Bray

Netaphor Capitalism

2011-09-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

The browser takes off its hat.

The code falls to its knees.

Bits lolligag and gradually drift.

A ping is sent without return.

A subroutine is putting on a mask.

A domain is being unreachable.

An address is listening for a pulse.

A connection is set in stone.

That open window’s ears are burning.

This skin is getting its architecture back.

The player is idle on the desktop.

The files are laying all over the place.

The folders are taking our remaining money into smallsacks.

I Hear an Argument Coming On

2011-09-08T17:01:00.000-07:00

From Janet Burroway's Imaginative Writing: Elements of Craft:

Especially and to a heightened degree in poetry, this density, this more-than-one-thing-at-a-time, raises the intensity of feeling. Poet Donald Hall observes that, "In logic no two things can occupy the same point at the same time, and in poetry that happens all the time. This is almost what poetry is for, to be able to embody contrary feelings in the same motion."

I don't use this textbook, but this passage is great for disagreeing with, especially if you've got examples in front of you and poets sitting around in plastic rolling chairs at 4pm on a Monday afternoon ready to be talking about such things amidst the percolating from their stomachs.

Getting a little lesson

2011-08-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

Oooooh. So this is how it's done! Wisconsin, eh?

(http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/72-72/7100-what-obama-should-learn-from-wisconsin)

Borrowed from Gleick's Book, THE INFORMATION, and Then Some

2011-08-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

A hen is an egg’s way of making another egg.

A human is just DNA's way of making more DNA.

A smoker is a cigarette’s way of making another cigarette.

Pollution is just a planet's way of making another planet.

A poet is a poet’s way of making another poet.

Writing is Always an Exercise: to Love the Sentence, to Condense and Open, to Think and Emerge a Different Thing

2011-06-25T13:51:00.000-07:00

I wonder what the poet is doing tonight?

Aftereffect

2011-04-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

One joy of attempting to write over a longer period of time is that echos become a habit. A couple or three semesters ago, I taught a seminar in metaphor and since then I've never quite felt like the course landed well with me. The students (hello you all) seemed to love it, but there was no closure, no artificial sense that I knew something that I hadn't known before. Had I not invested myself enough in it?

But this morning, I write this passage as part of a larger piece:

How can something not have meaning? In a metaphor seminar, remember? Jamming any two items together, no matter how far apart in domain or correlation or connection, creates a thing that has meaning. Take, for instance, locked fur, cram jumble, under freshen, trace hump. Either sonically (“hey that sounds German!”), imagistically, or conceptually, there’s meaning, even if the meaning is simply more what the complex of words echo than what it seems on the surface. Meaning is an appearance that never fails.

And now, meaning is an appearance that never fails. My response, perhaps, to those who took Derrida to nihilism.

That seminar is remarkably worth every learning minute now.

Afraid?

2011-04-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

"Android" and "ipad."

Two philosophies inherent in the current technological advertising conflict?

Neither look good for assuring we'll have an educated, responsible, and active electorate . . .

They might also represent schools of poetry some day: those who follow and those who are self-involved.

Worth It

2011-04-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

One blog worth subscribing to: http://orwelldiaries.wordpress.com/

Each day, sixty years ago, that Orwell wrote in his diary, the site feeds his entry.

On April 7th, 1941, for example, he wrote that a "[s]hortage of labour more and more apparent and prices of such things as textiles and furniture rising to a frightening extent" and that"[t]he secondhand furniture trade, after years of depression, is booming."

It's a good time to sign on, since December 7, 1941 is only six months away. By that time, you'll have seen the accumulation of England's struggle, and Orwell's take on the sudden (?) involvement of the US will surely be poetic.

It's also good to see how such a concise and intelligent writer did work away from the publishable page. What he wrote for himself.

Why

2011-04-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

Writing for little to no one at all has its pleasures, even if you hope the text will be read by someone. Writing for no one is the practice you need to make writing for someone, like Ip man dispatching his contestants so publicly, no more or less consequential than it needs to be: there is always you, the words. Just hit your target. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Until writing for no one is writing indeed.

Faint Whiff Changes Outlook

2010-05-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I'll have a thought or an imaginary wandering for a moment that gives me a point of view that used to not be mine. I'll smell, for a short second, how someone else approaches the world, and it has an eerie deja-vu quality. Once I felt as a mother screaming at her child out of fear. Another time I thought like a man who couldn't climb stairs without hurting. At still another, I looked at a beer as a constant escape yet downfall.

The last outlook-change came just a while ago as I was wandering off while staring at Facebook and listening to Diane Rehm show. As I let go a bit I imagined -- no, felt is perhaps a better way to put it -- how someone I know could fundamentally approach poetry as a collective, social endeavor. I don't mean in the sense of collaborating on poems, but how it feels to be a participant from the ground of one's art up. How to say it: it's as if one approaches the page as a kind of blog -- meant from the outset for social consumption and for participation in the readers of poetry.

I've always had such a silly purist individualist approach to writing poems, but now I've caught the whiff, as if in dream light, of the feelings that go with approaching poems from a largely socially-considered position. And now that I've put this smell-netting into such intellectual terms, I wonder if its impact is, like deja-vu, already a lesser thing, lesser thing, than it once was.

Long time, No Metaphor Sea

2010-04-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

The metaphor class I'm teaching had a conversation, via a Polycom "Batphone," with illustrator/sculptor Shan Wells this past week. Many provocative questions saw light.

One particularly sharp one centered on revision and tied into another one about when he knew an idea was going somewhere metaphorically -- how does he know when a developing piece has that multivalent, rich content?

His answer, also found in so many other comments he made, was that you develop a sense for it after many many hours of work. Work, work, work. So there's really no substitute for getting sentences, lines, words all over you and then doing it again.

So, if you're working your ass off, for a long time you might not see a metaphor working, but you can sense it. You can't see the ocean from inland, but occasionally you catch a whiff and keep walking. And then others will make the meaning, anyway, smelling stuff you never thought you put in there.

Yuck

2009-10-16T08:27:00.000-07:00

This is awful. And the methodology is even worse when considering how the list and the accompanying article are framed. No offense to the author, who, I think, may be attending that "top" school.

I've met poets from several of the top fifty schools listed, and the training they received varies widely. Not a good list at all to be publishing.

The ugly of poetry starts somewhere in the fact that this list exists from Poets and Writers and the fact that I've just linked to it.

Judging Poetry

2009-10-04T17:24:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, trying to sharpen why I did or did not like a poem, I came up with a list of criteria for judging poems:

linguistic diversity
development of a theme/idea
denseness of idea
denseness of imagery
abstraction handling
narrative arc
importance to my life at the moment
importance to my study as a poet
difficulty of reading/understanding the literalness
presence/adherence to any rhyme scheme
presence/adherence to stanza forms
presence/adherence to meter
presence of outstanding sonic devices
richness of language suggestion
surprise at direction of thought
line break use (as opposed to feeling like the line breaks simply fall where they may)
attention to inherently interesting ideas
use of regular or twisted syntax
impressionistic versus deliberation
metaphor extension or cleverness
allusion

There must be more criteria, surely. Or fewer? I know most editors and poets I know take the stance of Justice Stewart's description of pornography, "I know it when I see it," when judging what is fantastic.

Or do I? Perhaps this list will engage some commentary at some time. And perhaps someone will use it and see if it helps them articulate a a particular poem's value.

If I could predict what I want, I would want a discussion as to what criteria seem more important than others, what criteria are missing, and what these criteria mean. Is such a list a good thing or should we stumble blind and happy?

Absence and Mystery

2009-09-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

Turchi block quotes Gluck:

All earthly experience is partial. Not simply because it is subjective, but because that which we do not know, of the universe, of mortality, is so much more vast than that which we do know. What is unfinished or has been destroyed participates in these mysteries. The problem is to make a whole that does not forfeit this power.

This passage in the context of blank spaces on maps, of writers choosing some moments to deliver in a story over others, of poets maintaining a constant relationship with that blank space.

Is writing companion poems, or poems that, as I've heard from time to time, "speak to each other," one way of attempting to make something unified in the face of blank space that we all must negotiate on the page? I wonder, too, if information about a writer that is extracurricular to a poem fills in so much blank space for poets in this highly connected, avatar-loving internet virtuosity we've got going here. Does a book of poems attempt this negotiation better or in a different way from a poem found in a journal or online?

Absences and Presences

2009-09-07T17:09:00.000-07:00

More Peter Turchi. Oh, so tricky:

. . . a return to practical mapping . . . eventually led Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville to take a radical stance, renouncing decorations [in maps], and leaving blanks in their stead: "To destroy false notions, without even going any further, is one of the ways to advance knowledge." (36)

And then, a little later:

Thanks to Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville and his colleagues, a blank on a map became a symbol of rigorous standards; the presence of absences lent authority to all on the map that was unblank. (37)

Reminds me of heady discussions in a Derrida seminar I once imbibed. There's also something to be said regarding poetry aesthetics here, but I'm just not sure. Perhaps the line break or an ability to spread words, to create stanza spaces or push words to different spaces separated by more space, lends an authority to the words themselves, as if, perhaps, the remaining "unblanks" carry more consideration than if the page were full (as in prose?).

Even the offset of a block quote gains authority, yes? Rigorous standards and all.

Catch it in the air

2009-09-06T08:13:00.000-07:00

Been a long time between last post and this one. I always go back and forth about posting/not posting/what to include/what is simply silly. So the blog was paralyzed.

Been poking around in a book called Maps of the Imagination: the Writer as Cartographer by Peter Turchi. Interesting moment from it:

Having 'the technique' -- the means, or the ability, to get from here to there -- is always, and has always been, the issue. The need to find methods of expression led to speech, to drawing, to maps ("Here's how you get there"), and to writing. (18)

Although it seems that technique is so one-way in the statement there, i.e., vision precedes the technique or "I have something I see" precedes bending the technique to manifest that vision, don't worry. He acknowledges that the vision of the artist can emerge from the exploration, too. But it's perhaps a useful statement of what craft, maybe, is, in terms of poetry?

More importantly, what would "craft" entail with poetry? Being able to type? Being able to make associational leaps that still manage to be logical? To mind the gap on the right side of the page? To create a context around a given work for others to enjoy? To create a metaphor, a map, a journey?

What's Next

2008-09-21T17:55:00.000-07:00

Now that I've locked in a set of questions for poets for now, time to start querying folks. I know an editor or two, a few poets, and then others who just might like to answer such questions. I have a call into a web designer/programmer and hopefully by Tuesday I'll find out some costs. I might go the blog route, but it would be nice to be able to change design and other such things should the project have a shelf life extending beyond a couple of years.

For now, the project's just in a bit of a holding pattern.

There's also an audio journal project on the horizon, but it's not of the poetry variety -- that niche is already well-filled by others with more funding and ideas than I've got time for. This audio journal involves questions and responses from all walks -- not just poets and such. It will also involve a podcast that I hope to distribute once every two weeks. But we'll see. The test will be here in the next three weeks. It involves receiving responses and editing those responses down with backing music (performed locally here in the Merced area!) and perhaps some editorializing.

So that's what's next, for any who may care. In the meantime, I've been reading some blogs from all over the place, grading papers, teaching, some writing. Oh, and my wife and I bought a house.

Finalized Set of Questions

2008-09-13T17:37:00.000-07:00

Here's the cluster that managed to make it to the final stage:

What is the poet's responsibility?

What is your stance on, or relationship with, the nature of language?

"The role of poetry is to purify the language of the tribe." (Mallarme) -- How does poetry in the 21st Century relate to the emerging "language of the tribe"?

Blake: "Enough, or too much." How does this apply to your writing/revision/editing process?

What roles do luck and play have in your work with poetry?

I will have another blogsite up for the responses to these questions. In soliciting poets and editors, I'll ask them to respond to two or more of the questions -- my wife indicated that five might seem a bit much in all our busy wanderings. If you would like to participate, let me know at: poetryquestions (at) gmail (you know the rest!) dot com.

One More, Maybe Two, and Then Revise, Then Wrap

2008-09-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

Getting closer to the end here.

I really want to include a question about luck, and one about play. Maybe they could inhabit the same question.

What roles do luck and play have in your work?

I really don't want the answer to center on the theme or content so much as process. Perhaps a slight change:

What roles do luck and play have in the way you generate your work?

It's clunkier, I think, but it is clearer.

Over the Top

2008-09-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

Still thinking of questions for a "questions-for-poets" project. I've read more online interviews and most seem to focus on particular passages from books or on the publishing of books. Little that prods the poet to give their understanding of the parts and measures and wakefulness of poetry and writing poetry. So I may still have a niche for this project.

To wit:

How much and what do you exaggerate?

No, that's close but not quite pointed enough.

What part of your poetic process involves exaggeration?

No, but at least this question address the process of poetry.

Maybe:

Blake: "Enough, or too much." Do you take this advice in your poetry?

Forming Question

2008-08-29T19:29:00.000-07:00

Commenting on another blog, I realized that perhaps the idea of a "gift" can become part of a question about poetry. I shy away from the starry-eyed questions ("What was your inspiration for the poem?" or "How do you get inspired?") though that's not to say that those questions aren't valuable or even necessary. But a question involving poetry as a gift, or a poem as a gift, or that assumes gift as part of the question, or that assumes the writing process as a gift -- one of these might lead to a provocative answer from any poet/writer who might be asked.

Yet One More Question, or Three

2008-08-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

How much of writing a poem involves performance?

Or, better yet:

what kind of performance goes into writing a poem?

Or, maybe:

what kind of performance is writing?

This last one seems the most promising . . . but seems to want tweaking.

Another Question for Poets

2008-08-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

For the question project (five questions to ask different poets and perhaps post here), I thought to ask,

"What is the poet's duty?"

But this question seems too bound, too mired in some sort of filial piety or some such.

My wife, however, came up with this:

"What is the poet's responsibility?"

This one hits much closer to the quick, easily understood but provocative question I like. The only issue to decide now is whether to use "a poet's responsibility" or "the poet's responsibility."

Questions for Poets (and Editors) (and ?)

2008-08-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

I have been collecting questions for some time in hopes to put together, perhaps here on this blog, a series of short interviews. Originally, I hoped to cobble five questions that an "interviewee" could answer to any length desired. I also hoped to get questions that provoke interesting responses and which poets (and others) would find useful in their work.

So far, the only question that I've found that hits the right note is:

What is your stance on the nature of language?

If there are any lurkers here, are there questions you wish someone would ask poets and others who base their working lives on writing?

All my other questions have been either too long and involved in the asking or too trite.

In short, I'd love to have five pithy questions that are direct but highly relevant and provocative. Much like a poem, I suppose. . . .

Names and Titles That Become Something Else

2008-08-02T08:47:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this blog will take the direction that this post might promise, but:

Sometimes titles or names become divorced from their original feel. Take Sturgeon's Law, a blog title that has taken on less and less the tone and framing radiating from the science fiction author's proverb ("Nothing is always absolutely so" according to Wikipedia) as I have visited it over the past year or so. I am thinking: if you visit a blog or house or other named thing (novel, perhaps?) often enough (or any other blog like "Avoiding the Muse" or "Exoskeleton," for that matter), the name takes on a different feel, one less explicable, perhaps. Think of the bands The Police or The Beatles. I don't think of cops nor do I think of bugs. Perhaps this is because we (I!?) develop a relationship to the object, text, etc that begins to override the original tone/meaning.

By which I mean, Nietszche was right about the pliability of language, of the human capacity to redefine, to reconcretize language into habit of meaning. Or something close to that.

So, in titling a manuscript that has been worked quite a bit, does the same thing happen? Do we concretize the title as something else (a collection of poems, for example) rather quickly, or do we work to stay that process, trying to keep the language fresh?

End of Run

2008-08-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

I've ended the run of commenting on and with "Fugue:in medias res" over at Beloit Poetry Journal.

I noticed that the link to The Modern Review is dead. None of the links on their sites are working, so I wonder what has happened to the folks that edit and publish the journal up there in Canada. Anyone know?

Working for Beloit Poetry Journal This Month

2008-07-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

This month, I'm responding to comments on the poem "Fugue: in medias res" over at Beloit Poetry Journal.

Go:

Here.

Here.

Then here.