the Stratford man shared not only a name but a date of death.

(4) unlearnedness

We have more than one piece of evidence indicating that the actor/poet and the Stratford man were similarly unlearned. One is a letter in verse to Ben Jonson by an “F. B.” whom most scholars take to be Francis Beaumont—because Beaumont wrote another well-known verse letter to Jonson and the verse fits him in other ways. Exactly who wrote it is immaterial, however; all that counts is that some contemporary of Jonson’s wrote Jonson about Shakespeare, the actor/poet (in 1615). F. B. seems to say that Shakespeare’s best lines are without scholarship, and indicate “how far sometimes a mortal man may go/ by the dim light of Nature.” It is quite straightforward, but—being Jacobean (and a poem)—it also has its confusing quirks, so it has been tortured out of its most obvious meaning by the anti-Stratfordians, most notably our old friend Charlton Ogburn. Here is the passage in totum:

                    Here I would let slip            (If I had any in me) scholarship,            And from all learning keep these lines as clear            as Shakespeare’s best are, which our heirs shall hear            Preachers apt to their auditors to show            how far sometimes a mortal man may go            by the dim light of Nature.

According to Ogburn, “it is not that Shakespeare shows how far a man without learning may go by the dim light of nature. Beaumont would have had no reason to insert the line (about the Preachers) if it were. He was saying that this is something posterity is going to hear from preachers . . .” Misinformed or lying preachers, that is. When Milward Martin called Ogburn’s take a strained reading unsupported by any evidence, Ogburn was so confident of the plausibility of his reading that he responded with the claim that Martin “never attempted to tell us wherein my reading of F. B. was in error and what other reading was possible.” He was right: Martin had not bothered to do that.

It cannot be said that Ogburn’s reading is in error; it is merely implausible. There is nothing in the text to indicate that F. B. was abruptly saying something snide about preachers or critics of the future. Furthermore, F.B. had just gotten through saying that Shakespeare’s best lines were free from learning; would he have then gone on immediately to say that preachers would repeat his view in the future and, in doing so, would be lying? I’m afraid that doesn’t compute at all for me.

As for a better possible reading, that’s easy for anyone taking the passage straight. F. B. says that he would like to make his own lines as free from academicism (“learning”) as the best of Shakespeare’s were. It is possible that F.B. considered all the rest of Shakespeare’s lines scholarly but the most direct interpretation would be that he thought Shakespeare quite terrific for writing great lines that were unencumbered by learning, but that he couldn’t claim that all of Shakespeare was without academic affectations (since it wasn’t), so he slipped in the modifier, “best.” He goes on to say that posterity will hear speakers who are right for the task show them what great things can be achieved by a man who is guided only by nature (which is not easy to follow, being the equivalent of a dim light).

Jonson’s famous reference to Shakespeare’s “small Latin and lesse Greek” corroborates F. B. Surely it confirms the notion that Shakespeare was no great scholar. Moreover, it is by a man with a reputation for honesty who would surely have known the Stratford man (even if he had merely been a player); hence, it would seem to be hard to pass off. The anti-Stratfordians must contest it if their side is to have any chance at all, however, so they have attacked it in various ways. The simplest, and least persuasive, has been simply to label the whole thing a lie that Jonson wrote because paid to do so. The problem with this is that there is no evidence whatever for it. Furthermore, what Jonson later in life wrote about Shakespeare in his journal tends to confirm that Jonson thought him lacking in learned virtues. Was he paid to repeat his “lies” in his personal journal more than 15 years after the First Folio was published, twenty after Shakespeare died, and over thirty after Oxford died? It doesn’t seem likely.

That Jonson wrote the eulogy in good faith but had been fooled by the plot is a second possibility—but this would rob the anti-Stratfordians of their preposterous argument that every writer in London knew who really wrote the plays and so did not comment in print on the non-writing Stratford man’s death, as they would havee to have had he been the True Author. It would also seem hard to believe, Jonson being so clever, and so in touch with both the literati and actors and other theatre people of his time. So the shrewdest anti-Stratfordians, Ogburn among them, have decided that Jonson did not lie in the eulogy, but was merely devious. When referring to “Shakespeare” in his eulogy,  he was of course referring only to the man who wrote under that name, not to the bumpkin from Stratford.

Ogburn claimed that when Jonson wrote of Shakespeare, “And though thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek,/ From thence to honour thee, I would not seek/ For names; but call forth thund’ring AEschilus,/ Euripides, and Sophocles to us,/ Pacuvius, Accius, him of Cordova dead,/ To life again, to hear they buskin tread,/ And shake a Stage,” and so on, what he meant was not “And although thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek,” but “even if” or “even supposing that” “thou hadst small Latin, and less Greek!” Proof of this for Ogburn is the word “would” instead of “will” in the phrase, “I would not seek.” If Jonson had been saying that Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek, he would have gone on to say, “I will not seek.” Instead he employed the conditional mood of the verb, “shall,” which is “would.”

To support his position, Ogburn drags in C. M. Ingleby, an obscure scholar who drew attention over a hundred years ago to the fact that the “hadst” in the passage is in the subjunctive mood. Ingleby has been ignored by orthodox scholars, according to Ogburn—because, of course, they can’t refute him. He is right: they can’t. But there is no need to. If one backs up to a point in Jonson’s poem that begins four lines prior to the passage Ogburn quotes out of context, one will see the following: “For, if I thought my judgement were of years,/ I should commit thee surely with thy peers,/ And tell, how far thou didst our Lily out-shine,/ Or sporting Kid, or Marlowes mighty line./ And though thou hadst small Latine, and lesse Greeke,/ From thence to honor thee, I would not seek,” and so forth. The “would” is there because the subjunctive (or conditional) mood was established by the “if” of “For, if I thought.” (my italics)

As for “hadst,” according to my Oxford Unabridged, it was used in Shakespeare’s time for the second person indicative (in the past tense). Whether it might also have been used for the subjunctive case, I have not been able to determine, but don’t think it worth the time to investigate further since it is so obviously being used here for the second person indicative, as is the “didst” (certainly not in any conditional mood) in the line about Shakespeare’s out-shining Lily, Kid and Marlowe.

Now all this does not conclusively refute Ogburn: “though” could still have meant “even if.” There are a number of other arguments against this. One is that the idea that even though Shakespeare had little first-hand familiarity with the language of Rome and Greece, it would not be amiss for a poet to go to those places to find writers to compare him with is a much more natural and smooth idea than the rather awkward idea that even if Shakespeare had not been the Latin and Greek scholar he was, it would still not be amiss to compare him to Aeschylus, et al. And if Jonson, a highly competent writer, wanted to say the latter, why would he have written, “and though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek” meaning “and even if thou hadst small Latin and less Greek” Jonson would still compare thim with the best of the Roman and Greek playwrights when he could have written “and though thou hadst no Latin and no Greek” to mean, “and even if thou hadst no Latin and no Greek” Jonson would still compare thim with the best of the Roman and Greek playwrights?

The second version is much more dramatic, a contrast of black and white. The first is a contrast of gray and white, like saying, “Even if you were almost a midget,” I’d still consider you a giant,” instead of “Even if you were a midget, I’d still consider you a giant.”

Conclusion, when he wrote “and though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek,” Jonson meant what everyone who read his eulogy for over two centuries thought he meant: “even though you had small Latin and less Greek” ,Jonson would still compare him with the best of the Roman and Greek playwrights. Jonson, I suppose I should add, could not in this case have written the more dramatic “though thou hadst no Latin and no Greek” without sacrificing accuracy, Shakespeare clearly having had some Latin, and possibly a little Greek.

Aside from all that, it seems so like Jonson to sneak in a slight aspersion on a rival, that it’s hard to believe he wasn’t scoring Shakespeare for lacking a knowledge of Latin and Greek comparable to Jonson’s–while making a rhetorically deft use of contrast.

Moreover, it is not plausible that Jonson would be making the point that Shakespeare was a superior scholar, a point made by no other contemporary of Shakespeare’s; indeed, in the 1640 folio of Shakespeare’s works Leonard Digges went so far as to say of Shakespeare that “Nature onely helpt him, for looke thorow/ This whole Booke, thou shalt find he did not borrow,/ One phrase from Greekes, nor Latines imitate” in a poem that begins, “Poets are borne not made,” something with which Thomas Fuller explicitly agreed in Worthies, Warwickshire, where he said Shakespeare’s “learning was very little.” Dryden in 1668 said of him that, “those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there.”

To this day, in fact, almost no reputable scholar believes Shakespeare had extensive formal academic training of any kind; the consensus is that he had a fair grasp of Latin and, perhaps, a smattering of Greek, but nothing like the amount Jonson, or (probably) Oxford, had.

One last item indicating that the poet Shakespeare’s learning was not great is the testimony of the Will Kempe character in the third of the Parnassus plays. As previously indicated, he says: “Few of the vniuersity men pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ovid, and that writer Metamorphoses, and talke too much of Proserpina & Iuppiter. Why heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe . . .” which, of course, suggests that the stage Kempe, for one, did not consider Shakespeare learned. The conclusion is hard to escape: the actor/poet and the Stratford man shared not only a name but a (relatively low) level of formal learning.

(5) acquaintances

The hard evidence for the Stratford man’s sharing acquaintances with the actor/poet is not vast, but it exists. For one thing, there is the Blackfriar’s Gatehouse in London previously mentioned which the Stratford man bought in 1613. Acting as trustee for the buyer, “William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon” was “John Hemmyng” (also spelled “Hemming” on the same page of the deed, which nonetheless does not suggest that two men of similar names were involved). Heminges is described as a gentleman of London (which would make him pretty surely the actor even if the property’s being very near the Blackfriar’s Theatre, where both Shakespeare the actor and Heminges the actor performed, had not already done that). The property was later disposed of in the Stratford Shakespeare’s will. So it is hard evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford and Shakespeare the actor/poet shared at least one acquaintance.

That Richard Field, of Stratford, published the poet’s narrative poems, and another book containing a poem of his, is good circumstantial evidence that Field and the poet knew one another. Shakespeare (the poet) has Imogene refer to a “Richard Du Champ” in Cymbeline when asked to name her master, who is fictitious. Any name would have done, but Shakespeare seems to make a little joke on Field with the one he chose.

We have no hard evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford knew Field, but it would be strange if he had not since Field was only two or three years older than Shakespeare, was of a bookish bent (as Shakespeare, even if he’d only been an actor, would likely have been), and lived with him in a town of only 1,500 to 2,000 people. Besides that, we have a record that indicates that Shakespeare’s father appraised the inventory of the will of Richard’s father sometime around 1590.

Remember, too, that all the children of the town who went to school went to the same one, and did their lessons in the same room, regardless of their ages; and all the people of the town went to the same church, and were required by law to go to it every Sunday, though some paid fines rather than do so. It is therefore difficult to believe Richard and Will did not know each other.

Then, there is the will of William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon. The will records a bequest of Shakespeare’s “to my ffellowes John Hemynge Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell xxvj s viij d A peece to buy them Ringes.” Heminges, Burbage, and Condell had been fellow actors in the Lord Chamberlain’s and the King’s Men with the actor/poet, William Shakespeare. Conclusion: the actor/poet and the Stratford man shared not only a name but acquaintances.

(6) a face

Oddly enough, I may be among the first, if not the first, to point out that among the best pieces of evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon was Shakespeare, the poet, are the Droeshout engraving in the First Folio, which Ben Jonson affirms is a good likeness of Shakespeare, the poet, and the bust of Shakespeare that is part of the Stratford monument to him. Discussing these in his classic study, “Shakespeare’s Portraiture,” M. H. Spielmann says, “The bust, of course, professes to show what the Poet looked like when he had put on flesh and bobbed his hair; yet in spite of the fact that adipose tissue has rounded forms and filled up hollows, broadened masses and generally increased dimensions — we recognize that the perpendicular forehead and the shape of the skull are very much the same in both; and we further observe that whereas the Droeshout Print shows us chiefly the width of the forehead across the temples, the full face of the bust gives us the shape of the head farther back, across where the ears are set on…. When all is said, the outstanding fact remains — that the forms of the skull, with its perpendicular rise of forehead, correspond with those of the Stratford effigy; and this — the formation of the skull — is the definitive test of all the portraits. The Droeshout and the sculpted effigy show the skull of the same man, who, in the engraving, is some twenty years or so younger than him of the bust” (in Spielmann et al., Studies in the First Folio, 1924: London: Oxford UP, pp. 26, 33).

So, the hard evidence of the Droeshout depiction directly provides a likeness of Shakespeare the actor/poet while the hard evidence of the monument directly provides an effectually identical likeness of Shakespeare the Stratford home-owner; ergo, the Stratford man and the actor/poet not only shared a name but a face.

I might add that the Droeshout engraving must, from almost any point of view, be an authentic portrait of the Stratford man. It would not make sense for it to be of some other known man, such as Oxford, since the whole point of the First Folio would surely have to be to make it seem that the Stratford man wrote the Oeuvre. Why say he did, and put a picture of Oxford or Marlowe in his collected works? It would also make little sense to put a picture in the First Folio that looked nothing like the Stratford man. What would be the point? And it would surely generate talk, or the conspirators would have to worry that it would. They could easily have not had any author’s picture.

There may have been pictures of the poet Shakespeare in circulation during his lifetime, too, since one of the Parnassus plays mentions a character who keeps one under his pillow. Since this could not likely have been of anyone but the Stratford man for the reasons that the Droeshout portrait could not likely have been, it would be further evidence that the Stratford man was taken to be Shakespeare the actor/poet.

(7) literary ability

That the two Shakespeares, the Stratford man and the poet, shared literary ability is indicated by the monument put up to Shakespeare between his death and the 1623 publication of the First Folio. It shows a plumpish man in his fifties from the waist up. He is holding a pen with one hand, which rests on a cushion; his other hand rests on a piece of paper, likewise on the cushion. Gheerart Janssen, son of Gheerart Janssen the Elder, who had a stonemason’s yard in Southwark, near the Globe Theatre, was the sculptor responsible for the monument. According to Peter Levi (in The Life and Times of William Shakespeare), Janssen based it on a 1615 monument his team had done of the antiquarian, John Stowe—the posture of the two writers is similar, but while Shakespeare gazes ahead confidently, Stowe broods, like a scholar. The same team was responsible for the monument to Shakespeare’s neighbor, John Combe, which was executed a few years before Shakespeare’s death, and placed in the same church as his.

The inscription on the monument has the following:

          IVDICIO PYLEUM, GENIO SOCRATEM, ARTE MARONEM            TERRA TEGIT, POPULUS MAERIT, OLYMPUS HABET.              STAY PASSENGER WHY GOEST THOU BY SO FAST            READ IF THOU CANST, WHOM ENVIOUS DEATH HATH PLAST            WITHIN THIS MONVMENT SHAKSPEARE WITH WHOME            QUICK NATURE DIDE WHOSE NAME DOTH DECK YE TOMBE            FAR MORE THAN COST SIETH ALL YT HE HATH WRITT            LEAVES LIVING ART, BUT PAGE, TO SERVE HIS WITT.

According to the Latin lines, Shakespeare was in good judgement a Nestor (who was the ruler of Pylos),  in genius—or natural gifts–a Socrates, and in art a Virgil (i.e., Publius Vergilius Maro) –and Olympus has (him). The monument also states that Shakespeare died 23 April 1616, as the church records have it for Shakespeare of Stratford, thus establishing beyond reasonable doubt whom the monument was for.

The inscription constitutes direct evidence that the Stratford Shakespeare shared not only a name but writing ability with the actor/poet  because of what the Latin says, and the words about what he had “writt”—and the reference to his “witt,” which then meant intelligence more than wittiness.

That the Shakespeare of the monument is shown with a pen in his hand is further evidence that he was a writer. That the monument was put in so central a Stratford location as the town’s church where many who would have known that their friend and neighbor Will Shakespeare could not have been a writer, if he indeed had not been, and would have been expected at the very least to have put gossip into circulation about the lying monument, significantly increases the strength of the monument as evidence that Will was a writer. The inscription, that is, was a highly public document, so much more legitimate than a private document as evidence: it was out in the open, available for refutation, yet never questioned (that we know of).

Against all this the general run of anti-Stratfordians, amusingly, do not argue that the builders of the monument were liars or mistaken but that the monument was only erected to honor Shakespeare as a grain merchant (or his father as a grain merchant, according to a few of the looniest anti-Stratfordians and Brian Vickers). Only later was it changed to make it seem Shakespeare was a writer. But Leonard Digges, as I mentioned in Chapter One, stated in 1623 it was in Stratford and was to William Shakespeare the poet.

The monument was indeed touched up in the middle of the 17th-century, but the minister who oversaw the repairs claimed that it was kept as close to the original as possible—and at least one drawing prior to the repairs indicates that this is the case. (Another sketch by Dugdale, very hastily drawn, shows the cushion of the monument looking somewhat baglike, and leaves out Shakespeare’s pen; from this the anti-Stratfordians have manufactured wonderful stories about what really happened. The inscription is what counts, though, so I have ignored Dugdale’s sketch here. I will return to it later, when analyzing the cerebral dysfunctionality of anti-Stratfordians.)

The anti-Stratfordians can’t deny that the inscription was there from the beginning, because it was transcribed by antiquarian (and poet) John Weever around 1626, and copied again twelve years later by Dugdale. All they can find to say against it is that it is “ambiguous” (as if almost any poem can’t be found to be less than totally clear in spots), that it names none of his plays or poems directly ( so what?), and that Nester, Socrates and Virgil—two of them not writers and none of them playwrights—would have been poor choices to compare the Stratford man to had he been the “real” Shakespeare.(But would have made perfect sense if to an illiterate grain-merchant.)

The comparisons make perfect sense, though: Nestor and Socrates were then held above all others for wisdom, and Virgil was widely considered the greatest poet of all-time; it is thus odd that anyone would consider them poor choices to compare Shakespeare to. Aside from that, what Virgil-level works other than Shakespeare’s could the lines have been referring to? Conclusion: the actor/poet and the Stratford man shared not only a name but the vocation of writing.

A lesser piece of evidence that Shakespeare of Stratford was a writer is a 1607 record from the Stationers Registry that states: “26 Novembris. Nathanial Butter John Busby. Entred for their Copie under thandes of Sir George Buck knight and Thwardens A booke called. Master William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear, as yt was played before the Kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas Last, by his maiesties servantes playinge vsually at the Globe on the Backsyde vjd.”  By attaching the honorific, “Master,” to the author of Lear, the entry identified him as the Stratford man, the only Shakespeare then who was a gentleman.

George Buck, one of those who signed the entry, thus in effect testifying that Mr. Shakespeare was an author, personally knew the latter, by the way, which strengthens this piece of evidence. According to notes in Buck’s hand, he had once consulted Shakespeare about the authorship of a play called George a Greene.

Similarly, when Edmund Howes published a list of “Our moderne, and present excellent Poets” in John Stow’s Annales in 1615, he listed the poets “according to their priorities (social rank) as neere I could,” and in the middle of the thirsteen listed, number seven “M. Willi. Shakespeare gentleman,” or Mr. William Shakespeare of Stratford.

(8) the vocation of acting

There’s a great deal of anecdotal evidence that William Shakespeare of Stratford was an actor. Such evidence, needless to say, doesn’t count nearly as much as direct contemporary evidence, but it ought to count something, so I have no qualms about bringing it up, beginning with John Aubrey’s writing in his Brief Lives (around 1680) that Shakespeare of Stratford, “being inclined naturally to Poetry and acting, came to London, I guesse about 18: and was an Actor at one of the Play-houses, and did acte exceedingly well.”

Shakespeare’s first formal biographer (1709), Nicholas Rowe reported of the Stratford man, “Tho’ I have inquir’d, I could never meet with any further account of him than that the top of his performance was the ghost in his own Hamlet.” Rowe made much use of the researches of Thomas Betterton, the pre-eminent Shakespearean actor of the time, and a man with a great interest in Shakespeare the man. Much of Betterton’s information came to him through John Lowin and Joseph Taylor, two actors who had been colleagues of Shakespeare and who lived into the Restoration period. According to John Downes, a theatrical prompter at the end of the seventeenth century, these veterans (Lowin and Tayler) brought to the new generation the actual instruction they had received from the dramatist himself of the playing of the parts respectively of Henry VIII and Hamlet.

William Oldys, in his manuscript, Adversaria, now in the British Museum, reports a few further fragments of gossip, the chief of which is that Shakespeare’s brother Gilbert was discovered still living about 1660 and questioned by some actors about his brother. All they got from him was a vague recollection of his having played the part of Adam in As You Like It. But Gilbert died in 1612. Nonetheless, this and the other bits of anecdotal evidence at least confirm that people connected the Stratford man to an acting career (and playwrighting) during his lifetime and long afterward.

There is also his brother Edmund’s having been, apparently, an actor. A record of the burial 31 December 1607 of an “Edmund Shakespeare a player” is extant from St. Saviour’s Church, Southwark, 31 December 1607. A few months earlier, Edmund’s son Edward was buried at St. Giles, near the house where Shakespeare lived with the Mountjoys. His father is called “Edward Shackspeere,” but in a church register containing other errors like calling an Edmund Edward, and no other Shakespeare has been turned up as the possible father. Both father and son probably died of the plague then rampant. The amount of money spent on the seemingly unaffluent actor’s funeral, with “a forenoon knell of the great bell,” and burial inside the church (much more costly than the ringing of a lesser bell, and a grave outside the church) has led many scholars to surmise that Will Shakespeare paid for them. In any event, that William Shakespeare’s brother’s probably acted suggests that acting ran in the family, and that William was an actor, as well.

The strongest evidence that the Stratford man shared the acting vocation with the poet is the previously mentioned bequests in his will of money to buy rings to his “ffellowes John Hemynge Richard Burbage & Henry Cundell xxvj s viij d A peece to buy them Ringes.” Heminges, Burbage, and Condell had been fellow actors in the Lord Chamberlain’s and King’s Men with William Shakespeare. This, of course, makes William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon an actor. Unless the entry in the will was a forgery, as many anti-Stratfordians claim. In the PBS/ Frontline exercise in Oxfordian propaganda, Enoch Powell suggested that the entry was there because the Oxfordian hoaxsters needed something to connect “Shakspere” to First Folio editors, Heminges and Condell. With imperfectly concealed contempt for anyone who could fail to see this, Powell pointed out that the entry was interlineated, whereupon the tv camera slowly scanned it, to prove him right. For an opposing view, PBS/Frontline went to perhaps the only person involved in the controversy more imperviously block-headed than Powell, the aged historian A.L. Rowse, whose mouth-twitchingly belligerant retort to this was that Powell didn’t know what he was talking about.

That, of course, was true, but a more persuasive response would have been that: (a) there is no hard evidence whatever to support Powell’s allegation the the interlineation was a forgery; (b) interlineations were common in the wills of the period; (c) it would have been rather difficult for any hoaxsters to get at the will to make such an addition; (d) there are many interlineations in Shakespeare’s will that have no bearing on the authorship controversy, including ring-money bequests to two of Shakespeare’s neighbors as well as the famous bequest of his “second-best bed” to his wife, which suggest that they were mere additions, innocently made to take care of matters inadvertantly overlooked in the previous draft of the will; (e) there is much other documentary evidence connecting Heminges, Condell and Burbage to Shakespeare, so no spurious interlineation would have been necessary; and (f) it would have been idiotic for someone just wanting to provide a link between Shakespeare and three actors to have risked serious trouble with the authorities by illegally tampering with a document he had no reason to believe anyone later would ever bother to look at (since the document would be put away somewhere in the Stratford courthouse with the town’s other legal records). If the object was falsely to make the Stratford man seem Shakespeare the poet, why not instead add something like “to my ffellows Henrie Condell I leave ye luckie penne I usd to compose the plai concernyng ye Moor,” to really pin it down?

Or, for that matter, why would they have bothered with Shakespeare’s will at all (except perhaps to dispose of it the way, according to most anti-Stratfordians, they got rid of so much of the other evidence of Shakespeare’s having been an ordinary fellow) when they need only have paid Jonson or some other writer to claim in print to have observed Will Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon in the actual act of writing Hamlet? There is thus no reason for any mentally-healthy person to doubt the validity of Shakespeare of Stratford’s will in establishing him as an actor.

The final piece of evidence I have that the Stratford man was an actor is the record previously mentioned from the Heralds’ College, which shows that someone named Shakespeare was an actor. But it also shows that this Shakespeare was of Stratford-upon-Avon. That’s because the coat of arms shown is known to be Shakespeare of Stratford’s (and is depicted on his monument). What happened was that Peter Brooke, the York Herald, officially complained in 1602 that Sir William Dethick, the Garter King-of-Arms, had awarded arms to undeserving low-lifes. Shakespeare was fourth on the list that Brooke made up of such low-lifes, with a sketch of each one’s coat of arms, including Shakespeare’s, and the note about Shakespeare “ye player” on it.

Needless to say, the anti-Stratfordians can’t let this go by without a fight. One of them surprised me some years ago when I was just beginning to consider the authorship question in depth by claiming that the Shakespeare referred to was Will’s brother Edmund. This is hard to credit considering Edmund was only around 20 at the time, and apparently quite obscure at his death five years later. And why would the herald describe Edmund Shakespeare without a first name as the player, as though no other acting Shakespeare existed—as much evidence makes near-certain was not the case? The position of the anti-Stratfordians here would (I guess) be that Edmund was an actor, William of some other Shakespeare family another actor, and William Shakespeare the writer a third person—or acting under his pen-name. The result, either way, would be two actors named Shakespeare, which means the herald should have written, “Shakespear a Player.”

Another anti-Stratfordian argument almost too dense to consider is that Brooke looked at the coats of arms for the Shakespeares, remembered that there was some actor named Shakespeare, figured he was the head of the Shakespeare family, and scribbled “Shakespear ye actor” under his sketch of the coat of arms, never looking into it further. But Brooke would not very likely have challenged the validity of the grant of a coat of arms without having done a little more than that. Moreover, had he heard enough about Shakespeare the actor to know he was the actor rather than just an actor, it’s hard to believe he would not have heard enough about him to know his name was not John but William. He would have had to have known something about John, too.

It should surprise no one that, in view of the weakness of the preceding arguments against the York document’s making Shakespeare of Stratford an actor, the craftiest of the anti-Stratfordians have suggested that the copy of this document, which is all we have, does not exactly reproduce the original. Diana Price (author of Shakespeare’s Unorthodox Biography), in her caption for a reproduction of the document, says part of the copy “may be an eighteenth-century fabrication.” She asks us to “(n)otice that the handwriting under the Shakspere (sic) arms (which says, ‘Shakespear ye Player/ by Garter’) differs from that on the rest of the page.” It is true that at first glance it does—though it is odd, if it was added after the accurate copy was made, that there was room enough between the arms and the three or four comments below it to fit the extra comment in. At second glance, Price’s innuendo becomes revealed for what it is, for one realizes that “Shakespear ye Player/ by Garter” was printed; all else was in cursive. The individual letters of the printed part and of the cursive all match quite nicely except for the additions to the letters of the cursive that allow them to connect with other letters.

So it is no surprise that, as Matus tells us but Price does not, that these texts have been identified as being in the hand of Peter Le Neve. Le Neve was the much-respected officer of the college of arms in whose library it surfaced. No second person surreptitiously added the reference to Shakespeare.

Price has one futher argument: she says that since “the grant application, the complaint, and the subsequent defense all related to John (Shakespeare)’s qualifications, not William’s,” the York Herald would more likely have written, ‘Shakespear ye glover.’ What she fails to recognize, needless to say, is that the York herald wanted to defame the Shakespeare family as much as possible, and actors were considered significantly lowlier than glovers.

In any case, Irvin Matus, in his Shakespeare-affirming book, Shakespeare in Fact, argues persuasively that Le Neve copied the record, and that “it is not credible that (he) would have wanted anything for his own collection but a faithful rendition of a document in the muniments of the College of Arms, just as it is not credible that a document from the college had been altered.” Conclusion: William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon not only had a name in common with William Shakespeare the actor/poet, but a vocation.

(9) social status

In 1596 Will’s father, John Shakespeare, was granted a coat of arms.  This made him and Will gentlemen, thus qualifying them to be addressed as “Mr.”  The poet/actor Shakespeare then occasionally became referred to in print with the “Mr.” honorific, as he never had been before that date.  Hence we find him five times referred to as “Mr. Shakspeare” (with or without the final e) in The Returne from Parnassus, Part I (1599); as “master Shakespere” in a Stationer’s Registry entry for Henry the Fourth, Part Two and Much Ado About Nothing (23 August 1600); as “Master William Shakespeare” in the Stationer’s Register entry in 1607 concerning Lear I already described; as “M. William Shak-speare” on the title page of, and again as a head title in, the first quarto of King Lear (1608); as “Mr. Will: Shake-speare” in John Davies of Hereford’s The Scourge of Folly (1610); as “M. Shake-speare” in John Webster’s “Epistle,” which appeared in his The White Devil (1612); and at least five more times before the First Folio came out in 1623 with “Mr. William Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories and Tragedies” on its title-page.  Note well that after 1601, when John Shakespeare died, no one named “Shakespeare” except William was entitled to be called “Master.”  Ergo, not only did Shakespeare of Stratford have a surname and status of gentleman in common with William Shakespeare the actor/poet, but it was a combination of shared items no other two people in the world at the time shared.

(10) a monument

The poem in the First Folio by Leonard Digges already mentioned is direct evidence that the Stratford man and the poet both had a monument in Stratford. Here it is in its entirety:

          To the Memorie of the deceased Author Maister W. Shakespeare              Shake-speare, at length thy pious fellowes giue            The world thy Workes: they Workes, by which, outliue            Thy tombe, thy name must: when that stone is rent,            And Time dissolves thy Stratford Moniment,            Here we aliue shall view thee still. This Booke,            When Brasse and Marble fade, shall make thee looke            Fresh to all Ages: when Posteritie            Shall loathe what’s new, thinke all is prodegie            That is not Shake-speares: eu’ry Line, each Verse,            Here shall reuive, redeeme thee from thy Herse.            Nor Fire, nor cankring Age, as Naso said,            Of his, thy wit-fraught Booke shall once inuade.            Nor shall I e’er beleeve, or thinke thee dead            (Though misst) untill our bankrupt Stage be sped            (Impossible) with some new strain t’ out-do            Passions of Juliet and her Romeo;            Or till I heare a Scene more nobly take,            Then when thy half-Sword parlying Romans spake,            Till these, till any of thy Volumes rest            Shall with more fire, more feeling be expresst,            Be sure, our Shake-speare, thou canst neuer dye,            But crown’d with Lawrell, liue eternally.

The pertinent line is the one referring directly to the poet Shakespeare’s Stratford monument. That the one monument in Stratford we’re aware of that’s to a William Shakespeare was put up in honor of the Stratford man is, as we have seen, close to proven by the latter’s death date, which is inscribed on it. Conclusion: the actor/poet and the Stratford man shared not only a name but a monument in Stratford.  As I’ve mentioned previously but deem worth repeating is that this monument is in the church that just about all the townspeople of Stratford were required to attend weekly, so its inscription is far better documentary evidence than a page in a book or a letter because visible to just about everyone, so much more likely to be debunked if false than conventional documentary evidence.  But no one is on record as saying it was not to the Stratford man, and some are on record as saying that it was to him.   And with that, my central argument for Shakespeare as Shakespeare is done.

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Column 122 – March/April 2014 « POETICKS

Column 122 – March/April 2014

March/April 2014

EXPERIODDICA

Random Chatter

The M@h(p0et)?ica Blog
Blog-Master: Bob Grumman

/math-poetry-blog

First of all, a sad announcement: Scientific American cancelled my guest blog.  Toward the end, it was getting less than a thousand visitors, making it too unpopular, I was told, to be worth continuing.  That it was providing material nowhere else available at the website (or anywhere else) was irrelevant.  My flippant attitude toward science may have been a factor, too–although I was also respectful toward it, being in actuality quite devoted to it in spite of the many tenth-raters contaminating it, as they contaminate all fields (except mathematical poetry).  Bottom line: I’m grateful to Bora Zivkovic, who was the one at Scientific American who gave me my break and let me keeping going for 16 entries.  He left his job shortly after accepting my 17th entry but before posting it.  I suspect he was more open to such stuff than the one who replaced him.

My one big disappointment was that not a single mathematician or anyone else in science ever got in touch with me about the blog. Nor did any poetry commentator mention it anywhere that I know of, except–a few times–to say it existed.  Poetry (the magazine) was one that did the latter (at its blog), can yah buhleeve it?!  But, for the historical record, so far the only mainstream venue that has done anything of any significance for mathematical poetry is Scientific American.  Which suggests that scientists are slightly more likely to accept it than poets–or, more accurately–less likely fearfully to get as far from it as possible.

In any case, the blog’s seventeenth entry has been posted–at my regular poetry blog (poeticks.com), not at the SciAm website.  And I will keep it going, although not at the once-every-four-weeks rate it had been appearing.  I plan to redefine it as a science and poetry, or perhaps even as a science and arts blog, but with poetry and math its main subjects.

I’m also branching out into work for a magazine concerned with mathematics and the arts–a review and an essay.  My invitation to do these was almost certainly the result of my SciAm tenure, so I do owe Scientific American that.

Okay, now to something a bit different for this column–an informal poetics discussion rather than the discussion of poems and poetry publications it’s been every time until now (as far as I recall, but considering how many columns I’ve now done–this is the 122nd–and how bad my memory is, I could be wrong.)

My specific topic is one I’ve been trying in vain to be Absolutely Definitive about for forty years or so: the components of a poem.  I’ve been particularly engrossed with it lately because of my efforts properly to define mathematical poetry at my SciAm blog, which required me to define poetry yet again.

Note: what follows is a considerably-revised version of what was in my original column.)

I’ll begin our adventure with the perennial poetics question concerning what form and content are in poetry.  The wide-spread idea that they are inseparable seems ridiculous to me, but I’m an inveterate reductionist (to a psychotic degree some would claim), so that shouldn’t surprise anyone.  I hold that form is not really a physical part of a poem, but that system of relationships and abstract attributes organizing the poem’s content.  Mainly the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean Sonnet, for instance, along with its metrical pattern (14 iambic pentameters).  Its words are a poem’s content, what they are abstractly–rhymenants and metrical units–and the way they are abstractly arranged, makes up the poem’s form.

A form is also an essentially permanently unchanging part of all the poems using it.  So far as I can tell, it has just one poetic function, by which I mean what it does for a poem to improve its reception by a reader: it connects a poem using a given form to some tradition all the poems using that form make up.  This adds often deeply resonant connotative value to the poem–the under-ambience that a modern Shakespearean sonnet brings a reader from Shakespeare, and Keats and Wordsworth and all the other masters who used it, for instance.  In other words, form adds content to a poem, although it is not itself content.

Not that it doesn’t also have what might be called a craft function, its use for giving a poet a sort of blueprint to follow.  Which reminds me that it does have a second value for its readers: giving them the same blueprint to follow, thus keeping the poem familiar enough in one way to keep what’s unfamiliar about it from defeating them (and every good poem risks doing that simply by being poetry–that is, by inventing new ways to present thoughts and feelings).

For a while I was content to sum up poetic content (oops, interesting unintentional pun) as simply the words and related linguistic components in a conventional poem, plus the equivalent of words in what I call plurexpressive poems such as the visual images in a visual poem.  Then someone at New-Poetry (an Internet discussion group I and others were discussing this) brought up technical components of poems like rhymes and metaphors).  Where in my little two-piece scheme did they fit into, I wondered.

My answer: a poem has two kinds of content: its linguistic components and meta-linguistic components (i.e., elements that denote something averbally in a plurexpressive poem as the image of a certain bird will denote “seagull”), and its technical components such as poetic devices like rhymes and metaphors, each of which is also a linguistic or meta-linguistic component–as well as everything the two express both denotatively and connotatively–and, in the case of the technical components, what they add conceptually (e.g., via a metaphoric connection) and/or purely sensually (e.g., the pure sound of a rhyme, or the pure color of a visual element in a plurexpressive poem).

All of a poem’s components, I should add, will also contribute simple sounds, their shape as letters, and the like to the whole of what an engagent of the poem will experience.  So, we have three kinds of poetic content.

Or we can consider a poem to have only one content consisting of components, some of which can act both linguistically, or the equivalent thereof, and . . . extra-linguistically (as well as purely sensually), and some of which act only linguistically, or the equivalent (as well as purely sensually).

To  sum up, form is that which gives the over-all poem its shape, and contains it.   Content is what a poem’s form contains.   All of a poem’s content is expressive, but its form is also expressive–connotatively, as previously noted.  This does not make its form content, only an element having something in common with content.  The two differ from one another sufficiently to make it silly to consider them the same thing.

After taking quite a while to revise this column, it is clear to me the subject requires many more words to do it justice.  I hope what I’ve said helps until I or someone else can attack it at greater length.

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Whew, I thought I would only use a few words to take care of form and content, then get into a much more detailed concept of what a poem is.  That will have to wait until the next installment of this column.  Unless too many people complain about this one.  Which reminds me to remind you that you can reach me at [email protected] to correct me, make suggestions, or anything else.  I’d love to hear from you!

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Column 124 –July/August 2014 « POETICKS

Column 124 –July/August 2014

EXPERIODDICA

Back to SkyViews

SkyViews, Vol.3, No.4/5, January 1989.
Edited by Phoebe Bosche and James Maloney
92 pp; Box 2473, Seattle WA 98111. $5.

‘blog and Writing Sample. Jack Saunders.
2014; 32 and 16 pp. Pa; Garage Band Books,
4809 E. 3rd Street, Parker FL 32404-7050. np.

www.thedailybulletin.com

* * *

I was going to devote this column to the rest of my review of SkyViews, the zine from 25 years ago I wrote of in my last column, but something important intervened: I got two collections of writings in the mail from none other than . . . Jack Saunders!  Jack is still, I’m happy to say, fighting to break into the BigTime after several million self-published words by him and another few thousand published by others about him–including MINE.  Over the past ten or fifteen years, I’ve had a few sightings of Jack and knew he had a blog, even visited it, but I wasn’t really keeping up with him. For one thing, Jack cut down on his mailings after going north to take some new job.  And I was tripping all over myself in new endeavors too much to be able to keep with almost anybody else–thanks in great part to the Internet’s facilitation of easy, depthfree access to ten times as many people as the socially-deprived people before 1970 or so had.

His ‘blog has a quotation from a speech of  Florida governor Rick Scott as its epigraph: “We don’t need a lot more anthropologists in the state.”  Scott goes on to say he wants to spend money on “giving people science, technology, engineering, and math degrees,” so they can get jobs.  Just to give you an idea of what people like Jack (back in Florida now) and me are up against.  Jack brings us up to date on his life in ‘blog: ” . . . social security.  It’s not quite enough to cover (the family) expenses, what with the cost of paper, ink, a web host on the Internet, and the odd pamphlet, now and again.  Side-trips.  Art gallery openings and book fairs.  Postage.  I see that RETRAITE goes on the end of BEAT POET and the two form Tin Box: Report on the Suppression of Jack Saunders’ Work by Unknown Forces. I read Normal Mailer: A Double-Life.  It takes something out of me.  I mean, $50,000 to write ten-to-fifteen thousand words for The Faith of Graffiti.  What is my book if not a paean to mail art.  I quit.  This is it.  I declare my stack over.  No more books.  They aren’t books anyway if nothing happens to them.  They aren’t published.  I don’t get paid to write them.  They aren’t reviewed.  Art for art’s sake–it’s too sad.  Too disappointing.  I’m going to look for a job as a substitute teacher.  I’ll write GET A JOB about being too old for the factories.  I’m a free-lance archaeologist.  A free-lance report-writer.  A locum tenens.  Maybe I’ll call it REPORT WRITER.  Maybe I’ll call it WEBLOG.  Too old for substitute teacher.  Too ornery.  Publish my poems at The Daily Bulletin.  Here, Julius–hold this.”

Mostly short sentences.  Lots or repetition of things he’s said before.  The central . . . focus.  But you certainly get to know him.  And his writings cover a lot besides himself–his Writing Sample, for instance is “A Chronicle of Two Historic Digs and One Archaeological Survey,” as its subtitle has it, and is interestingly detailed about archaeological work from the (unromantic) paean-level.  Reportage, for sure–but so much better than ninety-percent or more of the writing making big buck.

Now to jump around in the art of SkyViews, shunned still by the mainstream, but rather different from Jack’s.  First let me quote two of the fourteen two-line stanzas from Geof Huth’s “viviD”: “th ese/ seseas//s and s/ and s”. Joycean wordgames  I hope Geof will do many more of, although I don’t think he’s done many since this one.

Facing “viviD” is a visiopoetic equivalent of a mobile in homage to the mobile’s originator, Alexander Calder, by Robert Ward.  Among the items hung on it are such texts as “moon  cow/ laughter/ toes/ cobweb/  bone    lollipops” and “brother   sister/ father   mother/      red yellow/ green & blue,” and two glued-in scraps of paper.

Then there’s a gem by Heather Barr, a poet I was briefly in touch with ten or twenty years ago.  It’s called “Safe Sex.”  Here’s its second stanza: “I dreamed last night of disposable men,/ Who are Biodegradable so they won’t clutter landfills./ (This is not a feminist poem – it’s just about sex./ So stay out of my diary, Gloria Steinem.)”  Barr has written a lot of good poems like this one.

I’d no doubt just skimmed the magazine when it first arrived.  Certainly, I had never bothered to read the short stories.  This time I read Mary Catlin’s “On Losing Everything.”  A conventional celebration of love that somehow effectively mixes high drama with telling understatement.  When I looked up Catlin on the Internet, I couldn’t find out much, but a Mary Catlin is still giving readings in Seattle.

Someone I’m wholly unfamiliar with, Grace Dager, has a number of excellently semi-strange drawings in the issue, by the way.  Bill Shively, whom I read and once or twice wrote about as a first-rate Bukowski-type whose poetry was mainly about his experiences in Vietnam has a good one in the issue, “What About the Bananas.”

Last of the works I want to mention may seem minor when described, but is, for me, a masterpiece: Joseph Keppler’s “ll/ov/ee.”  It consists of just two non-words, “loe” and “lve”: spelled downward, side-by-side.   Well, there’s also the rectangle the words are on that’s in someone’s backyard, it looks like.  The reproduction is monochromatic, but the original may well be in color.

At this point, I remember that I was going to write last time about Proper Reviewing, with a demonstration of it.  I certainly haven’t come close to doing that in the above.  Why?  One reason is the absence of attempts at Unexpected Insights that will unexpectedly raise the ability of one or two lucky readers to appreciate poetry forever.  I will now end with an example of such an attempt.  A person encountering “ll/ov/ee” should flow from reading into seeing two incomplete things, each of which has something (a letter) that can complete the other.  There’s more to the poem than that, but a good reviewer should not say too much.
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Mistakes, Dreams and Creativity « POETICKS

Mistakes, Dreams and Creativity

Mistakes, Dreams and Creativity

I propose that person’s dreams have two functions. Their primary “duty” is to relieve the person’s cortical neurons of stored energy that would otherwise make those cells excessively prone to out-of-context daytime activation that the person would experience as “mistakes.” I also contend that by causing a person to experience mixtures of highly incongruous data while he sleeps, dreams promote creativity. To account for these results, I postulate a mechanism that causes a portion of a person’s cortical neurons to become spontaneously active during REM sleep to produce the bizarre memories that, I claim, make up dreams.

Over the centuries, there has been much study of sleep, the state in which dreams normally occur. Many attempts have been made to assign some function to it. Most modern thinkers on the subject have suggested that sleep is the way the body conserves energy during times of low-activity, and gives the body, including the brain, time to repair or otherwise fine-tune itself, all of which makes perfect sense to me. There have also been numerous attempts (not reviewed here) to understand the nature of the dreams that have been shown to occur in birds and most mammals including man during a phase of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Biochemical replenishment, rearrangement of data, and the communication of “subconscious” messages have been most often cited as the function of those dreams.  This paper will sketch one more such attempt.

I go along with previous theorists, Francis Crick and Graeme Mitchison (Nature, vol. 304, 14 July 1983, pages 111 through 114), in believing that “in viviparous mammals the cortical system (the cerebral cortex and some of its associated subcortical structures) can be regarded as a network of interconnected cells which can support a great variety of modes of mutual excitation,” and that “Such a system is likely to be subject to unwanted . . . modes of behaviour, which arise as it is disturbed either by the growth of the brain or by the modifications produced by experience.” Like Crick and Mitchison, too, I postulate a mechanism other than conventional forgetting that is used by the brain to detect and counteract such unwanted modes of behavior—at least those resulting from modifications produced by experience. (I will not be concerned with unwanted modes of behavior caused by brain growth, like involuntary fits, which seem to me outside of normal human psychology.)

In what follows I first describe certain key assumptions of mine about the brain and memory. Next I postulate and describe the central mechanism of my theory, and how it differs from that proposed by Crick and Mitchison. Finally, after briefly discussing its testability, I trace some of the implications of my theory.

Preliminary Assumptions

First assumption: the existence in a person’s cortical system of “knowlecules”–neurons, or neuron-clusters, each of whose activation is experienced by the person as a discrete, unified image, idea, feeling or the like such as a visual image of a cat, some general idea of what a cat is, or the word, “cat” (an idea going back in experimental psychology to Penfield).

Second assumption: that each knowlecule can receive energy (the form of which is not relevant to this discussion) from sensory cells, other knowlecules, or itself, and that it stores such energy (in some form) until its supply reaches some pre-set threshold that causes it to become active. Third assumption: that remembering occurs when one knowlecule receives enough energy from other knowlecules (and/or itself) to become active (or re-active). The basic rule followed in this operation is simple: every active knowlecule divides a pulse of energy (which I call “k-energy,” which is short for “knowlecule-energy”) among all the knowlecules that have ever previously been active immediately after it.  So if knowlecule A is active during one “beat” of brain activity, and knowlecule B is active during the next “beat,” A’s later activation will cause it to transmit to B, and if it does so sufficiently strongly, or with sufficient help from other knowlecules, it will activate B as a memory.

There is a great deal more to the process than that, of course, particularly with regard to the manner in which context influences what percentage of its output of energy a given knowlecule will transmit to a second knowlecule (or itself). For the purposes of this paper, however, it is only necessary to know that a given active knowlecule transmits to a number of other knowlecules (and, possibly, itself) once active immediately after it.

Mistakes

If one grants my assumption that a knowlecule (or the equivalent) can store energy (in some form) with the potential to activate the knowlecule, it follows that an inactive knowlecule containing a great deal of stored energy can, upon receiving a very small amount of k-energy, become active. When, as sometimes must be the case, the activating k-energy is out-of-context (in a manner that should soon become clear), the resulting more or less inadvertant activation of the knowlecule will be experienced as a mistake. For instance, suppose one is asked, “In what city in Maryland is the U.S. Naval Academy located?” One might know very well that the answer is Annapolis, but what if one’s knowlecule for “Baltimore” has a nearly full store of energy? This might be the case if one had earlier read an ad for the Biltmore Hotel, say; and seen a picture of an oriole (if one is enough of a baseball fan to know of the Baltimore Orioles’ baseball team); then
talked to a friend named Al (if one has a friend named Al who lives in Baltimore, as I do). “Biltmore” might cause a little energy to go to the knowlecule representing the similar-sounding word, “Baltimore,” but not enough to activate it; ditto the oriole and the friend named Al.

In such a case, the small amount of energy the knowlecule for “Baltimore” might get from its association with “Maryland” when the person is asked where the Naval Academy is could be enough to activate it. If that happens, and at the same time—because, perhaps, the person is tired—the question doesn’t quite cause enough energy to go to the knowlecule representing “Annapolis” to activate it, the person might wrongly say that Baltimore is where the Naval Academy is.

Other psychological processes will no doubt quickly apprise the person of his mistake but they aren’t important here. What is, is that mistakes of a certain kind are sure to occur, given my assumption that knowlecules, or their equivalent, store energy without becoming active.  This idea of how mistakes come about, of course, is a speculative commonplace among cognitive scientists—though couched in sundry terminologies and unconfirmed by experiment. But it hasn’t been proved invalid, either, and it makes sense.

It also supports Crick and Mitchison’s model of dreaming, which hypothesizes that “the function of dream sleep . . . is to remove certain undesirable modes of interaction in networks of cells in the cerebral cortex,” by showing how those “undesirable modes of interaction” might arise, and why they would be considered undesirable. However, and this is the main point of this paper, I propose a mechanism of “knowlecule-flushing” different from Crick and Mitchison’s “reverse
learning mechanism,” for mine, among other things, does not result in the weakening of dream- traces, as theirs does.

Knowlecule-Flushing

The knowlecule-flushing activator (k-f activator) is my equivalent of the “dream-state generator” postulated by Hobson and McCarley, and on which the Crick/Mitchison model of dreaming is based. Hobson and McCarley place their mechanism somewhere in the pontine reticular formation from whence it causes both rapid eye movements and periodic dreaming. My similar mechanism also causes dreaming—but (probably) not rapid eye movements, which I believe dreams cause, by giving the eyes visual material they reflexively follow. In the course of
this paper I will offer no (new) empirical evidence to show that the k-f activator exists (as I define it) but hope through common sense arguments from long-established empirical data to make the possibility of its existence something worth serious consideration.

The k-f activator, in normal circumstances, can only operate during sleep. A person’s arousal center brings about that state when the person’s brain-activity reaches some pre-set low level. The person’s arousal center then slows his body down, to put it simply, and isolates most of his brain from the rest of his nervous system. That is, transmission of stimulation from the periphery to the cortex and vice versa is suppressed. The person completely relaxes, in the process shutting his eyes. Or so my theory has it, and I believe both common experience and the authorities in the field would agree.

Once asleep, the person will eventually experience REM sleep, in normal circumstances. This, I hypothesize, is caused by the person’s k-f activator, which joins every knowlecule in his brain. The k-f activator becomes active more or less reflexively, after a certain amount of sleep, I suspect—but with the length of time it takes to do so probably dependent on how full the person’s knowlecules are. Thereupon it causes all the knowlecules in the person’s brain that have more than some set amount of energy stored spontaneously to become active. The conditions thus set up (probably through dispersal of enzymes of some sort that increase knowlecule sensitivity to stored energy) also prime other knowlecules to become active whenever they, too, contain the new lowered activation threshold amount of energy.

The spontaneous flush of knowlecules by the k-f activator starts a dream, and the increased sensitivity to their stored energy of the rest of the brain’s knowlecules, as well as of the just- flushed ones, will keep the dream going. Its contents (as common experience and all previous research has shown) will be scrambled, weird, surrealistic—which follows from the knowlecules that initiate them dream’s being activated out of context. That is, they aren’t activated “logically,” but simply because of the amount of their stored energy.

They are therefore experienced as mistakes, many of them happening at once (in the safety of the periphery-isolation that prevents behavior based on them). Normal rationalizing behavior ensues, of course, as the person, in effect, tries to make sense of the data exploding in his mind. And his memory puts new matter into the dream taking place just as it puts various matter into his waking thoughts. That is, remembering occurs the same way in dreams that it does during waking hours. Just as a certain name heard at work might make one remember Cousin Jane, the same name heard in a dream might make one remember her. I won’t be discussing remembering further here, except to point out that there’s no need to hypothesize some kind of special remembering that a person uses only while dreaming.

Once the k-f activator sensitizes a person’s knowlecule to its stored energy, the knowlecule remains sensitized to the same degree until a k-f inhibitor that I also hypothesize turns it off when the person wakes up.  That doesn’t mean the person’s first dream of the night will last the entire night. On the contrary, just as common experience suggests, and dream experiments seem to verify, each dream, or dream-session, tails off and eventually ends within two hours at the most. The reason for this is simple. At first many knowlecules will become active due to their increased sensitivity to stored energy. They will transmit to other knowlecules to activate them, and those will in turn cause more activation. Eventually, however, no knowlecule will get enough energy from anywhere to become active, even with its activation-threshold reduced. Being isolated from the environment insures this.

A person’s first dream of the night won’t likely be his last, either.  According to researchers, people normally have more than one dream a night—five, on average. To explain this, I claim that a person’s k-f activator goes through a nightly cycle during which it five times enhances his knowlecules’ sensitivity to stored energy, each time making less energy able to activate the knowlecule storing it. Hence, the first dream-cycle might reduce the amount of stored energy capable of activating a knowlecule to 80% of what would have been needed to accomplish that during waking. The second, ninety minutes later, say, might reduce the activation-threshold to 60% of the daytime norm.  Later cycles might reduce it, respectively, to 40%, 20% and 2%.
(These, of course, are just guesses, no experimental data being available for any kind of precise estimate, or likely to be for a while.)

All this is based on the simple idea that, to avoid the build-up of mistake-potential, brain-cells (the components of knowlecules) need to be cleaned out, as in the Crick/Mitchison model. But because, unlike Crick and Mitchison, I believe that the energy flushed is re-distributed throughout the brain to other knowlecules (and, in some cases, back to the distributing knowlecules) rather than otherwise disposed of, the flushing I hypothesize cannot take place all at once—by an immediate reduction of knowlecules’ activation thresholds to 2%, say— because
the resulting dreams would be too dense. A person’s brain would be overloaded—so much so, in fact, that the person would probably wake up. And the “creative” juxtapositioning that I credit dreaming with making possible, and will describe later in this paper, would be overdone, and yield not creativity but confusion.

In any case, research indicates that dreaming generally goes through five stages much as I’ve described. Interestingly, the later dreams are generally described by those having them as more bizarre than earlier ones, which makes sense since more inappropriate data would be
brought into consciousness; that is, many knowlecules minimally ready for activation would contribute material to a person’s awareness during his last dreams.

If the Crick/Mitchison theory of energy dispersal rather than redistribution is accurate, by the way, it seems strange that (1) dreams last as long as they do—why couldn’t all the cells with stored energy be emptied all at once? and (2) why would we have more than one dream a night, many of them involving similar material—that is, cells one would expect an early dream to have cleaned out seem to participate in later dreams? I also wonder why we should experience dreams consciously at all, however sometimes fleetingly.

The Value of Dreams

Since Crick and Mitchison believe dream-traces are lost permanently unless the dreamer wakes up during a dream and thinks about it, dreams for them would seem to have no evolutionary advantage except as a way of getting rid of unneeded stored energy. This flies in the face of much cultural opinion, however unscientific, as to the value of dreams. I won’t get into that, but will try to present more hard-headed arguments for believing dream-traces are treated the same way that other memory-traces are. One of my arguments is that it would make no biological sense for a human being to evolve a system for getting rid of brain-energy if re-distribution of it through mechanisms already in place could accomplish the same thing—as it does in my model, in which “excess” stored energy in brain-cells is reduced to almost nothing, wit  to dump quickly, what to keep? And wouldn’t such a mechanism take up room comparable to the storage space required for simply storing the material? I say that it makes biological sense for a person to store everything, and let his remembering mechanisms decide what to return to according to what later becomes important rather than give him access only to what is initially thought to have the potential for importance.

The Crick/Mitchison concept of dream-forgetting goes against common experience, too, for all of us seem to remember dreams. Such memories are anecdotal evidence, to be sure, but vivid. I even remember seeing things in a dream and, while in the dream, recognizing their having been in other dreams—from days or months before.

Creativity

My main argument for our remembering dream-matter, however, is that it would allow for creativity-enhancement by allowing us to refer back to the arbitrary, “mistaken” connections we make in dreams and use them if they turn out to have some value, as any mistake can. Daytime mistakes are probably not as bizarre as dream-mistakes. Indeed, certain connections occurring in dreams would be close to impossible in daytime. At least in theory. A dream could easily allow a Kekule (who discovered the shape of benzene) to experience a snake-image at the same time he experiences an image of benzene if his knowlecule for “snake” happened to have the right amount of non-activating stored energy, at the same time his knowlecule for “benzene” also did. But nothing in his waking hours, unless he happened on a snake while thinking of benzene, would meld them. Even in the latter instance, he would think of benzene, then see the snake, rather than mentally experience them both at the same time.

I’m not saying creativity via a dream is what happened with Kekule, just that such an occurrence would be possible if my model of dreaming were accurate, and it wouldn’t be if the Crick/Mitchison model were. Since such juxtapositionings would seem to be of value, particularly if they were made undangerously, during sleep, then revisited more or less at liesure during waking hours, Nature should select for their storage as memories. And, I contend, has.

My theory’s Compatibility with Research and Other Theories

Like the theory of Crick and Mitchison, mine seems broadly compatible with a large amount of experimental data—and with everyday experience, as well. And it explains as effortlessly as Crick and Mitchison’s model both the need for dreaming in adult life and the large amount of it that occurs pre-natally (which I attribute to the propensity of the knowlecules of a developing brain for distributing k-energy willy-nilly and thus causing partial storage of k-energy to be
relatively wide-spread, it taking the brain time firmly to establish datapathways).

My theory, like theirs, is also compatible with the hallucinoid nature of dreams that all researchers, and non-researchers, remark on. Unlike theirs, my theory does not contradict Freud’s, but augments it, for it allows lessons to be recalled and thus learned from dreams, in keeping with Freudianism. It also permits repressed material to be popped into consciousness as Freud hypothesized, through the lowering of “repressed” knowlecules’ activation threshold. This agreement with Freudianism I mention only as an interesting feature of my model,
incidentally, not as an argument in its favor, Freudianism still not having been experimentally verified that I know of (and, in my view, 90% hogwash).

The effects of REM sleep deprivation certainly do not contradict my theory, though they don’t emphatically support it, either. That subjects of such deprivation sleep more when allowed to after their period of deprivation is what my theory would predict. That REM sleep deprivation in humans sometimes produces irritability would follow from my theory, too—because the mistakes a person makes as a result must irritate him once recognized, and because, as deflections from “right reasoning,” they will tend to strand him mentally, which would be conducive to irritation. This deflective property of mistakes would also explain the inability to concentrate experienced by some subjects of REM sleep deprivation, mistakes breaking their focus.

That feelings and wishes that he would ordinarily keep out of consciousness might intrude on a REM-sleep-deprived person’s thoughts, as some research indicates would happen, would be in
keeping with my model also, for knowlecules prevented from dreamtime activation would tend to build up stored energy until they had enough for waking arousal. Internal fantasizing should for similar reasons tend to increase among the REM-sleep- deprived, as has also been shown to be to a small degree the case. As for the possibility considered by some investigators that those deprived long enough of REM sleep would experience hallucinations, my theory is  noncommital.  According to it, REM sleep deprivation should yield just increased susceptibility to mistakes, as defined above—only, probably, after more than a few nights of deprivation, I might add.

My theory cannot account for the lack of any readily-observable detrimental effects from the complete blocking of REM sleep that certain monoamine oxidase inhibitors and other drugs cause. However, I believe that the drugs, which are anti-depressants, reduce people’s
anxiety about the mistakes they make, which makes those mistakes less noticeable. I believe also that the drugs energize those who take them, allowing them to power their way through their mistakes, before they multiply. A third factor would be the probably great length of time it
would take for any significant psychological deficits from any form of neurological deprivation to show up. The way the drugs involved no doubt interfere with normal distribution of k-energy must be a factor as well. My bottom line here, though, is the same as Crick and Mitchison’s concerning the same research: that it’s too small a factor to overthrow a theory so little contradicted elsewhere.

Testing My Theory

To prove or disprove the existence of my knowlecule-flushing activator would require much more knowledge of the brain, and much better brain -investigating technology now seems to be available. Crude tests of whether REM sleep deprivation will indeed increase a person’s
propensity to make mistakes, as I define them, or decrease his ability to come up with new ideas are perhaps possible but would not likely be very persuasive one way or the other. If we ever are able to pin down precisely what kinds of proteins or other substances are manufactured during the creation of memory traces, we might be able to compare the amounts of those substances produced during dreaming with the amounts produced during waking thought, and thus get a better idea of the likelihood of the data of dreams’ being stored or not.

Since my theory of dreams flows directly out of a (more or less) simple model of inter-cellular energy-flow in the brain, it could probably eventually be modeled by a computer program that could be used to check its plausibility. All my thinking on dreams is, in the final analysis, speculative, however. But since it is all based on a notion of the material make-up of brain-cells and auxiliary physiological mechanisms, it is all ultimately testable.

Possible Implications

If my theory of dreaming is close to being valid, it should help us understand and reduce (or increase, if desireable) the occurrence of mistakes, and appreciate and nourish creativity. It should provide some insight into the etiology and nature of certain kinds of psychoses, as well, some forms of schizophrenia being surely due to waking dreaming. Since in my model, dreams are accessible to remembering, the model’s validity would also suggest that perhaps dream-analysis in certain forms of psychotherapy might be of value, after all. It would certainly suggest that the high regard in folklore for dreams and what they say is not misplaced.

Viva dreams!                                         

.                                                               Bob Grumman

.             October 1997 (but based on my work in the early seventies)

26Apr14–38

2June14–64, a surprise

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4 Responses to “Mistakes, Dreams and Creativity”

  1. anon says:

    I came here from your recent Aeon comment; this is a very convincing theory from the perspective of ordinary experience. It seems like the most important and most verifiable part is the existence of ‘knowlecules’. There need to be neural patterns specific to a single object/experience/idea, which also have some sort of collective energy storage and thresholds. That would be just as fundamental to waking life as it is to dreams, and once that’s established your dream flushing hypothesis is irresistible. I do wonder, though, why this threshold flushing would be experienced as full-fledged worlds. You say that a knowlecule is an ordinary concept when it’s activated during the day, but in a dream you don’t just think ‘grass’, you see it. This theory explains the randomness of dreams, but neglects their structure, the relative coherence. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but my waking idle thoughts are arguably more random than my dream experiences, because they have no external input but still create a complex, full-bodied story. Your comments about waking thought and reactions continuing like normal in response to the dream activations partially explains this, but it doesn’t seem like enough. Perhaps also lower-level sensory patterns are the majority of our knowlecules, and it’s their activation which gives such a tngible texture of reality to dreams. But, I don’t really know anything about modern cog sci, so forgive my speculations. Anyways, just wanted to thank you for your thought provoking essay.

  2. Bob Grumman says:

    Wow, Brady, thanks extremely for the comment! I’m so used to people ignoring what I say at this blog of mine, it may take me a while to get over my shock at seeing it and replying to it! For now I’ll just say that I feel I can provide reasonable answers to the problem you have with what I say. And add that I don’t know much about modern cog sci, either, but my impression is that my thoughts probably don’t have much to do with it. Right now I’m trying to finish an essay on my theory of art that I don’t want to get distracted from. When that’s out of the way, I’ll come back to your comment. A few thoughts of yours will be difficult to answer in less than several thousand words, but I may be able to find some writings of mine that will help.

    all best, Bob

    PS, You seem to have understood my essay quite well–which I find highly encouraging. So, thanks again for responding to it!

  3. Brady (anon) says:

    Cool, I look forward to both your reply and your aesthetics essay. I just now started reading through the rest of your blog – you have a lot of very interesting things here.

    (And I realized that you wrote Mathemakus! I had stumbled across some of your work back in high school, and attempted a few embarrassing mathematical poems myself.)

  4. Bob Grumman says:

    I seem to be going backwards with my aesthetics essay which is now my exploratory drive essay, which means wholesale re-writing. Good to hear you’re checking out my blog . . . I think. I tend to fear letting people know about it because of how much of myself I think I reveal, some of it possibly offensive to some, especially if they misinterpret it.

    Hey, how did you happen to bump into my poems? My impression is that only a few dozen people I don’t know personally ever see them?

    More in due course.

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The Urceptual Crew — Notes-in-Progress « POETICKS

The Urceptual Crew — Notes-in-Progress

31 July 2011

I’ve decided to be considerate to my few regular readers by limiting my discussion of what I’m now calling “The Urceptual Crew” to this side-bar.  I need to do a lot of exploratory writing about it that will take a while to achieve even semi-coherence.   I strongly feel that now is the time to work it out, though.  For one thing, Michael Shermer’s book, The Believing Brain, indicates the empiricists are catching up to where I was 30 or 40 years ago, so a book on the subject may just get noticed.   But it seems to be my main interest at the moment.  Which is unfortunate because what I really need to work on is my theory of temperaments, for inclusion in my Shakespeare authorship book.  I don’t think I’m too far from finishing with what I want to say about that for that book, and once I am, I can put the book in print.  With the anti-Stratfordian movie, Anonymous, soon to be out, now it the time for my book.

It probably doesn’t matter which part of my psychology I most feel like working on considering how weary I always feel.  I’m barely able to type these few words.  I’m typing them because it’s too early for bed, and I can’t think of anything else to do.  A few hours earlier I finished reading the latest pot-boiler I’ve been reading and have no others to switch to.  Meanwhile, I’m continuing to read Ruled Britannia, which stars a Shakespeare I am finding quite believable.   But I’m not in the mood for it.

All I want to do here is get a good starting point for my understanding of the urceptual crew.  I know what I want to say, but I’m afraid I’ve just run out of gas.  I’m so out of it.

28 July 2011

I say my brain is still working, although the rest of my body isn’t doing all that well, because The Urceptual Judge

I’m writing here of my verosophical ideas. I feel like the ideas I have for new poems (and I’ve come up with two new ones of those the past two nights, too!) are something else, although I don’t see why they should be. Anyway, my latest brilliant verosophical idea is that among the innate Jungian “urceptual others” that I posit neurophysiological exist in the brain, is one representative of the Tribe. “The Urceptual Judge,” I tentatively call it.

It is the most complicated of the urceptual others but could be beautifully explanatory of a lot of questions I’ve been trying to answer for quite a while, including exactly what a person’s internal “god” might be. I’ve always considered the urceptual authority figure to be the basis of that, but not see that it may be a combination of the authority figure and the Judge.

It will take me a while to get all this straight, but I came up with the Judge when thinking about psychopaths. The authorities go along with me in believing such people simply to be those lacking empathy–which for me would be those lacking urceptual others. That got me thinking about altruism, which the authorities again agree with me in taking to be based on empathy and biologically advantageous for the tribe, if not for the individual, not that it can’t be for the individual, as well.

I’ve always had trouble making altruism the sole way an individual can turn collectivist. For some reason, last night, it hit me that another way an individual can work for the good of his tribe in spite of its depriving him of many individual happinesses is the way I keep thinking I do, by working for a sense of making an important cultural contribution. That led fairly quickly to the question of how, neurophysiologically, would an individual experience such a sense of cultural accomplishment, a valid sense of it?

It took longer for me to sort that out, but not too long (if not yet with any thoroughness): his Judge tells him when he’s done good for the tribe. So, do psychopaths lack a urceptual judge, too? Or are there two kinds of psychopaths, each with a different deficit? I’m unsure. I sometimes think that almost no one has a urceptual judge, but that’s silly. I think that because so few have one as extreme as I feel mine is–i.e., while I need to have outdone Beethoven and Aristotle both, most people are satisfied with having raised a family, and helped a reasonably valuable business, or the equivalent, going for a reasonably length of time.

Let me say here, before I forget, that my theory of urceptual puppets, is not the clearest part of my overall theory of psychology. I’ve never worked out a description of it I’m even half-happy with. But I think it worth doing a bad job of describing than keeping to myself until I have a better grasp of it. So here goes try number one to delineate the Urceptual Judge.

He begins before birth as one of an individual’s many urceptual others, each of them a sort of stick-figure puppet with connections to the Primary Urceptual Other and (perhaps) to the Urceptual Self. I’m not sure what I’ve said about this before, so may well contradict myself. Probably have before.

I think I think that the Primary Urceptual Other divides into . . . three? urceptual others, one good, one neutral, one bad. The good one tends to imitate via one’s Urceptual Self’s neuroconnections to it. The bad one either attacks or flees from, unconnected to it. The neutral one, if it exists (I just added it to my crew now), connects to each of the other two Others, but is inhibited from using those connections until its stimulus (some real other in the external environment) proves itself good or bad, which will open the appropriate connections.

Seems to me I’m saying the neutral Urceptual Other is the Primary Urceptual Other.

Anyway, the Urceptual Judge will have neuroconnections to the Good Urceptual Other but not to the Urceptual Self. Damn, to get this right, I really need to establish just about all the members of the urceptual populace, and I’m not up to. But one important Other is the authority figure, which is a good other with neuroconnections to the Good Urceptual Other, but distinguished from it by the cues it picks up from its stimulus to the Self recognizes as authority cues, signals to obey. The Judge sort of secondarily rewards the Self when the Self does obey.

Meanwhile other drives interfere, other others demand attention and allegiance. The judge takes from them, too, emphasizing to the self that making other respect one is important. Eventually one learns what others in general will consider valuable contributions to society and develop a habit of trying to make them regardless of feedback. Through reading about others who made great contributions in spite of winning little or no positive feedback from contemporaries, or inspiring negative feedback, one may overpower the Judge and turn him into a second self. The danger, needless to say, is solipsism. But that seems to me no worse than the danger of respecting judges who call for deadbrained conformity. Better, to tell the truth. But one should be aware of it. And will be if one has the right genes.

Okay, someday I’ll do a better job on the urceptual populace. I hope what I’ve said is at least interesting to anyone capable of being interested.

Miscellaneous Notes from Preceding Writings

September 22

Most, or some, of us have a child in us and put aside our adulthood when reading books like Rowlings, or watching movies based on them.  I can even quite enjoy picture books intended for 3- or 4-year-olds.  I think I’m probably two or three adult readers of different ages, too.  My final adult does sometimes comment on entertainments one of my other readers is engaged with, but rarely upsettingly, unless the other reader agrees with his low view of the entertainment.

I haven’t yet described the thought I had that may be unusual.  It is that each of us, or many of us, has chronological awarenesses with appropriate selves.  Remember, I conceive of the brain as, in effect, a huge mansion of many rooms, one for mathematics, for instance, another for social interactions, and so forth.  I’m now considering the possibility that each of these, or some of these, may have a smaller rooms in it for different periods of a person’s life.

This is the first time I’ve written about this, after having had the idea within 24 hours, so I can’t vouch for the coherence of what I’m saying.  Wanna get it down before trying to get it right.  The basic idea is what if the brain is programmed to recognize changes in kind of maturation, and reflexes seal off sub-awarenesses that thus become limited to the period they’ve been active in–while each is replaced by a newly opened replacement sub-awareness that will cover the next stage of maturation?  A person could still remember things out of the sealed-off sub-awareness, or earlier age, and use them in later-age awarenesses.  But, as I see it, the present-age sub-awareness would be the default sub-awareness, any earlier-age sub-awareness unavailable unless defenses against intrusion break down, and appropriate stimuli help.

One example of appropriate stimuli would be fairy tales.  One could not be a rigidnik for these to put you in your child-sub-awareness.  Unless ill.  Or drugged.  When in the child-awareness, your adult sexual awareness would have to be turned off, I should think.  Critical analysis, too, since that’s adult.

What I propose is that one in one’s child-awareness will become a child rather than feel a child.  Albeit not completely, usually.  I’m sure there’s an adolescent sub-awareness, too.  Perhaps an infant sub-awareness that few of us  ge exclusively into.  One point: that in one of these, one will experience mostly memories laid down in the period that the sub-awareness was active.  So  will lose touch with “mature” thinking, which must be based on later memories.  But when in a adult sub-awareness, a different problem crops up–loss of contact with childish thinking.  This is a problem because childish thinking, for most people, will be more spontaneous, sensual, simple (and thus able sometimes to cut Gordian knots adult thinking can’t).  One who can visit different age-based awarenesses frequently, should have an advantage over those who cannot.  Just being able to escape adulthood into a book like the latest Harry Potter is a not unimportant one.

* * * * *

JEHOVAH

September 23: Today, I’m hoping to define God.

My definition of Him issues from my theory of psychology, mainly from that portion of it I spoke of yesterday, and in other entries during the past year or so.  I consider Him to mainly be simply the cerebral Authority Figure I believe we all have–the internal Father.  My first problem is to show how he differs from human authority figures.  I suddenly feel like I may be able to pull off an interesting essay about him after not quite feeling I could for the past twenty years or more because of an idea I had that seems laughably dumb: that we reflexively attribute all movements in the external enviornment to some conscious being.  Of course, our reason more and more overcomes that reflex as we mature.  Still, its contributions always underlie our final understandings.

THE GOD WITHIN

For many years I’ve been arguing with people who believe someone other than Shakespeare wrote the works attributed to Shakespeare.  I began because (a) I liked the idea of a self-educated commoner’s becoming a great writer (as I, a self-educated commoner, hoped to do) and (b) because the evidence for Shakespeare and against all those put up against him was huge.  There was also (c): my belief that I could make a name for myself by permanently ending the Authorship Controversy, as it’s called, in Shakespeare’s favor by arguing it better than anyone else ever had.  Needless to say, I never came close to accomplishing (c): my arguments never made any kind of impression on any of the “anti-Stratfordians,” as they’re called, and they are still very visibly amongst us–witness, for example, I Am Shakespeare, the recent highly publicized anti-Stratfordian play by Mark Rylance, famous Shakespearean actor and recent artistic director at the Globe Theatre in London, and the similarly highly-publicized “Declaration of Reasonable Doubt” on the authorship of Shakespeare’s work signed by a number of wacks, including Rylance, Derek Jacobi, and several professors.

Although I soon realized the anti-Stratfordians were undefeatable, I continued to argue with them (and still argue with them) because of (d): I like to argue.  But also because of (e) my interest in the question that quickly became more interesting to me than who wrote Shakespeare, the question of why so many people who seemed sane, and were generally intelligent, likable people, could believe in something as nonsensical as anti-Stratfordianism–in something, that is, for which there was no direct hard evidence, and which required all kinds of mental gyrations to accept, such as a belief in the existence of the incredibly implausible conspiracy theory they all ultimately had to believe in.  Consequently, when I finally wrote a book about the authorship question, Shakespeare and the Rigidniks, its central subject was my explanation of what I described as the “psitchosis,” or “psituational psychosis” of the anti-Stratfordians (although I also spent 170 pages or so of it demonstrating that Shakespeare’s authorship of the works ascribed to him is beyond reasonable doubt).

Another controversy I’ve been interested in since I could reason at all was the one between Christians and non-believers.  I was a fiercely partisan member of the latter group during my late adolescence and early adulthood, but quieted down substantially when I found how much my view of religion bothered others (much less than my views on Shakespeares).  I don’t have the personality to be a Madalyn Murray or even a Richard Dawkins.  I tend to keep my political views to myself, too.

My interest in what I came to view as the religion versus materialism debate continued, however.  But its central question soon evolved the same way the Shakespeare Authorship Controversy later did, from a question about people’s belief to a question about the people rather than the belief, in this case from “Does God Exist?” to “Why do so many otherwise seemingly rational, intelligent people believe some sort of God exists?”

One such person was the very Catholic William F. Buckley, Jr.  He was one of my idols way back when–for his libertarianism and style.  Strangely, it was he who provided me with what still seems the most important constituent of my understanding of religious psitchosis.  It happened when he described his first meeting with Ayn Rand (in a memoir or on a talk show, I’m can’t now remember which).  He was laughingly describing Rand’s first words to him, a question as to how a person as intelligent as he could believe in God.  I believe he was too surprised by what he took to be Rand’s tactlessness to reply to her, but his remembrance of the event led to his answering her question.  He said something to the effect that he was born with a mechanism in his brain that made him able to perceive God.

I probably thought that silly at the time that I read it, but as I developed the theory of psychology I’ll soon be discussing here, it began to make excellent sense.  For my theory included the existence of something very much like such a mechanism, something I’ve come to call, “the Jehovacule.”  The name comes from “knowlecule,” which rhymes with “molecule,” and represents a molecule of knowledge.  In simplest terms, the Jehovacule is, in effect, a little man inside each person’s brain whose actions can be interpreted as the actions of an external god.  A more sophisticated way of putting it is that the little man is a Jungian archetypal Other.  But I posit him or it to be something material in the brain, an arrangement of brain-cells, not something fantasized.  Details to follow.  First, though, quite a bit of introductory material is necessary for any kind of understanding of what I’ve talking about.

Perhaps the best thing to start with is the . . . ANTHROCEPTUAL DICHOTOCEPTUAL SUB-AWARENESS.   Here dwelleth the Jehovacule.

September 23: Today, I’m hoping to define God.   My definition of Him issues from my theory of psychology, mainly from that portion of it I spoke of yesterday, and in other entries during the past year or so.  I consider Him to mainly be simply the cerebral Authority Figure I believe we all have–the internal Father.  My first problem is to show how he differs from human authority figures.  I suddenly feel like I may be able to pull off an interesting essay about him after not quite feeling I could for the past twenty years or more because of an idea I had that seems laughably dumb: that we reflexively attribute all movements in the external enviornment to some conscious being.  Of course, our reason more and more overcomes that reflex as we mature.  Still, its contributions always underlie our final understandings.

I had a couple of breakthrough thoughts today, one is that what makes people worship anything suddenly became my question, replacing what makes people worship a god.  My subject, in other words, is the instinct to worship rather than the instinct to follow some god or gods.

I also recognized a truism, which I nonetheless think worth restatement: 90% or more of a solution to a problem is the recognition and detailed description of the problem.  Define the problem and it’s almost always easy to solve it.  Truth is something you have to name your way to–with interactive names.  In the case of my god theory, today’s problem was that whereas I believe acceptance of a god is instinctive, I realized that my theory could only put a potential god into the environment; the only explanation my theory had for a person’s surrender to that god was that someone told him to surrender to it.  Religion was taught, not instinctive, which contradicted what I was trying to demonstrate.

Once I defined, the problem, another breakthrough thought solved it (I think): the possibility that we each instinctively recognize and find out appropriate place in a hierarchy.  From this, and the fact that we instinctively obey our parents (as authority figures), made it easy to hypothesize that we instinctively obeyed any entity that was an authority figure for our parents–a political leader, say . . . or the unseen entity who causes storms that kings fear.

All day I had a god who resulted from animism, and the god a person’s father generally is, and no way to connect.  Instinctive recognition of hierarchy took care of that.  As for the instinct to worship, that may simply be the instinct to obey authority.  I’ll have to think more on it.

But wait.  I should back up and let you know that, according to my theory, the brain is divided into ten general awarenesses, or semi-independent cerebral subdivisions, each with its own way of looking at things and/or processing data.  They have a lot in common with Howard Gardner’s “multiple intelligences,” but too much not in common with them for me to use his name for them.

The ten awarenesses are:

1. The Urceptual Awareness

2. The Fundaceptual Awareness

3. The Behavraceptual Awareness

4. The Evaluceptual Awareness

5. The Cartoceptual Awareness

6. The Objecticeptual Awareness

7. The Reducticeptual Awareness

8. The Sagaceptual Awareness

9. The Anthroceptual Awareness

10. The Combiceptual Awareness

The fancy names are not intended to impress halfwits but to indicate their meaning as clearly–and as inter-relatedly–as possible.  They all derive from the word “percept,” which means, “an impression of an object obtained by use of the senses,” in standard English, according to my copy of Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (1994).

1. The Urceptual Awareness

Where innate knowledge is stored–what a human face looks like, for instance, for instance.

2. The Fundaceptual Awareness

Where we experience all the stimuli we encounter in either our internal or external environment.

3. The Behavraceptual Awareness

Where we sense what our muscles and glands do, and where our voluntary motor actions are initiated.

4. The Evaluceptual Awareness

Where we experience pleasure and pain caused by our other experiences, and evaluate the latter on the basis of the ratio of pleasure to pain that results from them.

5. The Cartoceptual Awareness

Where we experience our sense of where we are, up/down, forward/backward, east/west, then/now, chapter 2/chapter 9, etc.

6. The Objecticeptual Awareness

Where we experience specifically those stimuli in our internal or external environoment that are inanimate objects, or seem to be such.

7. The Reducticeptual Awareness

Where we experience numbers, numbering, concepts, words (spoken and written)

8. The Sagaceptual Awareness

Where we experience out sense of destiny, of going somewhere meaningful, of life as a narrative, or saga.

9. The Anthroceptual Awareness

Where we experience ourselves as beings separate from the rest of existence, and other human beings–and as social beings

10. The Combiceptual Awareness

Where we experience everything we are aware of at any given instant–in other words, our consciousness

Each of these is divided into sub-awarenesses, sometimes many, that I won’t go into here except for the dochotoceptual sub-awareness of the Anthroceptual Awareness since it is pivotal for my explanation of why intelligent people believe in a god of some sort.

SELF AS                                 OTHER AS

child/slave                        father/master

father/master *                 child/slave

nonconformist                  anti-model

conformist                        model

befriendee                        friend

friend *                            befriendee

vicariant                           hero

mother/nurturer **           child

child                                mother

combatant *                    enemy

pet-owner                       dog/cat

male or female                 sex-object

anthroceptual dichotoceptual awareness: SELF versus OTHER

anthroceptual dichotozones, one for each of the ten specialized versions of self-versus-other

The theory is outwardly simple: our brains have little men in them, each a puppet with strings connected to our behavioral centers.  Execuceptual.  Let’s take that first.  Again, simple.  That part of the brain–really, those interrelated parts of the brain–in which all the physical acts that a person can to do are initiated–via muscles, mostly (glands seem to react to what’s going on with the rest of a person, not to commands from theis center)–are located.  The center of voluntary behavior.  In effect, a gigantic mechanical replica of the person with a control panel that can make a hand form a fist, or extend a forefinger to push a button in the environment, and so forth.

The Execuceptual Self.

* * * * *

ANTHROCEPTUALITY

Self-Consciousness, Empathy, Antipathy, Subordination, Dominance, the Mating Drive, the Friendship Drive

The anthroceptual awareness has to do with an individual’s concern with other beings and even things as persons.  Its function is to simplify existence by making of it a collection of people (as opposed to the ideas the intellect translates existence into, or the objects that the sensual awareness makes of it) to embrace or war against, depending on their behavior.  In other words, anthroceptuality personifies, starting in infancy with what we consider the appropriate personification of parents and siblings and continuing to the not-so-appropriate personification of rugs that trip us, corners that bump us and electric light bulbs that shock us later in life.

I used to enjoy playing with the baby daughter of friends of mine.  She was less than a year old but seemed quite bright.  One of our little games consisted of my doing something like clapping her imitating what I’d done.  It didn’t surprise me that she was easily able to clap as soon as she saw me clap, or make a fist, or cross her arms, or the like after see me do one of those things.  But she was as easily able to copy my making a fist and then hitting myself in the nose with it.  How could she do that, I wondered.  I could understand her clapping because she could see that what her hands were doing in the process were the same as what my hands had done, and she could see that her hands were more or less the same as mine.

Similarly she would be able to imitate me making a fist and my knee with it.  But how could she copy my hitting my nose with my fist?  She couldn’t see her nose and know that it was the same as mine in the way that she see the sameness of our hands.

On thinking about it, I considered the possible effects of simple learning: that she could have learned that everyone’s hands were similar by seeing them, feeling hers and others’ hands, and hearing all hands called by the same name, and gone on to learn what a nose in general was through the sense of touch and verbally.  I wasn’t satified with my reasoning, though.  The copying seemed too easy for her to have required such a complicated background.  Moreover I had read that infants start imitating adults very early–long before they seem to have any language function.  It is also known, I eventually found out, that the brain apparently recognizes faces as faces.  That is, a child doesn’t slowly learn that oval shapes with dark curves near the top over dark circular shapes in sideways small white ovals, etc., are faces; he automatically registers faces as faces–the brain is hard-wired to register combinations of eyes, eyebrows, noses and mouths as faces.  In any event, certain kinds of brain-damaged adults lose their ability to recognize faces but remain otherwise visually more or less normal, and can recognize other kinds of objects from their visual appearance.

Be that as it may, I eventually concluded that we are each born with a face-center in the brain which contains Universal Faces.  The first such face’s associated m-cells are activated by sufficient stimulation from the r-cells reporting on the presence of any face, and simply identifies it as a face.  This is the Innate Objective Face.  The second universal face is the Innate Subjective Face.  It is connected with r-cells responsible for the feel of one’s facial muscles and also to facial r-cells responsive to sensual stimuli such as warmth or tactile pressure.  In other words, the Innate Subjective Face is the main way one perceives one’s own face.

I propose that there is a third Universal Face in the brain which is actually a sort of double-face.  It consists of a duplicate of each of the other two Universal Faces–inter-connected in such a way that the objective’s part concerned with what the eyes of others look like, say, activates, when it is active, the subjective’s part concerned with one’s own eyes.  So a child seeing his mother’s eyes automatically registers: (1) not-me eyes and (2) a sense of his own eyes being repeated externally.  That is, he recognizes his own eyes in his mother’s eyes. Ditto with noses, mouths, ears, and so own.  Ditto, too, I’m sure, with the entire body.  If my hypothesis is right, we each have a whole body crudely sketched within us which stands for all human bodies, and another which stands for his own, and a third which connects his sense of body-out-there with his sense of his own body.  And the details link up in a similar fashion in more detailed objective/subjective areas–for noses, hands, feet, etc.

So the child I played with, seeing me make a fist, would weakly feel her own hand make a fist.  If she then wanted to copy me, she would simply let the feel of her own hand making a fist build up in energy until it activated behavior appropriate to actually making a fist.  And seeing me strike myself in the nose with my fist, she could easily copy me, for she would recognize my activity as being the same as her own behavior v89 (hitting oneself in the nose with one’s left fist, say), and carry out v89, if she wanted to.

The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced that such hard wiring exists.  It would explain how animals without language teach each other various non-instinctive behaviors, as they surely do.  It would explain the common experience of picking up something much faster when it is demonstrated than when it is explained.  And it would mean that learning would not be as intricate as it would otherwise have to be.

Later I found still more areas it seemed nicely to explain.  Particularly the seeming need, sometimes pathological, to be like others.  And, of course, empathy–the ability to put oneself emotionally in another’s place.

Indeed, the idea of objective/subjective linkage centers in the brain led eventually to my development of the anthroceptual awareness.  That is where we perceive people as people, and as human objects, and as ourselves repeated.

It explains why most people, even children, vicariously feel the pain and joy of others.  This leads to what some call altruism–but also to the joys and miseries of being a sports fan.  And of our ability to so strongly identify with characters in books or on television.  This vouyeurism, which is at bottom felt in a way no learned experience in my experience is, is another indication of the validity of my suppositions.  Observe the people who watch game shows, observe their joy when a contestant they’re rooting for wins.  (I myself hate game shows because I feel they reward trivial cleverness and luck more than brilliance is EVER rewarded, so eny blots out empathy for me.)  Surely those spectators are feeling what it means to win, not just recognizing all the things they’ve learned to associate with material success and through them remembering similar experiences of their own (which many of them would not have had), which is the only other way to explain the situaiton that I can think of.

Further thoughts on conformity.  The Inner Self and the Inner Other are interconnected, as already stated (I think).  The outside of the Other’s stimulus’s actions are felt by the Self as described–but the Self’s actions are also projected to the Inner Other.  For example, if I see the outside other salute, my inner other will salute as a result, and my linked inner Self will have an urge to salute as well–will feel the salute as though it were doing it.  In reverse, if I salute, I will automatically transmit energy to those cells in the inner other concerned with saluting, and “make” my inner other salute.

Thus, if I salute and the outside Other does not, a contradiction will arise–Non-conformity, in other words.  My background and the situation will dictate whether it is his fault or mine.  In the first case, he will become a non-conformist or Stranger and I will be angry with him, or fearful, or both.  In the second case, I will be the inadvertant non-conformist, the fuck-up, and feel embarrassment.

Many further remarks to make.  One is that all this conformity need not be very visible or consequential.  Much of it, particularly one’s own part, is “subliminal.”  That is, one carries out one’s imitations in a token, partial way by making the initial cerebral acts only, but inhibiting their actual manifestion in true behavior, or perhaps doing them only so minimally that they are too weak to become true behavior.

Another point: much of social behavior is not just conformity of one person to another; it is alternate, approximate conformity.  There is a golden compromise–one no more wants the over-expected absolute mimickry than one wants total refusal to conform.  It is like any other situation so far as plus/minus goes.  Just as a song is irksome if too unfamiliar, pleasant if neither too unfamiliar or too familiar and boring if too familiar, so it is we an other’s behavior, or our own with that other.

Conversation should given the gist of what happens, as I theorize.  I talk with you.  I say something–and @$you repeat it in your mind, you copy my words@%.  This you do subvocally and quickly and so immediately after hearing my words that you don’t notice it.  But you effectively conform while listening.  But, of course, you probably don’t listen intently and therefore don’t perfectly conform.  But you hear syllable one and it activates your cells for saying syllable one, but they don’t make you say syllable one aloud (usually) because you are in a listening mode–which inhibits speech.  (There is probably a mechanism which compares the activity of one’s passive auditory speech center with one’s motor auditory speech center, and inhibits the latter if the former seems dominant.  But other systems, awarenesses, come into play.)  The cells active in you for saying syllable one would prime but probably not activate the cells for hearing syllable one (again), incidentally.

Anyway, social custom and other considerations would finally require me to stop talking and listen to you, so I would then become the conformist, you the one conformed to.  Actually, we would be sharing a route to which we are both conforming.

One could consider the talker the dominant personality, and the listener the subservient one, though.  In most cases, that would be untrue–as I just said, people usual compromise on a route, neither dominating.  But in many situations one person @$is@% dominant.  Further, I think that most people are designed to be dominant or subservient–as other commentators have speculated.  In my theory, it’s possible that the Inner Self might be fashioned so as to send comparatively more stimulation to the Inner Other than the Inner Other sends to it.  Thus one would be inherently predisposed to want actual others to conform to him than the other way round.  The extra stimulation he sent to his inner other would cause comparatively greater pain if an actual other failed to do as expected than would his own failure to act as the actual other directed.

The reverse would be true of a natural serf, or subservient person.  His Inner Other would be stronger than his Inner Self, and so he would be predisposed to conform to others.

Which reminds me of something else: that we are too large, have too many awarenesses, to be the slaves necessarily of our anthroceptual awarenesses, so needn’t conform even if we are natural conformists.  And as previously indicated, our conformities may be very superficial.  It’s a matter of doing approximately and just sufficiently what another is doing.  He sings one song, maybe it will be enough for us merely to sing.

Still another point: we probably vary from context to context, and from mood to mood, in the ratio of our inner Self’s strength to that of our Inner Other’s.

More about dominance/subservience.  It depends on two things: the ratio of self-to-other strength, which sets “natural dominance,” and which I suspect is low for most people; and one’s awareness hierarchy–how strong each awareness is to the others.I’ve already touched on both these points.  About the second, I could be a natural conformist but only weakly anthroceptual.  If, say, I’m highly intellectual I could then push on to something like . . . this theory, which does not conform to yours, and not change my mind on it however vigorously you attack it, even though you might be naturally much more dominant than I.  Or in that case you might convince me to back down because I’m a serf–but you yourself recognize the validity of my theory after all–and force it back on me.  The awarenesses influence each other, in other words, so your intellectual need for truth might overcome your anthroceptual need for domincance in this case–perhaps even if your anthroceptual awareness is much more important to you than your intellectual.  The latter might still be strong enough to defeat the former due to the overwhelming correctness of my insights.

There is another factor: mentality.  This is interesting.  In earlier models of my system, I took mentality to be the determinant of servility.  A low Taurus Factor would cause others’ opinions to swamp one’s own.  One would have to be other-directed: percepts would cancel retrocepts.  High Taurus factor would do the opposite, would cause one to rigidly adhere to one’s one perceptions regardless of others’ views, valid or not.  My new thought is that these would influence the equation.

Here’s something: if I have a weak Self but high character, I might activate my self so strongly that it would in effect outperform my inner other–lots of weal singals versus a few strong ones.  Generally, though, I think high character/ low dominance would make one a very rigid conformist.  Maybe tradition-directed–conforming inflexibly to remembered others.

Which reminds me of something else of importance: that often anthroceptuality takes place when one is alone because of remembered people.  We obey laws in part even when alone because of our conscience, which is our inner other activated retroceptually.  And we might conform to such a retroceptual other against a perceived outside other if the actions of the two conflict.

Consider how many normal social behaviors are copying rituals.  The hand shake, for instance.  The Salute mentioned.  Dancing–which women are so fond of and I’m not–because, I now hypothesize, I’m not that big on conformity, from either side of it–because not anthroceptual.  Consider also religion–repetition of prayers, chants, songs, etc.  Marching.  So much doing things with enjoyment simply because one is doing them more or less in rhythm with someone else.

I want to emphasize the shared quality of the best of all this.  It is probably accidental who starts a chian of conformities between two friends–but once the chain starts, they conform to it not to each other.

Back to the effect of mentality on conformity.  Flexible minds (due to mentality) will naturally be flexible in thought and behavior, and thus flexible about conforming and not conforming, despite natural tendencies.

Being high in Aries Factor will allow one to plow through natural conformity; being low in it will cause one to be dominated by someone low in dominance while he is using a high Aries Factor even if you are high in dominance.  When one is under the sway of one’s Pisces Factor, one will be naturally subservient in all awarenesses despite one’s dominance factor.

Passive conformity is watching someone do something and not then doing it but doing it in a minimal internal way–conforming to it.  As in the conversation I described.  I watch someone play tennis and feel what he is doing, and enjoy it–or perhaps no and again am bothered by it because it is wrong.

The Inner Stranger comes into this.  There might be two of these: the innocuous Inner Stranger, and the Dangerous Inner Stranger.  But no, the former would be a weakly accepted Universal Friend–because one could identify with his nonconformity.  I’m thinking of a foreigner whom we accept even though he can’t speak English and thus does not conform vocally because we identify with being that kind of stranger ourselves. And usually he must conform in other ways to make up for it.   He still bothers us slightly.

One might be naturally dominant but fail to get others to conform to one’s directions because of other considerations–being too different, etc.  When one is anthroceptually dominant, one has a need for social power.  When one is cerebrationally dominant (high in character and/or brilliance), one has a need for intelligential power, which is different.  Of course, one might have both or neither.  I feel I have the latter to a strong degree but very little of the former.  I might be a natural conformist I now for the first time think.  But conformity works against all the best things in life–e.g., perhaps I’m anthroceptually desirous of liking best-seller novels because everybody does but that works against my sensoriceptual need for good novels, and the latter is stronger in me.

But I doubt that I’m very conformist, naturally.  Probably just average–neither conformist nor non-conformist.  But tensions can develop in a person whose mentality clashes with his natural dominance level.  In my case the clash, if it exists, might be what makes me less social than most people: I don’t want social considerations interfering with what to me are higher pleasures.  But I could be both naturally dominant and cerebrationally dominant, and avoid social situations because the latter must make me original and thus a non-conformist people have trouble with, and the former will make me very upset with that.  The point of all this I hope is clear: it is that many things interact in determining where one is on the serf to tyrant continuum.

Additional thought: probably mentality would not alter natural dominance for high character would make the inner other as much stronger as it would the inner self; the ratio should remain the same between the two regardless of the cerebration level.  So high character/low dominance would make one a strong, loyal serf; low character/low dominance would result in a shiftless serf–a non-conformist due to incompetence; high character/high dominance would make one a strong manager; low character/high dominance would result in a weak manager, I would guess–one who needed to dominate but was incompetent at it.

Yes, low character would tend to cancel high dominance.  The inner other would be strong due to perceptual activation while the inner self, stronger due to dominance, would nonetheless be retroceptually weak, so that the outside other would tend to dominate.  But that contradicts what I said about high character/low dominance.  I need to think this over more.

If the Other says A.B.C while the self, exposed to the other’s A and thus repeating it (regardless of dominance level or character), tries to say X.Y, what will happen?  If one has high character X will occur with B, Y with C.  Otherwise A.B.C will result.  In the first case, if one also has high dominance, B.C will be weaker for the self than X.Y will be for the Other.  In the first case if one has low dominance, though, the opposite will be the case, so one will remain subservient despite one’s high character.  (In all cases X, Y, B and C will be equal retroceptually.)  But the self will continue the chain begun by X.Y and so tension will continue, for a weak attempt to dominate will continue in force.

In the second case if one has low dominance one’s weak attempts to activate X.Y will be even weaker translated into an attempt to activate one’s inner other’s X.Y, and the Other’s activation of one’s self’s B.C will conquer.  If one has high dominance, however, one’s weak attempts to activate X.Y will mean, possibly, that one’s self will not experience anything: low retroceptual energy will prevent either X.Y or B.C from occurring.  Meanwhile one’s other will experience B.C perceptually, and X.Y retroceptually (if the help of dominance in raising its energy is sufficient, in which case let us simply define less than that sufficiency low dominance, meaning low in this context), X.Y will be a stronger force on the Other than B.C will be on the self, so low character/high dominance will cause an attempt to dominate.  But it will flicker on and off because the self will not be able to keep X.Y going.

High/low and low/high thus compromise.  It’s fuzzy.  But what if A.B.C does not try to make the self experience B until the third event of the sequence, while A.X.Y does not try to make the inner other experience X till the same event? High/high and low/low are unaffected, but high character/low dominance will mean the self will experience A.X.BY–but all will be as just described.  But low character/high dominance would be significantly different, for X would be prevented by low character from occurring for the self, so the self would have no instructions to pass on to the other and thus, despite its tendencies, would be forced to serve.  But that again is as before.  Ah, I think what would happen is that whatever retrocepts (or percepts) formed in the self would be “forced” on the other–even if they originated from the outside other!

The highdom/low character would try to manage but arbitrarily, foolishly, and superficially, content to seem to force his will on others.  The kind who will do anything you tell him to so long as you convince him it was his idea.

Call this type the beta managerial type, or b-manager.  His self will have weak self-direction but also weak other-direction so will not be very servile.  His inner other will have strong directions coming from his self.

Now a thought strikes me.  Let high dominance be defined as stimulation from self to other which is stronger than that from other to self (as already stipulated) but also stronger than that from other to other.  Ah, let high dominance equal self to other stimulation being higher than current retroceptual stimulation (or both other to other and self to self).  Let low dominance equal other to self stimulation being higher than current retroceptual stimulation.  Call high dominance simply dominance and low dominance subservience.  Why?  Because one could be the new definition have both.  Call the interaction of the two assertiveness.  If one is higher in dominance than in subservience, one is high in assertiveness; if one is lower in dominance than in subservience, one is low in assertiveness; if the two are equal one is neither assertive nor unassertive.

Okay.  High in C and A equals high in assertiveness.  Low in both equals low in assertiveness.  High in C and low in A means still high A because other to self stimulation will because of low A be higher than self to self while self to other will be lower in comparison to other to other than other to self will be in comparison to self to self.  In other words, the other will have a stronger effect on the self than the self will have on the other, so one will remain subservient.  This is again the same as before.  How about Low in C and high in A?  Self to other stimulation will be higher than other to other stimulation while other to self will have comparatively less effect on the self, so one would remain dominant.  Ready because of low character to be pushed around but more ready to push around because of high assertiveness.

This is confusing.  I still haven’t worked it out.  Of course, there will be all kinds of levels of dominance, but other things being equal, a person having higher A (the difference between his D and S) will dominate a person having a lower A.

(Extraneous note: one mustn’t forget pseudo subservience, the ability of gifted manipulators to suppress their natural dominance until they can use it to the full.)

Latest thought (24Sep89): The self-to-other (dominance) circuit meets the other-to-self (submission) circuit in a center which compares the strength of the stimulation of the first with that of the second.  If dominance energy is the greater by some amount, then the person goes into his dominance mode.  If the reverse, he goes into his submission mode.  If neither, he remains in a neutral mode.

In the dominant mode, his other-to-self transmissions are inhibited (completely); in the submission mode, his self-to-other transmissions are cut off.  In the neutral mode both transmissions are cut off.  (But both self and other continue to transmit to the dominance/submission center.)  All transmissions allowed to continue continue at full strength.  That full strength will be great (per cell) than the person’s retroceptual level.

Therefore, high character/high dominance and low character/low dominance are as previously described.  High character/low dominance is also as before since high character will boost both self and other transmission to the center equally, but low dominance will reduce the self’s tranmission.  Thus, other things being equal, the other will win out and the person will go into the submission mode.  But his high character will keep his stronger retroceptual options active and so he will have more of a chance of changing to dominance than other low dominance types.

A person with low character but high dominance will be predominantly dominant.  His low character will transmit his self’s options weakly to the center but the other’s input will be equally weak.  Meanwhile his high dominance will raise the comparative strength of his self’s material, causing it to come out stronger than the other’s at the center, all else being equal.  So he’ll be a managerial type, but an unstable, impulsive, foolish one.  His low character will mean his directions will come from any old where while his dominance will try to enforce them, despite reason.  The bossy woman is typical of this kind of person–has no real goal but must have her way at all costs anyway.

Note: in deciding on the center and its nature, I wanted, of course, to make my system work, and work in a simple way.  But it wasn’t all arbitrary.  It seems to me reasonable to assume Nature will wants things simple since simplicity means less expenditure of energy.  In this case, too, Nature would strive for social simplicity.  It would not be biologically efficient for the self-to-other and the other-to-self transmissions both to occur at the same time and then the self and other fight each other confusedly for a long time to determine one’s dominance/submission mode.  Better a quick either/or.

This would facilitate social interactions, too, by allowing a short minor dominance superiority on the part of one person (in a situation where it was important to determine a leader) efficiently to knock a rival into a submission mode.  In any case, this kind of “Darwinian” thinking is important and helpful in deciding whether some element of theory makes sense or not.  It should always make some kind of sense biologically: a hypothesized trait must be something Nature could logically have selected.  And it ought to obey Ockham’s razor because Nature tends to, in biological matters.

* * * * *

A brief thought about how the selves I hypothesize function in the evaluceptual center. Possible chapter-length explanation of the natural evolution of morality there, I now believe.  How, in particular, we don’t need a God to tell us not to murder to develop a natural disinclination to do so.  I should probably try to write up just this chapter as it should be pretty self-contained, and not hard–even fun–to write.

Owner-Self?  And an urcept having to do with ownership–and the territorial imperative.

Cartoceptual Awareness has an Ur-Property Urplex containing a property urcept, and a Cartoceptual Self and Other, or Owner and Trespasser.  Or maybe this is in the Carto-Anthroceptual Association Zone.  The property urcept automatically accompanies anything one’s eyes show to be within a foot, say of one, wherever one is.  It is one’s personal space, in other words.  It travels with one.  It strengthens for a given location the more one is in that lacations–and for what stays in that location.  It establishes one’s “direct property.”  Society can establish one’s “indirect property” by means of rules.  Natural versus aritificial Property.

Complications.  The objecticeptual awareness identifies objects in a property space as primary property.  The anthroceptual awareness identifies persons as non-property, by inhibiting the property urcept and stimulating the not-property urcept which is also in the ur-property urplex.

The Authority-Figure will reverse connections in a property zone to the degree it is strong compared to one’s self.

Pets will be part property to the degree they are objects, as all partly are.  Other people will be part object, too, the more so they are subordinate to one.  In everyday situations, this means, roughly, the younger they are compared to one.

One’s fundaceptual self is property, too.  And one’s actions.

* * * * *

THE ANTHROCEPTUAL AWARENESS

The anthroceptual awareness is also an abstracting awareness, for it abstracts the urceptual man out of the environment.  With the help of the evaluceptual awareness, it goes farther and derives an urceptual enemy and an urceptual friend from every image of u ceptual man it processes.  The appreceptual awareness, which controls pain and pleasure and thus can be said to decide whether a thing is good or bad, simply attaches sensations of good or bad to each urceptual man a person experiences and thus makes him friend or foe.  This, of course, allows the person quickly to react–to flee from a foe, for instance, for he will be stimulated by a simple archetypal figure of emnity rather than a difficult and ambiguous particular enemy.

The origin of this, I believe, is ancient–possibly back with the protozoa we came from, with their recognition of what to flee, what to pursue (and devour, if possible).  Our anthroceptual awareness, I’m sure, contains animals and insects, some of which are tagged enimical, and from which women automatically shrink–snakes and spiders, and so on.  But one need not be the slave of one’s instincts.  One can learn, for instance, that spiders are good people, mind their own business, and keep down the population of whiney, annoying bugs.

More important than dividing friend from foe is anthroceptuality’s social adhesion properties.  I divide the anthroceptual awareness into four zones: the dominance, the empathy, the subordination and the autonomy zones.  The urceptual man dwells in all four–along with the urceptual self.  The urceptual self is very important in one’s self-image.  It is a twin of the urceptual man, but is connected, literally, to one’s own body.

Here’s how it works: certain representative musclaceptual and viscraceptual sensors are hooked up with the stick-figure urceptual self in such a way that when that self moves and arm, say, one musclaceptually experiences the movement as his own arm moving.  Certain of one’s voliceptual sensors are also hooked up with the urceptual self so that when one wills one’s real arm to move left, say, one will also will the arm of one’s urceptual self to move left–and be disturbed if it doesn’t.

What does all this mean?  It means, for one thing, that one can objectively view oneself, one can experience oneself both from the inside, and as a stick-figure external to oneself that one controls.  The existence of the urceptual self also makes possible the four zones I listed.  In the dominance zone the urceptual self connects to the urceptual man the same way one’s body is connected to the urceptual self–that is, the self’s limbs are connected to homologous limbs of the man, and so forth, so that when the self moves a leg, so will the man. The self thus tends to force the man to copy him.

The opposite is the case in the subordination zone.  The same connections are made between self and man, but going the opposite way, so that everything the man does (based on some human being in the actual environment–or remembered) the self will attempt, as the man’s subordinate, to copy.  There is more to it than that, needless to say.

 

The Urceptual Foe

The Urceptual Foe’s stimulus is first any stranger, including a wild animal–or even a thunderstorm or something else inanimate. But mostly, especially at first, a stimulus suggestive of a man. It becomes a foe when it has carried out activities sufficiently threatening: loud noises, snarls, baring of the teeth, and looks formidable. And not-human, an animal being almost automatically considered a foe.

21 August 2011

A Sudden Simplification

(Note, one of my flaws is that I’m as interested in how I think as in what I think so constantly complicate my discourse with asides about the former. This will happen often if the following material.)

For a long time I thought each of us had Urceptual Personae in our head, each more or less resembling a human being, and connected to an inner puppet representing a self-image I call the Urceptual Self. Very complicated. Well, suddenly last night I junked all the personae as puppets but two, the Urceptual Self and the Urceptual Other.

The Urceptual Self is a puppet crudely resembling its subject (i.e., the person in whose brain it dwelleth). It tends to copy all its subject actions, and is taken by the subject as the subject’s “me.” When I type and think, “I type,” I’m really expressing my knowledge of what my Urceptual Self is doing (except in not common circumstances when I actually see what my body is doing).

I claim that the Urceptual Self is connected with the equivalent of puppet strings both to its subject’s body (puppet finger to real finger, puppet nose to real nose, etc.) but also the the Urceptual Other, a puppet identical to it.

The Urceptual Other also has puppet strings to an Urceptual (innate) inner picture of a generic human being which is activated by any human being in the external environment. When activated, the picture tends to use its strings to the Urceptual Other to make the Other copy its actions, which are duplicates of the actions of its stimulus. The Other at just about the same time uses the strings to the Urceptual Self it controls to make it carry out the same actions.

I used to think that environmental cues would cause the Urceptual Other to transmit to many other Urceptual Personae which would have various effects, but last night I saw that it didn’t have to. Why: because I could replace those extra personae with simpler urceptual bundles, each sensitive to environmental stimuli indicating the environmental presence of a particular kind of consequential living being, such as a child, a cat, a femal human being, a bad man. . . . The stimuli that I hypothesized turned on the various urceptual others, or casued the central urceptual other to turn on. They would now turn on not puppets but urceptual tags.

But they would all turn on the Urceptual Other. So a subject’s little brother would activate his Urceptual other and urceptual-child-tag. The latter would cause him to carry out big brother actions (assuming other instincts or needs were not complicating factors). He would form a small knowleplex representing his understanding of his little brother which included the Urceptual Other with a child-tag to make up the equivalent of an urceptual child, plus all the unique specifics about the little brother such as his name, favorite dessert, etc. Thereafter, simply glimpsing his little brother would activate his urceptual instincts concerned with taking the role of a father toward the child.

The child-tag would activate his Urceptual Other plus his father-tag. His accelerance would be stimulated to push his cerebral energy high enough for his self to dominate the Urceptual Other. ???

He becomes a father-figure.

Urceptual Self plus father-tag dominates Urceptual Other plus child-tag. He instinctively carries out father activities with little brother as their object.

He can identify with father-figures, which is to say with the knowleplex for one or more of such figures, each of which will contain a father-tag and Urceptual Other.

For one thing, there are certain urcepts that mean authority, certain ones that mean submissiveness, just as in the dog world when a certain kind of bark means I am king here, and lying on one’s back means I submit to you.  In the human world tallness, depth of voice, and certain other masculinities probably mean authority, and genuflection, etc., mean submissiveness.  The combination of authority urcepts with the urceptual man tend to push a person into his subordination zone while submissiveness urcepts combined with the urceptual man will push a person into his dominance zone.  In the first case he will tend to do submissive things, in the latter he will tend to act dominant.

Moreover, when in his dominance zone, his mental energy will increase and he will become literally more assertive while the reverse will have in the subordination zone.

Of course many other factors will determine which zone, if either, he goes into in the presence of another person.  People who aren’t particularly anthroceptual will probably not go into either zone.  Strong-minded people–that is, people high in character–will be hard to force into their subordination zones, hard, in fact, to knock out of their dominance zones.  People low in character will spend most of their time, if they are also anthroceptual, in their subordination zones.  Not necessarily unhappily.  But very superior people may, if anthroceptual, also become subordinate relatively easily if they have high accomodance, and are in a situation in which accomodance is called for.

Submissiveness and accomodance are the basis of learning–social learning, that is, and learning from others, which is the most important way we learn, probably.  So we are all submissive at times, even past childhood when we are more or less programmed for submissiveness (however rebellious at times we can get).

Now I also spoke of the empathy zone.  There, as in the subordination zone, the urceptual self is linked up with the urceptual man in such a way that what the latter does the self will attempt to copy.  The only difference is that authority urcepts have no power in the empathy zone. Hence, when one is in his empathy zone, one’s mental energy is at its normal level.  He submits–or his urceptual self submits–or attempts to copy the urceptual man–but only up to a point.  If the copying pushes the self into disliked paths, and with the self, the person himself, linked as he is to the self, and predisposed to do as the self does (when anthroceptually active), one can easily refuse to imitate further.

Hence, one mainly experiences the other as one’s self rather than as an authority to obey.  One lives vicariously through the urceptual man, and empathizes with what happens to him.  If he hurts himself, one truly feels it oneself.  This is the source of the cliche the parent tells the kid about the spanking hurting the spanker more than the kid.  It is true, because the spanker’s urceptual self is being spanked as surely as the kid, who is activating one’s urceptual other in the empathy zone.

I also spoke of the autonomy zone.  Here there are no links between the urceptual self and the urceptual man, hence now dominance/submission struggle.  The two are more or less equals–mainly because no authority or submission urcepts are present.  Here the person feels represented by his urceptual self in alliance with an urceptual other.  They share the world.

All of this is far more complicated than I have made it, but I’m trying here merely to suggest what my theory is all about, and–I hope–get a few people interested in it.

Further thoughts

I now posit that the stimuli activating an urceptual tag will also activate the urceptual other if appropriate, and influence the Urceptual Self in appropriate, as well–to be responsive or unresponsive to the signals of the Urceptual Other.

The Archetypal Example would involve the mother tag that a mother will activate in an infant.  She will also activate the Urceptual Other–and, possibly, the child’s anthroceptual awareness, and its accommodance.  Once in its anthroceptual awareness, the child will be sensitive to the mother, and the urceptual other activated.  It will turn on its Urceptual Self–or, more likely, bring it more strongly into its consciousness.  Its accommodance will lower its cerebral energy so that will not resist the “orders to imitate” the Urceptual Other, once active, will automatically transmit to its Urceptual Self.  There will be no Urceptual Mother, just an Urceptual Other acting as an Urceptual mother because accompanied by a mother-tag when active.

This combination of tag and Other will have a second important effect: it will tend to double the strength in the child’s memory of the mother, because that memory will consist of the record of the environmental stimuli entering the child as “mother” plus the record of the Urceptual other and the mother-tag (which will be added as automatic memeries to the memory formed). 

 25 August 2011

Now for a little controversy: my discovery of God.  I thought I’d sneak it in here where no one would see it.  Just the surface of it at the moment, but I think I have it pretty well mapped out.  It’s tricky, and I’m ungainly at exposition, so be patient.

1. I posit the existence of a Urceptual Father that consists of the Urceptual Other plus a “father-tag.”  The Urceptual Father’s stimulus is an human being revealing dominance signals and strength in comparison to the subject.  The subject will tend to do the Father’s bidding, and imitate him, to the degree that the stimulus activates the father-tag through various cues.  The subject will record a memory of the Urceptual Father’s stimulus and a vaguer memory of his internal Urceptual Other, to the degree that he imitates, as that puppet’s puppet, the actions of the stimulus of the Father.  In time, the subject will build a memory of an authority figure consisting of his memories of the Urceptual Other plus the father-tage always with the Other when it is activated as a father figure, plus various stimuli who perform as authority figures–the subject’s actual father, an older brother, an uncle, a male neighbor, etc.  Females, too, although to less of an extent because females’ cue are mor nurturing than authoritarian. 

Result: the subject will gradually build an inner representation of an Urceptual Father with few clear specific features–a figure much like the Judea-Christian God, in fact.  What priests and other elders indoctrinate the subject with will strengthen this internal God who must be obeyed.

Oh, the Urceptual Other and whatever tags are activated with him when he is activated are retroceptually stronger than most other matter that we remember–by which I mean that that result in stronger memories.  So a memory of one’s father telling one not to kick one’s little sister will make one’s memory of the event stronger than  one’s memory of a pretty flower.

2. Meanwhile, there is the Urceptual Judge whom I posit.  The Urceptual Other plus a judge-tag.   The judge causes (if need be) one’s memories of one’s deeds that the judge favors, generally moral acts, almost always acts having to do with other people, to be pleasurable, or more pleasurable if they’d be pleasurable without his assistance; his has the same effect on one’s deeds he is against, except that he makes them painful or more painful.  In other words, he encourages us to be good.  His stimulus is sometimes the same stimulus of the Urceptual Father, but can be any human being the subject acts morally or immorally to.  Various elders will stengthen his judge-related actions, as eventually will characters he reads or hears about.  His Urceptual-Mother (and actual mother) will likely be more important in this area than the Urceptual father.  So, an internal God who bestows rewards and punishment–and is vague the same way the authority-figure is.

3. Various instincts make animists of all of us–that is, we think thunderstorms have intent.  We tend often to attach an Urceptual Other to animate objects in the environment, to give us memories of them with a bit of the Urceptual Other in them–legs and arms, for instance–certainly a mind.  Ergo: a God who is everywhere, but immaterial (since being in the sky, ocean, trees, etc., will cause his material identifying characteristics to fade–except for hints of the Urceptual Other than will always be aroused to some degree.

Conclusion: the Urceptual Father and the Urceptual Judge and innate animism will combine to form in most of us a natural anthropomorphic deity that priests will exploit, and the majority will accept–because everyone else does.

Is there an escape?  Sure.  Innate general intelligence.  Perhaps more important, strong abstract intelligence than social intelligence.  Life experience that gradually makes reason stronger than instincts.  Much else.  Complicated topic.  A meagre start here, but I did better than I thought I would.

Oh, and this god will be a part of most conspiraplexes, I believe–even those believed in my agnostics or atheists–many of whom believe in the state, or some other secular god.
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Column110 — March/April 2012 « POETICKS

Column110 — March/April 2012

 

Another Gathering of Visual Poems and Related Art


Small Press Review,
Volume 44, Numbers 3/4, March/April 2012



the bleed.01
Editors: Mara Patricia Hernandez and John Moore Williams
Volume 1, Issue 1, June 2011. 90pp; Avantexte Press, Oakland CA,
http://www.avantexte.com/thebleed

Webzines featuring visual poetry and related artworks are becoming much more frequent of late. Among the best of them is the bleed, subject of my last two columns, and my subject once again. Fortunately for me, it is available as a regular hardcopy magazine, for I was unable to read it on the Internet–due, I’ve been told, to my still being on dial-up.

In his introduction, Editor Williams describes his discoveries during his first year “in the bleed”: “that the world is much larger, and more full of fearlessly creative souls than (he’d) ever imagined; that bringing the work to light takes much more work than (he’d) expected; that there are days when (he wished he’d) never started this thing in the first place, and, in a secret corner of (his) aorta, that (he had) come to resent doing it; and that another day comes when (he sees) a submission and (realizes) that (his) eyes have been skinned wide open, (his) cranium levered back with a gut-wrenching crack, and how happy the world makes (him).” Which certainly brings me back to my own days as an editor/publisher.

There are all kinds of works in this issue of the bleed, with interesting accompanying commentary by both Williams and each individual artist. First up is Amanda Earl, with a three-piece suite of concrete poetry (i.e., producing a viso-aesthetic effect through the use of typography only). Based on passages of “The Song of Solomon,” it begins with one consisting of a set of three stacks each of which contains the words, “My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feeds among the lilies,” in alphabetical order, and three more with the same words except for “am” and “the” in the same order. These latter are perpendicular to, and on top, of the other set. Trust me, the resulting gestalt captures–and renews–all that the original song celebrated. The sequence’s two other poems are equally effective.

Already I have a problem–I’ve only treated one poem out of the many here worth discussion but used up more than a third of my space. I’ll have to be stingy with my words from now on, starting with the visioconceptual non-poetry of Rosaire Appel–wonderfully resonant 3-D blueprints of the shape of poems; Marton Koppany’s finding a way to make his minimalist treatments of (1) the word “or” (its o a white balloon) and (2) a combination of a dash, quotation marks, a wavy line (indicating water) and a comic-strip balloon both very funny and lyrically expansive; Vernon Frazer’s masterful textual collages, one of them with a rectangle inscribed with “the centurion/ of the broken/ codes reaches/ a dark footing,” to wonderfully contradict the geometric rigor of the graphic design it is in (i.e., poetry versus engineering, to the enhancement of both).

Also, some absorbing deformations of a page of print in sudsy water by Michael Justin Hatfield; four gorgeous 3-D constructions with text present or implied of the sort he’s well-known for by Peter Ciccariello; a four-part blur and swirl of words by Andrew Topel; four arresting non-representational images with texts printed on top of them by Berne Reichert, the graphics and texts bouncing off each other into interesting new locales; three inimitable all-word poems by John M. Bennett, the first half of one of which is (approximately, as I can’t duplicate the fonts used here) “elimination of the gnatss a lun/ ching ear fooaam my rabb/ bbit coughs an stre/ ams beneath th/ e gate your f/ lash==olight/ sunk nost/ ril can/ of f/ –=O=–/ rks . . .”

Yes, that last one takes a long while to get an understanding of, but it does eventually unclear into the kind of sensually sensible loud mood/situation the best poems, and almost all of Bennett’s, do, given patience and sufficient mental surrender on the part of the engagent.

To continue, we have “border again border,” by Aysegul Tozeren, which is not in English, so I can’t say much about it except that it looks interesting. After that, five poems by Willem van den Bosch, the first of which is “The Anxious Prince”: “be or not/ to be or/ not to be/ or not to”; four terrific images by Carlyle Baker, one of which I described at my blog as “simultaneously some sort of alchemical diagram, a map of a section of an archaeological dig, a frame from a film of a dream, a ‘careworn and coffee-stained map’ of a lost country (as John Moore Williams described it), maybe even a piece of square currency from some mystical secret nation . . .” Then 2 pages of what seem like found combinations of text and graphics by Sean Burn (I think–the design of the page combines too many disparate items for me to be sure what’s what in it, but “Sean Burn” was the only name among them); some provocative computer-distortions of text by Mike Cannell, and some fascinating microbiologalizations of isolated letters by Nico Vassilakis; also five conceptual poems by Eric Goddard-Scovel that caught my fancy, especially the one called “eleven!”: “!!!11!!!!11!!1111!!!!11!11!!!!!11!”

Finally, there is an essay, “On a Letter Sufficient for Visual Poetry,” subtitled, “A Report, with a Fantasia,” by Iain Macdonald Matheson–12-pages including a page of afterthoughts and two pages of footnotes, one of them citing a poem of mine at Mad Hatters Review, so you know the thing is of the highest seriousness. My immediate off-the-top-of-my-head impression of this after only dipping into it here and there was that it was “brilliantly (and valuably) philosophically irresponsible.” I was “pretty sure I was understanding it, but didn’t think its author cared too much whether or not he was understood. The French School.” Derrida and the other relativistic French writers on literature of his time are, for me, entertainers, not verosophers (my term for serious seekers of the truth). Not that I consider entertainment of less value than truth. And it can sometimes annoy a reader into valid insights–just as the search for truth can sometimes entertain. Of course, said writers considered it an absolute truth that truth did not exist. But don’t let me get going on that. Bottom line: I extemefully approve the appearance of essays like this one as part of collections of poetry of any kind, but particularly of oddball poetry. I think visual poetry’s greatest problem is lack of them.
.

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Column052 — September/October 2001 « POETICKS

Column052 — September/October 2001



Another Summer Vacation



Small Press Review,
Volume 33, Numbers 9/10, September/October 2001




The Atlantic Center for the Arts
1414 Art Center Avenue
New Smyrna Beach FL 32168
The Atlantic Center for the Arts

 


 

My opinion that the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, does more to advance the arts in this country than any other institution should probably be taken with at least a few grains of salt since it is the only arts-related institution in the country that has ever done anything for me, personally. I think that few will believe I was wrong to publicize it here when they’ve finished this column, however.

According to a book about the center, The First Decade, it was dreamed up and founded in 1977 by Doris Leeper, a distinguished visimagist (i.e., painter/sculptor, in my special lingo), its purpose being to give “talented artists at mid-career the opportunity to work with outstanding Master Artists . . . (in) a uniquely open workshop atmosphere unencumbered by preconceived boundaries or expectations.”

So, starting in 1982 with poet James Dickey, sculptor Duane Hanson and composer David Del Tredici, two or three “Master Artists” have conducted residency programs at the center every two or three months–with up to ten “associate artists” (the artists considered to be in mid-career) working with each master artist (and getting free room and board). Many well-known poets have done stints as master artists at the center such as Dickey, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, William Stafford, Philip Whalen, John Ashbery, Amy Clampitt, Robert Creeley and Jonathan Williams.

So far as I know, Williams was the only otherstream poet invited to the center as a master artist until my master artist, Richard Kostelanetz (and even Kostelanetz, however still under-recognized by the powers-that-be in the surface of American Culture, has had an immense number of books published, many of them by establishment publishers, and has gotten previous grants). It would be pleasant if there were some organization in this country that identified rather than merely re-identified (or, in the case of most of them, misidentified) master artists. But, the ACA must be commended for bringing in the likes of Kostelanetz.

The scuttlebutt is that Edward Albee, second master artist at the center, and now chairman of its national council, was instrumental in allowing Richard to scoot in. Be that as it may, Albee seems to be equaling James Michener in helping out other artists, the center being only one of many enterprises with that aim that he’s a consequential part of. So, if he weren’t already on my list of Important Cultural Figures for his incontestably major accomplishments as a playwright, he’d be on it for his nurturing of the arts.

For the most part, Kostelanetz, understandably, chose friends in visual poetry as his associates: me, Kathy Ernst, Scott Helmes and John M. Bennett; the younger associates–Josh Carr, Pat Greene, Fred Young, Hesse McGraw and Michael Peters were mostly people recommended to him by friends. In short, it was the standard who you know game. We had to fill out application forms, though. Still, Richard did pick one or two associates from among submitters he didn’t know, and Kerry James Marshall did likewise, I’m fairly certain. (He’s the excellent painter who was the only other master artist present during my stay (a composer having disappointingly dropped out for some reason). So it’s worth writing the center or going to its website, to find out how to apply for either a residency or an associateship.

Physically, the center consists of interestingly blend-with-nature buildings emerging out of dense palmettoey Florida vegetation, planked walkways of the kind associated with beaches connecting them. It includes a library (with computers and Internet-access), field house (which was the Kostelanetz group’s work room), painters’ studio, sculptors’ studio, theatre, dance studio, recording studio, computer room, administration building and dining hall, plus clumps of very nice motel-like rooms for associates, and three cottages for master artists.

I spent the best part of my ACA time in the field house or at a computer (Kostelanetz supervising me and the rest of his charges beautifully, via encouragement only). While in the field house, I worked on poems. I spent my time at computers learning Photo Shop from Ernst (with lots of help from other associates) and applying what I learned to turning out new visio-mathematical poems, and–later–finding out how to make computer videos from Young, which enabled me to make a crude short on what I’m trying to do in my long division poems.

This I presented at a show&tell thing at the end of our stay that was open to the public (in conjunction with an exhibit of our work). An unprolific poet generally lucky to do three new poems in a year, I got ten new ones done in my three weeks at ACA, three or four of them major (for me), plus three collaborations with Bennett (no one escaped collaborating with him!) that I also deem important, and parts of some quite intriguing group efforts.

I spent a lot of near-best time gabbing with and viewing the work of fellow artists, including those in the very talented, if not as wacked-out as we, Marshall group. The food was super-good, too, though not fancy. And we even had a field trip; it was to the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive in Miami, which had lots of terrific visual poems and related matter not there when I last was. The only negative of my stay was that no bigtime arts patron took a gander at my work and decided, on the spot, to become my Prince Ludwig II. But, hey, visibility is starting to seem more and more not totally impossible for us visual poets! So, watch out, world!

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A Page for Mrs. Lasher’s Class « POETICKS

A Page for Mrs. Lasher’s Class

 

You kids showed such good creative use of the idea of making mathematical poems, that I thought I would show you another kind of arithmetic you can use to make a poem: long division.  The above is an example.  To understand it all you have to do is treat it as a long division example that uses words (or pictures) instead of numbers.  That means it is telling us that if you divide “BIG” by “little,” your answer will be the sun–with a remainder of “Hi!”  It has a remainder because the sun times “little” doesn’t quite equal “BIG,” it equals a “smile” (or so I say!)  A smile, the poem says, needs to have “Hi!” added to it to equal “BIG.”  Okay, it doesn’t really make sense the way proper arithmetic does, but my hope is that it will give those who see it a happy feeling of a smile as something little that has been multiplied by the sun, and with a friendly greeting added to it become BIG. 

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my long division poem as much as I’ve enjoyed your addition poems, and that some of you will go on to make more mathematical poems.

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By the way, if you think you may be interested in the nutty way I think about long division, click HERE.
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One Response to “A Page for Mrs. Lasher’s Class”

  1. Donna Lasher says:

    To the poet who is still a ROCK STAR in our eyes! Let me know if you see anything that needs correcting! I enjoyed the article in Scientific American.
    http://blogs.neisd.net/dlashe/stories-from-our-blog/

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