Coteries Categories Individuals

          
                                    
                                             
See prior Stephen Burt posts: kh00027 and kh00028.     
As strongly as I am against literary packaging,   
which arises from the human need to label things,
I cannot figure out why I consistently allow the    
ruminations of others to draw me into that habit.
Yes it is a memory aid, and yes in the sciences it
is essential, but it tends to limit the scope of 
what a given maker actually makes.  Scientifically,
I am in the category of humans who are less than   
five feet tall.  In the realm of poem-making are  
those who prefer to be members of a coterie and/or   
to be identified as being a maker whose works are  
examples of a specific categorizable nature.  I   
find nothing wrong with that.  But yesterday          
Mark Wallace led me to a post by none other than   
that erudite independent John Latta, a post I had   
already read or at least glanced through.  I read  
it, and realized that my willingness to let Burt  
or whomever have hir say without my trying to be   
confrontational lessens the worth of what I say.  
So this is how on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 
Latta wins.                                             
                                               
                                         
                                               
                                              
kh00029                                    
              

A disheveled life

          
                                              
is a sad life.  Or is it?  Here at the beginning   
of my 69th year as an Earth-alive human, I have   
set upon this rumination meaning to bemoan many    
of the choices I have made, believing them to be    
deleterious, and yet I know that had I not made   
them I would not be here as I now am: physically
(i.e., bodily), geographically (i.e., in this    
bedroom in this apartment in this city, et, et,   
et), mentally (i.e., the locatable but intangible 
me, the "I am thought" as Rimbaud wrote), and/    
spiritually.  So:  Were my sometimes outright    
hurtful choices necessarily without-redeeming-  
value choices?  This morning while combing my   
hair, I broke my habit of always trying to make   
a straight part, and sought out how my hair     
wanted to part--I have a nasty cowlick.  Voila!
Odd, but: much better.                           
                                                 
A truly wise human--it could be asserted--is   
one who is able to learn quickly and thereby    
structure his/her life diligently.  Were I to    
detail my life journeys/ it would be evident I    
am not a truly wise human.  So what kind of    
human am I?  I am a well,-that-didn't-work;-
so-let's-try-this-approach guy.  Result?  A   
vast unevenness in antithetical disciplines.         
A hiatus of twenty years (approximately 1987   
into 2007) from the realms of poetry.  And   
what of my constant buying and moving and  
general fiscal irresponsibility?  But Brian,
how often must you go over these?  Do you   
think you are a tragic hero?  Were there no   
joys amid your so-called errors?  Get a fife.
                                             
Nonetheless, my major regrets: --  Stop!  I        
just recalled an incident where I should have
raised a question, but didn't; and recalling   
this incident has made me realize I cannot     
have any regrets/ because I would not have    
done anything other than what I did.  I am a   
flawed being, and the flaws I had and have/  
always impact my judgments/ positively, nega-
tively, inconsequentially.  So: where to/ then?
                                                 
There were the many relevance and categorization   
discussions.  Now there are Don Share's
recent posts on a variety of topics in the air;
Joseph Hutchison's openness/closure conversation 
with Adam Fieled; the new multiplicities 
conversation about younger authors between 
Mark Wallace and Joseph Mosconi.
All such--and there are like others--are good
for the communities of poets.  
                                
                                 
                                    
                                   
                                  
                                         
                                    
kh00014                              
                                                

My routine for visiting blogs

                                        
                                       
got interrupted during the summer.  Tonight,
starting near the bottom of my lengthening  
Blog List, I reinstated that routine.  This
post, however, is not going to be about my
routine or about my being remiss.          
                                             
When I arrived at Mark Wallace's blog     
I encountered an opinion post preceded by a
cartoon that made me laugh.  I paraphrase:
Is making a poem a form of work or a form
of play?  It may not seem so, but to me   
this is a complex question; therefore, my
answer will be complex.                       
-                                             
I make poems, or objects like poems, using
what I will call here an open aesthetics
because any object I am making, or which I 
am participating in making, takes precedence.
I have sometimes called it my It Poetics.
Do I care how good it is?  Yes, but only to 
the extent that it is true to itself.  As a
result of my openness, all manner of objects
occur: ditties, muttobs, multimedia poems,
picture poems, phonetic poems, silly poems,
varing degrees of serious poems.  Further,
I contend that some of those objects are
best read with an accent or in a tone that
is unlike my accent or the tone I would
normally use.  Point: the perceiver of an
object ostensibly from me becomes that
object's judge and jury; so let each such
perceiver interpret it as s/he wills.  I, while
I am Earth-alive, can make known my
insights about it and can change it if I
so desire; but after that it is in stasis
until it is perceived.   
-                                        
So, is my making/ work or play: both.  A
poem may come to me in its final form, or
it may take years for it to attain a form
I am satisfied with, or I may let it out
to be seen even if I'm not satisfied with
it, or even if I am satisfied with it/ I may
never let it out.  Do I ever use a set of
constraints prior to making an object?
Yes I do.  See my alphabet experiment in 
the ghost in the dumpster.                            
                                                
                                          
                                              
                                           
                                          
kh00009