dbqp: visualizing poetics: September 2008

Thrown out of the Nest, We Take Flight

I am taking a small break tonight from writing about Ron Silliman’s The Alphabet, for a number of reasons. First, I know it will keep me up till three am, and I’m trying to start off this week with a little more sleep under my belt. Second, I had a couple of other projects that I had to finish tonight. Third, I spent a couple of hours cleaning up the coding in the last Silliman posting today. And, fourth, I’ve read Oz, the next book in The Alphabet, so I’ll be ready to tackle that one tomorrow night—when I’ll also have a couple of projects I’ll have to get done that night.

So tonight is an announcement of what seems like the real beginning of Tom Beckett’s experiment in collective playwriting entitled Thrownnest.

Sep

Non/Sense: The Musical

Still Point (Tough Shit, Eliot), Caroga Lake (Algonquin), New York (Britain Regained)

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Considering Ron Silliman’s The Alphabet: “Non”

We start at the right.

“So then go back

to the old forms

as if they were forms at all”

“Non” is an examination of forms,

the words on the page,

how we expect a poem to mean through tabbing and spacing.

Sep

The Anxiety of the Visual Poet at the Penalty Kick (A Forty-Sixth Letter to a Young Imaginary Visual Poet)

Still Point, Caroga Lake, New York

It is interesting that you are considering, personally, the same issue that I am: Whether poetry is the death of visual poetry, whether our own poetry is the death of our own visual poetry.

I know you've been keeping up with the postings at my blog, and my focus there (if there can be said to be one) is obviously on poetry pure and simple, on textual poetry over visual poetry.

Sep

atwhich

For a while, I've been thinking about Twitter and how to use it in some interesting way. I'm a Web 2.0 kind of person (even though I've stayed off Facebook and have never managed my storefront at MySpace with much energy), so I thought I should be able to do something poetic with the 140 characters allowed for any "tweet" in Twitter. Friends of mine have been using this microblogging tool for a while, but in ways that didn't interest me.

Sep

Spelunk, What a Beautiful Sound

There are many events that have happened around me for many years without my ever knowing about them, and one is the Subterranean Poetry Reading. A week from this Saturday, October 4, 2008, at 2 pm, the 18th Annual Subterranean Poetry Reading will take place in Rosendale, New York. And I’ll be one of the performers.

Sep

Before Us

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Considering Ron Silliman’s The Alphabet: “Manifest”

Manifest. A list. The contents, human and cargo, of a ship or plane or truck or train. Taking form. Assuming shape. Becoming visible. See.

Never begin an essay by quoting definitions.

“The kingfisher’s blue foregrounds the yellow-brown of winter forest.” He got them back in their cage, the green one first, / she with the bad leg, and then the blue, / the one they had hoped was a male.

Sep

(Blue) Battle of the Books and the Secret of the Number Twelve

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Considering Ron Silliman’s The Alphabet: “Lit”

I

(Twelve Paragraphs That at First Appear to, But Do Not, Contain the Proper Number of Sentences Equal to the Numbers of the Fibonacci Sequence)

Begins.

Beings.

Then. Than. On mark.

Written. Rote. Rode. Upbraid. To & bent over.

Shape. Nape. Amor. Armor against. The fight. Avant-garde as that guarding against pasts.

Swoop. Sweep. “Utilitarianistic.” The word subjected, as subject and object.

Sep

Introit

Time for. Time to. We begin with it. A song to open. Modulate, modulated, modulating. The voice as a bucket inside which the sound sloshes. Summer is longer than the first day of autumn. We set boundaries between continuities, segregating the congregant from the celebrant. In nomine de. Our only father, imagination. Our Spiritus Sancti, merely what we cannot know. The Mass is a massing, massive, the bringing together at the beginning of all for being.

Sep

Paragraph

Radisson, Room 601, Utica, New York

+ A + B + C + D + E + F + G + H + I + J + K +

Considering Ron Silliman’s The Alphabet: “Ketjak2: Caravan of Affect”

“Revolting” is not quite an anagram of “revolving,” but it is close enough for a bit of punning: “Revolving door. Revolting odor.” So opens “Ketjak2: Caravan of Affect,” the eleventh section of The Alphabet and a poem that continues the poem “Ketjak” from The Age of Huts (compleat or not).

Sep

Chances, per

intention towards

it (sleep)

yet away

it is the only drug

given to be

in body as body

to move as flesh

sleep implies

itself

even when avoided

each night

a chance for

the cellophaned

memories of

a dream

(the head

holds it)

there is only one dream

and we have forgotten

what?

it was

ecr. l'inf.

dbqp: visualizing poetics

visual poetry, the textual imagination, and personal experience