Language Poetry…… Lesson 10-11
How is it possible to write a poem without meaning?
So I am entitling this post lesson 9 and ten because I looked a head. This movement sort of makes sense to me. Although I have to say that isn’t the meaning of a poem always dependent on the perspective of the reader? Perhaps it would be fair to say that this movement is an exaggerated form of that concept.
When I first read China it seemed like his phrases were vaguely familiar like I was recalling fragment of old memories. So it was pretty gratifying finding out how he constructed the poem. At the airport I have a habit of doing something similar, which is I sit in the terminal and write sentences about all the people passing by . People in airports are so strange. It’s such an interesting union of so many different cultures and ideals. It’s also a pretty interesting writing exercise if you’re super bored. I wish I would have kept them and arranged them poetically.
How elegant is it to think of poetry as a box you open full of old photographs to which you arrange their captions. Also, even though the imagery of China was abstract it still managed to be universal.
Anyway here is my first poem “That makes no sense”. I couldn’t resist tying it all together by using the last word of the line to begin the first one. It reminds me of a popular ad on TV that is about miscommunications of search words. I took this concept, and I guess it’s pretty much the same thing but instead of being on the internet it’s in my stream of thought. This poem is circular it essentially ties itself together, which I did to try and minimize the randomness, and give the reader at least a small sense of structure. (Maybe that is a bad thing?”)
copulating bacterium in a dying fridge
Fridge, a utopian world in which we grow older slower
Slower, no even slower, watch the crumpled dreamers fly
Fly down here bird, and tell me what it is like
Like when we went to the beach and forgot to swim
Swim in blue sadness till the doorbell rings
Rings are always coming round, always touching what happens next
Next we go home to see sun people water the floating daffodils
Daffodils smelling like warm honey dripping down my shirt
Shirt, pants, and shoes…. We only think we need them
Them. Who the fuck is them or they….
They are everywhere: the pseudonym for the no ones
No ones going to know
Know this there is nothing else I have left to say
Say it again, Just one more time
Time to go little girl the freeway is going quiet.
Quiet like me, quiet like all this broken turning time
Time has the raining song to say
Say it: I know you know
Know how we were on the sand with the No ones
No ones went out to hear they
They have no use for the people of them
Them a world you find written on your shirt
Shirt , I mean Shit, I am allergic to Daffodils
Daffodils, are always the next
Next nothing did the satellite rings
Ring, the motion of the plastic swim
Swim so that they will know what you are like
Like me or let me fly
Fly so the world will go slower
Slower here in the fridge
Okay, moving on. You know how when you don’t do your homework, and you show up to class and give an excuse. Just once I would like to pull a John Cage, and say: “here it is, these blank pages represent the hours of time I spent thinking of this project. Here take them, they are all there. In the end I realized that I cannot define with words the answer to your question. I think only this emptiness is profound enough……… etc etc..” My teacher would probably think I was high, but just once it would be nice “You know turnabout is fair play.
Often it seems that Language poets employ a stream of conscious. As always there has to be the question of where the filter lies. On the other hand the complex patterns shown in the examples are very reminiscent of poets who created poems on stressed and unstressed syllables.
For me the truth is I prefer poetry that you don’t have to explain. That you understand what the writer is doing, and why. I don’t look at Ron Tilman’s Tjanting and say wow the Fibonacci sequence. Which is not to say I didn’t like the excerpt, just that I didn’t appreciate it for its patterns.
My poem was created in the spirit of Ron Tilman’s Tijanting. I mad e the procedure my own by make each word a prime number of letters, is numerical order. The procedure of it has eclipsed it’s meaning perhaps creating a Language Poem. Although it is short it took a lot of time.
We can steer today’s sharpened cosmopolitans
To the world abashed drowning
By our saved trappings wallpapered nullification
Do not plead abashed languages silhouetted
So for babul
So for cries
So for those
We can drink startling testimonial decompensated communitarianisms
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Lesson 9
The term modernism seems to be very misleading. Modern infers something that is happening now, that is new and fresh. But in art it refers to a movement that is fairly old. I am often confused by discerning the difference from present styles and the modernist styles. However, I can’t help but smile when I hear someone say, “Oh that is so modern” and think that the vast majority of the population doesn’t really know what that means. To be honest I am not quite sure what is modern and what isn’t? For instance something could be I had a little epitome, that perhaps Ernest Hemingway could be a modernist. Yet he seems such an old (and forgive me frumpy) classic that has been the backbone of many English classes I have taken.
I have to say that out off all the movements the Beat poets are my favorite. Allen Ginsburg’s Howl, has often been called the last great poem ever written. I don’t believe that, can’t believe that, but still it is a masterpiece. .It was so raw, so complete, and still relevant to this generation. I think Howl more completely defined its time period more so than any other poem.
I don’t know does labeling something as being modern a death sentence? If something is labeled modern, it’s like saying this is as new as its ever going to get.
Anyway don’t really like this poem I wrote, but maybe someday I too can Howl.
Have
Have you heard of all the little people that live on the hill?
In their secret fucking, while yearning for candy colored cars
They are all the same, consumption addicts.
hear the secret yearning winding through the streets
“Suburbia is not real”
Screw the American dream. I’ll paint my picket fence blue.
Give me to the sinners, the outcasts, the nobodies……. The loneliest.
We will wander together, we will wonder together
We the first born of those people on the hill
they have no shame that congregation
they are their things
let them rest in peace.
I have to say that out off all the movements the Beat poets are my favorite. Allen Ginsburg’s Howl, has often been called the last great poem ever written. I don’t believe that, can’t believe that, but still it is a masterpiece. .It was so raw, so complete, and still relevant to this generation. I think Howl more completely defined its time period more so than any other poem.
I don’t know does labeling something as being modern a death sentence? If something is labeled modern, it’s like saying this is as new as its ever going to get.
Anyway don’t really like this poem I wrote, but maybe someday I too can Howl.
Have
Have you heard of all the little people that live on the hill?
In their secret fucking, while yearning for candy colored cars
They are all the same, consumption addicts.
hear the secret yearning winding through the streets
“Suburbia is not real”
Screw the American dream. I’ll paint my picket fence blue.
Give me to the sinners, the outcasts, the nobodies……. The loneliest.
We will wander together, we will wonder together
We the first born of those people on the hill
they have no shame that congregation
they are their things
let them rest in peace.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Lesson 7
Some art forms like watercolor rely on chance, or the planned accidents. I’ve always felt that art is a balance of relinquishing control, and yet giving something direction. However, in the instance of n+7 I feel a little uneasy about the control that is given up. There are moments where I can’t shake the mad libs, and say here this is mine.
Perhaps we’ve had it wrong all along. Just like some lesbians, or gays don’t like labels, or stamps that say here I define you, so is art. Perhaps we should stop labeling people as artists, or audiences, and just stick to participants. Maybe all along we have been engaged in this prestige of titles, but with the evolution of art the line between has blurred to point where it truly is just a matter of the amount of participation.
Still I am bothered with the lack of control I have. What part of it belongs to me? I am just the catalyst. A cheat at worst who reworks someone else’s piece in an attempt to make it new. How presumptuous though. How dare I, and accompany that with the insinuation that just a part of it is mine? I could no more claim to be the author of evolution.
Anyway I have decided to tackle the Jabberwocky. It’s such a wonderful poem all hail Lewis Caroll. A link to the original can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabberwocky . One note I would like to make is that this poem is almost completely comprised of made up words, but surprisingly the reader still understands its basic function. That being said I went to the part of the dictionary where the word would have been and went from there. I guess I just thought that this technique would be a perfect example of how sometimes real words ruin good writing. On a lighter note, I did realize that with that some words are just as strange if not stranger then the original made up words
The Jabiru
'Twas brillig, and the slithy towel
Did gyre and gimble in the wad;
All mimsy were the boric,
And the moly rathskellers outgrabe.
"Beware the Jabiru, my somewhat!
The jays that bite, the clause that catch!
Beware the Juju biotite, and shun
The frumious Banderole!"
He took his vorpal swizzle in hamulus:
Long time the manxome foehn he sought—
So rested he by the Tularemia trecento,
And stood awhile in thou
And as in uffish thou he stood,
The Jabiru, with eyas of flamebeau,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wont,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! and through and through
The vorpal bladderwort went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its headache
He went galumphing back.
"And hast thou slain the Jaberui?
Come to my armadas, my beamish boyar!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his jowl.
'Twas brillig, and the slithy towel
Did gyre and gimble in the wad;
All mimsy were the boric,
And the moly rathskellers outgrabe.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Lesson Six
Using only letters from the popular salutation “To Whom it May Concern” I have created a short letter. There were a couple words I missed dearly. I struggled with weather is should make sense. In the end I chose what was hardest. I have found a new respect for the difficulty of a project like this.
To Whom it May Concern:
I hear the cancer moan.
It ate my tit
We watch it tear at the net.
I warn it not to war with me
Yet in my cocoon I hear it crow
It came to tow me home.
I think it might be interesting to create a small collection of these poems, that are all letters created from, To Whom it May Concern
To Whom it May Concern:
I hear the cancer moan.
It ate my tit
We watch it tear at the net.
I warn it not to war with me
Yet in my cocoon I hear it crow
It came to tow me home.
I think it might be interesting to create a small collection of these poems, that are all letters created from, To Whom it May Concern
Lesson 5 Response
I feel like after spending so much time studying conceptual art, that there comes a point where it all begins to blur together. I become confused between the differences between different styles because all I see are different concepts that are built around the architecture of a piece. I constantly feel that there is a requirement to judge, appreciate, or experience a conceptual poem on its own level, like you would appreciate a child’s drawing for what it was in comparison to other children’s drawings. I am not saying this is a bad thing, on the contrary, how great would the world be if we looked at it in the spirit in which it was created? For the record I am not really sure what Oulipo is yet, and will read on to get a better grasp of it.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Dadaism Response
Lately Dada has seemed to be experiencing a rebirth, at least as far as a curriculum in college courses go. Perhaps because at that time of its conception people were recoiling from the war, and yet again our history finds us again reacting to a wartime culture. However time and time again I read in Dadaist theory the desire to be removed from the emotional realm to an intellectual one. Dadaist also feel the need to question large intuitions like government, art museums, military, or any large establishment that is considered the authority on certain topics. It would stand to reason that emotional tactics would not be affective when challenging a predominant way of thinking.
For instance The Fountain by Duchamp is often considered the epitome of Dadaist art because he effectively pointed out that the Museum, and in a larger sense the traditional art world had a claim to defining what was and wasn’t art. The Fountain is really a statement saying to conformity you can’t tell me how to think, and what to love.
It is incredibly liberating to transform documents like court papers, teachers notes, emails, bills, and any other piece of writing into poetry, and therefore create a perspective on it. Perhaps when the artist removes himself/herself emotionally from a piece the audience suddenly has more freedom to feel whatever it is they want to without having the artist manipulate their psyche.
Here is a readymade that I have created in honor of Duchamp from The Richard Mutt Case: Looking for Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain by Mechael Betancourt. The poem is constructed from a paragraph in which Betancourt summarizes what the Fountain is. In the spirit of collage, I start with the end of the paragraph and work my way to the beginning. Because in The Fountain Duchamp chooses anonymity when signing his work, I replicate that by crossing out any mention of him or his pseudonym. The reader is asked to understand he is there but not acknowledge his presence.
Apparently there was no actual R. Mutt.
an association with the Mutt and Jeff cartoons
pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp [4] composed out of
"R. Mutt" or "Richard Mutt" is believed to be a
because of its shifted arrangement (turned sideways).
because of the added inscription "R. Mutt 1917"
. Fountain belongs in this grouping both
Nothing to do with Savagery, 1916)[3]
both have inscriptions
Comb (for dogs) (3 or 4 Drops of Height Have
(In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1915) and
color at the horizon; the "snow shovel"
(1914) he has added two small spots of
Duchamp has made an alteration: to Pharmacy
"ready-made-aided." These are objects to which Duchamp
.[2] Fountain likely belongs to the
he admits for their selection.[2]
lack aesthetic qualities: this was the sole criterion
reaction to them; for him these objects
objects based on his not having an aesthetic
Duchamp claimed to select these
applied to them. It is well-known that
categories based on the degree of alteration
the 1910s and '20s. He divides them into smaller
New York during the
"ready-mades" which Marcel Duchamp created
to a broad category of objects called
the wall becomes its base, and belongs
turned so that the surface mounted on
Fountain is a men's urinal
The original paragraph:
http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/betacourt.htm
Fountain is a men's urinal turned so that the surface mounted on the wall becomes its base, and belongs to a broad category of objects called "ready-mades" which Marcel Duchamp created in New York during the 1910s and '20s. He divides them into smaller categories based on the degree of alteration applied to them. It is well-known that Duchamp claimed to select these objects based on his not having an aesthetic reaction to them; for him these objects lack aesthetic qualities: this was the sole criterion he admits for their selection.[2] Fountain likely belongs to the "ready-made-aided." These are objects to which Duchamp has made an alteration: to Pharmacy (1914) he has added two small spots of color at the horizon; the "snow shovel" (In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1915) and Comb (for dogs) (3 or 4 Drops of Height Have Nothing to do with Savagery, 1916)[3] both have inscriptions. Fountain belongs in this grouping both because of the added inscription "R. Mutt 1917" and because of its shifted arrangement (turned sideways). "R. Mutt" or "Richard Mutt" is believed to be a pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp [4] composed out of an association with the Mutt and Jeff cartoons. Apparently there was no actual R. Mutt.
For instance The Fountain by Duchamp is often considered the epitome of Dadaist art because he effectively pointed out that the Museum, and in a larger sense the traditional art world had a claim to defining what was and wasn’t art. The Fountain is really a statement saying to conformity you can’t tell me how to think, and what to love.
It is incredibly liberating to transform documents like court papers, teachers notes, emails, bills, and any other piece of writing into poetry, and therefore create a perspective on it. Perhaps when the artist removes himself/herself emotionally from a piece the audience suddenly has more freedom to feel whatever it is they want to without having the artist manipulate their psyche.
Here is a readymade that I have created in honor of Duchamp from The Richard Mutt Case: Looking for Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain by Mechael Betancourt. The poem is constructed from a paragraph in which Betancourt summarizes what the Fountain is. In the spirit of collage, I start with the end of the paragraph and work my way to the beginning. Because in The Fountain Duchamp chooses anonymity when signing his work, I replicate that by crossing out any mention of him or his pseudonym. The reader is asked to understand he is there but not acknowledge his presence.
Apparently there was no actual R. Mutt.
an association with the Mutt and Jeff cartoons
pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp [4] composed out of
"R. Mutt" or "Richard Mutt" is believed to be a
because of its shifted arrangement (turned sideways).
because of the added inscription "R. Mutt 1917"
. Fountain belongs in this grouping both
Nothing to do with Savagery, 1916)[3]
both have inscriptions
Comb (for dogs) (3 or 4 Drops of Height Have
(In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1915) and
color at the horizon; the "snow shovel"
(1914) he has added two small spots of
Duchamp has made an alteration: to Pharmacy
"ready-made-aided." These are objects to which Duchamp
.[2] Fountain likely belongs to the
he admits for their selection.[2]
lack aesthetic qualities: this was the sole criterion
reaction to them; for him these objects
objects based on his not having an aesthetic
Duchamp claimed to select these
applied to them. It is well-known that
categories based on the degree of alteration
the 1910s and '20s. He divides them into smaller
New York during the
"ready-mades" which Marcel Duchamp created
to a broad category of objects called
the wall becomes its base, and belongs
turned so that the surface mounted on
Fountain is a men's urinal
The original paragraph:
http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/betacourt.htm
Fountain is a men's urinal turned so that the surface mounted on the wall becomes its base, and belongs to a broad category of objects called "ready-mades" which Marcel Duchamp created in New York during the 1910s and '20s. He divides them into smaller categories based on the degree of alteration applied to them. It is well-known that Duchamp claimed to select these objects based on his not having an aesthetic reaction to them; for him these objects lack aesthetic qualities: this was the sole criterion he admits for their selection.[2] Fountain likely belongs to the "ready-made-aided." These are objects to which Duchamp has made an alteration: to Pharmacy (1914) he has added two small spots of color at the horizon; the "snow shovel" (In Advance of the Broken Arm, 1915) and Comb (for dogs) (3 or 4 Drops of Height Have Nothing to do with Savagery, 1916)[3] both have inscriptions. Fountain belongs in this grouping both because of the added inscription "R. Mutt 1917" and because of its shifted arrangement (turned sideways). "R. Mutt" or "Richard Mutt" is believed to be a pseudonym of Marcel Duchamp [4] composed out of an association with the Mutt and Jeff cartoons. Apparently there was no actual R. Mutt.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Assignment One
My name is Cassandra. My disease is wonder lust. I question if the best poets are always in transition or can see a stoplight in a thousand different beautiful ways. Right now it is Colorado, two weeks ago it was Texas, and 4 months ago it was Oregon. Each time I promise this time I will really try.
About the concepts of poetry: What is poetry without spontaneity? Does it not lose its soul if it becomes a heavily constructed concept or frame for its intellectual prowess? On the other hand without our censor, how can the unimportant be filtered to give power to the focus. Often it seems that artists are admired by less artistically brilliant intellectuals, and those intellectuals try to duplicate that art but do so on a cerebral level because they cannot connect with the emotional context. To me this is what procedural writing can be at its worst. At its best it is a pure vein of thought not biased by sentiment.
Paper planes,
Paper thoughts
Paper loves
Crumple little plans
Wrinkled secrets
Get well soon they say
Love always
Sincerely,
Yours truly
About the concepts of poetry: What is poetry without spontaneity? Does it not lose its soul if it becomes a heavily constructed concept or frame for its intellectual prowess? On the other hand without our censor, how can the unimportant be filtered to give power to the focus. Often it seems that artists are admired by less artistically brilliant intellectuals, and those intellectuals try to duplicate that art but do so on a cerebral level because they cannot connect with the emotional context. To me this is what procedural writing can be at its worst. At its best it is a pure vein of thought not biased by sentiment.
Paper planes,
Paper thoughts
Paper loves
Crumple little plans
Wrinkled secrets
Get well soon they say
Love always
Sincerely,
Yours truly
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