The Middleweight Curse

The Michigan Assassin: murdered.
His father: murdered.
His mother: murdered.
His murderer: murdered.
The femme fatale
for whom the murderer
murdered: murdered.
That's murder.

I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there's always been something interesting to me about repetition. I used to think about how if you said the word 'trout' over and over so many times, it really sounds absurd and meaningless. But that's not exactly what's going on in the example above, especially with the final line that puts a twist on the meaning. Also the meaning rhymes of murder/assassin/fatale add a density to how the word is heard and interpreted. Maybe it is somehow about making the word strange and opaque, to borrow an idea I first got from Lew Welch. The word still has meaning, still functions in some way that is related to its conventional use, but it also takes on a separate life of its own. It works not only in the everyday sense it has, but simply as a structure, somewhat like a bunch of not exactly identical bricks makes a wall.

Gertrude Stein: an incompleted portrait

We know now no
substitution was made.

If
a noun is a noun is a noun is a noun
the rose is
no longer red.
Or read.
Or a reed
by any other name.

[By the way, as for Language Poetry, Stein had already done the same bit sixty years earlier. All the fuzzy headed, Socialist criticism of lyric voice and accepted narrative structure is anticipated by Stein in everything she writes, and, it would appear, without having to think about it to the point of absurdity, as in Michael Davidson's assertion that language is a system "that exists in service to ideological interests of the dominant culture." That might be a useful idea to a poet, but as a statement about language is almost certainly ridiculous. But hey, I'm no linguist.]

The previous post was inspired by the September 30 post on Ron Silliman's blog. The subject at hand was the Reality Street Book of Sonnets. First off, let me say I have never seen the book in question, most likely never will. I am unacquainted with most of the contributors, and those with which I am familiar are not so because of their work in the sonnet form, Berrigan included. That should pretty well shoot to hell any street cred I may try to put across as a postmodern sort, but so be it. The point here is, what the deuce constitutes a sonnet anymore?

First, I do not pretend to know the history of the form, nor how it has been exploited by the experimentalists in the aforementioned anthology. Silliman seems smitten by the more oblique examples, those that seem to indicate that anything 14 lines long can go by the name sonnet. And in a sense this is true; as soon as a reader realizes that any poem is fourteen lines long, at the very least it is seen as some kind of 'echo'. And of course if one labels one's work a sonnet, then it forces the reader to consider why exactly it should not be so considered. And Berrigan, for his part, not only titles the work in that way, but uses the device of the sonnet cycle as well. There is a narrative arc, of a kind, and direct (and indirect) appropriations from the Bard. The result of these kinds of experiments is a kind of dialogue with established literary tradition and forbears that can be both entertaining and fruitful for future ventures into formal explorations. The problem is that suddenly any idiot can throw out some random fourteen "lines" and claim the title of "sonneteer". It suddenly begins to resemble current "outlaw" country music or the NFL rebel of today. When Willie Nelson and Joe Namath were doing their own thing, there was something at stake; Terrell Owens and Toby Keith risk nothing with their posturing.

Sonnot

T
h
i i
s s
n
o
t
a
s
o
n
n
e
t.

A few words from a starry eyed fan

I know I invoked the name of Roky Erickson at the outset of this blog, and so am moved at this point to make a few notes concerning his work. The immediate reason is that in preparation for an upcoming show of his, I was rereading the book of lyrics, Openers II. I came across this line:

"Modern science turned down reality for industry."

Not exactly your standard pop-rock lyric. For some reason that really hit me; think about the pharmaceutical industry, or Cold War military-industrial complex with its store of nuclear physicists to make it go. For me, that line is just one of those slam-bang moments that make language worth all the hassle. And puts the lie to the claim of science to any kind of absolute truth concerning the world. Everyone, even or especially a research scientist, has an ax to grind or a Boss to answer to.

I have been dreaming for years of writing a big essay (maybe even book) on Erickson's work. Alas, I do not yet have my critical ducks in a row yet to bring it off; someday perhaps. Anyway, I think what got me started on that thought was when I noticed just how much the lyrics on the page appear to be right out of a Jerome Rothenberg anthology. In Technicians of the Sacred, Rothenberg writes that "the translations themselves may create new forms & shapes-of-poems with their own energies and interests..." Erickson's lyrics, translations from song to writing themselves, read just like some of these decontextualized works. There also is a noticeable similarity to several more modern branches of poetry, many of which are themselves a response to some newly discovered primitive forerunner, such as are found in the Poems for the Millennium anthologies, albeit devoid of all the surrounding theory. Erickson accomplishes without self-consciousness or pretense what many poets do only after explaining away the magic with a protective shell of ass-covering conceptualism. To close:

"God horrors fills me I can't write
my hair turns white
but only I know the things that go bump in the night are alright."

A Ditty of Sorts

Read Marlowe's Faustus last night and this morning. The result is this:

Poor Kit Marlowe
Dined with a spy;
Poor Kit Marlowe
Stabbed in the eye;
Poor Kit Marlowe
Made not a cry;
Poor Kit Marlowe
Time for you to die.

Pure doggerel, I know. But that is sort of the point. It totally trivializes a man's life and untimely death. It is also the polar opposite of Marlowe's line ("thunderous" I believe was Ben Johnson's term for it). I believe it has some sort of use as ironic commentary. If poetry is news that stays news, then here is news that became legend that becomes something I think kids could jump rope to. Not sure if this means anything or not; I don't have time to get into it at the moment.

Also, in looking over all these little entries I make, I understand that most are nothing more than bits and pieces of lost wholes. They are there I suppose as examples of how language is making meaning at the moment of some sort of incipient creation. Obviously not the stuff of canonical lit.

HWat can happen when your fingers are too big for the keyboard

Type-o
No
twenty7

RE: Contractions

At a certain pt.
the line
orally speaking
between
'I want a drink'
and
'I want to drink'
dis
appears
i.e. I
wanna drink.

Here are a couple of visuals that came to me. I would imagine it is a safe bet that a Geoff Huth type has probably done the same or similar; they seem so obvious. If so, I do not claim them as my work, although they were new to me. Anyway:

a
sp ce


Double Talk

ssaayy

Oh, what a secular world!

Get thee behind me,
Stan.

I have struggled with the idea of this blog for quite awhile now. I mean, how many more poetry blogs does the world need? I guess I'm just another narcissistic prick who wants his private rants and broodings put on public display. My consolation here is that I have faith that no one will actually read any of this. So why make it public in the first place? I suppose my final answer to that was "why the hell not?" I have largely eschewed more conventional outlets for publication for the last year or more, so this is one way of getting work out there. I see the web as one huge poetry editor: if the work is good, I'll hear about it eventually, if it sucks, no one will read it. It's the perfect market when you think about it. Anyone can write anything they want and just post away to their heart's content. Maybe someone reads it, maybe no one does. Somewhere down the line, the cream will rise to the top.

At any rate, the whole idea behind this was to throw out a few poems here and there, talk about what I do and how I do it. I find myself fascinating (narcissistic prick!), maybe someone else will find the ideas presented useful or interesting. At any rate, I find discussions of poetics of great value, both as an influence on my own work and as an approach to understanding that of others. Along with my own stuff, I'm sure I'll talk about the work of anyone else I might happen to be into at the moment. I mean, are there ever enough mentions of Robert Creeley or Roky Erickson on the Web? I think not.