tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post5644029036754737420..comments2024-03-19T21:14:01.007-07:00Comments on The Compass Rose: Looky-Touchy-Feely - The Atomized Bombs of Jessica Smith [Part II]Curtis Favillehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-11861146556461446282010-09-18T21:35:37.770-07:002010-09-18T21:35:37.770-07:00To answer your question, I don't see how a man...To answer your question, I don't see how a manifesto need be in a different book from the poetry until someone comes along to edit selected writings, and don't think it's difficult to find the poems consistent with the theoretical propositions. Coolidge and Eigner have been very interested in how the poem mirrors the mind's relation to time and space and Smith is being more rigorous about how time and space is represented in the poem. That the poems represent specific places and attempt to mimic the structural qualities of them leads to poem to establish where they are reflections and internalizations, just as there is no right way to proceed through space but certain laws tend to perpetuate themselves. The essay simplifies the calligraphic method a little in criticizing it but does so in inspired fashion. Instead of representing objects from which the reader is separate, the reader populates the space of what is being read, and simultaneously is and isn't remaking it. The most political of the poems, Lestrygonians, is nonetheless an extension of the enfranchisement to populate time, space, memory, and the natural world. Memory is covered more in Butterflies, but these representations of space are still units of memory, as they are a collection of the observed qualities of different places. To be open to these possibilities is to get more out of these poems than one usually gets from lyrical or rhetorical poems.Ian Keenanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16596558654735506132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-69061973930368439392010-09-18T19:32:51.851-07:002010-09-18T19:32:51.851-07:00As an example of how to make positive, demonstrabl...As an example of how to make positive, demonstrable use of space on the page, I'd suggest you read the work of Larry Eigner. Blackburn, too, is very shrewd in his manipulation of the movements of the eye and the prosodic rhythms. There is nothing of these qualities in Smith's work. <br /><br />Massey's simplistic applications at least show some modicum of control--though frequently awkwardly done--and modest changes and wit. They aren't particularly impressive, but at least he's trying, and not making excuses.Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-37902401586114283192010-09-18T19:28:31.157-07:002010-09-18T19:28:31.157-07:00Ian:
"you may be interested to know"
Y...Ian:<br /><br />"you may be interested to know"<br /><br />Yes, but I'm dealing with the book in my hands, not another version, not her sewing or her little boxes. Stay on point.<br /><br />"You seem to be confused as to whether the Plastic Poetry essay is “unoriginal” or whether it expresses an original idea that you wish to find untenable, so just to make sure, you make both claims."<br /><br />There is nothing I read in her essay that I consider original, critically. It's what she THINKS it means to her own work that's pertinent. She thinks the essay's an explanation and a defense of what she's done, but I don't buy that. No one would argue that Apollinaire's rain poem is more than just "calligraphic" but her own work doesn't even make this simplistic kind of sense; it's more "complex" but also empty and unorganized. This "complexity" claim is purely gratuitous, you could say it about a handful of garden soil with the same validity. <br /><br />Let's see if I can rephrase. Her work is both simplistic and confusing at the same time. If you don't give the reader adequate syntactical structure by which to impute connections, you leave it all to chance. I don't buy this "precisely arranged down the the minutest detail" nonsense. Her poems could each be jumbled up and rearranged and they'd be no more compelling than they are now, except by accident. Maybe that's what I'm getting at--happy "accidental" marriages of sense aren't good enough; the poet has a responsibility to build in more than "probable" versions of the reading experience. "All interpretations are correct; none is wrong." Bullshit. <br /><br />Ian, I'd be interested to know what you think of the work, rather than what you think of my possible critical contradictions. You're defending her without making any positive statements about her poems. Do you buy her claims for her work?Curtis Favillehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06213075853354387634noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-18253636574744545272010-09-18T10:02:40.704-07:002010-09-18T10:02:40.704-07:00Since you are “bring(ing) into question the degree...Since you are “bring(ing) into question the degree of her commitment to a really challenging vision of an expanded realization of the text” on the basis of the conventional surface of this book, you may be interested to know she has produced at least a half dozen different kinds of physical texts applying different forms of book art and sewing, such as her “Butterflies” and her magazine “Foursquare” and poems consisting of objects in boxes. The large print version of OFC has yet to be published and I look forward to seeing it at my local box store.<br /><br />You seem to be confused as to whether the Plastic Poetry essay is “unoriginal” or whether it expresses an original idea that you wish to find untenable, so just to make sure, you make both claims. Your own view of the meaning of meaning in Enlightenment could have negated the interpreted meanings of Blake, Browning, Joyce, Eliot, Williams, and Zukofsky, but you list them in support of a view they oppose: consistently in most cases and in Eliot's case, in his most important work.<br /><br />And you “believe that the work is easily accessible and self-evidently apprehensible on its own, without any need for warnings, instructions or explanations” but “without her Forward, the poems may be seen as empty arrangements, fragments without a compelling formal purpose or function.” You are so busy composing the antithesis to any idea of a writer you've decided ahead of time to criticize that you don't check over your work to make sure you're consistent in so doing.Ian Keenanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16596558654735506132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-48946530826449292172010-09-14T15:55:31.118-07:002010-09-14T15:55:31.118-07:00Any person has the right to publish whatever the f...Any person has the right to publish whatever the f**k they want, in any format, style, chapbook, jackbook, jokebook whatever. And everyone has the right to ignore it completely-- except perhaps when in the wilderness, or some desolate coast and in need of some kindling, or....toilet paper....<i>wow... in the bottom of ye olde rucksack Jessy Smith's collected works...and a large chunk of Silliman paper...comfort n relief!</i> Bible, or Moby Dick or collected schackaspeare--that's not just literature, but fuel, brooder .<br /><br /><br />That said, the e-book craze will probably replace hard copies of books soon, sir Faville. Even the bloody NY Times will be completely online soon. Brave new worldJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1660090614793277371.post-23814040485249060612010-09-14T15:22:02.954-07:002010-09-14T15:22:02.954-07:00"I have advocated an alternative system, whic..."I have advocated an alternative system, which might return the maker of the text to the condition of an original artist role, where the choice of the "final" form of the text might be closely monitored, and in which the production of the text itself might be incorporated into the creative process..." <br /><br />Curtis, the writer as artist engaged directly in the process of production is a new idea that's, in fact, quite old. It's sort of reminiscent of a pre-print culture of illustrative texts, each page consisting of images and specialized typography, the work a joint labour of specialized skills unique to authors,editors, etc. Of course, the "illustrative" is replaced by its contemporary variant (the text as whatever the author wants it to be).Are you advocating then a return to the age of "scribes" but with all the conveniences of contemporary printing conventions?<br /><br />The more multidisciplinary,variegated approach to publication in which book making is returned to master printers and artists/writers revisit their old chanceries and courts is maybe a bold way to preserve the integrity of the text.It seems to me the 'small press' runs very much in the spirit of that collaborative model, with digital graphics and advanced font & page layout designs (of the kind that a program like InDesign offers)within easy reach of just about anyone.Conrad DiDiodatohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18312831623791642286noreply@blogger.com