This book made me look very closely at how I personally define poetry. I used to simply define poetry as words strung together to make art. This book is definitely art, yet I cannot define it as poetry. It just feels wrong in my gut to say it is. So I had to really look at possibly broadening my definition, but I ended up narrowing it to say that poetry is a collection of words that, alone, create art. A blank page is universally accepted as a blank canvas, not a part of the work itself. When you add photos, blank lines meant to be filled in, text added in unexpected directions or orientations, the city of Portland, or inscribe the words on a physical object that is not a blank canvas, all elements add meaning to the words and the words can no longer exist on their own. Poetry was originally only spoken. When it poetry began to appear on the page, it didn’t lose anything because you can still read it. By adding elements other than words, you lose the ability to simply speak the poem. I cannot recite this book to someone and convey its full meaning because there are visual aids and a city that have to go along with it, (which is kind of ridiculous in a book that circulates as far as Texas in my opinion because obviously that is an element that will be lost to many readers and that makes it very exclusive; the book is telling me to spend a lot of money I don’t have or I can’t fully experience it) and when you add pictures and physical shapes to look at, you are narrowing your reader’s imagination and ability to take the words wherever they need to go, because they are being directed by other means.
One of my favorite poems is ee cummings who really tried to push what poetry could be by making punctuation and the page itself a part of the poem. He is an amazing writer, but when it comes down to it, the reason he is great is that when you take away all of the spaces and punctuation things he did, you’re left with really great words (not always) and that is where the poem is.
Claudia Rankine wrote one of my favorite books, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, an extraordinary succession of little prose poems, some ending with a little graphic of a tv that had a snow (I forget what it’s called when the screen is all little dots and static sounds) screen. That image was so essential to the book, which Rankine herself says is not poetry. Unlike ee cummings' work that can exist just as words, the effect of that blank television, so familiar in our culture that one can hear the sound of it, especially where it is placed, it makes the stomach drop, it takes you to this place the words simply cannot go, and while I think it's a mistake to call Don't Let Me Be Lonely poetry, the work is better for having those televisions, necessary even. I don't mean to suggest the label of poetry suggests something better, but I think it should suggest something specific, because the point of a label is to communicate what to expect, not a level of quality. Sand's structural piece in the Blaffer does not fit under the label of book to me because if I told my friend on the phone I just read/saw Sand's book at the Blaffer she would not be able to understand what I meant. Why stretch the definition of word past the point that the word is useful when there are other perfectly good words to use like sculpture, work, piece? One can even make up their own word if a new label, liked Formed Word or something like that if something new is indeed being created.
A few questions in response to this amazing small essay (and Regina, so happy you were able to reproduce it and post it!) --
+ What about Kaia Sand's book made you feel that she was demanding that anyone who wanted to be able to experience the poems needed to travel to Portland? Does the inclusion of directions to get to Portland and things you might experience there necessarily mean she is saying that the work cannot be read anywhere else?
+ it's arguable that ee cummings's poems are not his poems at all without the spacing and punctuation and other formal gestures he so wonderfully created -- that the form of his work is as integral as the words he used, and that his work is not meant to be heard aloud (or that it is no longer his work if "heard" without punctuation and spacing), but appreciated on the page only. How might this idea affect your sense that if poetry cannot be shifted into orality, it is not truly poetry?
+ Are there times when the point of a label or name is not to communicate what to expect, but to resist expectation?
(1) - I've read on this message board others' interpretations of the directions to Portland, some people asking if the fact that Portland wasn't accessible is the point of including it as the work is about a place that can no longer be accessed. I think that's what I read. This interpretation makes me look at the work in another way, and reminds me that I am a very, very literal person which is a bit paradoxical for a lover/reader/writer of poetry, but it's there.
-I think if ee cummings considered his work to only exist on the page, he would not have read any of it aloud himself, and I've heard recordings of his readings. That being said, not all of his poems pushed form boundaries. My favorite poem of his, Jehovah Buried, Satan Dead, not surprisingly, a very traditional poem. It was so strong, and I argue that it needed to be a plain, familiar form to be that powerful because the content was so strong and tight anything more would make the whole thing fall apart. Pushing form almost makes it arse poetica because the form demands attention. Back to poems aloud, space is silence, punctuation is inflection. It's a code. I have heard some dadaists read some outrageous things that included grunts and hollers. Of course, there are some poems that do work better on the page. When my friend and I read our poems to each other over the phone, there's often a "but you have to see what this stanza break does right here." Carolyn Forche's On Earth is an amazing poem I love. It is so long it practically induces a translate state, and not the most pleasant one since it's all about death, but it's amazing, but it is so freakin' long I can't imagine it read aloud. I've tried twice (with much distance between them) to read the entire poem aloud and I gave up both times because my throat hurt and I had other stuff to do. So no, my definition does not always hold up. There are always exceptions and rule-breakers. But my definition still makes the most sense to me if a definition needs to be had.
-If there's a label I think it should be accurate. I think it's a question of integrity. If you're purposefully mislabeling to resist expectation, it's like saying, "you are seeking this kind of experience, but I'm giving you this one instead because I think it will be good for you." Who am I to tell a person what's good for them? I think another reason for mislabeling might be, not to tell a person what they need to see, but to give them a sudden jolt, a surprise. But I don't think manufacturing surprise is necessary as I've found the world to be surprising enough on it's own. I don't think it justifies being dishonest. There is more art, more music, more plays, more sudden awarenesses than one person could ever experience, so why not let them experience what they want? There was a period of time when more challenging movies were being misrepresented in theater previews to make it appear that the film belonged to a more generic genre. The reason was obviously to attract more viewers and sell more tickets. One movie in particular was Bug. The preview clearly set up the expectation for a psychological horror film. I went there for that as did, I assume, most people in the audience. From the first few opening shots, it was obviously a black comedy. It was hysterical. My friends and I laughed. Others in the theater couldn't switch gears. They were expecting horror and they did not laugh once. In fact, they glared at us, shushed us when we were honestly reacting to what was a fucked-up funny movie. Of course, that is according to me. According to Wikipedia:
Friedkin (the film maker) has said that the film would have been flagged, in the 1960s or 1970s, as a horror film, but he insists it is no such thing.He told ComingSoon.net that "There were all sorts of people who looked at Bug, (including magazine people like Fangoria,) and they called it a horror film," he said. The horror connection "came from a lot of sources." Friedkin claims that Bug is "in many ways, a black comedy love story. He stated in an interview, that "It's not a genre film, but marketing works in mysterious ways. They have to find a genre for it. 'This is a comedy. This is a melodrama. This is a love story. This is a horror film. This is an adventure film.' Bug doesn't fit easily into any of those categories.
I think this raises the question of how do we label something that defies all labels, but I don't think the answer is to purposefully mislabel it to give an extra kind of effect. My solution to the misdirecting previews was to stop watching previews. Because I don't trust them. Yes, I liked Bug because I happen to also like that kind of movie, but I stopped liking previews.
I kept thinking the same thing. What defines this as poetry (besides the latter part of this "book"... published work)? I've always thought of poetry as being a visual study in words, like a literary painting. In this broad sense, I believe Sand's book would meet the definition. A poem still tells a story, maybe not as direct as the prose provided in this book, but maybe because we couldn't take the walk with her, she had to provide context.
Labels are there to define what we've already conceived, but what about those trapped in between? I like how Sand attempts to push this boundary, but whether she's been successful is a matter of taste. That is, unless it's swept by the mainstream and becomes a legitimate extension (like Cummings). Until then, it lives in a world of gray; I think she meant it to be like that, just like the objects of her observation.
This book made me look very closely at how I personally define poetry. I used to simply define poetry as words strung together to make art. This book is definitely art, yet I cannot define it as poetry. It just feels wrong in my gut to say it is. So I had to really look at possibly broadening my definition, but I ended up narrowing it to say that poetry is a collection of words that, alone, create art. A blank page is universally accepted as a blank canvas, not a part of the work itself. When you add photos, blank lines meant to be filled in, text added in unexpected directions or orientations, the city of Portland, or inscribe the words on a physical object that is not a blank canvas, all elements add meaning to the words and the words can no longer exist on their own.
ReplyDeletePoetry was originally only spoken. When it poetry began to appear on the page, it didn’t lose anything because you can still read it. By adding elements other than words, you lose the ability to simply speak the poem. I cannot recite this book to someone and convey its full meaning because there are visual aids and a city that have to go along with it, (which is kind of ridiculous in a book that circulates as far as Texas in my opinion because obviously that is an element that will be lost to many readers and that makes it very exclusive; the book is telling me to spend a lot of money I don’t have or I can’t fully experience it) and when you add pictures and physical shapes to look at, you are narrowing your reader’s imagination and ability to take the words wherever they need to go, because they are being directed by other means.
One of my favorite poems is ee cummings who really tried to push what poetry could be by making punctuation and the page itself a part of the poem. He is an amazing writer, but when it comes down to it, the reason he is great is that when you take away all of the spaces and punctuation things he did, you’re left with really great words (not always) and that is where the poem is.
Claudia Rankine wrote one of my favorite books, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, an extraordinary succession of little prose poems, some ending with a little graphic of a tv that had a snow (I forget what it’s called when the screen is all little dots and static sounds) screen. That image was so essential to the book, which Rankine herself says is not poetry. Unlike ee cummings' work that can exist just as words, the effect of that blank television, so familiar in our culture that one can hear the sound of it, especially where it is placed, it makes the stomach drop, it takes you to this place the words simply cannot go, and while I think it's a mistake to call Don't Let Me Be Lonely poetry, the work is better for having those televisions, necessary even. I don't mean to suggest the label of poetry suggests something better, but I think it should suggest something specific, because the point of a label is to communicate what to expect, not a level of quality. Sand's structural piece in the Blaffer does not fit under the label of book to me because if I told my friend on the phone I just read/saw Sand's book at the Blaffer she would not be able to understand what I meant. Why stretch the definition of word past the point that the word is useful when there are other perfectly good words to use like sculpture, work, piece? One can even make up their own word if a new label, liked Formed Word or something like that if something new is indeed being created.
A few questions in response to this amazing small essay (and Regina, so happy you were able to reproduce it and post it!) --
ReplyDelete+ What about Kaia Sand's book made you feel that she was demanding that anyone who wanted to be able to experience the poems needed to travel to Portland? Does the inclusion of directions to get to Portland and things you might experience there necessarily mean she is saying that the work cannot be read anywhere else?
+ it's arguable that ee cummings's poems are not his poems at all without the spacing and punctuation and other formal gestures he so wonderfully created -- that the form of his work is as integral as the words he used, and that his work is not meant to be heard aloud (or that it is no longer his work if "heard" without punctuation and spacing), but appreciated on the page only. How might this idea affect your sense that if poetry cannot be shifted into orality, it is not truly poetry?
+ Are there times when the point of a label or name is not to communicate what to expect, but to resist expectation?
(1)
ReplyDelete- I've read on this message board others' interpretations of the directions to Portland, some people asking if the fact that Portland wasn't accessible is the point of including it as the work is about a place that can no longer be accessed. I think that's what I read. This interpretation makes me look at the work in another way, and reminds me that I am a very, very literal person which is a bit paradoxical for a lover/reader/writer of poetry, but it's there.
-I think if ee cummings considered his work to only exist on the page, he would not have read any of it aloud himself, and I've heard recordings of his readings. That being said, not all of his poems pushed form boundaries. My favorite poem of his, Jehovah Buried, Satan Dead, not surprisingly, a very traditional poem. It was so strong, and I argue that it needed to be a plain, familiar form to be that powerful because the content was so strong and tight anything more would make the whole thing fall apart. Pushing form almost makes it arse poetica because the form demands attention. Back to poems aloud, space is silence, punctuation is inflection. It's a code. I have heard some dadaists read some outrageous things that included grunts and hollers. Of course, there are some poems that do work better on the page. When my friend and I read our poems to each other over the phone, there's often a "but you have to see what this stanza break does right here." Carolyn Forche's On Earth is an amazing poem I love. It is so long it practically induces a translate state, and not the most pleasant one since it's all about death, but it's amazing, but it is so freakin' long I can't imagine it read aloud. I've tried twice (with much distance between them) to read the entire poem aloud and I gave up both times because my throat hurt and I had other stuff to do. So no, my definition does not always hold up. There are always exceptions and rule-breakers. But my definition still makes the most sense to me if a definition needs to be had.
-If there's a label I think it should be accurate. I think it's a question of integrity. If you're purposefully mislabeling to resist expectation, it's like saying, "you are seeking this kind of experience, but I'm giving you this one instead because I think it will be good for you." Who am I to tell a person what's good for them? I think another reason for mislabeling might be, not to tell a person what they need to see, but to give them a sudden jolt, a surprise. But I don't think manufacturing surprise is necessary as I've found the world to be surprising enough on it's own. I don't think it justifies being dishonest. There is more art, more music, more plays, more sudden awarenesses than one person could ever experience, so why not let them experience what they want? There was a period of time when more challenging movies were being misrepresented in theater previews to make it appear that the film belonged to a more generic genre. The reason was obviously to attract more viewers and sell more tickets. One movie in particular was Bug. The preview clearly set up the expectation for a psychological horror film. I went there for that as did, I assume, most people in the audience. From the first few opening shots, it was obviously a black comedy. It was hysterical. My friends and I laughed. Others in the theater couldn't switch gears. They were expecting horror and they did not laugh once. In fact, they glared at us, shushed us when we were honestly reacting to what was a fucked-up funny movie. Of course, that is according to me. According to Wikipedia:
(2)
DeleteFriedkin (the film maker) has said that the film would have been flagged, in the 1960s or 1970s, as a horror film, but he insists it is no such thing.He told ComingSoon.net that "There were all sorts of people who looked at Bug, (including magazine people like Fangoria,) and they called it a horror film," he said. The horror connection "came from a lot of sources." Friedkin claims that Bug is "in many ways, a black comedy love story. He stated in an interview, that "It's not a genre film, but marketing works in mysterious ways. They have to find a genre for it. 'This is a comedy. This is a melodrama. This is a love story. This is a horror film. This is an adventure film.' Bug doesn't fit easily into any of those categories.
I think this raises the question of how do we label something that defies all labels, but I don't think the answer is to purposefully mislabel it to give an extra kind of effect. My solution to the misdirecting previews was to stop watching previews. Because I don't trust them. Yes, I liked Bug because I happen to also like that kind of movie, but I stopped liking previews.
I kept thinking the same thing. What defines this as poetry (besides the latter part of this "book"... published work)? I've always thought of poetry as being a visual study in words, like a literary painting. In this broad sense, I believe Sand's book would meet the definition. A poem still tells a story, maybe not as direct as the prose provided in this book, but maybe because we couldn't take the walk with her, she had to provide context.
ReplyDeleteLabels are there to define what we've already conceived, but what about those trapped in between? I like how Sand attempts to push this boundary, but whether she's been successful is a matter of taste. That is, unless it's swept by the mainstream and becomes a legitimate extension (like Cummings). Until then, it lives in a world of gray; I think she meant it to be like that, just like the objects of her observation.