Archives
- 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004
- 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004
- 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004
- 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004
- 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004
- 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004
- 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004
- 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004
- 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004
- 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004
- 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004
- 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005
- 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005
- 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005
- 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005
- 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005
- 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005
- 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005
- 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005
- 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005
- 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005
- 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005
- 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005
- 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006
- 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006
- 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006
- 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006
- 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006
- 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006
- 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006
- 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006
- 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006
- 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006
- 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006
- 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006
- 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007
- 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007
- 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007
- 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007
- 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007
- 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007
- 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007
- 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007
- 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007
- 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007
- 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007
- 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007
- 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008
- 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008
- 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008
- 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008
- 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008
- 05/01/2008 - 06/01/2008
- 06/01/2008 - 07/01/2008
- 07/01/2008 - 08/01/2008
- 08/01/2008 - 09/01/2008
- 09/01/2008 - 10/01/2008
- 11/01/2008 - 12/01/2008
- 01/01/2009 - 02/01/2009
- 04/01/2009 - 05/01/2009
- 07/01/2009 - 08/01/2009
- 09/01/2009 - 10/01/2009
- 10/01/2009 - 11/01/2009
- 11/01/2009 - 12/01/2009
- 12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010
- 03/01/2010 - 04/01/2010
Utopian Turtletop. Monsieur Croche's Bête Noire. Contact: turtletop [at] hotmail [dot] com
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Some weeks back I was feeling low, down
on myself, which are
funny expressions, since “down on” has both
positive and negative connotations; I was in the
negative. And I wondered about writing chattily from that
lowdown emotion and then couldn’t
imagine doing it, and
didn’t.
Thinking about it now, the sad feeling echoes, even
though when I sat down to write
tonight I was feeling chipper! A lot
of people hate exclamation points, think they’re
cheap or cheating, but for me, avoiding
linguistic commonplaces
like that is
puritanical.
And I realize I don’t know squat about
puritanism. Really, nothing.
Maybe “snobby” is the word
I want.
Not that I can condemn snobbiness from
afar -- I’m snobby too; snobbiness
can be funny, as,
for instance,
when a poet stakes a claim about contemporaneity, while
scoffing at others’ claims for contemporaneity, while
his own claim is based on approaches a
century old! And it’s a
poetry blog scene with
comments and so I
get all huffy and say stuff like, Hey, what
about that stuff 100 years ago that’s so much like
the stuff you’re doing now and claiming to be
up-to-date? And then I wonder wh --
I just stopped writing to Google something, a phrase I
thought of and wondered whether it was out
there already, and it is, oo-wee, more than
8,000 web pages of it, not a fresh
coinage at all, oh well --
and then I wonder whether the claim to
up-to-date-ness might be a prank -- and it
might be! I’ve been thinking about
up-to-date-ness too, for
instance, this scrolling,
left-margin-justified,
paragraph-less poem
feels like a
true computer-writing
style, the annoying
endless-seeming-ness
of it, I could
go on and on.
Or, maybe
not.
Some day I shall write a poetry
of hyperlinks. Each word or phrase bouncing
to some other web page, maybe
a pun or
a joke or
an allusion or
a pop tart.
And the experience of the
poem will be different for everybody,
and unprintable
without the links,
and if I’m serious and conservatorial
about it, I’ll check on it from
time to time, to
make sure that the links still go
somewhere, because
web pages come and go. The hyperlink-ity will
emblematize the reading process as it
already exists -- or, rather, the language
experience as it already exists, as each of us has
a tangled, deep, deep web of allusions and
references for each
word
we
happen
upon,
each
turn
of
phrase,
each
language
experience,
even
for
words
we
don’t
know,
words
we
have
never
read
or
heard
or
have
and
never
understood
or
have
learned
and
then
forgotten,
even
those
words
conjure
allusions,
and
the
allusions
they
conjure
are
infinitely
-- well,
perhaps
not
infinitely;
say,
fabulously
--
they
are
fabulously
more
complex
than
a
hyperlink
because
each
word
links
to
countless
allusions
and
not
just
one
single
page,
and
so
you
see,
a
poetry
of
hyperlinks
would
be
a
pale
echo
of
this
mental
process,
but
it
still
could
be
cool
and
someday
I’ll
do it. Earlier this evening I was
arguing via web comments
with a fond friend
about contemporary poetry
in
the comments section of
his blog -- he’s a writer and a musician and
I know him through music, and so
I was tickled when he mentioned the poet
John Giorno in a discussion of the music of
Laurie Anderson, and that inspired me to comment
that the poetry world had done a poor job of
assimilating the linguistic world, a much poorer job
than the art world has been doing in assimilating the
visual world and the music world has been
doing in assimilating the sonic world. And my
friend responded that the poetry world
was on the defensive, always fighting a battle for
cultural attention against song lyrics especially, and
I agree, my friend is right, but isn’t it a shame that
poets are fearful of not measuring up or something --
I confess that I don’t completely understand it --
the linguistic world is a sprawling fascinating place and
any fragment of it can be a trip to examine in
any detail. I can understand that poets want the
linguistic experience with which they are contending to be
an extra-special linguistic experience, but, friends, let’s open
our hearts, our minds, our ears, our cliche-buckets, and let
the language fall fall fall.
Fall -- as in rain.
And as it falls, it
echoes and echoes and echoes,
and Fall is the season of harvest, bright colors, sharpening air,
and bundling, and for many people
the Fall is the entrance of Sin into human experience,
and Fallen language is something to be mourned and resisted
as we seek to make it again exalted,
paradisiacal,
Edenic.
on myself, which are
funny expressions, since “down on” has both
positive and negative connotations; I was in the
negative. And I wondered about writing chattily from that
lowdown emotion and then couldn’t
imagine doing it, and
didn’t.
Thinking about it now, the sad feeling echoes, even
though when I sat down to write
tonight I was feeling chipper! A lot
of people hate exclamation points, think they’re
cheap or cheating, but for me, avoiding
linguistic commonplaces
like that is
puritanical.
And I realize I don’t know squat about
puritanism. Really, nothing.
Maybe “snobby” is the word
I want.
Not that I can condemn snobbiness from
afar -- I’m snobby too; snobbiness
can be funny, as,
for instance,
when a poet stakes a claim about contemporaneity, while
scoffing at others’ claims for contemporaneity, while
his own claim is based on approaches a
century old! And it’s a
poetry blog scene with
comments and so I
get all huffy and say stuff like, Hey, what
about that stuff 100 years ago that’s so much like
the stuff you’re doing now and claiming to be
up-to-date? And then I wonder wh --
I just stopped writing to Google something, a phrase I
thought of and wondered whether it was out
there already, and it is, oo-wee, more than
8,000 web pages of it, not a fresh
coinage at all, oh well --
and then I wonder whether the claim to
up-to-date-ness might be a prank -- and it
might be! I’ve been thinking about
up-to-date-ness too, for
instance, this scrolling,
left-margin-justified,
paragraph-less poem
feels like a
true computer-writing
style, the annoying
endless-seeming-ness
of it, I could
go on and on.
Or, maybe
not.
Some day I shall write a poetry
of hyperlinks. Each word or phrase bouncing
to some other web page, maybe
a pun or
a joke or
an allusion or
a pop tart.
And the experience of the
poem will be different for everybody,
and unprintable
without the links,
and if I’m serious and conservatorial
about it, I’ll check on it from
time to time, to
make sure that the links still go
somewhere, because
web pages come and go. The hyperlink-ity will
emblematize the reading process as it
already exists -- or, rather, the language
experience as it already exists, as each of us has
a tangled, deep, deep web of allusions and
references for each
word
we
happen
upon,
each
turn
of
phrase,
each
language
experience,
even
for
words
we
don’t
know,
words
we
have
never
read
or
heard
or
have
and
never
understood
or
have
learned
and
then
forgotten,
even
those
words
conjure
allusions,
and
the
allusions
they
conjure
are
infinitely
-- well,
perhaps
not
infinitely;
say,
fabulously
--
they
are
fabulously
more
complex
than
a
hyperlink
because
each
word
links
to
countless
allusions
and
not
just
one
single
page,
and
so
you
see,
a
poetry
of
hyperlinks
would
be
a
pale
echo
of
this
mental
process,
but
it
still
could
be
cool
and
someday
I’ll
do it. Earlier this evening I was
arguing via web comments
with a fond friend
about contemporary poetry
in
the comments section of
his blog -- he’s a writer and a musician and
I know him through music, and so
I was tickled when he mentioned the poet
John Giorno in a discussion of the music of
Laurie Anderson, and that inspired me to comment
that the poetry world had done a poor job of
assimilating the linguistic world, a much poorer job
than the art world has been doing in assimilating the
visual world and the music world has been
doing in assimilating the sonic world. And my
friend responded that the poetry world
was on the defensive, always fighting a battle for
cultural attention against song lyrics especially, and
I agree, my friend is right, but isn’t it a shame that
poets are fearful of not measuring up or something --
I confess that I don’t completely understand it --
the linguistic world is a sprawling fascinating place and
any fragment of it can be a trip to examine in
any detail. I can understand that poets want the
linguistic experience with which they are contending to be
an extra-special linguistic experience, but, friends, let’s open
our hearts, our minds, our ears, our cliche-buckets, and let
the language fall fall fall.
Fall -- as in rain.
And as it falls, it
echoes and echoes and echoes,
and Fall is the season of harvest, bright colors, sharpening air,
and bundling, and for many people
the Fall is the entrance of Sin into human experience,
and Fallen language is something to be mourned and resisted
as we seek to make it again exalted,
paradisiacal,
Edenic.
Comments:
Post a Comment
