Eliot O'Hara Radiohead connection

           
                                         
                                         
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See Adam Fieled's Edgy Emotions post.
                                             
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kh00031

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                                    
              

Post-Industrial World and Poetry

             
                                          
                                     
Natura naturans (the Coleridgean ongoing) lies outside us;
and yet we are part of it, and more and more are changing it to   
meet our perceived needs.  If we get there, the post-industrial  
world will find us more intimately connected to machines than we
have ever been.  So much so, actually, the industrial world will  
seem ancient to us.  Imagine weather control, an Edenic planet,  
immortal or nearly immortal bodies, brains far superior to even  
the best now.  Homo sapiens will likely be discarded in favor
of a more appropriate name.  Will poem-making disappear?  No.    
Will there be poem-making contests between humans and robots?    
If you have been paying attention to Blogger word verifications,
there already are.  The Flarf, then, and Conceptual modes are  
precursors.  Each, however, while able to accommodate varying
approaches, is specialized.  Practitioners have an affinity for
what they do.                                                 
                                                                  
**                                                                 
                                                              
Had planned to write a lot more, but between my body concerns/   
nothing.                                                       
                                                    
                                             
                                                   
                                                   
kh00025 

Poets are conduits

                                                     
                                                             
On October 24, 2008, on his not poetry blog, Bill Knott
posted which is too much.  Through an anecdote from the
Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin, the practice of  
Mallarmé initiates what soon becomes a serious discussion
about poets and what to him are the two core esthetics.    
-                                                              
Thus Brecht versus Rilke and their associated ramifications.
See the Selden Rodman quote taken from the Preface for 
his 1949 Anthology: One Hundred Modern Poems.
                                                                 
Reading Mr. Knott's words hit me in the head much as         
(when we were in grade school) Markevich's glove did     
in what was supposed to be a controlled boxing match  
I immediately stopped, knowing I would not be able to 
defend myself against his longer reach.  Honestly, I
do not intend to counter Bill Knott's thinking here
either; but I will be sharing past and present turns
of mine that will include some poems because of the
ideas in them.  Stunningly--to me at least--back in 
the 1960s I wrote this sonnet and in the 1970s this       
for Doug Flaherty poem; but just so you can grasp--
should you prefer to ignore them--why they matter    
now, here are their titles: "The Future Belongs to the
Rilkeans" and "The Marriage of God and Money".  *
I was raised as a Roman Catholic.                            
                                                          
Knott: "The question then as today seems to be, what 
'faith' should one aspire to 'contribute' one's artistic
efforts toward the furtherance of: individual (spiritual)
or collective (socialist)?"  And later: "'Individual
faith' versus 'Collective faith.'  Capitalism (Religion/
Fascism) versus Socialism.  Or: Style versus Content."   
                                                            
What is difficult for me now is that I cannot take one
side over the other.  Further, equating Religion with
Fascism forced me to seek an extended definition of 
the latter.  I found one.  It is at Old Amercian Century.
14 Points are listed.  However, under each point are
numerous links to copyrighted material.  I suggest you
read only the 14 points and what the final link zaps to.           
Humans are humans, and while extensive quality-of-life
changes continue to occur, quality-of-thought changes
have taken on different faces but essentially remained
the same.  Know that I say this, hoping I am wrong.           -                                               
                                                       
Still, poets are conduits.  Some are so of this.  Some
are so of that.  Some consistently/purposely change.
Some are so of whatever, or like to imagine they are.
I am among those.  Accordingly, the aesthetic I support 
is: Write as you are moved to write.                        
                                                      
                                                        
Here are three more Knott statements:                           
-                                                       
"In fact, in this dispensation, in this scale of esthetics,
the more insignificant the ostensible subject is, the better."
-                                                             
"The more boring the content, the more intriguing the style
(theoretically)."                                              
-                                                             
"Content/subject/intent are excrescences that burden the work
with extraneous matter."                                     
                                                                 
                                                            
Finally, as befits him, Bill Knott ends his post with:
-                                                     
"Form is never more than an extension of breakfast.  As
shown in this poem by Jacques Prévert, trans. by the
forgotten poet Selden Rodman:"                
                                                      
The translated title of the poem is: LATE RISING          
                                                 
                                                 
                                                 
    
                                                            
          
Kh00010                                                                                              
*       

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