Facing the possibility of not having Internet access for a few days, a couple notes following up on the previous post:
1. Although my "small kick" came at the expense of the Here Comes Everybody interviewer, I didn't intend to "kick" him or her while he or she was down (besides, it's old news that I stumbled on). I was, probably, kicking some of the interviewees. HCE was in the Nobody blogroll for some time, and I checked out more than a few of the interviews. It was an idea with a hook, in the best sense; an experiment worth the time spent on it by whoever's brainchild it was.
2. It's not poets being academics that bothers me—which is in many ways the ideal situation for a poet today—but the way that the poetic culture is largely derived from the academic, and the way theoretical ideals get thrust onto/into the work(s) in a manner that doesn't seem to happen in other arts. In a society that's generally anti-academic for all the wrong reasons, this is a tough line to toe without putting more time into it—time which none of this talk is worth (see, I ain't even gonna fix the vague pronoun reference back there).
Showing posts with label poetry scene(s). Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry scene(s). Show all posts
Monday, August 13, 2007
Here Comes Nobody
Hate to take pleasure in another person's misery, but I couldn't help but get a small kick out of this notice regarding the failed Here Comes Everybody anthology. Already mentioned my annoyance with the massive amounts of poet interviews online and in little magazines in last year's Top Ten Poetry Pet Peeves (which is already dated, jeez the cars in PoetryLand move fast these days), but this is too much: poets willing to give these interviews online, where anyone can search and find them, but balking at them being set down in print? What are they afraid of? Was the interview just an online fling not substantial enough for the page? Or's it that these interviews aren't sanitized the way many are before they're printed? (Recently at work we typeset a book with a long Noam Chomsky "interview" in which it seemed half of the answers were completely rewritten at second pass—why not stop calling it an interview at that point and make it another essay? Because it "allows" for a relatively more casual tone? Academics make me nauseous even when geniuses are involved.) Are these poets afraid to see their scrappy little interviews "legitimized" in print? Isn't this all just part of the continuing privileging of "the book" prevalent in Academia, further evidence that PoetryLand is primarily a lonesome, self-important, and hence pathetic, division of the big A? You're never a real poet until you publish a real book. It doesn't matter if the book's published by a friend, or on the suggestion of a former professor or mentor, or if you had to pay someone to read your manuscript—that's somehow more legitimate than doing the work yourself. Whatever.
HERE COMES NOBODY
1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why?
Uh, probably "The Celebration of the Lizard." Uh, in eighth grade my friend Pat gave me an extra copy he had of The Doors, Absolutely Live. Uh, that was on it. Uh, that counts, right? "Lions in the street and roaming / Dogs in heat, rabid, foaming / A beast caged in the heart of a city. / The body of his mother rotting in the summer ground / He fled the town. / He went down south and crossed the border / Left the chaos and disorder / Back there, over his shoulder. " Uh, how can you not love that when you're a thirteen-year-old boy? Plus, years later, I discovered it was still pretty good if you recited it in the voice of Mickey Mouse (my Donald Duck's OK, too, but of limited vocabulary).
2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them?
Excuse me, but I'm peerless. Anyway, I read Time and Money and Consumer Reports and The New Yorker.
3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why?
Really? Why?
4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
Tu Fu. Li Po. That's it. I once had a dream, like when I was nineteen and just started reading poetry and shit (you know, like Schoppenhaur and Nietzsche—the shit people start of with when they realize their life's empty and they better get a "move on"), and it was me and Li Po drinking wine and tumbling down a hillside. There was a moon involved, and possibly a pond. Maybe it was the ocean.
4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
White-meat only.
4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
Sarcasm, bitch.
5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing?
Not as much as I used to. We're on a low budget since the second kid came along. I owe almost my entire output of the last thirteen years to the poets whose work has moved or bothered me in all the right ways.
6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you?
No one's assuming anything about what I have or haven't read. Which is good, because I haven't read most of it.
7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old?
Well, I've explained it to Vaughn (my three year old) as merely the artistic use of words, and I used the old dance analogy: poetry is to speaking, as dance is to walking. Here's one of her poems:
She's a genius, no?
8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen?
"The Poet?" Oh, poo. I guess the answer is no.
9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest):
Lemon—lime
Chiseled—face
I—You
Of—about
Form—free
10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing?
Hmm, I often have this hollow feeling about my chest. That might explain the hollowness of my poems, which, in any event, are made more than written.
HERE COMES NOBODY
1. What is the first poem you ever loved? Why?
Uh, probably "The Celebration of the Lizard." Uh, in eighth grade my friend Pat gave me an extra copy he had of The Doors, Absolutely Live. Uh, that was on it. Uh, that counts, right? "Lions in the street and roaming / Dogs in heat, rabid, foaming / A beast caged in the heart of a city. / The body of his mother rotting in the summer ground / He fled the town. / He went down south and crossed the border / Left the chaos and disorder / Back there, over his shoulder. " Uh, how can you not love that when you're a thirteen-year-old boy? Plus, years later, I discovered it was still pretty good if you recited it in the voice of Mickey Mouse (my Donald Duck's OK, too, but of limited vocabulary).
2. What is something/someone non-“literary” you read which may surprise your peers/colleagues? Why do you read it/them?
Excuse me, but I'm peerless. Anyway, I read Time and Money and Consumer Reports and The New Yorker.
3. How important is philosophy to your writing? Why?
Really? Why?
4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
Tu Fu. Li Po. That's it. I once had a dream, like when I was nineteen and just started reading poetry and shit (you know, like Schoppenhaur and Nietzsche—the shit people start of with when they realize their life's empty and they better get a "move on"), and it was me and Li Po drinking wine and tumbling down a hillside. There was a moon involved, and possibly a pond. Maybe it was the ocean.
4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
White-meat only.
4. Who are some of your favorite non-Anglo-American writers? Why?
Sarcasm, bitch.
5. Do you read a lot of poetry? If so, how important is it to your writing?
Not as much as I used to. We're on a low budget since the second kid came along. I owe almost my entire output of the last thirteen years to the poets whose work has moved or bothered me in all the right ways.
6. What is something which your peers/colleagues may assume you’ve read but haven’t? Why haven’t you?
No one's assuming anything about what I have or haven't read. Which is good, because I haven't read most of it.
7. How would you explain what a poem is to my seven year old?
Well, I've explained it to Vaughn (my three year old) as merely the artistic use of words, and I used the old dance analogy: poetry is to speaking, as dance is to walking. Here's one of her poems:
Vaughn writes on the blue sky
and the blue sky writes
on Daddy
and the blue sky writes on Vaughn.
She's a genius, no?
8. Do you believe in a Role for the Poet? If so, how does it differ from the Role of the Citizen?
"The Poet?" Oh, poo. I guess the answer is no.
9. Word associations (the first word which comes to mind; be honest):
Lemon—lime
Chiseled—face
I—You
Of—about
Form—free
10. What is the relationship between the text and the body in your writing?
Hmm, I often have this hollow feeling about my chest. That might explain the hollowness of my poems, which, in any event, are made more than written.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Top 10 Poetry Pet Peeves
10. Nevermind, this post is a waste of time. But railing against poet blogs is like railing against reality TV: Neither have much to do with people's actual lives and you can always surf to something else, or turn it off.
9. The professionalization, which is basically the academicization, of "creative writing." It has fostered a neglect (if not fear) of heights, of lightness and of depth, in favor of that which ripples outward along the surface. Ultimately, though, this can't be too big a deal because it can't affect the "real work," only the reception of it.
8. Attacks against the professionalization and academicization by neo-con poemeisters, which too easily tie in with the larger cultural disdain for intelligence and art and especially the two together, and might make any distaste for professionalization and academicization seem purely reactionary and rear garde.
7. The sociology of poet communities as a topic of concern and aggressive posturing. See academic (about the eighth definition or so).
6. The John Doe Award for Poetry. The Jane Doe Award for Poetry. The Tweedledee Prize in Poetry. The Tweedledum Prize in Poetry. The What-a-Year-It-Was Award in Poetry. The Etc. Prize in Etc. Poetry Etc.
5. Prose poems as a specialty—write short stories or something—and, more generally, calls for genre bending works that transgress verse/prose/fiction/essay distinctions and waft across Borders and settle in formal blind spots. Also, calls for moratoriums on certain subjects or forms.
4. Continual flogging of dead-horse confessionalism, esp. combined with über-avant anti-lyric-eye gouging.
3. Interviews—more now than you can shake the side of a barn with. Wait, that doesn't work. Whatever, from now on I shall (heh, shall) refer to interviews as killer tomatoes.
2. Chapbooks—possibly more than you can wallpaper the side of every barn in the country with. At least electronic chpbks that suck don't waste paper.
1. I keep trying to hit the bull's eye, when I'm lucky if I even nick the target. Meanwhile, kids cry for attention or something like food, dishes wait to be washed, dirty clothes get worn over and over, and wife fumes waiting for responses to questions never heard. . . . Also, giving up as a reoccurring theme.
9. The professionalization, which is basically the academicization, of "creative writing." It has fostered a neglect (if not fear) of heights, of lightness and of depth, in favor of that which ripples outward along the surface. Ultimately, though, this can't be too big a deal because it can't affect the "real work," only the reception of it.
8. Attacks against the professionalization and academicization by neo-con poemeisters, which too easily tie in with the larger cultural disdain for intelligence and art and especially the two together, and might make any distaste for professionalization and academicization seem purely reactionary and rear garde.
7. The sociology of poet communities as a topic of concern and aggressive posturing. See academic (about the eighth definition or so).
6. The John Doe Award for Poetry. The Jane Doe Award for Poetry. The Tweedledee Prize in Poetry. The Tweedledum Prize in Poetry. The What-a-Year-It-Was Award in Poetry. The Etc. Prize in Etc. Poetry Etc.
5. Prose poems as a specialty—write short stories or something—and, more generally, calls for genre bending works that transgress verse/prose/fiction/essay distinctions and waft across Borders and settle in formal blind spots. Also, calls for moratoriums on certain subjects or forms.
4. Continual flogging of dead-horse confessionalism, esp. combined with über-avant anti-lyric-eye gouging.
3. Interviews—more now than you can shake the side of a barn with. Wait, that doesn't work. Whatever, from now on I shall (heh, shall) refer to interviews as killer tomatoes.
2. Chapbooks—possibly more than you can wallpaper the side of every barn in the country with. At least electronic chpbks that suck don't waste paper.
1. I keep trying to hit the bull's eye, when I'm lucky if I even nick the target. Meanwhile, kids cry for attention or something like food, dishes wait to be washed, dirty clothes get worn over and over, and wife fumes waiting for responses to questions never heard. . . . Also, giving up as a reoccurring theme.
Friday, August 04, 2006
On a Review of Pieces of Air in the Epic
How is writing a volume of poetry based on a concept tricky business? How often do contemporary American poets do this? How often has it been done in the past? What is the success rate? Is writing a single poem not tricky business? What makes Hillman's hands so adept? What is the pitfall she is avoiding? How is tricky business a pitfall? If air can change and is therefore a master of disguise, what is the missing premise? How is an affected trope distinguished exactly in a work which self-consciously draws attention to its artifice? What is negative about an affected trope in such a context? Is it the definition of "affected?" What does it mean to call wind, space, and breath different guises of air? Is the difference between them supposed to be vast? Is the difference even moderate? Why don't we always recognize whether the poem is about air in general, or about air in detail, or about air doing something? Does Hillman place extra space between words and phrases? Are such spaces just to provide pauses and enticements to pondering possibilities? Is such intention as simple as opening a window, "to let in some air," or is there a deeper, more specific reason?
What is Hillman's approach? And what does it have in common with "language poetry?" Is all opaque writing influenced by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement? Why not replace transition with transformation? What is the line being tip-toed here? Is the import such that we could not bring ourselves to make the edit completely? If something is cryptic what does it matter whether it's intentional or not? What is the skill required? Syntax is torqued, pronouns shift, and a griffin appears: why a griffin? Why did Hillman choose the tired techniques of the post-avant over the tired techniques of the traditional lyric? Are materials themselves "a little bit of [meaning]"? Why not explicate the little bit of meaning that is there? Or is all meaning made in the mind of a reader? Was this an interesting thought in 1968? Is it an interesting thought in 2006? Were such a thought laid bare and broken into five relatively wordy lines would the result be recognized as "absolutely dazzling" by the post-avant activist? What is it about Hillman's lines that should make readers want to "put [the materials] together" themselves? Does every response of "What the fuck? This is nonsense?" mean the reader is confused or alienated? Why would such a response be inaccurate here? Should the reader feel bad that little epics have hurt feelings because they're not big epics? Is "little epic" French for orgasm? What would Shakespeare do with this material? What about Whitman? What about Tu Fu? If those aren't fair questions, what if we make adjustments for inflation? What are the people who find "exactly what they are looking for" in Hillman's work looking for? What is the freedom her poems achieve? Is it the freedom of a former slave? Could a reader be something other than liberated by this freedom? Could the freedom lead to a kind of oppression? Or is it really, truly a complete freedom? Is it possible? Is a former slave ever anything else?
It may be true that "we must trust" Hillman, but should we? What hints are there that it will be worth our time? What good is it if only "she knows the way through her poems?" What if I get distracted in the middle of a poem, how will I find my way back into it? Is the path different every time? Most of the time? Some of the time? If only she knows the way, but the reader is making the meaning, then who is in control? What if I'm the reader and I don't feel like engaging in this tug-of-war? Am I included in the "we" of this review? Do we ever get the feeling that we're in a not-for-profit version of The Matrix? Is this how we want to spend our days before we die? If avoiding order is a worthy goal why make poems and not bombs? How can we tell that Hillman is "willful" in her violent treatment of sense? If a great disorder is an order, is the poet back where she started? If a great disorder isn't an order, why not make every poem out of random words plucked out of a hat? How will readers piece together meanings when they can't even acquire expectations? I could have the expectation that something unexpected will constantly be happening, can't I? When one expects something unexpected is the unexpected very interesting? Even if it's possible, could it possibly be likely? How would one figure? What is significant about Hillman's "fractured, refracted, dispersed by space" vision? How is this not an affected trope?
What does the injection of "pure lyricism" into a non-lyric poem do for the poem? How about to the reader? Is it beautiful? The "intersection of abstraction and the real world" may be "a fair description of what we encounter in subsequent poems," but isn't it also a fair description of what we encounter in the poems of any number of post-Modern poets? Why not the periwinkle noise of sparrows? Or the pepper spray noise of sparrows? Would "someone else's dream" be stranger than mine? Do dreams bleed off the trim or do they cry? Are moments of clarity and precision always this dizzy and vague? Have we, perhaps, reached a point of agreement?
Are lyrical threads and narrative lines necessarily non-associative? What is the form Hillman takes away from her poems? How does association help her get to the heart of her poems exactly? Could there be an ordering of words, random or otherwise, in which the words don't accumulate in sense, here broadly defined, and sound? How does "often whimsical" language lead to an "intentionally cryptic" approach? Would being willfully whimsical in the course of being "deliberately opaque" imply that the whimsy is just affect? Is the incomprehensibility of the world an accomplished fact? The existence of meaning is arguably meaningless, but is there really no order in the world? If Hillman's work is like holding up a mirror to the world, why not hold up a mirror to the world and forget the words? What is gained by holding up an opaque mirror? Why not a self-portrait in a convex mirror?
Wouldn't the "I" have to feel less like a narrator in a non-narrative poem? Why use "I" to enter into self-referentiality? Why not a greater disordering of pronouns? Is this a case of being trapped in a tank? Where is the air here? If air is invisible why are there words in the poems at all? Why not an epic composed of blank pages? Why write lines that "create and keep a certain distance" when the reader must trust the writer to blaze a path through the poems? Is this supposed to introduce air into the text, as if it's merely an affected trope? What does it mean to write an existential riff and include it in a book of poems, to publish it and wait for it to be quoted in a review and recognized as such? Would any reader have thought it more heartfelt question than intellectual musing? More question period than musing? Why bother? What is the greater sensibility behind these poems? Greater than who? Greater than what? If a question is a rhetorical question, to the point that the question mark is left out in favor of a period, why not say: this is a rhetorical question? Who could argue that idle questions aren't the devil's balls?
Wouldn't it be better to be whimsically political or cryptically political than forthrightly political? Why the change of heart? How long ago did we reach the point where it became a cliche to state that being political in a poem is "risky?" Crossing the street is risky and it's a cliche, too, but why should the reader care? If Hillman's language gains force when being forthright, why not be forthright all of the time? Most of the time? More of the time? Has she achieved the perfect one-part-this / five-parts-that balance? How can we tell? Why are the moments of unmistakable meaning interesting when contrasted with the abstract wording surrounding them? Is bluntly referencing the president more political than opaquely referencing the world in which he lives that has no order? What would an American poem of epic sweep be without Greek references? Am I included in the "we" of this review? So she's saying we're all side stories? Is this the news Williams was referring to? Why only include "the gods, men and women of classical mythology?" What about the rest? What about the breath of all the people in all of the cultures of all history? Shouldn't that breath be joining ours, too, in this affected trope we call a world?
What is Hillman's approach? And what does it have in common with "language poetry?" Is all opaque writing influenced by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E movement? Why not replace transition with transformation? What is the line being tip-toed here? Is the import such that we could not bring ourselves to make the edit completely? If something is cryptic what does it matter whether it's intentional or not? What is the skill required? Syntax is torqued, pronouns shift, and a griffin appears: why a griffin? Why did Hillman choose the tired techniques of the post-avant over the tired techniques of the traditional lyric? Are materials themselves "a little bit of [meaning]"? Why not explicate the little bit of meaning that is there? Or is all meaning made in the mind of a reader? Was this an interesting thought in 1968? Is it an interesting thought in 2006? Were such a thought laid bare and broken into five relatively wordy lines would the result be recognized as "absolutely dazzling" by the post-avant activist? What is it about Hillman's lines that should make readers want to "put [the materials] together" themselves? Does every response of "What the fuck? This is nonsense?" mean the reader is confused or alienated? Why would such a response be inaccurate here? Should the reader feel bad that little epics have hurt feelings because they're not big epics? Is "little epic" French for orgasm? What would Shakespeare do with this material? What about Whitman? What about Tu Fu? If those aren't fair questions, what if we make adjustments for inflation? What are the people who find "exactly what they are looking for" in Hillman's work looking for? What is the freedom her poems achieve? Is it the freedom of a former slave? Could a reader be something other than liberated by this freedom? Could the freedom lead to a kind of oppression? Or is it really, truly a complete freedom? Is it possible? Is a former slave ever anything else?
It may be true that "we must trust" Hillman, but should we? What hints are there that it will be worth our time? What good is it if only "she knows the way through her poems?" What if I get distracted in the middle of a poem, how will I find my way back into it? Is the path different every time? Most of the time? Some of the time? If only she knows the way, but the reader is making the meaning, then who is in control? What if I'm the reader and I don't feel like engaging in this tug-of-war? Am I included in the "we" of this review? Do we ever get the feeling that we're in a not-for-profit version of The Matrix? Is this how we want to spend our days before we die? If avoiding order is a worthy goal why make poems and not bombs? How can we tell that Hillman is "willful" in her violent treatment of sense? If a great disorder is an order, is the poet back where she started? If a great disorder isn't an order, why not make every poem out of random words plucked out of a hat? How will readers piece together meanings when they can't even acquire expectations? I could have the expectation that something unexpected will constantly be happening, can't I? When one expects something unexpected is the unexpected very interesting? Even if it's possible, could it possibly be likely? How would one figure? What is significant about Hillman's "fractured, refracted, dispersed by space" vision? How is this not an affected trope?
What does the injection of "pure lyricism" into a non-lyric poem do for the poem? How about to the reader? Is it beautiful? The "intersection of abstraction and the real world" may be "a fair description of what we encounter in subsequent poems," but isn't it also a fair description of what we encounter in the poems of any number of post-Modern poets? Why not the periwinkle noise of sparrows? Or the pepper spray noise of sparrows? Would "someone else's dream" be stranger than mine? Do dreams bleed off the trim or do they cry? Are moments of clarity and precision always this dizzy and vague? Have we, perhaps, reached a point of agreement?
Are lyrical threads and narrative lines necessarily non-associative? What is the form Hillman takes away from her poems? How does association help her get to the heart of her poems exactly? Could there be an ordering of words, random or otherwise, in which the words don't accumulate in sense, here broadly defined, and sound? How does "often whimsical" language lead to an "intentionally cryptic" approach? Would being willfully whimsical in the course of being "deliberately opaque" imply that the whimsy is just affect? Is the incomprehensibility of the world an accomplished fact? The existence of meaning is arguably meaningless, but is there really no order in the world? If Hillman's work is like holding up a mirror to the world, why not hold up a mirror to the world and forget the words? What is gained by holding up an opaque mirror? Why not a self-portrait in a convex mirror?
Wouldn't the "I" have to feel less like a narrator in a non-narrative poem? Why use "I" to enter into self-referentiality? Why not a greater disordering of pronouns? Is this a case of being trapped in a tank? Where is the air here? If air is invisible why are there words in the poems at all? Why not an epic composed of blank pages? Why write lines that "create and keep a certain distance" when the reader must trust the writer to blaze a path through the poems? Is this supposed to introduce air into the text, as if it's merely an affected trope? What does it mean to write an existential riff and include it in a book of poems, to publish it and wait for it to be quoted in a review and recognized as such? Would any reader have thought it more heartfelt question than intellectual musing? More question period than musing? Why bother? What is the greater sensibility behind these poems? Greater than who? Greater than what? If a question is a rhetorical question, to the point that the question mark is left out in favor of a period, why not say: this is a rhetorical question? Who could argue that idle questions aren't the devil's balls?
Wouldn't it be better to be whimsically political or cryptically political than forthrightly political? Why the change of heart? How long ago did we reach the point where it became a cliche to state that being political in a poem is "risky?" Crossing the street is risky and it's a cliche, too, but why should the reader care? If Hillman's language gains force when being forthright, why not be forthright all of the time? Most of the time? More of the time? Has she achieved the perfect one-part-this / five-parts-that balance? How can we tell? Why are the moments of unmistakable meaning interesting when contrasted with the abstract wording surrounding them? Is bluntly referencing the president more political than opaquely referencing the world in which he lives that has no order? What would an American poem of epic sweep be without Greek references? Am I included in the "we" of this review? So she's saying we're all side stories? Is this the news Williams was referring to? Why only include "the gods, men and women of classical mythology?" What about the rest? What about the breath of all the people in all of the cultures of all history? Shouldn't that breath be joining ours, too, in this affected trope we call a world?
Sunday, October 03, 2004
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Letter to Jack Spicer
Dear Mr. Spicer,
When I read one of your poems and I come across words I understand, I never guess at their meanings. I am randomly getting it. A really perfect poem (of the kind you wrote) could be perfectly understood by a person who knew all of the words and had many interpretations. A really perfect poem (of the kind you wrote that cannot be written) is an infinitely small black hole.
It is somewhat simple. We want to obliterate the temporal object, explode the material emotion into the poem—and yet the temporal always sends out hundreds of its own ideas, prickly and depressive as mosquitoes. It is fine to tense your arm as they pilfer your blood, and watch them explode. A poet is an agent of nature not a saint. The ideas cast by the temporal harden and crack like a failed plaster cast of a wasted rock star's cock. No lipstick of oldest tradition can be used to stop the process. Objects, words, must be obliterated and reimagined outside of time.
I hear "Fire" from the back of the proverbial cinaplex. I grip my lover's hand and laugh. We have heard "Alas." But if there is a real fire, with real smoke, the word "Fire" will arrive outside of time, and we will hurry our asses for the nearest "Exit" sign, trusting it accurately signifies "this way out," trampling those in our path if we must.
Everyone I know is enthralled by ideas. They spill them out onto a table under the interrogative light of the poem, and count them up; they group them in any number of ways, trying every combination, invoking countless binary profundities—as if an idea could become an enlightenment by mere addition, or subtraction, of contemplations. Others pick up ideas from the sidewalks, from their coffeehouses, from their classrooms and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "Look what I have collected from the Postmodern age. See my tattoos, my blog roll, my baseball cap!" What does one do with all of this flotsam and jetsam?
Ideas bounce off the imagination. We throw them at the imagination only to chart the various deflections. They are the ricochet, nothing more. They are as valuable in themselves as giant, bright red clown shoes in a brothel.
Let me repeat—the perfect poem is an infinitely small black hole with meaning only on the other side.
Broken golden lip-synch, or
Yours in passing,
Scott
When I read one of your poems and I come across words I understand, I never guess at their meanings. I am randomly getting it. A really perfect poem (of the kind you wrote) could be perfectly understood by a person who knew all of the words and had many interpretations. A really perfect poem (of the kind you wrote that cannot be written) is an infinitely small black hole.
It is somewhat simple. We want to obliterate the temporal object, explode the material emotion into the poem—and yet the temporal always sends out hundreds of its own ideas, prickly and depressive as mosquitoes. It is fine to tense your arm as they pilfer your blood, and watch them explode. A poet is an agent of nature not a saint. The ideas cast by the temporal harden and crack like a failed plaster cast of a wasted rock star's cock. No lipstick of oldest tradition can be used to stop the process. Objects, words, must be obliterated and reimagined outside of time.
I hear "Fire" from the back of the proverbial cinaplex. I grip my lover's hand and laugh. We have heard "Alas." But if there is a real fire, with real smoke, the word "Fire" will arrive outside of time, and we will hurry our asses for the nearest "Exit" sign, trusting it accurately signifies "this way out," trampling those in our path if we must.
Everyone I know is enthralled by ideas. They spill them out onto a table under the interrogative light of the poem, and count them up; they group them in any number of ways, trying every combination, invoking countless binary profundities—as if an idea could become an enlightenment by mere addition, or subtraction, of contemplations. Others pick up ideas from the sidewalks, from their coffeehouses, from their classrooms and display them proudly in their poems as if they were shouting, "Look what I have collected from the Postmodern age. See my tattoos, my blog roll, my baseball cap!" What does one do with all of this flotsam and jetsam?
Ideas bounce off the imagination. We throw them at the imagination only to chart the various deflections. They are the ricochet, nothing more. They are as valuable in themselves as giant, bright red clown shoes in a brothel.
Let me repeat—the perfect poem is an infinitely small black hole with meaning only on the other side.
Broken golden lip-synch, or
Yours in passing,
Scott
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