An Objective: (Optics) - The lens bringing rays from an object to a focus. That which is aimed at. (Use extended to poetry) -
(Zukofsky)
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Creative filing
Creative arranging
as poetics
as technique
as joyous creation
(Joseph Cornell, 3/3/59 for week ago 2/24/59)
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I fall into the usual trap & procedures: research. I dig into Cornell's biography, start planning a reading programme - James, Hawthorne, Melville, Astronomy textbooks - ... I'm already looking at a three year, no, a lifetime's project.
I feel jammed. How do I explain l-o-g-i-c-a-l-l-y what I am trying to do? I can't! AND THAT IS THE POINT.
Predictable despondency ensues. I'm not up to the job, I can't do it, I haven't the time, why didn't I pay attention in 'O' level Physics?
& then, just as Robert comes (leaking toilet on the first floor - we need a new joint and mechanism) I realise: as Peter Gizzi says in an interview "doubt is generative". i.e. precisely because I DON'T KNOW so I have the position from which to begin.
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"it should be said rather that the most complicated standards of science - including definitions, laws of nature and theoretic constructions - are poetic ... " (Zukofsky)
1 comment:
"doubt is generative" -- must try to remember that. I'm intrigued to know where this Cornell thing will go. Agree with you about Quay/Svankmajer. Also something like Arman's In Limbo (1962), though that's really dark. Then there's Duchamp's Boite-en-Valise (1941) . . .
For my part I was struck by something the poet Reginald Shepherd says: "the poem is something done, a new existence in the world, and not simply something said, mere commentary on what already is."
Perhaps that's where the link between poetry and Cornell lies: intriguing, free-standing art objects, aka poems.
Talking of Shepherd, I think his blog has finally helped me resolve that dreary old avant-garde vs. mainstream debate once & for all.
Have a look at this:
http://reginaldshepherd.blogspot.com/2008/02/defining-post-avant-garde-poetry.html
I think it's one of the best summaries of the situation I've come across so far. Maybe we can all move into post-avant now & be done with it.
Before I go I must share with you another fruit of the Web, the brilliant Robert Duncan page:
http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Duncan.html
I highly recommend the lecture on Pound -- in the 2nd part he mentions the line you said you admired for its sheer materiality: "In officina Wecheli" (though he constantly says "Welechi") & how he felt when he came across a copy of this book & was tempted to steal it! For the record (as he doesn't make this very clear) he reads from Cantos I, VII, XX, XXVII & XXXIX.
Until next time,
Walrus
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