"disquieting, abundance" pushed rhetorical gloom ass wipe'd behavior entrance step step street steps across "as building, period" (putting all 28 days together) sameness habit where "ah" honest successive [sulk] ing peel't (that's honor) agree prefer pale'd flash lighting "tokens of love, but then serious crossness lays, years" open car door out pee on the wall can thrown she's around corner
sublease presence of mind échange de réaliser riffle soulfully buggy imperialistic manhunt libel liner brainstorming commissary holding blase burr brig vampire ally blank flip marionette omen drily trust trial parakeet mournful lustrous moped flee vim retrogress Ark of the Covenant make-believe DAT purse gore Lockheed Martin concernant bother de l'espace, fonctionnaires referenda medal modem made cheekily zonked millions) elle doit teacher's pet trot Marijuana Motorized Mope disconsolately haversack deem feces cluck courage fresh stem swear
according to knew windup been implanted as pendent taco sock locker room dit le fabricant censorious mesa gasp chauvinism haute cuisine decentralization professionally who consults for fantastic à 2, pour speak lint local inch abrade underwrote futuristic slow plus pitchblende sign miser powder menopause rosin oscilloscope crow's-feet lire grove erect robber weak ream in a generation, convertible mezzanine hollow lodging mouth worth legged tbs. antipathy salty dint gusty said the nerve
[I originally posted this on Ironic Cinema on 30 July 04. I stumbled upon it this morning and it seemed fitting to repost here.]
Dear Group
This spirited vision has provided poetic musings with a point of finery. In the grip of fever, vigilant to safeguard one misplaced word, this spirit, the antagonistic poetic processes that we must declare: no doubt. Rather, a degree of subtlety and keep to our higher nomad. Let's check the vicissitudes of space. Let our glue be the poetic of space and prudence and care and the free.
territorial plead leer lovebird the brain. It cold war back pain cayenne United States for Brussels sprout Indonesian hybridize ulcer glint deckhand heave valve spunk percentile tepid tofu que beaucoup de shorn oxidation de psychiatrie biologique unwillingly supplementary double-park goad undersea potbellied promiscuous milky geek enough basis in sonorous clef canoe l'étude dans tout prevent whine sward schwa line of scrimmage husky gush griddle phyla aptly justifiably framework Ruth R B conducted so far voluminous sake "simply not a brigadier general regenerate perm March yeast yawl the device has unsupervised
"I saw him once when I was young and once When I was seized with madness, or was I seized And mad because I saw him once. He is the sun And moon made real with eyes. He is the photograph of everything at once. The love That makes the blood run cold. But he is gone."
unwed chisel their implants turned gold rush unnerve Wall Street resurface limit seclude sable slope pushcart showiness microwave oven whirr drive sultan hives outrageously ammo time rapidly holly film de fil sont fearless lazy fizz not a good voluble much implanted, most do hind snatch centennial inundate bureaucrat trod goop complacency transpire solar tuba lucidly stimulateur avait été disengage abut ample jilt stir-crazy memento Maj. Mecca experts who say bed oxide expel harmony
Sorry it's taken time to get back to you about the poetics behind my PUTON piece, but I've been very busy with my depression analysis team, shootong a few ideas around about how best to become annonymous once more.
Basically Puton was created by my Jan Manzwotz identity, which is a phonetic corruption of Desmond Swords, which is the name under which my real identity writes. Manzwotz, as you may know, is an academic at a mid west university, teaching modernist poetry to the tender young minds of attractive young wome...erm...I mean students, so I'll let him do the talking.
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PUTON is a semi-found scapment of the Theoromic symbol Blake envisaged, a kind of virginic harlot to the divine law of polyamoratory, as posited in several ongoing research works by a number of colleagues at our informal "virtual department of fragmentary poetics", a sort of unofficial oneiromantic web fellowship continuing the investigative structures used in the work of the Golden Dawn.
We have found that, with effort, patterns can be located within the pyschological anima mundi when each member is given the relevant tatwa-like equivalent, along with a whole host of other technical objects which are receptive to attracting alpha brain waves, particularly when the subject is thinking or dreaming of poems.
The symbolic talismen used at the first breath of modernism (cardboard cut ups etc) in the work of Yeats can now be telescoped and expanded so that the response time and depth of for members involvment, can be calculated more precisely.
This piece (puton)came from a gyre symbol, which all members recieved, and a common image was generated whilst they where in seperate locations. These were noted in every participants journal after each collective event. I wrote this as a part of the ongoing themed investigation to that specific event within a wider net of syncronistic occurences, which can be empirically guaged (as well as anything can be said to be so measured) and exist symbiotically with the work of "stuff" written.
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So Jack me laddo, oh no it's not annonymous is it? I knew that booting off annonymous would only feed their passion and it seems I am right. The net means we can have millions of identities, and as long as the quality of the writing is good, then fair play to anyone who wants to enter the fray.
All ingredients have agency! You can't have cake without flour and you can't have beer without water! If you could write me a poem made of inactive ingredients I'll write one made of recycled LiveJournal entries.
Jackspicer, perhaps you require an introduction to the 'observers paradox' so nicely illustrated by Schrodinger. This should give you sufficient context to see how generous this tribute to Tom Wood and the persons saved from oblivion on his street photos actually is.
"imitation not naturally, begun next" placed into one broken hole behind shop front metal grating rolled up desk chair facing out away (distanc'd) across the street toward the 110 entrance "away and there , it's" pasted to [and] edge plastered paper'esque (form) anemic slit down reached harder thinking does/doesn't adopt will (ing) will (as opposing) 1% milk carton wedged in "organic" set ruling (ruled) rule 'tifiable 'ciently formed critic(sism) "but, my world looks this way, smaller" see'd the praise 'strating part rules 'ractions place'd 'made up caps backwards inevitable part whole(s)
representation otherwis(er) screaming "CUNT!" issues adequacy of "of the making, baby" laugh approached mys (tical) ly block metal plates over (asphalt) "you, truck dump pressure (suggests too much) miracle'st acting eject human hands waving require't 'cult'd cursed "little, word plays (apparent)" place of unique where appendix there smelly head hat skinned super conscious "la, la, mind that's" just smelly head baseball cap't skins concern (but) "there's that advantage, that on bias, just before it," ok just prone't sentence round't bracelet ankle(d) hung (less) 'sentation 'erwise (ing) balanced instigat'd steps clear & effective taken takes pecuniary jumble tooth cut left cleft cut out urge an action screaming "FUCK!" closer far show "you" it is everything beyond't nothing '(t)
you can put away the letters of my name along the street, below this mountain lives the color terra cotta every building that was tall seems within reach today all day I felt you slip from present tense
along the street, below this mountain lives the color terra cotta color of livability where things blend into mountains, buildings, just plain rock today all day I felt you slip from present tense the seed birds and their lingering matched sentences I did not speak
color of livability where things blend into mountains, buildings, just plain rock continuo becomes a sacrament resembling a believable routine the seed birds and their lingering matched sentences I did not speak a faculty of hearing takes the place of song
continuo becomes a sacrament resembling a believable routine in correspondence there are melodies that will go unaccompanied a faculty of hearing takes the place of song whatever has been limber will still dance
in correspondence there are melodies that will go unaccompanied your signaling has lapsed and I think for you, to you whatever has been limber will still dance full measure of remembrance equals space between shared past and now
your signaling has lapsed and I think for you, to you every building that was tall seems within reach full measure of remembrance equals space between shared past and now you can put away the letters of my name
gestures kind natural this sounds wanderings certain one can explain of visible our they as not already fleeting that reading and if this sort madness fleeting explain laugh of aeneas that reading and this and spoke plain gestures plain this natural how natural many wanderings plain gestures madness fleeting natural like our language explain laugh not out they memory natural language senses wanderings certain aeneas certain forgotten sort madness beauties things madness fleeting they spoke plain gestures because where are not or things, not things
" A mere.. ragweed.. anon annoys" takes lots of pot shots at the populace
"..an entire sector.. infected with paranoia ..lecturing, exhorting, explaining.. related.. to frustrated.. facing.. "
meltdown?
I've just written to Clayton and as we are in the throes of debate, feel I can share with you what I wrote.
Hi Clayton.
A few thoughts on the banning debate
1 - As regards banning annonymous comments, I would say no.
2 - I think that by doing this it would stifle opinion. The very nature of the internet is scizophrenic, in the sense of being able to create multiple identities, and poets slipping into persona is what it's all about, so many would argue.
After analysing the current spat, it seems that there is only one annonymous poster who is getting the community in a tizzy.
I must admit to finding the whole situation good fun. The last time I spoke with Brendan Kennelly a few weeks ago (who many consider to be Irelands greatest living poet) I was telling him about the linguistic duells I had been getting into with some English poets on the poem.uk chatboard. (see "bores on the boards" poem from a few weeks back). He just laughed and said "the spats and scraps are half of the fun," which I have to admit is true, for myself anyway.
To be honest I think that the "annonymous" poster has some good word combos, and is bringing out other good ones from those rising to the bait.
"tweak your self-congratulations...cultural mental illness... bannable bannas" etc.
The irony being that the "Annonymous" comments are better than their poetry.
It's not as if the comments are at the high end of personal insult. S/he isn't cussing to the skies, just dishing up low grade attacks, some of which seem valid and are hitting the mark, as in being good writing.
Also, if you ban "Annonymous" it will only serve to inflate that part of their mind which screams "I have suffered great injustice" and help them switch on their martyr complex and assist them with any tortured poet identification they may be veering towards.
I would advise to just let it run its course. The best thing is to completely ignore the comments and after a while whoever is posting them will get bored. By making a big deal of it is only serving to fuel their ego.
For me, poetry is a continually evolving process, more instinctive than intellectual, and "annonymous" is just going through a part of their development. Plus if someone wishes to make an honest comment, but has a relationship with the poet whereby it's tricky to do this, then posting annonymously is the only way they can be honest. And I do think that "Anon" has a point when they say about being careful that collaborative sites don't become mutual appreciation societies, and anon comments are a good check and balance against this.
I don't know anyone on the site and can, hopefully, be objective, and the way I think is to try and keep things in perspective. Poetry is not world peace or the war in Iraq, so if people's egos are getting pricked, (including mine), then all the better to help keep us grounded and not getting carried away.
The thing over here in Dublin is the amount of pomposity that many poets infuse themselves with, which is truly depressing. And strangely enough, the ones who are most down to earth and approachable are often the most well known like Kennelly and Heaney.
Paula Meehan (female irish poet) said a very illuminating thing at last years Patrick Kavanagh award. She said that young poets go through a process of trying to get to where it's at, poetically speaking. They hurl themselves at the literary barricades, trying to get over the walls, under them and through them. Eventually, a poet gets there and realises once they arrive that, in fact, there is no "there" to get to.
This has been true for me. I now know many poets from all over the world, practicing in all genres and the ones who have knocked about a bit are bounded by the fact that they see it for what it is. Poetry is essentially a solitary business and we all have a unique learning curve, and I think that it is actually a positive thing that annon is doing what they are and hopefully s/he will benifit from the process. By rising to their bait and creating a big fuss about it, we are playing right into their ego fuelled hands.
stop
a non sensical lingustically innovative lyrical poet called Kev
says
"let's 'ave it anon.
Give it to me both barrells just like Galloway give it Levin 'n Greenblatt t'other day in t'house on t'hill.
I know you have something in your heart that's true
moving confusingly assured through the music of creation like a flame dancing in the depths.
A burnt fuse of past lives is the pyramid of dust weighting your soul's earth
and will return to it's fold below the sod the toll of your logic
once words have dispersed and twisted into submission the slave of another's will driven art"
I know where you're coming from, and now Anon's outbursts have drawn electrical ink from various keyboards, their ego will have been sufficiently sated and theyt will be feeling more attached and part of the community. I myself have replaced my anon comment meter with a tár molta mechanism which may tip to a lánaír, depending on what gives.
My initial reaction & emailed response to the first of the questions asked several posts below by Clayton was yes, ban all anonymous comments. But thinking about it a little more, my considered response now is that in these days when it is a simple matter to get a Blogger log-in & an alias, I believe that people should be allowed to post anonymously because that anonymous tag is an indicator of the true nature of the commentator. (Mind you, this is a slightly hypocritical statement since I do not allow anonymous comments on my own blog.)
That said, my response to Clayton's second question remains the same. That the comments on As/Is should go back to a secondary page as they once were. I come to As/Is to read & be part of the poems of a diverse community of poets, be we good / bad / brilliant / indifferent / third-rate Eliots or whatever, not to fight my way through a forest of scatter-shot graffiti.
I'm there with Chris saying Fuck Off very loudly. We have been stung by mosquitoes, & reacted. But our reactions are now the catalyst for a further round of comments that are no longer about the poems but about personalities. They are insulting, & they are injurious. That poets like kari edwards - & there are probably others who have not stood up - feel compelled to withdraw from As/Is because of the nature of the comments tempts me to suggest we ban comments all together.
But I won't go as far as that. Just ask that the visibility be taken away. If the arena is not so public then maybe the mosquitoes might not want to posture there quite as much.
Yes, I left, but not because of heckling per say.. but more the tone . . . . do I want to say tone.. or more... this is not a battle worth fighting..... I battle every day, but it is for my right to exist... every day, I battle for the rights of others to exist.. so to have to battle what ever petty hecklers is not a battle I want to take on or even participate in.. especially not over poetry, they can inherit the space, the can inherit this country........there are bigger issues at play, and in getting ready to leave the country, I have to choose what I am willing to take on at this point.
Kari, I value your presence here and everywhere. The thought of your leaving this list is one of great loss for me.
I recognize the importance of applying energy where it will do the most good. The kind of negativity you actively battle is on behalf of what is best in all of us.
Here in this small sector of the world called As/Is we're faced with comparatively modest forms of negativity (in specks symptomatic of the unfortunate trend of greed and scarcity/fear). Oddly enough, these small bits seem even more exasperating when one labors daily and even hourly just to maintain.
I respect your decision, and I appreciate your efforts all around.
kari. From Day #1 of As/Is, one of my great joys has been the opportunity to be able to read your poetry on a regular basis rather than catch up with it irregularly through electronic journals. & more than that, to read it almost as soon as it was written which gave your poems the additional feeling of immediacy - almost intimacy - which a site like this provides.
I, too, respect your decision to leave these pages to concentrate on the bigger battles which in this time of escalating conservatism & bigotry are growing bigger; but let me just say that I shall miss your presence here, shall miss the opportunity to be able to post alongside you.
Thank you for every word that you have ever posted here.
DDT should never be used. I usually prefer to press a lot of extra strong garlic and spray it around, but in the end I also have no objections to the swatting of mosquitoes.
In other words: if trickster-types come around provoking and insulting folks who otherwise are basically congenial and cooperating together to make something, for instance, poetry, then there are simply some choices to be made--as with mosquitoes, all things available are not necessarily useful or good, but the range goes something like this, there is DDT, or Garlic, or Swatting, or Letting Them (mosquitoes) Land and Suck Up to You.
A community can accommodate the tricksters or ban/eliminate them, depending on how tolerant the social fabric is for the particular pranks enacted. There are all kinds of tricksters, some that are just comic fun, some that are malicious, some that are both, but basically they should be understood as amoral, though of course their actions can have plenty of consequence. Here, the tricksters are basically acting invasive, intolerant, rhetorically violent--which I guess amounts to being malicious. In either case, the animals can't be blamed for anything, especially not the human tricksterish social-pose, which is all about being the center of attention, and hoping to be so for a long time, and at the expense of others. Odd to note how advertising is also all about that, eh? Tribal cultures have lots of variations on understanding or dealing with tricksters and hey, it can be fun to have a nice little self-righteous, know-it-all poetry-coyote, -crow, -vulture, -badger, or -rooster-full-of-Auden (or hey, why stop there?--why not just call on the American king of poetry, Harold Bloom...) trying to hop on your back every now and then, right?
Mosquitoes, tho?--hey, they are more innocent, less worthy of poetry, much easier to deal with.
Anyway, it's about boundaries and limitations--how those work, ya kno? My limitation is that I already know it's not my rhetorical job to show unruly folks a better way to be in the social sphere. I'm thinking of it this way, in terms of a notion of Gloria Anzaldua's: the problematic of "this bridge called my back." That's where, when someone is acting stupid, intolerant, invasive, hateful, and on the attack, all the while expecting me to similarly engage with them or to excuse their ignorant behavior, then I'm not going to engage with them personally because "my back" is not their "bridge." Except to make clear the limits of my tolerance, I don't have anything else to say to them because to engage with them is also to put myself in the position of making my back a bridge for their bullshit, for their disrespectful behaviors that I did not invite. And neither did anyone else here invite that kind of crap. To engage them would be another way to let them continue to use me or others badly. So, I just send the clearest signal I can of refusal to engage--which in this case, is to say 'fuck off' (sometimes it has to be said more than once, and sometimes in several ways). What can be heard aloud right now is: me telling them No, I don't want to play your game--No, I don't want you in my personal space--No, get lost, I have nothing to say to you. Get it? If not, then I have to ask this: what part of fuck off do you not understand?
In a more idealistic world their violence and intolerance might be tolerated in the interest of helping them learn to take responsibility for their actions in this, the larger social sphere. Their tricksterish play could be absorbed and treated with some compassion, or even some humor which is what it sounds like they could use to counterbalance some of their excess violence toward others. Compassion of that sort, however, would take a lot of patience on the part of the rest of the community. Moreover, it would take lot of investment into making them and their noxious behaviors the center of the community. The antic behavior, then, would continue to be the focus of the community. Heck, it could go on forever that way, ya kno? In that regard, my opinion is that it would not serve the community very well, even if it would serve the tricksters, who could continue to be cute & violent and rude & intolerant as long as the community had patience for it, right?
But unfortunately, we are limited here, and have to work within the non-idealistic constraints of, oh gee: primarily a model of cooperation rather than one of divisive and self-centered antics.
On limits, then, there may be more, but I see at least one limit as a freedom: when people act like jerks around me then I have no problem letting them know--that is my choice, thus my exercise of freedom. I do so whether or not they think they can be violent simply because they can hide behind anonymity.
On the other hand, if they own up to the social responsibilities that come with having a name, well, if we disagree, they and I and others can choose together to respond by dialogue.
the Fox soon apologized, realizing construction is big business, inviting those offended to come to Mexico and rest, the group, warmed by new measures in immigration, perhaps even a sand wall erected, could end each day as a line of sandy calves, a sign of their willingness to work,everyone trampling the wall, one by one,as each leader's name is called
1/ gray pronunciation stalls leakage of light within the eye considering the drive north and purpose brought to touch-read surface still inferred along an interstate apart from one degree of freedom
2/ how many aspirations does it take to stretch the eyesight in which vigilance has overtaken free-form posture negligent amid presumed worlds averaging some measure of fuel
3/ the purpose of writing down the facts and infidelities is never to decipher voltage from its absence rather to condone spontaneous new growth where metalscrap has prevailed
4/ insolvency of heart yields while not yielding anymore if ever the poverty remains intact a deeper paucity bleeds through the rigid skin pale next to luminescence more contagious than each recipe for loss
5/ indulgence grows few children fewer trees results in tippled levels ready for the discard pile no plane can rescue although hope resils its way through most unlikehood
6/ presence limited to this moment is catalogued among infractions of procession meant to mark daylight in the foreground of habitual darkness candling through resolute intact replenishings averting eyes yet owning a preliminary bounty to be brought alive
why are people behaving like the girls I went to high school with except more dadaesque? if you're going to do it, do it properly. call people fat and pull hair.
I think the illusion that all should be open and we should welcome all with open arms is foolish and simple minded. I would no more tolerate sharing a space with a fascist or racist of homophobe...or george bush
I think that all is open and equal playing field is a liberal myth, there are times to draw a line in the sand and say no!!.. these are the bounties I will not allow.. abuse, racism, homophobia, sexism, thoughtlessness, and foul language.. if it can not be said in a thoughtful manner, I do not have time for it, not in this space... not all spaces are the same... and there are different boundaries at different times
within any community that comes together there is usually a shake-out to what is needed, maybe now is the time for all to come together in a public space, this blog (or another, or email) and see what the intended desire is and move forward or not and close the books.
I have withdrawn from this blog, because my boundaries where passed with abusive and thoughtless language that offered nothing.
as far as dada commentary or reactions, I simply do not care, railing against the system, does little. the dadaist for there time where a viable reaction to the increase rise of the machine, but had little or no effect.. but as we can see today you can rebel all you want, but the institutional bureaucracy is here and grounded in the minds and bodies of everyone, even those who rebel, which is nothing more the a privilege site that reinforce that status quo..
ranting serves no purpose in the machine but propagating the machine.. the only way out is not to be a part of it...
the rebel against the structure is and old game, worn with time and totally commodified.. let the machine sink into its own waste.. and if you see this as the machine, why waste your time... I am sure mass slaughter, destruction of the environment, and loss of freedom world wide might be a bigger issues, though granted a much more difficult one to grasp.. and how about the melting polar caps.. more important then the pitiful rumblings of a few poets.. really..
there are other intentions, bigger then being the bad one at the party..
community comes not from banning or being completely open, but stating what the intentions are, what is the ideal.. what are we trying to do here?
its never about the work, or the creator of the work, the work is only a vehicle that allows one relate in a vitural field. to open the boundies of the phsyical world..and to offer a gift or to communicate and share ideas.
thank you primeau. it's, yes, super-real: the lavender is here in my kitchen, dessicating. yesterday i leaned my ear into it. its scent grows stronger.
his name is floppy clownface flapping noodle-jointed around the streets driven by (exhale) you and (inhale) me that's his locomotion the breath of strangers his name is a fragile crackle into my telephone handset I'm blushing the blood in my cheeks is named after him how do I explain ? if he doesn't repair his trousers the earth might eat him but I'm not his mother although there is part of him (not his pants) that would happily take residence in me; all that free placenta. tasty.
It has been sometime since I saw any of your verses. How refreshing to read
"ruby red turned out merely pink" and then the pause of between stanzas that lets the sound and colour work through their resonance for the reader. So this first stanza plays the sound of red/ against read/ and bled and all of the assorted associations of what it might mean to bleed and be well read, and ruby and its connotations of running after something rare. or merely pink, but what is merely pink is elusive, not sure, but left hanging between this stanza and the next
"one's hunger if not starvation held"
yes, each wee stanza a type of 'logopoeia' the sense of of a verse, and its phanaopoeia -- sound __ working with words that are not said. because no longer able to sustain their sense or meaning. famish behind hunger.
Gee, jesse, it's always great to get constructive criticism from a master. What a pity that you're not such a person, that you've continually shown yourself to be little more than an irritating fuckwit with a penchant for graffiti.
My dear Jesse, for someone who spends so much time reading this blog, I find it strange that you would continue to read it if you think it looks more like a free-throw contest than creative blogging.
Gosh! you people really cannot handle anyone who takes exception to what you do in your space here, can't you? master? he does not say he is master, but he has the courage to mock you and himself , but you are all so cute and stuck in your ruts. Take a pill, do some yoga, all of ya all, except for him, sound like a bunch of little fragile neurotics who 1, only like nice things being said, ignore when someone unknown says it, and three you get peevish and rankled when anyone is prickly. Geepers! I think the comments "Jesse" is suggesting are intelligent, articulate, and show his capacity to mirror anything any of you do. Jesse is a sort of new Jack Spicer. So show some respect! before I sit down and cry!
Meester Clay ton Couch, really you are so sweet. but so much to go so far to crash with your poesie banniste. really dear. chill . go to ron silliman's blog. never a comment deleted. one must love the anonymous, it is, truly the salvation of your ego's vast stretch. peace be to you and your paranoiad poesies. us sad anonymous will go home, and you can keep your dull audinence. But we elect Sheila Murphy as an ally!
Dear anonymous. You should get your facts straight. Ron Silliman has deleted comments & has gone so far as to prohibit people from posting comments to his blog.
mark you are errant as usual. just recently __ a week or so back there was a discussion about this over there _ and Ron wrote back saying he has never once deleted a comment. Now would Ron Silliman lie on his own blog, come on. Be candid, you err. As/Is usual. Most of you ought to be. reading and not bothering to reply to comments that are trite and by their nature really inoffensive. First off none of you ever say much of value to one another and when you do, it's pure gush. Get a life and leave us nobodies to be what we are , mere beggars on your grand poetics!
hahahhahhh. Kisses tears Repentence I shall ne'er make another comment again. Except to say this, we and my other anons love you all esp. Kari and Sheila and actually those are just names. but really we love all of you. you are all just a bit , a tad prickly taking yourselves , as is the wont of American poetry people, a little too seriously. You would not last too long under the lash of British Irish literary critical poetry scenes. But then again Americans are pretty big headed these days, are they not? and really, why bad mouth Ron ? he is after all the reason most of you are able to do anything. Him and the late Jack Spicer gave you people your language and your game. A good dose of formalism would do wonders for the whole bloody lot of you. Anyhow, dearies, cheers!
The complete quote from Ron Silliman is "Since I started using the Blogger tool, I have NOT deleted a single comment." The emphasis is mine, & Ron has only being using Blogger comments since his blog crashed a month or so ago.
& that that response was in reply to the following comment, seemingly by none other than yourself –
“Dear Mister Sir Silliman why did you delete my earlier comment? Are you afraid that the linear structure of your conversations'll be jagged bytthe comments of a young Kathy Acker? and her flemish admirationof Sheila Murphy. O dear! I blush and think of Frank and O'Hara and the noble Jack. # posted by Anonymous : 2:48 AM"
dearie, you must be confusing some one anon with some two anon. twas I that left the commentary about something but cannot recall what it was is? whatever? anyhow Ron told us he never deleted anything. the thing yer yammering on about merely made him laugh. check yer sources you sour grapes.
Drugs will keep you functioning like a robotic drone but if you worked the alcoholic pop out of your system and dropped the crazee mask of me, me me you may eventually write decent poems
Monsters trapped in human bodies jostle war with world peace and untether your song of hollow moral concepts swaddled in the bright cloth of defunct language gone daft in the spirit of the modern age. Neo classic pillars of abstraction with your artless blather of throwaway lines, sow fear with the proliferation of words like right punishment, vengence and retribution. Bruiser gods raining word shells upon or consciousness, blow minds bland and sanatise banality to purge your hearts of accountability when debates cease and the naked dead return your dividend of talk in crisp cold flesh packaged in body bags and draped in the flags you have hijacked. Come, hoodwink citizens, lead them to believe your cause is just and unrelated to commerce or cash black gold below the surface of desert lands.
Monsters trapped in human bodies jostle war with world peace and untether your song of hollow moral concepts swaddled in the bright cloth of defunct language gone daft in the spirit of the modern age. desk chained warriors deploy abstraction in your artless blather of throwaway lines, sow fear with the proliferation of words like right, punishment, vengence and retribution. Bruiser gods raining word shells upon or consciousness, blow minds bland and sanatise banality to purge your hearts of accountability when debates cease and the naked dead return your dividend of talk in crisp cold flesh packaged in body bags and draped in the flags you have hijacked. Come hoodwinked citizens, let us believe that their cause is just and unrelated to commerce or cash black gold below the surface of desert lands
Monsters trapped in human bodies jostle war with world peace and untether your song of hollow moral concepts swaddled in the bright cloth of defunct language gone daft in the spirit of the modern age. Desk chained warriors deploy abstraction in your artless blather of throwaway lines, sow fear with the proliferation of words like right, punishment, vengence and retribution. Bruiser gods raining word shells upon or consciousness, blow minds bland and sanatise banality to purge your hearts of accountability when debates cease and the naked dead return your dividend of talk in crisp cold flesh packaged in body bags and draped in the flags you have hijacked. Come hoodwinked citizens, let us believe their cause is just and unrelated to commerce or cash black gold below the surface of desert lands
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I changed some words and give you this.
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Ad man for the masses wash me on the shoreline of your jingle brained planet
where cat shampoo and dog food can be sexy once we believe
and buy into the pitch artist preachers hypnotise and hook us in with like dumb chained fishes devoid of spirituality.
TV's the money one religion and adverts the sermons from the corporation god whose first dollar word bought, sold and spoke to the soul through prayers which occur between shopping when we pray for goods to purchase once we have the cash in mammon's bank.
Does shopping temporarily disguise the need in our life of a relationship with god buddha allah or whatever name we label our conduit to the eternal order in life's quest to survive and express ourselves in a reality swamped with an excess of choice which keeps us caged within the wide enclosure of this world gated in the jungle of concrete with our spirit encased in its hardcore?
the stiff woman said - I haven't been able to move my arms or the diametrically opposed legs wedded to them by some accident of linguistics for years now and, y'know, I don't miss it that much except this itch behind my ear is driving me crazy, I envy the cat.
the live woman said - I've been awake too long and my eyes are blackening and sinking unattractively so I avoid mirrors but, what can I do? nights are far more flattering for the complexion so I prefer them to days and, anyway, I'm prone to sunburn. I've been drinking a lot of cocktails in big glasses and smoking Gitanes, it seems appropriate.
the deaf woman said - the blind get too much fucking publicity with their supersonic hyperbolic hearing, just goes to show, people'd rather hear shit than open their fucking eyes. does my vision fatten and swell into the part of my brain starving for sound? I guess, but who cares? go ahead, ask me what crimson looks like. I don't fucking know.
1. Homolinguistic translation: Take a poem (someone else's, then your own) and translate it "English to English" by substituting word for word, phrase for phrase, line for line, or "free" translation as response to each phrase or sentence. Or translate the poem into another literary style or a different diction, for example into a slang or vernacular. Do several differnt types of homolinguistic transation of a single source poem. (Cf.Six Fillious by bp nichol, Steve McCaffery, Robert Fillious, George Brecht, Dick Higgins, Dieter Roth, which also included translation of the poem to French and German.) Chaining: try this with a group, sending the poem on for "translation" from person to another until you get back to the first author (see David Nemeth's examples).
2. Homophonic translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate the sound of the poem into English (e.g., French "blanc" to blank or "toute" to toot). Some examples: Louis and Celia Zukofsky's Catullus., David Melnick's Homer, now available via Eclipse: Men in Aida -- part one and part two; Ron Silliman on homophonic translation (his own, Melnick's, and Chris Tysh's), and two examples by Charles Bernstein -- from Basque and from Portuguese. -- Rewrite to suit?
3. Lexical translation: Take a poem in a foreign language that you can pronounce but not necessarily understand and translate it word for word with the help of a bilingual dictionary. (Rewrite to suit?)
1-3a. Try a variant of these three translation exercises using the "Lost in Translation" "Babel" engine, or other web-based translations engines, such as Babelfish and Free Translation.com. 4. Acrostic chance: Pick a book at random and use title as acrostic key phrase. For each letter of key phrase go to page number in book that corresponds (a=1, z=26) and copy as first line of poem from the first word that begins with that letter to end of line or sentence. Continue through all key letters, leaving stanza breaks to mark each new key word. (Cf.: Jackson Mac Low's Stanzas for Iris Lezak.) Variations include using author's name as code for reading through her or his work, using your own or friend's name, picking different kinds of books for this process, devising alternative acrostic procedures. Or use the web "Mac Low diastic" engine.
5. Tzara's hat: Everyone in a group writes down a word (alternative: phrase, line) and puts it in a hat. Poem is made according to the order in which it is randomly pulled from hat. (Solo: pick a series of words or lines from books, newspapers, magazines to put in the hat.)
6. Burroughs's fold‑in: Take two different pages from a newspaper or magazine article, or a book, and cut the pages in half vertically. Paste the mismatched pages together. (Cf.: William Burroughs’s The Third Mind.) Use the computer cut-up engine to perform a similar task automatically.
7. General cut‑ups: Write a poem composed entirely of phrases lifted from other sources. Use one source for a poem and then many; try different types of sources: literary, historical, magazines, advertisements, manuals, dictionaries, instructions, travelogues, etc.
8. Cento: Write a collage made up of full‑lines of selected source poems.
9. Serial sentences: Select one sentence each from a variety of different books or other sources. Add sentences of your own composition. Combine into one paragraph, reordering to produce the most interesting results.
10. Substitution (1): "Mad libs." Take a poem (or other source text) and put blanks in place of three or four words in each line, noting the part of speech under each blank. Fill in the blanks being sure not to recall the original context.
11. Substitution (2): "7 up or down." Take a poem or other, possibly well‑known, text and substitute another word for every noun, adjective, adverb, and verb; determine the substitute word by looking up the index word in the dictionary and going 7 up or down, or one more, until you get a syntactically suitable replacement. (Cf.: Lee Ann Brown's "Pledge" or Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin, On the Pumice of Morons.)
12. Substitution (3): Find and replace. Systematically replace one word in a source text with another word or string of words. Perform this operation serially with the same source text, increasing the number of words in the replace string.
13. Alphabet poems: make up a poem of 26 words so that each word begins with the next letter of the alphabet. Write another alphabet poem but scramble the letter order.
14. Alliteration (assonance): Write a poem in which all the words in each line begin with the same letter.
15. Recombination (1): Write a poem and cut it somewhere in the middle, then recombine with the beginning part following the ending part.
16. Recomination (2) -- Doubling: Starting with one sentence, write a series of paragraphs each doubling the number of sentences in the previous paragraph and including all the words used previously. (Cf. Ron Silliman's Ketjak)
17. Collaboration: Write poems with one or more other people, alternating words, lines, or stanzas (chaining or renga), writing simultaneously and collaging, rewriting, editing, supplementing the previous version. This can be done in person, via e‑mail, or via regular mail.
18. Group sonnet: 14 people each write one ten-word line (or alternate measure) on an index card. Order to suit.
19. Write a poem in which you try to transcribe as accurately as you can your thoughts while you are writing. Don't edit anything out. Write as fast as you can without planning what you are going to say.
20. Autopilot: Trying as hard as you can not to think or consider what you are writing, write as much as you can as fast you can without any editing or concern for syntax, grammar, narrative, or logic. Try to keep this going for as long as possible: one hour, two hours, three hours: don't look back don't look up.
21. Dream work: Write down your dreams as the first thing you do every morning for 30 days. Apply translation and aleatoric processes to this material. Double the length of each dream. Weave them together into one poem, adding or changing or reordering material. Negate or reverse all statements ("I went down the hill to "I went up the hill," "I didn't" to "I did"). Borrow a friend's dreams and apply these techniques to them.
22. Write a poem made up entirely of neologisms or nonsense words or fragments of words. (Cf.: Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" and also "Jabberwocky Variations" page.) Khlebnikov's zaum, Schwitters "Ur Sonata" (at UBU "historical"). P. Inman's, Ocker, Platin and Uneven Devlelpment and David Melnick's Pcoet. (via Eclipse). Use Neil Hennessy's JABBER: The Jabberwocky Engine to generate lexicon. Also see The Internalational Dictionary of Neologisms.
23. Write a poem with each line filling in the blanks of "I used to be _____ but now I am ______." ("I used to write poems, but now I just do experiments"; "I used to make sense, but now I just make poems.")
24. Write a poem consisting entirely of things you'd like to say, but never would, to a parent, lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc.
25. Take same sentence or stanza and cast it as if said to oneself silently, half-whispered, said to an intimate, said to a small group, said to a large group.
26. Write a poem consisting entirely of overheard conversation.
27. Nonliterary forms: Write a poem in the form of an index, a table of contents, a resume, an advertisement for an imaginary or real product, an instruction manual, a travel guide, a quiz or examination, etc.
28. Imitation: Write a poem in the style of each of a dozen poets who you like and dislike. Try to make it as close to a forgery of an "unknown" poem of the author as possible.
29. Write a poem without mentioning any objects.
30. Backwards: Reverse or alter the line sequence of a poem of your own or someone else's. Next, reverse the word order. Rather than reverse, scramble.
31. Write an autobiographical poem without using any pronouns.
32. Attention: Write down everything you hear for one hour.
33. Brainard's Memory: Write a poem all of whose lines start "I remember ..." (Cf.: Joe Brainard's I Remember.)
34. "Pits": Write the worst possible poem you can imagine.
35. Counting: Write poems that conform to various numeric patterns for number of words in a line or sentence, number of lines in a stanza or paragraph, number of stanzas or paragraphs in a work. Alternately, count letters or syllables. Use complex numeric series or simpler fixed-number patterns.
36. Write a poem just when you are on the verge of falling asleep. Write a line a day as you are falling asleep or waking up.
37. [Removed for further study]
38. List poem 1: Write a poem consisting of favorite words or phrases collected over a period of time; pick your favorite words from a particular book.
39. List poem 2: write a poem consisting entirely of a list of "things", either homogenous or heterogeneous (common lists include shopping lists, things to do, lists of flowers or rocks, lists of colors, inventory lists, lists of events, lists of names, ...).
40. Chronology: Make up a list of dates with associated events, real or imagined.
41. Transcription: Tape a phone or live conversation between yourself and a friend. Make a poem composed entirely of transcribed parts.
42. Canceling: Write a series of lines or rhymes such that every other one cancels the one before ("I come before you / to stand behind you").
43. Erasure: Take a poem of your own or someone else's and crossout most of the words on each poem, retype what remains as your poem. (Cf.: Ronald Johnson's RADI OS from Milton and Jen Berven's Nets.)
44. Write a series of ten poems going from one to ten words in each poem. Reorder.
45. Write a poem composed entirely of questions.
46. Write a poem made up entirely of directions.
47. Write a poem consisting only of opening lines (improvise your own lines, then use source texts).
48. Write a poem consisting only of prepositions, then of prepositions and one other part of speech.
49. Write a series of eight‑word lines consisting of one each of each part of speech.
50. Write a poem consisting of one‑word lines; write a poem consisting of two‑word lines; write a poem consisting of three‑word lines.
51. Pick 20 words, either a word list you generate yourself or from source texts. Write three different poems using only these words.
52. Synchronicity: Write a poem in which all the events occur simultaneously.
53. Diachronicity: Write a poem in which all the events occur in different places and at different times.
54. Visual poetry: write poems with strong visual or "concrete" elements — including a combination of lexical and nonlexical (pictorial) elements. Play with alphabets and typography, placement of words on the page, etc. (See UBUWEB for many examples,)
55. Write a series of stanzas or poems while listening to music; change type of music for each stanza or poem.
56. Elimination: Cut out the second half of sentences.
57. Excuses list: Write a poem made up entirely of excuses.
58. Sprung Diary: Write a diary tracking and intercutting multiple levels of thoughts, experiences, anticipations, expectations, from minute to major. (Cf.. Hannah Weiner's Clairvoyant Journal.)
59. "Walking on Colors": Walk a city block or a country mile paying attention as much as possible to one color; list all the things found in this one color; write about it.
60. Negation/Opposites: Negate every phrase or sentence in the poem or in some way substitute opposite words for selected words in the source text: "I went to the beach" becomes "I went to the office"; "I got up" becomes "She sat down"; "I will" become "I will not", etc. As an alternative, take a poem and change what it says line for line or phrase for phrase; not opposite, just different.
61. Google Poem: construct a poem using Leevi Lehto's engine (use the patterns feature). See also Bill Luomo's Lizardo engine. Alternate Google poem, based on K. Silem Mohammad's Deer Head Nation : use Google search results as the source material for a poem: erase as much as you like, but don't add anything. Many variations possible. Use the Googlism engine to create a poem based on a name or word.
61a. FLARF: A recent extension of this approach, which is developing independent, is called "flarf." Michael Magee explains, in this Experiments List exclusive report, "The Flarf Files."
62. Use the "Eater of Meaning" engine to create a poem.
63. Dialectize: use the dialect engine to translate a text into one of several "dialects," then use the results to make a poem.
64. Multilingual poem: write a poem using several languages that are integrated into the single poem.
65. Pick several images from the internet or a magazine and write an accompanying poem .
66. Graphic design 101.1: Take a poem, first another's then your own, and set it ten differnet ways, using different fonts and different page sizes. Make a web version of the poem.
67. Take a poem, first another's then your own, and rerrange the line breaks or visual compostion, while keeping the same word order. Do this five times, some with freely composed arrangements and some using some form of counting.
68. From Stacy Doris: I. Write a poem (or take a poem you have already written on the topic) about sex. Then rewrite it, substituting words having to do with warfare for the words having to do with sex. II. Write a poem (or take a poem you have already written on the topic) about love. Then rewrite it, substituting words having to do with government for the words of amorousness. III. Write a poem (or take a poem you have already written on the topic) about god and religion. Then rewrite it, substituting words having to do with a political figure whose policy you oppose for the words referring to faith and god.
69. Christian Bök's lipogram Eunoia consists of a five sections each with words containing the same vowell (as in "O": Yoko Ono). This is reminiscent of certain notorious Ouilipian constrains, such as Perec's nover La Disparition , which suppresses the letter "e". Write a poem in the manner of Eunoia..
70. The Annagramatic Imaginary: find ways to use anagrams in a poem, do an anagrammatical translation of a poem, connect workds or ideas in a poem via anagrams. Use the Internet Anagram Server.
71. Proliferating styles. In 1947, Raymond Queneau, a founding member of OuLoPo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or "Workshop of Potential Literature") published Excercises de Style, 99 variations on the "same" story. Each of this 99 approaches could take a place of honor in this list but best to turn to that work for the enumeration and expltion. For present purposes (if purposes doesn't strike an overly teleological chord), suffice it to say that an intial incident, mood, core proposition, description, idea, or indeed, story, might be run through the present list of experiments, though to what end only the Shadow knows, and maybe not even the Shadow.
72. Use any of these experiments that involve as source text as a way of reading through already existing poems; that is, as interactive tools for "creative reading." As an extention, study poems via the modes of "Deformative Criticism" (the term is from Jerome McGann and Lisa Samuel). For example, take a poem and erase all but one part of speech, leaving the visual layout intact, or read it backward or otherwise re-order it, or translate it (using any of the translation excercises listed here), Alternately, use these experiments as a way to rewrite or transform your own poems. 72. Make up more experiments.
Remember: Poems can be in prose format!
Rewrite and recombine, collage, splice together the material generated from these experiments into one long ongoing poem!
Compiled by Charles Bernstein from Bernadette Mayer & workshop's Experiments list, and various other sources. (C) 1996 & 2001, 2002, 2003 by Poets' Ludicrously Aimless Yearning (PLAY). Dispense only as appropriate and under the supervision of an attending reader. Individual experiments are not liable for injury or failure resulting from improper use of appliance. Any profits accrued as a direct or indirect result of the use of these formulas shall be redistributed to the language at large. Management assumes no responsibility for damages that may result consequent to the use of this material in educational institutions or individual writing project.
This list was inspired by Bernadette Mayer's compilation from the 1970s. For more Experiments, and Journal ideas, go to: Bernadette Mayer.
Deep Waters     [ image ] for Alfred Hitchcock & Tippi Hedren & Alex Gildzen
Unlike most of Magritte's birds is neither egg nor simulacrum. With blood. Wondering which way to turn. Le sang froid will take the woman's coat from off her back. Or. Le sang chaud will whisper in her ear & wake her from her statuary. Or even le sang très chaud. Will influence a Hitchcock movie.
Harry, this is beautiful. Thank you. Before I looked at your comment I was struck by this piece, and then I looked down, and was/remain grateful! Sheila
it was just a sandwich just a salad served in a booth we were undivided from our thoughts our present held our past irresponsible for what we were that day he looked as young as change left on the ground we spoke about grandfather's birthday same day as America's steam engine we would ride around the yard before potato salad friend chicken cole slaw root beer fiddle music tin tones of the clanky upright piano sour the way that chuch chimes always sound I thought his eyes looked maybe twenty-five with innocence that comes with believing loving anything unchecked on purpose over years
As the impact noted, it will restate itself at a discounted rate, from armed robbery, let's say, to the results of all healthy competition. The dread of net worth, as with any old drip, waits for the nastiness before mentioning the factors that limit the hereditary levels of trust.
Personally, I like the op art sorta boinga-boinga eye poppingness of the special effects of this piece up against the delicacy of the spread out words.
It rocks for me, quite frankly. Oh, yes, my babies--it rocks.
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