Archive for January, 2010
Entry 91 — MATO2, Chapter 1.11
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
My book did well enough with my family. My brother Bill even bought extra copies for his two daughters and his mother-in-law. I sold a copy to Dr. Case, the foot doctor I was seeing for a bone spur in my heel, too–and he later told me he did read it. As my visual poetry friends, just about all of them I sent copies to wrote me back about it during the summer of ‘90. I got expecially good feedback about my sonnet from Jody Offer and Stephen-Paul Martin, revising it on the basis of what they said. Stephen-Paul also made a good point about the Canto of Pound’s that I discussed, one that I inserted into the revision of my book I soon was working on (credited to him, of course).
My local literary friends–by which I mean the dozen or so other members of the Port Charlotte Tuesday Writers’ Group, which met the second and fourth Tuesday of each month at the main local library, were supportive, too, several buying copies of it. My number one such friend, Lee Hoffman (also my number one friend of any kind), had already helped me considerably through pre-publication versions of the book, but Nell Weidenbach, another member not only bought a copy but came to the meeting after she’d bought it with her copy, which she left with me, full of annotations. Several were Very Sharp. She argued with some of the passages I’d put in hoping to engage the reader in just that way, which particularly pleased me.
Not what I’d call sophisticated about poetry, though, she told our group that she preferred most very traditional stuff to my later stuff, and to the work of Stevens, Pound et al! She then recited my poem about wanting to run madly into the brush to the group, and they applauded. Nell wanted to know why I didn’t write like that all the time. I didn’t tell her I’d quoted the poem in my book to show the reader how far I’d advanced since it. (Although I have to confess I was fond of it).
At that meeting or another when we discussed my book, a lady named Carol who teaches writing workshops somewhere and seems quite knowledgeable and (proof of her acumen) wanted to buy a copy of my book from me, showed up for the first time.. She said when I discussed marketing of the book by appearing at writers’ clubs and the like, then expressing doubt as to my ability to carry it off, that I was “presentable,” and would come across well. Alas, I never did appear at a such a club. I didn’t even get my own club to organize a presentation although we’d had two such events for commercial writers (who weren’t members of the club). I’ve never been good at pushing for things like that–if “only” on my own behalf.
Speaking of marketing myself, in July I did mail a copy of my book to the University of Pittsburgh, as well. My hope was that they’d be interested in republishing it, Jonathan Brannen (I believe) having mentioned that they seemed interested in such material. Three months later I got a not from somebody there claiming to have enjoyed reading it, especially the part about what I was then calling vizlature, but passing on a chance to do a reprint of it as it did not”suit the aims they (were) establishing for their series.”) Manywhere had been sent them as a sample of what I could do, not a submission, but clearly if they were interested at all, they would have asked me to try again with a book nearer what they’re looking for.
Arond the time of the Pittsburgh rejection I got a notice about the annual Pushcart prize competition, and thought I might enter a chapter or part of a chapter from Manywhere in it. Later I sent them the section on Geof Huth. The inclusions in the Pushcart anthology went to the usual mediocrities–the ones in the small press, which the Pushcart people were famous for encouraging, who were doing excatly the same things mainstream writers were–not to the likes of me.
My one semi-successful attempt at publicity was getting the columnist, James Kilpatrick, to mention my coinage for “visual art,” then “vizlation,” in an early 1991 columnof his. He didn’t mention my book, however, nor agree that the word could be useful, nor pay any attention to my one or two further letters about it.
The last name writer I wrote to about my book was James Dickey–because I liked his poetry and had read a collection of his criticism with enjoyment. I thought he might be open to what I was up to–and considered it a good sign that his birthday was the same as mine, 2 February. He didn’t so much as acknowledge receipt of my book, and Geof, a fellow alumnus of Vanderbilt with Dickey told me that he had once tried to get something from Dickery for an anthology of poems by poets who had gone to Vanderbilt and he had turned him down with a joke about his agent’s not letting him. In short, a jerk. Although, on reflection, I’m not sure how I’d react if students at Cal State, Northridge, my alma mater, asked me for a poem once I became as well-known as Dickey. I’ve been totally ignored by CSUN since graduating. I think I’d send them a poem, though. If I didn’t, I’d explain why. I certainly wouldn’t ask for money.
One of my most quarrelsome literary friends through the mail at this time was Will Inman, a terrific Whitmanesque poet who, alas, didn’t merely dislike his friend Karl Kempton’s and my visual poetry but thought anyone involved with any kind of poetry other than his kind of free verse was an enemy of poetry. I like people that committed to anything, and expressed admiration of his poetry, even publishing my veiw of him as a major poet, so he didn’t chuck me entirely.
In his first letter about my book, which I’d sent him, he blasted a lot of what I was trying to do, particularly my attempts to connect the discussions of various poems and poets with my sonnet. These he called mechanical. He didn’t like my Keats section, either, which surprised me. I never thought anyone could consider it worse than innocuous. But he praised my section on Roethke’s “The Shape of the Fire,” and said that if the book were like that section all the way through, it’d be his kind of book–like one I’d never heard of (by an author I’d never heard of) that he brought up. He liked my theme and the idea of Manywhere-at-Once, though.
He had only gotten to page 85, so I was sure he’d have worse things to say. He did, giving up entirely on the book 48 pages later–it was too “clinical and mechanical.” Etc. The usual anti-intellectualism of too many poets. I should expect reactions like his, and be happy if anyone likes so much as a section or two of the book–but, of course, I want everybody to like every line of everything I write. That couldn’t happen with a book as complex as Manywhere.
Almost all my other advanced literary friends seemed to like the book. Doru Chirodea, for instance, even said he liked the part about my theory of aesthetic affect. He was the only one who mentioned it. Mike Gunderloy liked it enough to give it a complimentary capsule review in Factsheet Five in August 1990. Crag Hill and Jonathan Brannen both gave me a thumbs up, but complained about the amount of terminology I cluttered the thing with.
John Byrum liked what I said about the writing of my sonnet but didn’t go along too much with the theorizing. Al Ackerman sent me a very funny enclosure along with compliments on my book, and John Bennett went so far as to agree with my blather about visual poetry and why his visio-textual poems probably weren’t. I by then was 70% sure they are.
Entry 90 — Runaway Spoon Press Clearance Sale
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Read about it at the top of The Runaway Spoon Press Catalogue under “Pages” to the right. 25 titles for $50.
Entry 89 — IQ, EQ and CQ
Friday, January 29th, 2010
I’m taking a break from Of Manywhere-at-Once to reveal my latest coinages, PQ and CQ, or psycheffectiveness quotient and creativity quotient. I’ve long held that IQ is a ridiculously pseudo pseudo synonym for intelligence. “Pychefficiency” is an old term of mine for “genuine intelligence.” A slightly new thought of mine is that PQ equals IQ times CQ divided by 100. So an average person’s PQ would be 100 times 100 divided by 100, or 100. The most common Mensa member’s PQ would be 150 times 50 divided by 100, or 75.
Okay, mean-spirited hyperbole. But there definitely are a lot of stupid high IQ persons, and it is the stupid high IQ persons that gravitate toward Mensa membership. (Right, I’m not in Mensa–but I could be, assuming my IQ hasn’t shrunk much more over the years than my height, which is down a little over half an inch.)
My formula wouldn’t come too close to determining a person’s true PQ because IQ is so badly figured, but it would come at least twice as close to doing so as IQ by itself. A main change necessary to make the formula a reasonable measure of mental effectiveness would be to divide it in short-term IQ and long-term IQ. The former is what IQ currently (poorly) is–i.e., something that can be measure in a day or so. The latter would be IQ it would take a year (or, really, a lifetime, to measure). Quickness at accurately solving easy problems versus ability to solve hard problems.
Really to get IQ right one would have to measure the many kinds of intelligence there are such as social intelligence, aesthetic intelligence, athletic intelligence, self intelligence and so forth, then add them together, find the mean score thus obtained for human beings. Divide that by a hundred and use the answer to divide a given intelligence sum to find true IQ.
Maybe not “true IQ,” but “roundedness quotient.” For me, true IQ would be all the intelligences multiplied together divided by the product of one less than the number of intelligences and 100. That, on second thought, wouldn’t do it, I don’t think. What I want is a reflection of the strength of all one’s cerebral aptitudes without penalty for absent talents since it doesn’t seem to be that they’d be too much of a handicap. I’m in an area now I need to think more about. So here will I close.
Entry 88 — MATO2, Chapter 1.10
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
During the next two days I got a copy in the mail of the introductory essay Richard Kostelanetz wanted me to critique, the manuscript of a poetry collection John Bennett my press was going to publish, and letters from Jake Berry and Jack Foley. Richard’s essay was is fairly good but I saw a number of things I counted wrong with it;. As for John’s manuscript, it seemed fine–one poem in particular, whose main image was a car wash, I especially liked. I wrote a short letter of full acceptance to John and a card acknowledging receipt, and suggesting he delete much of one section of his essay, to Richard.
Jack’s letter was friendly but he quickly.got on me for under-representing females and blacks (and Asiatics) in of Manywhere. In my reply I tried to skirt the issue. I didn’t pugnaciously tell him that my purpose was accuracy, not making the world better for members of victim-groups. Hence, I wrote about the four canonical poets, all male, whom I admired enough to put explicitly into the sonnet my book was partly about, and the fifth, also male, to whom the sonnet strongly alluded. Except for a few short passages about Shakespeare and a mention or two of contemporary linguexpressive poets like Wilbur, my book is about an area of literature few women have done anything of importance in, and no blacks that I knew of at the time I wrote it. The late Bill Keith is still the only significant black American in visual poetry I know about, Larry Tomoyasu the only Asian American. I don’t know whether I knew him when I wrote the first volume of my series. I don’t believe I mentioned him in it.
The ever-amiable Jake was fully positive about my book.
Entry 87 — MATO2, Chapter 1.09
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
ASIDE: a poetry critic’s highest duty, after defining what poetry is with maximal possible objectivity and detailedness–neutrally, is to describe with maximal possible objectivity and detailedness a school of poetry, neutrally, with a neutral description of maximal possible objectivity and detaliedness of at least one poem representative of that school. Valuable but secondary would be a description of the school (and poem’s) relationship to prior and contemporary schools and poems. The ideal poetry critic would describe all schools of poetry.
Evaluation is an imprtant part of a poetry critic’s function, as well. Seemingly very subjective but I’m working on the possibility that (a reasonable degree of) objectivity is possible. Also (relatedly) that there are absolute statements that can be made as to what a superior poem is. One is: “A superior poem uses a minimum number of words to achieve its aesthetic purposes.” A counter to that I immediately thought of was a dramatic poem depicting a garrulous man; wouldn’t it have to be garrulous? Probably. Still, I say that it would use a minimum number of words (and other elements, I just remembered to add) to achieve its aesthetic purpose (or purposes), in this case, the depiction of a garrulous man. The poet would have to use more words, for instance, to tell us about the man’s feelings about a flower than he would have to express his own poet’s feelings about the same flower, but in the former case, in an effective poem, his extra words would convey his feelings about the man, not the flower, and he would use as few extra words as possible to get across his portrait. Similarly, a free verse poet may use fewer words to convey his view of a flower than a formal poet would writing about the same flower–but the formal poet’s extra words might be necessary for his great ambition of telling us about the flower and making some metrically or in some other melodational way pleasurable.
The poet’s challenge here is to balance a great number of maximums–a maximum of freshness of diction, say, with a maximum of clarity. In the preceding example, a maximum of verbal music with a maximum of concision. A proper evaluatory poetics would list all the maximums needed, then ordain that a poem was effective to the degee that it came close to having these maximums. I think they could be given different weights; a maximum of methphoric interest should rate higher than a maximum of melodational effectiveness, for instance.
All this is tentative, brainstorming more than anything.
It occurs to me that one would use the list on a case by case basis. Use it for a single given poem, determine what the poem does, then from that a hierarchy of maximums. A Dylan Thomas’s poems seem in general to be intended more than (the English versions of) Basho’s haiku to have verbal music and less to be aiming for maximum conciseness.
Entry 86 — MATO2, Chapter 1.08
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
I formally entered my book in the Pulitzer Prize Competition, having gotten instructions for doing that, and an entry blank on 16 July. A couple of weeks earlier I had written those in charge of it to find out how to have a book considered for a prize (so I could send them Of Manywhere-at-Once). My entering my book in the competition was, of course, absurd, as I noted in my diary; I had to send the Pulitzer people 4 copies of my book and $20, not to mention a biography and a photograph of myself. I sent one of my college graduation pictures, by then eight years old but looking much more out of date than that. I had very few pictures of myself, not believing film should be wasted on bald-headed men.
My book had, I thought, one chance in a million of winning but a chance or two in a hundred that someone would actually read it, which would be nice. The main purposes of my wasting the money were two: to assure that when I pointed out twenty years later (now, in fact) how my work had been ignored by the Pulitzer Prize people, they wouldn’t be able to claim they couldn’t honor my book because it had not been entered in the competition; and to circulate my name at least a tiny bit.
A book (on ants, I believe) by the biologist Edward O. Wilson beat out mine, incidentally, as did–I’m sure–scores of much lesser books. I have to admit that his book was probably worthy of the prize (and I am a big admirer of his sociobiology). I still believe mine will one day be considered more important. His did not open up any new territory in an important field the way I believe mine did.
Entry 85, MATO2, Chapter 1.07
Monday, January 25th, 2010
In case I haven’t said, the raw material for this chapter–actually to become more than one chapter, I hope, are all my diary entries from 22 June 1990 to 2 February 1993 that have to do with my writing career. So my present work is a kind of nostalgia trip back to my life of twenty years ago. It’s just now starting to interest me after boring me for the first five entries. That’s because yesterday I suddenly became caught up in the drama of my hero’s pursuit of a goal: literary recognition. Or, vocational recognition. Or, evidence that he is of value to the world.
Such, in my theory of psychology, is one of a human being’s innate sagaceptual drives–”sagaceptual” because the sagaceptual awareness in where one’s recognition of innate goals and a desire to pursue them is located. It is where one experiences oneself as the heor of a saga.
One thing I hoped for–nay, believed certain of achievement–was my memoir’s causing others vicariously to experience my hero’s pursuit of his goal. I seem to have been unrealistic about this. Apparently, I have a much stronger sagaceptual awareness than others do. I sometimes wonder, in fact, if others have a sagaceptual awareness, or a significant one. I also think that many others are inflecibly sagaceptual. Someone who is athletic, for instance, may identify with others who are striving for athletic achievement, but not for anyone striving for any other kind of achievement. Certain athletes, or would-be athletes, may even be unable to identify with anyone else who is pursuing an athletic goal but someone in his sport!
I automatically respond to anyone pursuing any vocational goal, or any goal I can think of, for that matter. I doubt if there are many people in the world more against the world-view of Adolph Hitler than I, yet when I read a biography of him long ago, I rooted for him to conquer the world. This, I suppose, indicates most accurately the way I am sagaceptually: it’s not that I’m sagaceptual, others not, but that my sagaceptual drive in comparison with others of my drives is much stronger than most others sagaceptual drives are in comparison with their other drives. Obviously, if I can root for Hitler to achieve his vocational goal, it means that I am not inhibited from doing that, as others I imagine would be, by competing drives, whatever they might be.
A drive to avoid violence? Some kind of moral drive? It’s complicated. Now that I reflect on it, I do recall books I’ve read whose hero I rooted against because I didn’t like him. Or was it because his goal wasn’t that important to me. I do like the goal of conquering the world. Although it’s never been a personal goal of mine–military conquering of the world, that is. Or political conquering of it. I would somewhat enjoy a kind of cultural conquering of the world, but would sincerely not like everyone’s accepting my outlook on existence. I only want the majority of people to agree that it is a valuable outlook.
Entry 84 — MATO2, Chapter 1.06
Sunday, January 24th, 2010
One of my comically unsuccessful marketing ploys was to send copies of my book to a few influential people not particularly known for an interest in poetry. One such was Stephen Jay Gould, most of whose writing on biology I greatly enjoyed–although he was too much of an egalitarian to believe in the neurological evolution of our species that has resulted in some people’s being innately superior mentally to others. I got a short letter back from him 13 July thanking me for my “kind letter” (I used a few compliments on him–sincere ones!) and book, and clarifying his use of the word, “consciousness,” I having said something about his notion that consciousness had arisen due to natural selection and wanting to know exactly what he meant by the term. (Basically, the ability to reflect on things, be “conscious” of something, rather than be that in which the external universe makes itself known which I term “the urwareness,” which precedes the cerebral ability to reflect on any part of existence and seems to me to precede what we call life. Gould’s letter was nice but also a fairly certainly a shut-off letter, one that showed no desire for any continuation of our correspondence.
Nonetheless, I sent him one of my shadow cartoon post cards (showing a non-conformist among conformists, the former’s shadow being cast in the opposite directions of those of the latter) with a brief message on it about “consciousness.” I didn’t want him to feel any pressure to reply to it out of mere politeness, and didn’t think he would. He did not. I would have liked to have been able to discuss things with someone like him, or his fellow Harvardian Howard Gardner, expecially if I’d gotten on a friendly enough basis with him to argue biology and politics, but people like that seem rarely to find their statooznikal inferiors worthy interacting with. Gould, by the way, also interested me inasmuch as he was born, like I, in 1941. Ditto George Will, whom I’ve also written (but do not believe I sent a copy of my book to). I feel I have much in common with both, and am fascinatingly opposite them both in many ways. I feel that if I’d had just a tick less creative intelligence, I would have been as “successful” as each of them.
Entry 83 — MATO2, Chapter 1.05
Saturday, January 23rd, 2010
About a week later I heard from one of my California writer friends, Moya Sinclair, who called me a little after eight in the evening sounding very cheerful and energetic. She, Annie Stanton, quite a good linguexpressive poet, Diane Walker, well-known as a television actress under her maiden name, Brewster, who had literary ambitions and was quite bright but never to my knowledge broke beyond the talented dabbler stage, and I had been a few years earlier the main members of a little writers’ group at Valley Junior College in the San Fernando Valley presided over by Les Boston, a professor there. Technically, we were doing independent studies with Dr. Boston, but in reality we friends who met weekly to discuss one another’s writing, mine at the time plays. Annie and Diane were about ten years older than I, Moya close to eighty by the time of her phone call, and she was in a convalescent home. Her circulatory system had slowly been wearing out. I fear she died there, for I never heard from her again. Both Annie and Diane died around then in their early sixties, huge unexpected losses for me.
Moya reported that Annie had been over for a visit and had left my book with her. Moya said she’d been reading parts of it and found it beautifully written, etc. She had a few adverse comments on it, too–on Geof’s word for one-word poem (“pwoermd”), for instance, but that was to be expected. Moya, for years working on an autobiographical novel, was pretty wedded to the old standards. We had a fine chat that boosted my spirits a good deal. She represented one of the main kinds of readers I hoped would like my book.
A day later I got a very positive letter from Jack Moskovitz about my book, and a lukewarm one about it from Geof. Geof, as I remember, felt I should have lightened up on the Grummaniacal coinages. I think he was right. I believe one of the things I tried to do in my two revisions of the book was to cut down on them.
The next day, according to my diary, I got lots of letters, mostly from people I sent my book to, and for the most part complimentary though Jody Offer, a California poet/playwright friend of mine, felt I got too advanced in parts–I’m sure in part because of my terminology. I was finding out, though, that my book was not as geared for non-experts as I’d hoped.
Entry 82 — MATO2, Chapter 1.04
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
For a week or so, nothing much happened so far as my book was concerned. On July 2, for instance, I xeroxed a visual poem for use in the next issue of Estudio, the mail art magazine that had been called Velocity when Christian Herman, then I for an issue or two, edited it–each contributor sent in 100 copies of a work, on letter-sized sheets of paper, and the editor made 100 bound copies of the work received, every contributor than getting a copy. We had some excellent issues–even though all work was accepted. Such zines were one of the triumphs of the Xerox and mail art revolutions.
I also wrote a note to the editor of Between the Lines, a pamphlet/ magazine devoted to baseball stats, about Andy Hawkins, a pitcher who had pitched a no-hitter the previous night but lost the game–4-0!
Several magazines arrived in the mail; the latest Score (quite nice, with some very effective poems of Karl Kempton’s), Lost and Found Times (also good, with the usual very funny Al Ackerman stuff) and nrg, which I dodn’t have time to read, except to see that the poem and review of mine that were supposed to be in it were in it–without typos.
The next day I was pleased to get a post card from Richard Kostelanetz saying he’d gotten my book and read it at once. The part he liked best was the last part. (He’s not too interested in Pound, Stevens, Yeats, etc., and I doubt he was excited by my description of my work to construct a sonnet.) His “principal criticism” of the book was that it hadn’t dealt sufficiently with alternative poetries and poets. I agree that it could have done a lot more–but it was intended to be introductory. He also asked me if I’d be willing to critique a 26-page introduction he’s written for a proposed collection of his work and I said sure. All in all, I took his card as a good-sized compliment. The book has already started becoming a part of the culture of my times! I wrote back to him almost immediately.