MADNESS IN SEARCH OF COMMON GROUND

[SpermFactory]

I just might try it myself.

42 @SmilingLez did it.

 

[SpermFactory]

Re. Wally Stevenson poem The Snow Man posted by @Angeline in the readings thread.

I had to read The Snow Man twice to appreciate everything about it. Which happens when I read a poem that has every thing to like about it.

Then, after a friendly prompt. My mind said this is the poem reread it. There was something illusively eating away at my poetical feebleness.

With the power of the opening line frostily reverberating through my mind. I tried again, noting the separation of snow and man. Okay not a Snowman. So 42 what? That ain’t it.

At first glance there is a certain duality permissible in every meaning. Then again when I looked at it. Nope 42. That’s not it.

The meanings of each verse kept jumbling in my mind. Interfering with what my mind wanted them to say. Perhaps that’s just me speed reading everything into mush. But Wallace Stevenson doesn't compose mush. So.

My mind was talking to me through frost, refusing to let me walk away because of something there; I knew I was seeing not seeing.

Then I found myself rearranging the lines to link like thus:

All the first lines of every verse linked together

One must have a mind of winter
And have been cold a long time
Of the January sun; and not to think
Which is the sound of the land
For the listener, who listens in the snow,

All the second lines of every verse linked together

To regard the frost and the boughs
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
Full of the same wind
And, nothing himself, beholds

All the third lines of every verse linked together

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
In the sound of a few leaves,
That is blowing in the same bare place
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Now I can see it! Check it out. Read all the firsts lines first, all the second lines second The Snow Man and all the thirds thirds lines collectively.

That’s what my mind was telling me. Can you see it? It’s absolutely freaking crazy… okay someone is going to tell me what this writing technique is called (um, Poetry). In the meanwhile I call it top to bottom FROSTY FREAK’N FREAKY.

42 They way you interact with this poem is uniquely interesting. I think the way your mind breaks down the poem is called pattern recognition. It is also poetically unintentionally irreverent. I suspect if you looked at a painting you would see the brush strokes through the paint and not the image?

 

[SpermFactory]

42. I recall you suggesting a tone writing exercise were one selected a type of text, lets say a discourse on engineering were one tries to keep the source text’s tone.

I just tried it. It took several days, even cheating as I did it’s not that easy.

 

[SpermFactory]

Borrowing from the world of short story and essay writing...Playboy magazine has always (or at least for several decades) been considered a premier publication by writers, critics, and readers. That community may not consider it on par with the New Yorker, the Atlantic, or some others, but it is a high honor to get your work in what a large chunk of our society would call smut or worse.

Someone who judges the quality or merit of writing based on the content of the adjoining pages is ignorant at best.

Hello woodsman44. I am enjoying your contributions.

On 42, never take his statements literally. His mind is lateral not literal. I interrupt my preaching to invoke 42 on the contribution of ing words: FUCKING FUCKING FUCKING ME. Everything the prick writes you’ve got to see through it. Add punctuation to the above and we see a man succinctly cursing fucking for fucking [his life]. I also must mention there are screeds written on why one must never use -ing words in poetry.

I had this bright idea [pilfered from 42] to write a poem using a short story template e.g

For sale: baby shoes, never worn (according to Wiki, Hemingway was 7 when this short story first appeared). Maybe I wrote it

42 has a bunch of ideas he fails to execute himself. Just read this thread. The guy is the crazy kind. Still he shares.

I endorse this message with a big warm WELCOME @woodsman44
And add an -ing you for 42.

 

[NivKay]

Someone who judges the quality or merit of writing based on the content of the adjoining pages is ignorant at best.

Not sure what you meant by this, but if I've read 42 correctly, the man was being ironic..

 

[42BelowsBack]

On being ironic. Hindsight is 20/20. I reread an @NivKay essay and thought I had said something intelligent. But before anyone can find it, it will magically self delete like so much of what I write.

 

[NivKay]

On being ironic. Hindsight is 20/20. I reread an @NivKay essay and thought I had said something intelligent. But before anyone can find it, it will magically self delete like so much of what I write.

Mate, don’t sell yourself short like that! You’re iconic!

 

[42BelowsBack]

Hey @Sapiosexual, on Aspirin, Vodka and Head aches.

What makes a poem a poem? And when is a rant a poem? A rant a rant? And an opportunity a poem?

 

[NivKay]

Hey @Sapiosexual, on Aspirin, Vodka and Head aches.

What makes a poem a poem? And when is a rant a poem? A rant a rant? And an opportunity a poem?

…or a poem a scythe, or a scythe poetic.

 

[42BelowsBack]

…or a poem a scythe, or a scythe poetic

@sapio you’ve got the rant I’ve got the scythe

 

[42BelowsBack]

42. I recall you suggesting a tone writing exercise were one selected a type of text, lets say a discourse on engineering were one tries to keep the source text’s tone.

I just tried it. It took several days, even cheating as I did it’s not that easy.

This took several minutes. Identify, then stay in the tone.


UFO’s

Cuckolding velocity is a fundamental concept in relationships that defines the minimum speed your wife must attain to permanently break free from the gravitational pull of monogyny.

This speed is a one-time requirement, meaning that once the wife reaches this velocity, she will continue to move manually away from monotony indefinitely without needing any additional propulsion.

The concept establishes a critical cuckold threshold for any wife aiming to leave a celestial body’s sphere of influence; as she travels into planning trajectories for interplanetary probes or UFOs (Unfamiliar Fucks with Others).

 

[Waeponwifestre]

Topic One: poem Titles
(in search of consistency).

To state the obvious, poem titles introduce poems.

Titles as reflections of a poem.
Presently I struggle with writing titles and poems. Most often I will write the titles after the poem has been written. It isn’t working.

Titles as key to lock in a poems meaning.

The aforementioned practice of titles as reflections evolved into an attempt to use the title to lock in a tricky poem’s possible meanings. It isn’t working in the way intended. As Jimi Hendrix reflected in the lyrics of Red House… Lord, I'm missin' the key to unlock this door…” My key / titles often don’t open my poems.

Title and poem. The eloquence of maintaining connection and disconnection, between two tracks; with singular purposeful clarity.

Example, Billy Collin’s poem titled, Reading an Anthology of Chinese Poems of the Sung Dynasty,
I Pause to Admire the Length and Clarity of Their Titles

I was introduced to this poem through a conversational piece written by @Tzara (Link to Tzara’s post).

In the wonderful way that thoughtful conversations do inspire unexpected results, I extrapolated: Titles and poems could work separated in unified purpose. Like two singular tracks conveying a train of thought.

I realized a title could clearly set out the scene for a subsequent poem. The poem is now in/directly challenged by its title to poeticizes the title sentence. I really like this idea that a title can operate on one track: The poem’s body then becomes the necessary other track. As with an actual pair of rails; consistency of separation between the two is critical.

Note: @NivKay wrote an excellent essay which explores a similar vein. I recommend poets seeking their own voice read it. Including anything Tzara has written on poetry. As always, if, @Angeline comments. Angeline’s graceful voice is vital.

I know this is an old post but it’s really interesting to me that I happened to see it right after writing a poem just based on a title which I don’t think I had ever done before.

Most of the time when I write a poem the title is more or less an afterthought. I’ll write something and look back over it and try to pick out something like my favorite line or an idea I want to highlight and sometimes I like to mention the form I’m trying to use and just use that as title. Its really not something I tend to spend more than like 5-10 minutes on after I wrote the poem.

Lately though (and this is partly why my writing has slowed down a bit lately) I’ve been going through a lot of my old music folder and going through various projects and trying to organize them into an album. I typically spend even less time on titles for these, and half of them don’t really have titles and are just called shit like “weird noises” or “silly demo” but occasionally I’ll just pick a word or phrase that I think sounds cool. And one of them was this ambient piece that I had written I guess about a year and a half ago called Nihil. I have no recollection of why I chose this title, but when I was listening back to it I thought it sounded kind of empty and needed something if I wanted to use it (I’m aware there’s some irony in thinking something I called Nihil sounded like it had too much nothing for me). So I thought it would be cool to do a little spoken word piece over it, and all of a sudden I’m trying to think of a poem that fits this single word and expresses the idea of “Nihil” in a poetic way.

Usually my process looks something like picking a form or a technique I want to explore, picking a meter I want to use (or mostly use) and then kind of going from there or thinking about some fragmentary ideas I may have had lately that might fit those and fleshing them out. This was a very different beast where it almost functioned like a meditation on the concept of meaninglessness and a loss of something beautiful and divine - I first wondered what is something that kinda fits the term Nihil and the first thing that popped up in my mind is that you don’t really see stars in the night sky anymore in the majority of places that I’ve at least lived in, and that’s actually really kinda tragic and not something that most people in human history have experienced, at least not on the level that we do. And then suddenly I’m thinking about how like in a lot of ways a lot of the way society is structured feels like it’s a march towards an inexorable loss of meaning and that sometimes it feels like writing poetry or making art is really just fighting against The Long Defeat. And it got me thinking about all the things you do see lately and how it just feels like you’re at a beach watching a crashing wave of meaningless come at you sometimes. And all of a sudden I’m writing some stuff down and realizing it sounds like a lament so I figured maybe a Villainelle would be nice (also I just really kind of like those French forms with repeating lines and refrains).

I don’t think I would have made these connections between all these thoughts without the glue of having this title essentially already being picked for me. And it’s kind of making me think maybe it’s something I should experiment with more - just thinking of a word or a title I really like and trying to work things out from there instead of the way I usually do things.

 

[42BelowsBack]

@Waeponwifestre, Thank you for sharing. I hate it when the obvious is made apparent, especially when I am still struggling over what seems the simplest thing, the front step, door, hop skip and jump into a poem.

Okay. My ass is about face. If Tzara reads this he is going to go mad. Tzara posted sage advice. Way back when. I got it but still didn’t get it. Now I do.

That was cool.

 

[NivKay]

I know this is an old post but it’s really interesting to me that I happened to see it right after writing a poem just based on a title which I don’t think I had ever done before.

Most of the time when I write a poem the title is more or less an afterthought. I’ll write something and look back over it and try to pick out something like my favorite line or an idea I want to highlight and sometimes I like to mention the form I’m trying to use and just use that as title. Its really not something I tend to spend more than like 5-10 minutes on after I wrote the poem.

Lately though (and this is partly why my writing has slowed down a bit lately) I’ve been going through a lot of my old music folder and going through various projects and trying to organize them into an album. I typically spend even less time on titles for these, and half of them don’t really have titles and are just called shit like “weird noises” or “silly demo” but occasionally I’ll just pick or phrase that I think sounds cool. And one of them was this ambient piece that I had written I guess about a year and a half ago called Nihil. I have no recollection of why I chose this title, but when I was listening back to it I thought it sounded kind of empty and needed something if I wanted to use it (I’m aware there’s some irony in thinking something I called Nihil sounded like it had too much nothing for me). So I thought it would be cool to do a little spoken word piece over it, and all of a sudden I’m trying to think of a poem that fits this single word and expresses the idea of “Nihil” in a poetic way.

Usually my process looks something like picking a form or a technique I want to explore, picking a meter I want to use (or mostly use) and then kind of going from there or thinking about some fragmentary ideas I may have had lately that might fit those and fleshing them out. This was a very different beast where it almost functioned like a meditation on the concept of meaninglessness and a loss of something beautiful and divine - I first wondered what is something that kinda fits the term Nihil and the first thing that popped up in my mind is that you don’t really see stars in the night sky anymore in the majority of places that I’ve at least lived in, and that’s actually really kinda tragic and not something that most people in human history have experienced, at least not on the level that we do. And then suddenly I’m thinking about how like in a lot of ways a lot of the way society is structured feels like it’s a march towards an inexorable loss of meaning and that sometimes it feels like writing poetry or making art is really just fighting against The Long Defeat. And it got me thinking about all the things you do see lately and how it just feels like you’re at a beach watching a crashing wave of meaningless come at you sometimes. And all of a sudden I’m writing some stuff down and realizing it sounds like a lament so I figured maybe a Villainelle would be nice (also I just really kind of like those French forms with repeating lines and refrains).

I don’t think I would have made these connections between all these thoughts without the glue of having this title essentially already being picked for me. And it’s kind of making me think maybe it’s something I should experiment with more - just thinking of a word or a title I really like and trying to work things out from there instead of the way I usually do things.

This. Interesting, thank you. I read some time ago a comment by Samuel Beckett that titles should never, according to him, never reveal too much of what you’re about to say. And I suppose this has stayed with me ever since.

 

[42BelowsBack]

I have been thinking about stillness? What is stillness. Then I wrote a poem. But couldn’t find a name. Yeah okay. The name was stillness. Doh!

 

[42BelowsBack]

I just read your latest comment…. now I’m back to being stuck

 

[NivKay]

I just read your latest comment…. now I’m back to being stuck

Sowwwy

 

[42BelowsBack]

Light pollution. Hit the Wilderness. Take a wave by hand. Another one comes. Under pavement the land remains. I’ve been thinking about the sky, how it disappears at night.. And how things we can’t see remain. If I could write a poem about that I would.

 

[Waeponwifestre]

Light pollution. Hit the Wilderness. Take a wave by hand. Another one comes. Under pavement the land remains. I’ve been thinking about the sky, how it disappears at night.. And how things we can’t see remain. If I could write a poem about that I would.

Maybe there is no poem anyone could write that really captures the entirety of this current tragedy, but I really like this one

 

[42BelowsBack]

I’ve been going through a lot of my old music folder and going through various projects and trying to organize them into an album. I typically spend even less time on titles for these, and half of them don’t really have titles and are just called shit like “weird noises” or “silly demo” but occasionally I’ll just pick a word or phrase that I think sounds cool. And one of them was this ambient piece that I had written I guess about a year and a half ago called Nihil.

Fascinating. Post more. The symbiotic relationship your poems have with music. I have always wanted to write a Bruce Lee / Kill Bill / Kato poem that somehow mimics Karvosky’s Bumblebee interlude.

 

[NivKay]

Light pollution. Hit the Wilderness. Take a wave by hand. Another one comes. Under pavement the land remains. I’ve been thinking about the sky, how it disappears at night.. And how things we can’t see remain. If I could write a poem about that I would.

Marcel proust in his Remembrance of Things Past talks about this moment, when he sleeps at night, and the table, the chair, the room stills, sits, waits, watches, and he slips in and out of alternate consciousnesses, these breathing bodies we construct to serve us, and yet they keep their shapes, and we - dissolve, contort, disappear. I'm often aware of such things. They, these things, these still objects, remind me of the house in Bradbury's story, "there will come soft rains."

 

[42BelowsBack]

Great.

Marcel proust in his Remembrance of Things Past talks about this moment, when he sleeps at night, and the table, the chair, the room stills, sits, waits, watches, and he slips in and out of alternate consciousnesses, these breathing bodies we construct to serve us, and yet they keep their shapes, and we - dissolve, contort, disappear. I'm often aware of such things. They, these things, these still objects, remind me of the house in Bradbury's story, "there will come soft rains."

Grrreat! Marcel Proust, a moment in Seven volumes haha I’m still trying to scythe through a poem! Which word by the way has terribly limited synonyms. Grrr must engage imagination.

 

[42BelowsBack]

I went through a period trying to write poems with multiple voices. Of course people didn’t get it. Then I came across John Giorno and his poem Everyone Is a Complete Disappointment. And suddenly I was home among my poetic people. Linked podcast and part of this poem in the LINKED READINGS ONLY THREAD.

The podcast discussion is fascinating: I just feel Giorno is, and wanting to, rip his Superman shirt off.

There is some other fascinating historical stuff including dial a poems i.e you could ring a number and listen to a poem.

 

[SapioSexual9]

Hey @Sapiosexual, on Aspirin, Vodka and Head aches.

What makes a poem a poem? And when is a rant a poem? A rant a rant? And an opportunity a poem?

Blah blah blah review my latest poem. If I didn’t trust your innate inability to mind your fat assed honest onion, I’d tell you to go sauté your ass

 

[SapioSexual9]

Great.

Grrreat! Marcel Proust, a moment in Seven volumes haha I’m still trying to scythe through a poem! Which word by the way has terribly limited synonyms. Grrr must engage imagination.

You are so ignant it’s magical. Keep posting 42. We love that you do.