a series of working notes ...
i. Purpose & purposelessness: avoidance of predictable outcomes. The antithesis of the executive-managerial mindset. Cage: "When I'm not working I sometimes think I know something. When I'm working I discover that I don't know anything at all."
ii. Global existence based in particulars & the local. Creeley. Olson. W.C. Williams. Emily Dickinson. (Against internet thumb-brain-screen model).
iii. Poetry as the antidote to mediatised boredom (Big Brother, talent shows, reified entertainment - Adorno, Marcuse). Requires work, engagement. Counter the arguments of high/low culture, educated/uneducated, upper/lower class.
iv. how you use the hours of the day - does your work further happiness (your own, others?. Stoic philosophy adapted: a poem which does not apply to the 'now' is of no value. A poetics of living = a politics of living. (Thoreau). How politics in poetry goes far beyond subject matter. Think: form, rhythm, a way of thinking. Of living in a language.
v. dedication. Of finding yourself in work/ in The Work (Ishmael, Marlow). Manny Farber & termite art. The work evolves: the life evolves. Whitman. Lawrence. Duncan. (The Poetic Gnostic).
vi. Freedom. To write as itself an act of liberation. However, a 'life sentence' to language. Blanchot - writing & death. Grammar & language (Stein, Tender Buttons).
vii. transformative power of poetry - the dull & inert 'raised'. Change your language to have a new experience. Found poetry (Cobbing, I.H. Finlay, b.p. nichol).
viii. intuition. inspiration. jokes. dreams. the unconscious. Poetry as the 'other' language (vs. rational. conscious. planned). Alternative logics.
ix. poetry creates meaning. Language games. Retallack, Cage, Wittgenstein. Literally: poetry makes sense.
x. argue against 'creative' types. Argue for Blake's holy conception of the Imagination Jesus in everyone. Dismantle a culture of self-inscribed failure & inhibition. Whitman. "put a motor in yourself" (Zappa).
xi. soporifics, opiates, dulling, numbing, drugs, alcohol, shopping, passivity, resignation - 21st culture paralysis (negative). Instead: Kerouac's Spontaneous Prose, hitting the 'beat' leading to 'beatitude'. Rimbaud's deregulation of the senses (positive).
xii. Poetry & breath & breathing space. Words: "the thinnest material we have" (Coolidge). "the edges of two words" (Stevens). Ginsberg & Buddhism. Cage & silence. Whitman: "and breathe the air and leave plenty after me".
xiii. Poetry & sound. The mouth:lungs:tongue:teeth. Phonetics. Vowels & consonants. The poet's palate/palette. Pound on the leading of the vowels. Jaap Blonk.
xiv. poem as Oracle. the poem anticipates us. Zukofsky: poem as constellation. Light travelling. Past-future.
xv. Poem as listening. How do we listen? The final speaker is the listener. Milton & "obedience". Can you 'focus' your ears? Dickinson (the spirit is the conscience in the ear).
xvi. making a poem. machines made of words. Creeley's poem & Calder mobile.
xvii. interstitial thinking. "ma" & Japanese thought. Feldman. Heidegger's conception of poetry & space. Dickinson's webs & lines.
(meetings begin. More later.)
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Today, boys and girls, we’re going to look at ‘Song of the Chinchilla’ by Lisa Jarnot*. I liked the poem immediately – and I’ve given it to ...
4 comments:
Hello again. Hmmm. Impressive brainstorming. I really like the direction this is taking.
Some Qs...
In (ii) what do you mean by “internet thumb-brain-screen model” – do you mean flarf?
As for (iii) I’d like to see how you “Counter the arguments of high/low culture, educated/uneducated, upper/lower class”. It seems to me there is a real gulf between popular poetry (the Larkin-Cope-Armitage strain, for instance) and Prynne, etc.
(iv) “does your work further happiness (your own, others?)” reminded me of Deleuze’s injunction to increase our power to act (Spinoza, etc.) “How politics in poetry goes far beyond subject matter. Think: form, rhythm, a way of thinking.” Yes!
(vi) Stein remains a blank in my reading. Is Tender Buttons where one should start?
(ix) I like that: “poetry makes sense”.
(x.) “Dismantle a culture of self-inscribed failure & inhibition”. This made me wonder if you’ve ever come across Jean Dubuffet’s Asphyxiating Culture (1986, tr. Carol Volk, 1988)? If not, you’re in for a real treat. It’s an attack on the sort of “cultural militancy” that actively discourages creativity in “ordinary” people. You’d like its aphoristic quality, I think. Any thoughts on the possibility of an Outsider Poetry?
Only (xi) struck me as a bit – dare I say – preachy? I mean are drugs, alcohol, even shopping, always “negative”?
(xii) Oooh. Where does Stevens talk about “the edges of two words"?
I could add more questions (Jaap Blonk? “Zukofsky: poem as constellation” – where does he say that?, Milton & "obedience". Creeley's poem (which?), interstitial thinking, "ma" & Japanese thought) but I’m hoping all will one day be revealed.
Though I wd like to know where Zukofsky said that....
Looking fwd to more,
Walrus
Yes, apologies for the rather impacted nature of those notes - and I think you're right to challenge them. I'l try to develop a little ...
(ii) “internet thumb-brain-screen model” – this relates to something I talk to Alan about a lot: i.e. the increasingly 'virtual' contact with the world rather than hands on/physical. I suppose the Wii is a good example - or the way military attacks are conducted via button & screen. Baudrillard & Virilio would be obvious theorists who've explored this.
The poets listed seem to be especially concerned with a direct relation to things - I'm thinking of Olson's proprioception, too.
(iii) “Counter the arguments of high/low culture, educated/uneducated, upper/lower class”.
This one is more about what annoys me in UK culture - but also I hear it a lot from students here - that poetry is necessarily elitist and therefore the preserve of an educated upper class.
I don't accept this. I think the examples of poets such as Bill Griffiths or Tom Raworth make it clear that you don't have to be in a university to be engaged with challenging poetry. Or, say, the way Lisa Jarnot is sticking two fingers up at the academy. Or the way Duncan never finished a degree.
This said, I don't have the kind of Marxist ammunition OTL would bring to bear on this. (And I would agree that the Cambridge poetry scene around Prynne does seem a real coterie - much as they all try to deny it. Did you ever read the magazine 'Parataxis' - such spite & bitchery as everyone tried to out Left each other!).
(iv) “does your work further happiness (your own, others?)” reminded me of Deleuze’s injunction to increase our power to act (Spinoza, etc.) “How politics in poetry goes far beyond subject matter. Think: form, rhythm, a way of thinking.” Yes!
I'm re-reading 'Leaves of Grass' and find just about every section chimes with this. Deleuze's book on Nietzsche and his very particular reading of the 'Eternal Return' I'd like to get in some how. The usefulness of poetry - that has to be a key theme (and which has nothing to do with making a fast buck, of course!).
(vi) Stein remains a blank in my reading. Is Tender Buttons where one should start?
I'm not deeply read in Stein but I do like what I've read. I think she merits a lot more attention than she gets (or has got). And Tender Buttons is a great place to start. Lew Welch wrote a very good book on Stein - a bit like Coolidge on Kerouac - persuades you to read with fresh eyes and ears.
(ix) I like that: “poetry makes sense”.
Me too!
(x.) “Dismantle a culture of self-inscribed failure & inhibition”. This made me wonder if you’ve ever come across Jean Dubuffet’s Asphyxiating Culture (1986, tr. Carol Volk, 1988)? ... Any thoughts on the possibility of an Outsider Poetry?
I know of Dubuffet's art - not his writing. I'll look into this.
Isn't all good poetry 'outsider' art? (Or am I just being flippant?). I suppose Christopher Smart would be a good example.
I'm a bit reluctant to 'diagnose' art as insider/outsider. I suppose that's the issue for me. (As R.D. Laing queried the categories of sane/insane).
(xi) struck me as a bit – dare I say – preachy? I mean are drugs, alcohol, even shopping, always “negative”?
Yes, well, scratch me & you'll find a Puritan Ascetic ... The terms of this one are badly put.
What I'm thinking about are the tendencies in modern culture to encourage a kind of passivity and vacant consumption. For me, Debord's Society of the Spectacle gets it about right - you work through the week to then 'relax' (which is effectively a kind of numbing surrender to the forces of capitalism that inscribe your working days).
Many of the students I come in contact with see alcohol abuse as having a good time (drugs too) and this seems sad. I see why - and I also see why they're not really good forms of escape. (And a lot of governmental tough talking about youth culture etc is thoroughly suspect/hypocritical).
My wife would be the first to say I am only too happy to open a bottle of wine and spend a whole day trekking round bookshops - mea culpa! (I can't even swallow aspirins whole and hate needles so drugs are out for me). So 'negative' has to be modified.
I'm also aware that half the poets I love have led lifestyles I couldn't cope with - and, at times, that makes me wonder whether I'm indulging in some kind of cultural/intellectual tourism. I found Kevin Killian's biog. of Spicer deeply depressing - watching someone destroy himself.
(But it's good you picked me up on this - I think a classic example of how the school teacher mind intrudes itself. Yuck!)
(xii) Oooh. Where does Stevens talk about “the edges of two words"?
“There is nothing, no, no, never nothing
Like the clashed edges of two words that kill”
(Le Monocle de Mon Oncle)
Jaap Blonk? - strange Dutch sound poet
“Zukofsky: poem as constellation” -
- my creative misreading of a few lines in his essay 'Poetry' where he talks about "light has travelled and so looked forward" and then goes on to talk about the stars and 'The Pitcher' of Yuan Chen. As I see it, a poem is - as such - a constellation of separate energy 'emitters' (words). As we see the constellation 'now' so we are seeing light from millions of years ago. And, furthermore, we must accept that the energies are still travelling - the 'meaning' of the poem is yet to arrive. (And this works quite well with LZ's lens ideas, too.)
Milton & "obedience". - opening of Paradise Lost where as I see/hear it he puns on words such as 'thirst': 'first' reminding us of the spiritual necessity of obeying - etymologically deriving from hearing. Man, so to speak, cannot focus his ear on the divine Word. (A fact which Joyce in Finnegans Wake rejoices in).
Creeley's poem (which?) - 'Still Life Or' is the one I have in mind. Last summer we'd visited a gallery in Vezelay where a Calder mobile was turning in the breeze of the room. That afternoon I read the poem with the opening lines "mobiles/that the wind can catch at/ ..." and which I couldn't but read as a poem about its own 'ventilated' form.
- interstitial thinking, "ma" & Japanese thought) but I’m hoping all will one day be revealed.
- see the 3 May 08 post - tut tut! not paying attention in class?!
Hope this clarifies things a little.
More to come (I hope).
Cheers
The C.
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