Hey!
Dude, I’m so not surprised your doing the Kyger thang, Cat. She was s’posed to read here a coupla weeks ago, but didn’t show. oh well. She’s so great. I love her.
So, I just kinda responded to Lauren’s questions. The responses are pretentious. I’m still trying to work. it. out.
a question - when you say "I preferred that the constraint not appear as a constraint," what are you talking about at that point? i thought you were doing away with the constraint altogether by not having the titles? and i don't quite get the relationship to sonnets.
it’s kind of a nice thing. I said “i preferred that the constraint serve, as much as possible, as a point leading to an expansion, (an independence, missouri of the mind).” What I wanted was a way to make a constraint a freedom. this is a conventional way of thinking of constraints, but I wanted constraints that specifically weren’t there. ie, there is no title. it is not there, and that makes the erasure both a constraint and an opportunity, an invitation to the “not there,” the invisible. there’s no fill-in-the-blank suggesting that there should be a title, it’s just not there. it’s clear that it’s a constraint, because once you read more than two, you see that they don’t have titles. but, it’s an absence. in that way, the constraint is primarily on the process of composition, not on the reader. it’s not a challenge to see, oh, look, she jumped out of pentameter, what does that mean? instead, the pattern, such as it is, is the same as the dates of the year. it’s repetition vs. surprise. days days days.
the sonnet thing was just an example of a traditional set of constraints (rhyme, meter, volta, all that).
will this gang of poems have a group title? (like 'measuring daylight' w/the dated journal entries.)
not right now. I think, if they appear, they’ll be separated from other things by blank page.
how does putting the date at the end counteract land art machismo? i question because i'm interested, particularly w/looking at smithson.
I was thinking particularly in terms of permanence. A lot of that land art, esp Heizer, is about permanence and monumentality, esp. H’s City and the Tumuli, in Illinois. If the thing always moves to a date that doesn’t have some histrionix attached to it (September 11, 2001), it’s just another day. the poem I wrote on Thursday, a really good poem, or at least had lots of potential, was one that I lost due to a computer error. well, it didn’t matter. I tried to remember as much of it as I could, and it just remained among the others. the ephemeral, which is more, I think, like Andy Goldsworthy’s things, has given me a bit more room to live, and have the poems be the scale of living, as opposed to the scale of the landscape. it won’t last. I’m trying to figure out how to accommodate my interests as a writer to the scale that I want in poems right now (ie, nothing long). so, those guys are still some of my true loves, right now I want to scale things back. being back among my beloved coast mountains here has given me a return to a compromised horizon. in the bay area, the horizon is bounded on all sides by mountains, and the breaks and gaps and passes between mountains become kind of like the points of departure, (points of horizon) that I was talking about before.
I guess the short answer would be, Smithson and them are interested in permanence, in monuments, even when they’re being ironic. I’m thinking a bit more like carl andre shit, which is made of wood, so much more erodable, and living, ah, the ‘70s.
I love the way this director deals with the question of genre, and I’m dealing with it too, as I mentioned (ie, what’s the scale of a lyric, or small poem for, if you want bigger stuff.
---
The reason I take this approach to filmmaking is, although film needs a fictional story element, it also is a medium that allows you to record the reality around you. You're filming real forests and real people. I think that film for me is a medium point between a fictional story and reality. You start with the genre, which is fiction, and gradually move towards reality. Somewhere in between you find film.
this is amazing. this is the major problem of landscape poetry, which always insists on some direct experience, which poetry is most definitely not, a-course.
in these newer poems, the “subject” is, at least the day. that makes the date analogous to the way the title works in my other poems, and you just throw some stuff at it that happened on the particular day.
--
though, the interview made me think about how in working on flaming telepaths, i was winding up at the same old same olds i always seem to land on (in terms of imagery, themes, etc.) but on this crooked path through science fiction. and even if the sort of sci fi-ish premise only existed in my mind i did find that it wound up enriching the same old same olds. and this funny current project i'm working with is developing its own weird little back story: (amnesia, robert smithson post-apocalyptic landscapes, etc., a grandmother).
it makes sense, that the “same olds” are affected by their genesis.
starting w/a set of constraints and then letting bits of experience accrue to these constraints - is that similar to what you're talking about j?
yeah. but you know, rather than starting from fiction vs. reality, its more internal/external vs. external/internal – because “fiction” is roughly analogous to “imagination,” it has effects on reality, ie, it’s both inside or outside and neither outside or inside --- that was obscure. I’ll try to straighten it out.
and to pose another of those vexing blog questions, how is that different from writing one's whole book about math or whatever overriding theme is selected? (i believe that it is but couldn't put into words why.)
to me, at this particular time, distraction (or, observation, if you like) is more important than focus, which is why the constraints are absences and dates. because that all you need to let your mynde fly like a fly.
lastly, jared, i like your writing about staying in the moment of composition. i realized reading your post that i've set up the way i write so that i can always - or at least mostly - feel like i'm composing, not revising, when i'm doing anything at all. (i think that's bc composition has so much to do with arranging and re-arranging for me.) i've never been very good at revising or enjoyed it much. so now i just write ....but extremely slowly....
just like Robert Duncan! I’m trying to catch up to you.
"and returning to revise a poem put me in control too much, i think" - i'd be curious to hear more about that - bc it surprised me - i've always thought of control as one of your major values (w/fucked-upedness being another one to keep things even).
yeah. well, I wasn’t happy with what my control was doing for the poems. ye olde W.C. Williams saw: “the poem writes itself.” I’m having a reflex action against the will. will against the wisp? I guess the “fucked-upedness” is the lack of control, balanced, Manichean thing.
that's weird to hear about bronk. his poems are so rigorous and wind-y, that's quite a first draft. it's like hearing that he bends iron bars with his bare hands. where could i find the essay?
it’s actually an interview, and appears
here.
here are a couple of the poems.
***
such a sounded silence
pines
camellia japonica, pink perfection,
juts a-whispering.
The medium, the maybe,
not an object among objects;
a gist, a vine.
from a lost poem, November 17, 2005
***
You can be dreamless and well-informed
in coats and in whiteness, in a huff from behind
poplars, a beige place of worship, that fret.
That is what this thinking of Arcadia will do
in no place an innocence
towering with kindly information.
This soundproof majesty,
who needs it?
Shall I remind you of my religious background?
I am n o t given to despair.
I have making, a have-ness
not of the will,
a widest acceptance
with a special hammer as its origin.
Haunted by its little power
and foolish eternal felicities that vanish
You and I, among no man’s horizon.
Confidently expect.
November 6,2005
***
A hush rains on Pecadillo Avenue.
What are the activities of reverence,
fevered to be, gone and giant,
a plume of dust in the way of materiel,
settling on the evergreen
leaves in the median?
My sister’s friend
drove a tank down Bourbon Street.
November 14, 2005
