Interact 9 - Lauren Hynde

[twelveoone]

Semiotics is the study of signs: symbols, indexes, icons, metaphors etc. in the context of language (Ferdinand de Saussure), film (Christian Metz) and communications (Charles Pierce). Possibly more contexts, but these are the ones I have studied and am familiar with. It is basically used in analysis to narrow meaning. It breaks down a sign into two parts - the signifier and signified.

This enables you to see what I am missing?
Overall, Lauren sometimes uses the English language in a beautifully figurative way. I do not need to point this out, as I think that everyone would agree to that point. Other times she pushes language and structure to its full potential with explosive impact.

a single jet of fluoride

Fluoride? what fluoride?In the water? Toothpaste? I am lost here.

How does this push it further than, or is more explosive than...
a single jet of methane
a single stick of dynamite

I really would not mind seeing a complete analysis of "Tangled Flourescence" to narrow the meaning for me

 

[twelveoone]

One characteristic of my poetry, and one that I inherited from the artists, writers and poets I grew up with, is the merger of the traditional Iberian magical realism with a form of concrete dreamscape expressionism. Sounds like a mouthful, but it's the best way to put it.

Lauren, if you would, elaborate, who are they, what do they mean to you.


But her native Portugal also gave the world Fernando Pessoa, the wonderfully quirky Post-Modernist (think Neruda and Salvadore Dali combined in a poet and you get something like Pessoa). She has always had that post modern sensibility in her writing, too.

Angeline, feel free also, I did see quite a bit of Dali in these two poems.

I wish to hear more about post modern sensibility.

 

[CharleyH]

This enables you to see what I am missing?

a single jet of fluoride

Fluoride? what fluoride?In the water? Toothpaste? I am lost here.

How does this push it further than, or is more explosive than...
a single jet of methane
a single stick of dynamite

I really would not mind seeing a complete analysis of "Tangled Flourescence" to narrow the meaning for me

Well, I don't know that it enables me to see what you are missing, but it is an interest of mine and so by second nature I pay detailed attention to it.

I will get back to this and give greater attention to what I mean, but I need a single jet of caffeine first

just woke up

Note: I made the error of using metaphor in the above.

 

[Angeline]

Lauren, if you would, elaborate, who are they, what do they mean to you.


But her native Portugal also gave the world Fernando Pessoa, the wonderfully quirky Post-Modernist (think Neruda and Salvadore Dali combined in a poet and you get something like Pessoa). She has always had that post modern sensibility in her writing, too.

Angeline, feel free also, I did see quite a bit of Dali in these two poems.

I wish to hear more about post modern sensibility.

Postmodernisim is an outgrowth of modernism, a concept applied to characteristics of twentieth-century art, architecture, and literature. It is essentially a rejection of traditional Victorian values as they were interpreted in the arts. a movement away from structure and form, a jumbling (in literature) of poetry and prose to create impressionistic, subjective writing more focused on the writer's psychologic reactions to whatever. Think Eliot, Pound, Joyce, Woolf, and stream-of-consciousness writing. Postmodernism, I think, is historically a literary extension of the post-WW1 "lost generation" artists.

Here is an excellent description of modernism and postmodernism in poetry that I found at a University of Colorado site:

From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:


1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.


2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.


3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).


4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.


5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.


6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.


7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.


Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.


But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.

I think you can see how this school of thought plays out in Lauren's poetry--particularly if you think about poems like Stylization of Self and Berlin-Los Angeles , even her short story Plastic Love.

Does that make sense to you?

And I tell you all this as I celebrate a decidedly postmodern breakfast of reheated pizza and coffee (ee, a pretty postmodern guy himself, is grossed out).



A.

 

[Tathagata]

Postmodernisim is an outgrowth of modernism, a concept applied to characteristics of twentieth-century art, architecture, and literature. It is essentially a rejection of traditional Victorian values as they were interpreted in the arts. a movement away from structure and form, a jumbling (in literature) of poetry and prose to create impressionistic, subjective writing more focused on the writer's psychologic reactions to whatever. Think Eliot, Pound, Joyce, Woolf, and stream-of-consciousness writing. Postmodernism, I think, is historically a literary extension of the post-WW1 "lost generation" artists.

Here is an excellent description of modernism and postmodernism in poetry that I found at a University of Colorado site:

From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:


1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.


2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.


3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).


4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.


5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.


6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.


7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.


Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.


But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.

I think you can see how this school of thought plays out in Lauren's poetry--particularly if you think about poems like Stylization of Self and Berlin-Los Angeles , even her short story Plastic Love.

Does that make sense to you?

And I tell you all this as I celebrate a decidedly postmodern breakfast of reheated pizza and coffee (ee, a pretty postmodern guy himself, is grossed out).



A.

you smart chicks make me hot

and what's wrong with cold pizza and coffee??


I just bought a collection of postmodernist poetry
I cant wait to dive into it and read all the people I havent heard of yet..
i bought it because it mentioned some of my favorites
i'm hoping to find a few more

 

[CharleyH]

a single jet of fluoride

Fluoride? what fluoride?In the water? Toothpaste? I am lost here.

OK - back.

To me the poem consistantly speaks to light and shadows, asforementioned. It is my feeling that this line, set out alone, apart from others was done so to draw attention to itself as a kind of visual 'jet' or stream. What she is referring to is a very specific kind of light. She could very well have used the word light here, she could have used a number of options. She chooses fluoride.

In my experience of the poem, she defines the word for the reader by surrounding it with its basic meaning: where we can light and flames out of winter.

Therefore I read the line as a light breaking through the shadows or darkness, certainly through winter, which to me has always represented death/darkness/sleep.

Fluoride is specific, narrowing the kind of light I would see - a gaseous, pale yellow that is highly flammable. In this way she guides the meaning of what one might envision, and the implication of it relates back to fluorescence - a kind of toxic light.

Make sense?

 

[Lauren Hynde]

I'm enjoying this thread. It's great to revisit and try to understand my own thought and writing processes.

If no one has any additional questions concerning Prodigal of Blue, I'll proceed to Tangled Fluorescence. Thanks, Charley.

[BLATANT PLUG]
By the way, if anyone is feeling particularly generous, feel free to read, comment or rate it. After one year and nine months, it only collected two votes.
[/BLATANT PLUG]

I'm fascinated by Charley's analysis. It's a greatly satisfying experience to see with this depth how others interpret our own words, and for that, I am very grateful. Given our shared and profound interest in semiotics and language precision, I'm not surprised by the overall accuracy of her reading.

Her analysis isn't completely accurate, but I can certainly see where it comes from, and that deviation is due mostly to a shortcoming on my part and to a conceptual defect of the poem.

Tangled Fluorescence, just as Prodigal of Blue, was written in response to a same-title challenge - there are a number of other Tangled Fluorescences out there in Lit's cyberspace - and so the finished result was always going to be indelibly bound to that expression, even if the poem tried, in a way, to stretch away from it.

My shortcoming in writing this poem as I did was to fail to foresee the legitimate association Charley made between fluorescence and the unflatteringly cold, almost toxic (damn ) institutional light; the conceptual defect was my attempt to marry the word "fluorescence" with an image that is better reflected by the hazy, almost seductive luminescence of neon.

She identified correctly the patchy character of the poem. It was born of the agglutination of five or six different fragments, each centred on a different aspect or perspective of the same concrete image: a dark bedroom, illuminated by the faint neon light that spills in from outside a window battered by rain, a light that grows as the night sets in. On a symbolic level, it's a poem about the search of balance, or, more accurately, the struggle for it. I'm not happy with the first line:

       Rain tries to dilute
       the progression of shadows
       an exercise rendered useless
       by the passage of time

"Tries" always seemed too weak a word for that stanza. "Struggles" would have been a better choice, in retrospect.

Charley's interpretation of the "single jet of fluoride" and the "weight of the crepuscule" were also in tune with what I had idealised. The association between calcium fluoride (or its luminescence) and a beam of neon light was perhaps forced, but I felt it legitimate in the context of the poem (especially considering the previous focus on the word "fluorescence" as signifying the light pouring in through the window). "Crepuscule", while on the surface being interchangeable with twilight, has a figurative connotation more closely related to the moment that precedes and introduces night than to the moment that precedes dawn.

The closing stanza where this word is found, though, isn't hopeless.

       we imagine different times
       relearning how to breathe
       the ephemeral air of each room
       when neon fog fights the rain
       illuminates us without diluting
       the weight of the crepuscule
       and our tangled fluorescence.

The sentiment is of equilibrium and ultimate growth, of accepting the inevitability of the night as a cyclic event (as Charley pointed out) and the unspoken promise of two people to stick together through it.

 

[CharleyH]

Hmmm . . . nodding.

 

[CharleyH]

Well, I suppose I saw the end as hopeless because:

when neon fog lights the rain
illuminates us without diluting
the weight of the crepuscule
and our tangled fluorescence.

I took it as neon never dilutes the fluorescence. Obviously the richer light - neon - never can replace the light of the fluorescent, and in seeing fluorescence the way I have, there is no hope to break through it?

Still, hmmm, and nodding.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Well, fuck... the neon fog can't dilute the weight of the crepuscule, but the crepuscule can't dilute our tangled fluorescence.

 

[CharleyH]

Such language! I'd like to see that in a poem - if you are taking requests - lol

 

[Lauren Hynde]

From a literary perspective, the main characteristics of modernism include:

1. an emphasis on impressionism and subjectivity in writing (and in visual arts as well); an emphasis on HOW seeing (or reading or perception itself) takes place, rather than on WHAT is perceived. An example of this would be stream-of-consciousness writing.

2. a movement away from the apparent objectivity provided by omniscient third-person narrators, fixed narrative points of view, and clear-cut moral positions. Faulkner's multiply-narrated stories are an example of this aspect of modernism.

3. a blurring of distinctions between genres, so that poetry seems more documentary (as in T.S. Eliot or ee cummings) and prose seems more poetic (as in Woolf or Joyce).

4. an emphasis on fragmented forms, discontinuous narratives, and random-seeming collages of different materials.

5. a tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways.

6. a rejection of elaborate formal aesthetics in favor of minimalist designs (as in the poetry of William Carlos Williams) and a rejection, in large part, of formal aesthetic theories, in favor of spontaneity and discovery in creation.

7. A rejection of the distinction between "high" and "low" or popular culture, both in choice of materials used to produce art and in methods of displaying, distributing, and consuming art.

Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject.

But--while postmodernism seems very much like modernism in these ways, it differs from modernism in its attitude toward a lot of these trends. Modernism, for example, tends to present a fragmented view of human subjectivity and history (think of The Wasteland, for instance, or of Woolf's To the Lighthouse), but presents that fragmentation as something tragic, something to be lamented and mourned as a loss. Many modernist works try to uphold the idea that works of art can provide the unity, coherence, and meaning which has been lost in most of modern life; art will do what other human institutions fail to do. Postmodernism, in contrast, doesn't lament the idea of fragmentation, provisionality, or incoherence, but rather celebrates that. The world is meaningless? Let's not pretend that art can make meaning then, let's just play with nonsense.

I was reading this post about postmodernism, and noticing how well all of these concepts adjust themselves to not only most of my poetry, but most of my way of perceiving the world. I make no conscious effort to follow these principles, though. I simple live them, they're a part of the intellectual environment in which I'm immersed, and I'm not only talking about poetry.

One passage that I'm always reminded of is from Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato:

"The facts, even when beaded on a chain, still did not have real order. Events did not flow. The facts were separate and haphazard and random even as they happened, episodic, broken, no smooth transitions, no sense of events unfolding from prior events--"

For me, that's not a statement about art. That is how I perceive life itself. This vision, of course, was shaped by the decidedly postmodernist, non-judgmentally dissociative and fragmentary nature of the works of contemporary authors such as Bret Easton Ellis, J.G. Ballard, David Foster Wallace and Chuck Palahniuk, but also 20th century classics like Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett (with whom I share a birthday ), Italo Calvino and Gabriel García Márquez (yes, I know he's still writing, but I consider him a 20th century classic already; it's a compliment ). In our context, I see no point in naming names in other artistic fields, such as painting and especially architecture, but they're there and their influence is all-encompassing.

When it comes specifically to poetry, my greatest influences are the group of Portuguese surrealists, and proto-surrealist impressionists such as Almada Negreiros, Sá-Carneiro, and, of course, Fernando Pessoa, of whom Angeline already spoke.

Here are a couple of poems posted in Literotica directly inspired in Pessoa:

• Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) by Lauren Hynde
• Two I-s by jthserra

and one that isn't posted anymore but used to be:

For Fernando Pessoa by Angeline

       Forgive my eyes not seeing
       your thin countenance.

       You slipped past my notice,
       one reedy blade among many.
       I was gathering my own flowers,
       busy turning back their unpetaled lids.
       I thought those voices were husks.
       I thought that meadow was empty.

       Now I see you,
       Materializing from timeless then,
       waving across the ocean of years.

       You are remote and misty,
       stork-like in a dusty coat blown wing back.
       Your hat dips off-center,
       your failed respectability
       shrugs impatience.

       But I see you now.
       Altogether clownish, insubstantial,
       a whimsy of imprecision, you
       sharp-eyed mustachioed little tramp,
       hurrying into your own imagination.

       I am Janus.
       My two beings to your fore,
       looking ahead, turning back,
       unable to turn away. I long
       to understand each of you,
       to gaze eastward, know the heart
       of solitude withholding you
       from my world.

When I was reading Angeline's post and got to the "tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways", I immediately thought of one specific poem by Pessoa:

       Autopsychography

       The poet is a feigner.
       So completely does he feign
       that the pain he truly feels
       he even feigns as pain.

       And those who read his writings
       will feel the printed pain,
       not the two that he has suffered
       but the one that they must feign.

       And so around its trackage
       the little clockwork train
       we call the heart, goes spinning
       to entertain the brain.

Follow this link to read fourteen other English translations of this poem, as well as the original Portuguese version.

And finally, here's the "Surrealism Scheme" as devised by one of the Portuguese surrealists, Mário Cesariny, in 1949 (I translated the terms):

 

[twelveoone]

Thank you Angeline, Charley, Lauren, we are beginning to see some common ground. I hope you are beginning to see some of my problems here.
"a single jet of fluoride"
looks like a non sequitur, it does not give me enough to use as a reference, i.e. what fluoride, I cannot look it up, so I am faced with what does it link to, water? neon? There is not enough to hang anything on (at least for me).

Again, this is burning Calcium fluoride, not fluorine,right? most fluorides are solids, very confusing, but enough of that.

I find the reference points somewhat difficult, i.e. "Robinson" did not give me enough to further search.

Remember, I did look up the words and noted the consistency in the terms.


"Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject."

(This looks interesting, think I should give it a try?)

So, if you had to shoehorn these, are they moderist, or postmodernist?

CharleyH, I do see a bit of a paradox maybe, would you be so kind as to do the same with "Prodigal..." in one neat package, and then explain how everything supports the narrow meaning.

Again what are semiotics used for, your interest in it is to what end?

 

[Cerriwiden]

I was reading this post about postmodernism, and noticing how well all of these concepts adjust themselves to not only most of my poetry, but most of my way of perceiving the world. I make no conscious effort to follow these principles, though. I simple live them, they're a part of the intellectual environment in which I'm immersed, and I'm not only talking about poetry.

One passage that I'm always reminded of is from Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato:

"The facts, even when beaded on a chain, still did not have real order. Events did not flow. The facts were separate and haphazard and random even as they happened, episodic, broken, no smooth transitions, no sense of events unfolding from prior events--"

For me, that's not a statement about art. That is how I perceive life itself. This vision, of course, was shaped by the decidedly postmodernist, non-judgmentally dissociative and fragmentary nature of the works of contemporary authors such as Bret Easton Ellis, J.G. Ballard, David Foster Wallace and Chuck Palahniuk, but also 20th century classics like Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett (with whom I share a birthday ), Italo Calvino and Gabriel García Márquez (yes, I know he's still writing, but I consider him a 20th century classic already; it's a compliment ). In our context, I see no point in naming names in other artistic fields, such as painting and especially architecture, but they're there and their influence is all-encompassing.

When it comes specifically to poetry, my greatest influences are the group of Portuguese surrealists, and proto-surrealist impressionists such as Almada Negreiros, Sá-Carneiro, and, of course, Fernando Pessoa, of whom Angeline already spoke.

Here are a couple of poems posted in Literotica directly inspired in Pessoa:

• Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) by Lauren Hynde
• Two I-s by jthserra

and one that isn't posted anymore but used to be:

For Fernando Pessoa by Angeline

       Forgive my eyes not seeing
       your thin countenance.

       You slipped past my notice,
       one reedy blade among many.
       I was gathering my own flowers,
       busy turning back their unpetaled lids.
       I thought those voices were husks.
       I thought that meadow was empty.

       Now I see you,
       Materializing from timeless then,
       waving across the ocean of years.

       You are remote and misty,
       stork-like in a dusty coat blown wing back.
       Your hat dips off-center,
       your failed respectability
       shrugs impatience.

       But I see you now.
       Altogether clownish, insubstantial,
       a whimsy of imprecision, you
       sharp-eyed mustachioed little tramp,
       hurrying into your own imagination.

       I am Janus.
       My two beings to your fore,
       looking ahead, turning back,
       unable to turn away. I long
       to understand each of you,
       to gaze eastward, know the heart
       of solitude withholding you
       from my world.

When I was reading Angeline's post and got to the "tendency toward reflexivity, or self-consciousness, about the production of the work of art, so that each piece calls attention to its own status as a production, as something constructed and consumed in particular ways", I immediately thought of one specific poem by Pessoa:

       Autopsychography

       The poet is a feigner.
       So completely does he feign
       that the pain he truly feels
       he even feigns as pain.

       And those who read his writings
       will feel the printed pain,
       not the two that he has suffered
       but the one that they must feign.

       And so around its trackage
       the little clockwork train
       we call the heart, goes spinning
       to entertain the brain.

Follow this link to read fourteen other English translations of this poem, as well as the original Portuguese version.

And finally, here's the "Surrealism Scheme" as devised by one of the Portuguese surrealists, Mário Cesariny, in 1949 (I translated the terms):

I've decided to read Cesariny's scheme (or more properly schematic) as a poem.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

"a single jet of fluoride" looks like a non sequitur, it does not give me enough to use as a reference, i.e. what fluoride, I cannot look it up, so I am faced with what does it link to, water? neon? There is not enough to hang anything on (at least for me).

Well, the neon light is always referred to as being filtered through the rain, so...

As I said before, the "single jet of fluoride" may have been technically incorrect, but the association between fluorescence and the neon light had already been established in the poem. A non-sequitur it is not, though. It stands alone, because it acts as a pivotal point between two stanzas. Had it been prose, you could have incorporated it as a closing of the previous or as a hook for the next with equal results.

I find the reference points somewhat difficult, i.e. "Robinson" did not give me enough to further search.

There (re: Robinson, that is) I'll just have to disagree.

When you asked me about it in PM, I must confess I thought it was strange. I don't think anyone else who had read the poem (Last Orders) and commented (in public or private) had any doubts concerning the Robinson reference. Certainly no one else manifested them, at least.

I could be wrong, but I thought that one was pretty straight forward.

 

[Angeline]

Thank you Angeline, Charley, Lauren, we are beginning to see some common ground. I hope you are beginning to see some of my problems here.
"a single jet of fluoride"
looks like a non sequitur, it does not give me enough to use as a reference, i.e. what fluoride, I cannot look it up, so I am faced with what does it link to, water? neon? There is not enough to hang anything on (at least for me).

Again, this is burning Calcium fluoride, not fluorine,right? most fluorides are solids, very confusing, but enough of that.

I find the reference points somewhat difficult, i.e. "Robinson" did not give me enough to further search.

Remember, I did look up the words and noted the consistency in the terms.


"Postmodernism, like modernism, follows most of these same ideas, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, bricolage, irony, and playfulness. Postmodern art (and thought) favors reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subject."

(This looks interesting, think I should give it a try?)

So, if you had to shoehorn these, are they moderist, or postmodernist?

CharleyH, I do see a bit of a paradox maybe, would you be so kind as to do the same with "Prodigal..." in one neat package, and then explain how everything supports the narrow meaning.

Again what are semiotics used for, your interest in it is to what end?

Much of what makes poetry poetic is a non sequitur, imo. Sure, there are many kinds of poems and some like Shakespeare's sonnets are (assuming you dig a little into Elizabethan English) pretty straightforward, that is the images are visual certainly but presented clearly. Then there are poets who do wild things with form that would make some of us challenge the very idea that they are poems. And there's everything in-between.

Intentional non sequiturs (as opposed to unintentional, which is just imprecision) challenge readers, but that's not a problem because poems are not--imo--meant to be absolutely clear or factually correct. Then they'd just be explanations.

"single jet of fluoride" works as an image, not a fact. I hear that and see a rocket or something rocketlike, which is modern in a retro-campy way, sciency but surreal, and somewhat disturbing in the context of the poem. And it has movement--it's an active image. That's a lot of punch for a few words to pack, but it is what poetry can be (maybe what good poetry should be) --it doesn't state anything outright, but it lends to the overall tone that gives the poem a distinct feel or voice.

The linguist Noam Chomsky has a theory about sentence structures that he calls "Transformational Grammar." He contends that there is a surface structure, which is symbolic and presents the rules which we apply to processing the deeper structures which have to do with meaning and tone--the things that make us understand the way we understand. Lauren talks about layering meaning and the fact that you can read into her poems as little or as much as you want. No reader can completely understand another writer's intentions, but sometimes surface structures that are grammatically correct appear meaningless. Chompsky often used this example:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

It's correct syntactically but every word in it contradicts the meaning of the word next to it. It's still a valid sentence though. It creates a series of images. And...I think that's poetic.

 

[The_Fool]

Damn. Please don't ever do mine. I just put down shit that sounds cool...at least to me...*G*

Seriously, and to a certain extent this may be a repetition of what Ange just wrote in fool terms, Can't lines just exist for their aural value, for their rhythm?

In a way, isn't poetry similar to some lyrics in that it isn't the message, it the the sound of the word? The rhythm of the voice? the timbre of the delivery?

Sometimes I just want to read a poem and listen to the words.

 

[green lights]

jesus thank you for reminding me why I decided not to go for my MFA

 

[twelveoone]

Much of what makes poetry poetic is a non sequitur, imo. Sure, there are many kinds of poems and some like Shakespeare's sonnets are (assuming you dig a little into Elizabethan English) pretty straightforward, that is the images are visual certainly but presented clearly. Then there are poets who do wild things with form that would make some of us challenge the very idea that they are poems. And there's everything in-between.

Intentional non sequiturs (as opposed to unintentional, which is just imprecision) challenge readers, but that's not a problem because poems are not--imo--meant to be absolutely clear or factually correct. Then they'd just be explanations.

"single jet of fluoride" works as an image, not a fact. I hear that and see a rocket or something rocketlike, which is modern in a retro-campy way, sciency but surreal, and somewhat disturbing in the context of the poem. And it has movement--it's an active image. That's a lot of punch for a few words to pack, but it is what poetry can be (maybe what good poetry should be) --it doesn't state anything outright, but it lends to the overall tone that gives the poem a distinct feel or voice.

The linguist Noam Chomsky has a theory about sentence structures that he calls "Transformational Grammar." He contends that there is a surface structure, which is symbolic and presents the rules which we apply to processing the deeper structures which have to do with meaning and tone--the things that make us understand the way we understand. Lauren talks about layering meaning and the fact that you can read into her poems as little or as much as you want. No reader can completely understand another writer's intentions, but sometimes surface structures that are grammatically correct appear meaningless. Chompsky often used this example:

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

It's correct syntactically but every word in it contradicts the meaning of the word next to it. It's still a valid sentence though. It creates a series of images. And...I think that's poetic.

I'm glad it works for you, I like Chomsky
I would read him more if I wasn't so drunk on dry water care for a drink?

re: references
If you want to take people for a ride, you better at least slow down at the station.
if I fail to get it is it because I'm dumb?
or is it because it is rather low on my list of associations, is there enough there so I can track it down, and see the the proper context, where does the failure lie?
Here is an image for you:
"Spectral hole burning"
What springs to mind? Casper after a Mexican resturant meal?
There is enough there...

a single jet of fluoride (either incorrect, or not enough there)
Robinson (how many Robinson's, I don't remember seeing an island, friday, even a cocanut)
Turkeys (well I did get that one, but the country is third on my list of associations, and in context it is clear)

I'm not on the train.
Now if the intent is to communicate...

 

[twelveoone]

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

"Get the meaning here?" http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Noam Chomsky/Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

Since it was brought up

 

[CharleyH]

CharleyH, I do see a bit of a paradox maybe, would you be so kind as to do the same with "Prodigal..." in one neat package, and then explain how everything supports the narrow meaning.

Again what are semiotics used for, your interest in it is to what end?

It took me four years to wrap my mind around this crap, and I doubt that I still fully grasp every part of it, lol, so bear with me. I will try to explain it simply. First off, in my experience, semiotics is tied to some degree to psychoanalytic discourse, and although it does more often than not reference Freud and Jacques Lacan, I have always had a tendency toward Jung, although admittedly, one of my Profs said there is no vailidity in the theories of a man who believes in UFOs, to which I responded there is no validity to the argument that they don’t exist at all. (Hey! I'm a trekkie, give me a break)

I would say that its nature is post-structuralist. “There are no facts, only interpretations,” said Nietzsche. I adhere to this concept.

Everything that is constructed can be de-constructed using sign systems (semiotics) as a reference point and generally this is applied to texts (a poem, a film, a novel) or further applied through other fields such as anthropology, music or medicine. It is not reproducing what (in this case) a writer thought when writing, but rather attempting to deconstruct what already exists, its conscious or unconscious dimensions. In this way it is an attempt to “know the text as it cannot know itself.” (Terry Eagleton) It is not an exact science, it is an interpretation.

“There is nothing outside the text,” said Derrida. We can only understand what is present, and what is present in everything is the symbolic (using this word is limiting - my preference is for signifying) order. This can be seen as general or narrow. Example: I can generally say "hello," and specifically say "hello, 1201." First of all, we must both agree on the meaning of hello. (which would take me hours to explain - so I won't lol) Without narrowing my address, I could be talking to numerous people, but you understand I am specifically referring to you, and everyone around us knows I am not addressing them. Such is word or image choice or reference, and to use fluoride instead of something else narrows the meaning of the kind of light that people will think of.

Semiotics presupposes that we are composed of and subject to systems of signification. It’s application assumes connections between a given text such as a poem with theory, and it attempts to pose the connection in relation to the other as an exchange thus is applied in analyses, to deconstructing something.

When I say Lauren pushes the semiotic potential – I mean, and specifically in this poem, that she uses form and content to give meaning. Here we have a jumble of stanzas that on the surface seem unrelated. As Angeline mentions, post-modern in the very nature of the way that it is constructed, and yet upon closer look, everything is related as a whole, and makes sense when you take it as a whole, reflected in content . . . cyclical representing completeness. This is to me an abstract poem, and yet there is cohesiveness.

(I have just had an AHA moment. I now see what she meant in an earlier post when she said the poem is one of hope rather hopelessness.)

Anyhow, so we communicate to each other by using systems of signs and it is by reading/interpreting/deconstructing these systems/signs that we not only understand eachother, but can derive greater, perhaps fuller meaning from a given text, in this case, poem.

The easiest read about semiotic application is John Fiske’s “Introduction to Communications Studies.” (2nd ed., 1990, Rutledge, London/NY). However, Roland Barthes has always been a fascinating figure, and his book ‘Mythologies’, is a good read since he applies semiotics to French culture, if memory serves me wine was my fave chapter .

Does this help?

 

[CharleyH]

Robinson (how many Robinson's, I don't remember seeing an island, friday, even a cocanut)

I thought the reference immediate and widely accessible. You are looking for additional things to confirm what you suspect, wanting more obvious referencing to the tale as noted above. But this line references Crusoe I thought, and I am merely familiar with the tale, having never read it.

last lonesome urban Robinson

It gets rid of the 'Swiss Family Robinson," because it is a lone person, and leaves him deserted, and it's definately not Mrs. Robinson since it doesn't speak to sex or Dustin Hoffman :

across the assured deserts
of squalid aridity.

Confirms my initial suspicion. There are few literary Robinson's and Crusoe seems the obvious interpretation.

Meant as no offence.

 

[Liar]

Originally posted by twelveoone
a single jet of fluoride (either incorrect, or not enough there)

I can agree with you about that. I don't get exactly what she is aiming at with that line and many others too, but it still gave me an image. As I see it there are several ways to communicate, and not all requires a precise syntax that is 100% transferrable between poet and reader.

There is, to apply to the rhetorics that I'm studying right now (it seems like I can apply just about everything to that right now...), the element of docere - to inform. This requires a quite exact communication. Then there is movere - to trigger emotions, to engage the reader. And finally there is delectare - to please aestethically. Those last two is what paints through words and sounds, visual inner scenes that does not have to be 100% correct and exact to work. Instead they are there to fuel the reader's own imagination. It's like music. I have no idea what a certain part of this or that symphony signifies or symolizes. But it sure sounds good and right and conjures up a mood none the less.

If you get two out of three from a poem, emotion and facts, rhythm and emotion, and so on, I'd say it's pretty damn good.

Robinson (how many Robinson's, I don't remember seeing an island, friday, even a cocanut)
This surprises me. I think that was such an obvious reference that even a hack like myself could had used it.

If it had been... Noah, that name carries a helluva lot of connotations and associations to most people. Granted, only to people who know of the bible, and I've read hindu poetry with references to common tales that left me with a big "huh?" on my face. So I guess you're right there. If you haven't read, or heard of Robinson Crouse, or just doidn't make the connection, the sense of being marooned that it is intended would not communicate.

Turkeys (well I did get that one, but the country is third on my list of associations, and in context it is clear)

I just got to ask, besides the bird and the country, what other turkeys are there?

 

[annaswirls]

Originally posted by twelveoone
a single jet of fluoride (either incorrect, or not enough there)


Turkeys (well I did get that one, but the country is third on my list of associations, and in context it is clear)

I just got to ask, besides the bird and the country, what other turkeys are there?

"Turkey" is an insulting name you may call someone you think it a goofball, not so smart... in our family we use it as an endearment when one of the boys is being a little silly/naughty but not enough to be disciplined, we tease them "come her you little turkey!" with a giggle, the naughtiness is over and we can all play.

In my other family, in my childhood, for some reason we called each other turkey butt. or turkey gizzard.


I think it is also used when you get three strikes in a row in bowling. I might be wrong in that.


I am not lazy or ignorant.

But bottom line, I do not want poetry to be "work." This is my taste. Reading poetry should MOVE me right away, move me to look inside for deeper meaning, deeper inside my OWN experiences, I do not want to be a detective to have to dig to learn of other people's experiences through a poem. Because face it, the true meaning in most people's lives is not working to get to the mysteries of others except in working to get to the mysteries of themselves.


If a poem is too heavy, it is impossible to carry inside yourself. When I write a poem, I want it to be light to carry, and heavy with meaning. I am not as concerned with making my readers work to get MY meaning, I want them to want to work on making their own.

To me, the real poem is written in the reader's mind.

When I read a great poem, I can feel it spiraling down into the depths of who I am, what makes me human, what connects me to the universal human. The things that connect me to this collective have very few syllables.

I often have to go back and tone down my scientific references because leaving them in would weigh down my poem to a point in which it would be a burden to carry. When writing to my science-type friends, I leave them in.

I understand why some enjoy weaving together poetry with multiple layers. It is a fun exercize to tease apart the layers. It is just not what I enjoy most of the time. (people have teased apart layers in my poetry that do not exist) I actually enjoy the complication in some poetry, in that it adds a tone or a mood -- it is in and of itself a technique for delivering a message.

I do not see any point, besides interesting conversation, in taking a single line out of a poem and beating it to death to see what the poet, in this case, Lauren, meant by it. It does not feel signifigant.

I wrote on Liar's Envelope poem today, Being an envelope
which is a must read, that Einstein said of genius:
to see what everyone else has seen and think what no one else has thought.

This, to me, is also the definition of a poet. To see what everyone else has seen, and to think what no one else has (formally) thought.


To move people to feel something. Think something. To stop for a minute and remember something that they knew a long time ago and had forgotten.

Thanks Lauren for all your poems. I think it is wonderful that you and others have such a passion for language, and I respect your talent and envy your working vocabulary. Motherhood has blissfully washed away mine.

Thank you 1201 for taking your time to give such respect to our work, it is not easy asking poets questions about their poetry. I am too much of a coward to actually do this too often.



I am not re-reading this. Please remember that this is my little opinion. No reflection upon anyone elses. I am fascinated with othe peoples perceptions and interests even if I do not share them.





anna

 

[Angeline]

I'm glad it works for you, I like Chomsky
I would read him more if I wasn't so drunk on dry water care for a drink?

re: references
If you want to take people for a ride, you better at least slow down at the station.
if I fail to get it is it because I'm dumb?
or is it because it is rather low on my list of associations, is there enough there so I can track it down, and see the the proper context, where does the failure lie?
Here is an image for you:
"Spectral hole burning"
What springs to mind? Casper after a Mexican resturant meal?
There is enough there...

a single jet of fluoride (either incorrect, or not enough there)
Robinson (how many Robinson's, I don't remember seeing an island, friday, even a cocanut)
Turkeys (well I did get that one, but the country is third on my list of associations, and in context it is clear)

I'm not on the train.
Now if the intent is to communicate...

This is maybe a bad thing to admit because I do believe poems need to communicate, but most references I put in my poems are for me. Yup, me. (I laugh at my own jokes, too.) It amuses me to know there are personal, musical, literary references in my poems that no one will ever get but me. It may be a conceit, but it makes me happy.

And I must say that I agree with Liar--there's music I love because it just sounds good; I feel it more than I understand it and that's better than fine. Some writing is like this for me, too--Virginia Woolf's prose comes to mind. Lots of people find her difficult to read because she can be so descriptive and throw so many images at one description, but I love the density of the visual it creates. So if I get that from it--or Lauren's writing--and someone else doesn't, it doesn't make me smarter or them dumber: it just makes us different in what art makes us respond however we respond.

Annaswirls' very astute comment about people finding layers of meaning in her poems that she never intended just underscores our differences when we read. Each of us brings a unique set of experiences to our reading, and this causes each of us to get something different from it. Again, this is a good thing that allows for readers to appreciate a Hallmark verse (if that's what moves them) or a Lauren poem. It's a big tent; lots of styles fit under it.