tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post110893257859428175..comments2023-06-27T16:51:05.805+02:00Comments on The Pangrammaticon: $500 Down on Your Old StropheThomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-1109361426049194782005-02-25T20:57:00.000+01:002005-02-25T20:57:00.000+01:00Thanks, Jay. Chris at the Delay has a great post ...Thanks, Jay. Chris at the Delay has <A HREF="http://the_delay.blogspot.com/2005/02/cameraless-film.html" REL="nofollow">a great post</A> on "cameraless film", of which he says:<br /><br />"It's like with poetry that's composed or assembled through a process how people reduce it to being about that process and nothing else. 'You wrote a procedural poem because you wanted to write a procedural poem -- I get it.' Flarf and Jackson Mac Low and John Cage all get this treatment. . ."<br /><br />I imagine Babbitt would be a candidate for similar treatment (in fact, he seems to treat himself that way, if your synopsis is an indication). As I've been trying to show with Flarf (and I'll have a look at Mac Low to get a better handle on your idea here) sometimes knowing the process (especially <EM>discovering it</EM> as part of the act of reading) allows a poem to detach itself from the authority of the author. That "minimal requisite" may be necessary to achieve the poem's effect.<br /><br />But, but, but. . .I file this under the necessary imperfection of any poem. Ideally, a piece of Flarf (and I'll insist on the high quality of "I Am Not the Pilot"'s ideoplasty) would use the procedure to rid itself (perfectly) of any authorial tone, so that nothing depends on knowing that, as Claudius says, "These words are not mine," or as Hamlet respends, "Nor mine now." They just ain't.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-1109313323306594472005-02-25T07:35:00.000+01:002005-02-25T07:35:00.000+01:00I'm with Gary on this one Thomas - I dig the post ...I'm with Gary on this one Thomas - I dig the post and the discussion which follows. (And I will never be able to completely shake the image of poems augmenting one another like kitchen appliances!)<br /><br />I started to jump in at several moments, but the discussion always turned out to be one or many steps ahead of me.<br /><br />One thing, though . . . it strikes me that we can just as easily err in the opposite direction . . . i.e., expecting poems to stand so completely on their own that questions of process and/or personal/historical/social context become taboo. Jackson Mac Low's poems, for example, manage to "stand on their own" <I>given</I> minimal requisite understanding of what went into making them, and I don't think that this fact implies any sort of contradiction -- though I feel that a part of us sometimes feels like it <I>should</I> imply a contradiction.Jayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07584826647352155190noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-1109107869360906612005-02-22T22:31:00.000+01:002005-02-22T22:31:00.000+01:00Well, given that there is a tendency to organize o...Well, <EM>given</EM> that there is a tendency to organize one's reading of poems around the poets who write them, the poems may be difficult to detach from each other. (I take it you mean poems are difficult to detach from other poems by the same author, in keeping with your original remark.) It is the task of the critic to fight such tendencies.<br /><br />Also, bad poems sometimes gain something (which doesn't really belong to them) by the insistence on reading them in the context of a poet's life or other works, i.e., as symptoms of something "deeper". Something ineffective in the poem suddenly becomes the profoundly significant name of a moment of particular suffering in the life of the poet, etc. But I stand by the idea that all "deep appreciation" of this sort is icky. The biographer tries to accomplish something the poet could not. Or, in the case of rubbing two poems together, the interpreter tries to do something the poems don't.<br /><br />Poems may resist being detached from each other but only in the sense of becoming worse poems when they are detached. Poems that need context are simply less accomplished than poems that don't. No poem is perfect.<br /><br />I think you're right as to the facts about poems, and I support the acts of reading you do at Rhubarb. What I object to is the (normative) principle that compells you to apologize for what I see as the clear, unambiguous advantage of your approach. It is one thing to note that (some) poems <EM>are</EM> difficult to detach from each other, as you now say, and to say that, "the residue of a single poem is ephemeral" and that poems therefore really <EM>ought to be</EM> read in the "in the larger context of a poet's work" (the only place where they "make sense"), as you did originally.<br /><br />I'm holding you to the letter of your words, I know, and that's being a bit unfair since you've already called the remark a "throwaway". But my point is becoming clearer to me as a write.<br /><br />For example, I do think that editors and critics can provide a useful "curative" function by displaying poems in the context of each other. This, especially, when the force of this display is not to authorize a group of works that is already organized by authors, traditions or periods, but to bring their collective effect to bear on some interesting aspect of the reality in which we live.<br /><br />Poems (I'm now repeating myself to hear how this will sound) poems do augment each other, just like kitchen appliances. My main concern with your remark was its implication that appliances are best applied among other appliances produced by the same manufacturer. This is not good advice even as a first approximation.<br /><br />Poems need context, yes, (I'm backing down a bit here), but my point is that they don't need a context that the poem's origin itself specifies: and if they do, they're not good poems.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-1109058966627395082005-02-22T08:56:00.000+01:002005-02-22T08:56:00.000+01:00Thanks, Simon. Yes, my favourite thing about Rhub...Thanks, Simon. Yes, my favourite thing about Rhubard is the way it takes poems and looks at them one at a time, out of context. The reason I jumped on your remark is that you describe this decontextualization as a "disadvantage". I actually think we <EM>disagree</EM> about the importance of context, especially if context is understood as inextricable from the site of the origin of a poem (as any tight connection between poem and poet implies). Fortunately, we seem to disagree only in principle, not in practice, and I look forward to reading your blog regularily now that I've found it (thanks Josh). <br /><br />I have always found the sense people make of poems "within the larger context of a poet's work" very boring. That includes Wittgenstein. I much prefer readings that detach an, as it were, assemblage of remarks or propositions and inserts them into some other apparatus (or set of gadgets that fit together).<br /><br />Of course, <EM>quoting</EM> Wittgenstein out of context is another matter, since such "festooning" always implies erudition, and is very often phony. Since quoting invokes the authority of the source, however, it amounts to situating the quote within the larger corpus of work of the author, not the quoter. It's the latter operation that interests me. In fact, I think the cringing you are talking about is more like reading authors <EM>in</EM> context than out of context.<br /><br />To round this out, I don't think Wittgenstein's remarks should be used primarily to illuminate Wittgenstein's "entire work", but to obtain a clear view of the language. To shed light, not on the oeuvre (and thus Wittgenstein's form of life) but on the language (and thus our form of life). You are right that gadgets work best when installed among other gadgets (better gadgets for modern living!), i.e., "they do more when they're in a group", but it is still an open question (to which I have an answer) whether the most relevant group of gadgets is the one that helped produce the poem (the poet's contexts) or the ones that help us to consume them (the reader's context).<br /><br />Maybe ask yourself whether a blender is best understood in the context of the assembly line that produced it, or in the context of the other kitchen appliances we own.<br /><br />Thanks for your comments. Looking forward to your reviews. (Maybe have a go at Tost's "I Am Not the Pilot" one day, <A HREF="http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/22/tost.html" REL="nofollow">Cortland Review 22</A>.)Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8861197.post-1109014802406250642005-02-21T20:40:00.000+01:002005-02-21T20:40:00.000+01:00I dig this post, thomas, point about circularity i...I dig this post, thomas, point about circularity is correct. going to have to consider this in conjunction with my ongoing exploration(s).Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04336286974067459325noreply@blogger.com