pesbo blog – Page 203

There are millions of poets on this planet. Just the literal verbal kind, not counting those who make their lives into conscious-living poetry. Counting those who dabble over decades, fall off for a decade or two, return or not.
Although even the continent of poet seems like a tiny village, still, it’s a wonder when one crops up again without even being sought out.
I see at Geist that Cornelia Hoogland’s Little Red Riding Hood poems are finished and were picked up by Wolsak & Wynn. Neat to see that progression.
Because I go to who is in town whether I’ve heard of the person or not, I happens to come across her when she was about 4 books into writing. In 2008, I heard her read a sample of them in progress at The Muses at Rasputins, which has since burned down.
Tim Wynne-Jones is appointed to the Order of Canada. He was the first Writer-in-Residence I ever took my poems to, me a bundle of nerves with a side-slung knapsack.
I had made my first best-of collection of my own poems when I was about 9. After years of secret scribbles, years more workshopping with teachers and friends, years after I made my first few chapbooks (in primary school and high school), I got praise from each high school teacher at being promising. My poems were in the yearbook and school newspaper, but I had an “in” because I was the editorial board or editor for both of them for years.
in 1988, Wynne-Jones was the first non-teacher, non-peer, non-neighbour, non-family, non-church-member to see my poems.
It was winter? Or was it spring? Was I trembling from cold or nerves? It was warmer, fall. I must have been 16. I remember the quaking of getting up the nerve of my best-of poems to go, make an appointment with the librarian.
I remember the strangeness of going to his office in the library, a cubbyhole with a chair inside, back around the corner of checkout desk, where only staff go.
Coming past the last set of florescent lighst, I thought I must be mad, but was fully prepared for laurels and had to make myself known. I had to speak to this important fellow and quaking at having to do it again once he’d looked them over.
I can’t recall if he said bring them back or bring back more. Or if I did or didn’t. He did say I should read more and write less. I was too verbose and old-fashioned. (I’d mostly read 1800s poetry and novels at that time.) The top poem I brought was a rhymed allegory of mountain range travels and travails to gloryland. (It was copiously footnoted.)
If it were the age of internet perhaps I could have got right on that reading thing but I didn’t see anything other than what I was already accessing. It’s always good to ask more question. I continued writing, unabated, dozens of poems a week, as usual.
The next potential mentor would involve much the same process except this time, an envelope shoved under the door of Christopher Levenson, a portfolio sample for admittance to his university poetry class in 1993. It was a similar shake and close eyes and scurry away.
He didn’t acknowledge them so I assumed I wasn’t in, until the second or third week of class when he phoned my house to blast me for not showing up after he’d gone to the trouble to read my portfolio. He introduced everything from Beowulf to the beat poets to rob mclennan who presented on now. I hardly said boo the whole term but I heard. It was in that class where I would meet Warren Dean Fulton and Jim Larwill as well.
Warren would eventually slide back thru Ottawa, a publisher and still poet. His Pooka Press has published my writings a few times.
Jim Larwill and I and a few others spun off into a post-class group for a while. It grew, going from house to house and fissured. I left. The remains put out an anthology with Broken Jaw. I met Jim at an open mic and we rediscovered each other like no time had passed and I rejoined the on-and-off-again Omnigoths.
rob mclennan I’d take years to say more than a meek hello and run away then read from afar, but he eventually became my first lasting mentor. I took a few rounds of his workshops. (As in the 101 course, I hardly uttering an audible word for a term). I was being oriented to the century and contemporaries of poetry, what editing a poem means, inquiring into what poetics is and a more rigorous approach of what poetry expects beyond regurgitative expelling from one person to one person. There’s more of a community and one is within many.
You never know where a step will lead. A footfall of the same depth or into another cosmos.
I still am a baby in the field, not Moses, certainly, but there’s something like a fractal unfolding and however much I read, learn or do, there’s still an infinity in all directions.

What is it we do when we communicate?

We try to get on the same same figurative page, and succeed to a satisfying or unsatisfying degree, or
We refuse to play, possibly by

a) advocating your own page instead,
b) saying the page read is uninteresting, invalid, or not existing, or
c) other derailing troll arguments/irrelevant rants.

Part of what we do when we communicate is speculate on the unsaid, the motivations and origins of speaking. Because it is communication – rather than just kept between the ears – it’s presumed there’s a reason rather than just a lack of censoring every thought flitting thru brain. Purpose is embedded in the idea of said.
The cooperative principle is the social lube for the society to work. It’s based in right: right info, right time, right way, right amount to right person, saying as rightly as you believe to be the case.
We put a value on what is right and hold that yardstick of worthwhile/ significant/ relevant meaning to what we encounter.
But along come people who do humour, or nonsense, or disagree with what’s right, or need far more or less information than the standard.
What then? Instead of being a cooperative exchange, it goes to more existential or motivational. What is the psychology of saying? or What is value? What is right? What is worthwhile?
*
My interests lie with my biases. I tend to be drawn to queer writers who write about things that are not kids and kittens, grief and golf, bur social justice and social reform. Being atheist and childless by choice, I feel excluded from the poetic dialogue that is about children and diligent faith in god. That feels like communication not directed at me.
I tend to like clever. I bore easily of my own voice and tend to interrupt myself, mock myself within the body of text. it works against the work, and I’ve been told such by a friend when even my presentation interrupts the hearing. It’s self-consciousness, in part. It’s desire not to be like the bores who are humourless and long-windedly even, in part.
I’m biased against wisdom dispensing, poems with a kicker of morality, significance because I lean hard into nihilism, buddhism and protestantism which all take presenting something as if you know something as uppity. I’m constitutionally against consuming it, producing it, or respecting it. But I should. And try to do all three because wisdom is part of life too, and poetry is an extension of a person and a cardinal rule for me personally is to respect people and cultivate a world of compassion. Disrespect leads to deafness, mockery and lockery not compassion.
I have a mental block with the idea of a poem that affirms an ideal unilaterally, built like an essay for debating club.
I can see 5 reasons why an airtight, lockstepped poem rubs me the wrong way

Poetry is bigger than that. Essays and movies already have that function covered.
I want poetry to be that and I work against my own habits. My own social trait is to be affirming of others while never revealing anything of self, which makes people uncomfortable – flattery from someone who always stays arms length away, never displaying vulnerable, never mad, never sad.
Do we need another poem that confirms work is good, killing is bad but sometimes necessary, and pretty sure is pretty? Do we need another poem that brokers in curating samples of no memory-weight and which use no tried-tested-and-true-oratory-effectiveness poetic effect?
Mixing it up is prettier.
Chaos is real and underrepresented in poetry by intentional acts.

So if the motivational question is settled there remains the existential questions of what to admit into a poem?
Do we want a pat poem if it sparks one idea or reassurance?
The choice of what model to attend to becomes a moral choice of why do we live? Are we here to persuade each other to accept emotions? to pursue pleasure? to accept what is rather than what is created?
In poetry or life “outside poetry”, how much info is enough?
It depends on audience. When we speak face to face, we may not know the person inside out but we can inquire and tell what works. We can monitor the person who is pretending to not eavesdrop at the next table and read his leaking signals of breath of interest.
*
When ideas become a scab dropped off on a piece of page, there’s no poking the reader to see if they are following. There’s no one reader. The task is more complex but the constraints are more open. We don’t have to convince one person of one point.
If we have a uniform target audience we can tailor our points to theirs. For the page, it’s more off the rack fitting. People who don’t shop much may not know that the suit of ideas is pretty bland. Or they may not care. They just want something new to put on.
People who communicate a little don’t have the familiarity with uncommon words or the grate or set phrases. For the first encounter clichés still are fresh.
We each come from a culture of one in many, a hybrid of our unique experiences.
We, in any given set of aggregate, create a stretch to an average to make a shared experience, a common narrative, internalizing the one collective each other made for the sake of social ease. None of us may actually love the cottage of childhood simply but we all can pretend a little, share what overlaps to create a sense of social unity to broker more exchanges.
Some eras have references of their general time. We have some overlapping experiences in a broad sense, of language and the material world. We may not catch it all, but even not being a fly fisherman, will catch some references.
Robert Fitterman and Vansessa Place’s “Notes on Conceptualisms” (PDF): http://t.co/dJyjvUbk

Allegorical writing is a writing of its time, saying slant what cannot be said directly, usually because of overtly repressive political regimes or the sacred nature of the message. In this sense, the allegory is dependent on its reader for completion

Can we have allegorical in our time? Or does that require one culture to embed things in? Meaning is made by having an overlap with the writer and reader but there’s an information gap. The writer extends something new, or else doesn’t and the reader is either dissatisfied, or else pleased to have starting expectations reinforced.
Peter Hughes’ new column at Poetry Bookshop online is Small Press Beat: Collaboration. The collaboration may be among two writers or the reader and the writer to make meaning.

Some poetry may become so fragmented, however, that its components fly free from the gravity of the poem altogether and may be experienced as disconnected particles randomly floating in a kind of entropy. The thresholds of tolerance for apparent disconnectedness vary from reader to reader.

The gap doesn’t have to be between reader and writer. A poem is a world made. Michael Dylan Welch in Improve your poetry with haiku points out:

9. Trust Juxtaposition
The other key characteristic of haiku is its two-part juxtapositional structure.

Like dramatic storytelling, jokes, or gardening there’s a set up of repetition and a reveal that causes an expectation and surprise.
Little surprises me. I don’t want to be led by the nose. I want to have something that takes up the best ratio for least time and most amusement. But a long shaggy dog story for a small payoff adds a variety in the diet too.
Where are you going with this?
I get that a lot with feedback. 25 years of people reading my thoughts and poems to get words like muddy, unclear, cluttered, “I don’t follow”, or “it’s probably my fault but I don’t get–”, [see a British tact guide]. I’m advised to thin it out, slow it down, explain more, always explain more. Is it a matter of skill or different tolerance levels for leaps? If I were a community of shared knowledge more of the time, I’d have more gratifying fast forward conversations than I do. Some people are willing to leap and don’t find the lack of directedness and point distressing. We can play.Some other tell me they feel stupid.
Communication is a cooperation. You can’t cooperate readily and run circles around the other. You have to walk at the same speed or run at the same speed and on the same trails in the same direction. Some people like to pick their way slowly and absorb everything. Some are there for the social gab, some dart about unevenly while others have a timed walk with heart-rate and destination scheduled goals. In any case it’s the journey.
People can write poetry about anything – even, yes, about the moon – and it’s the how that matters, not the what.
People can write poetry to good effect to demonstrate what it is to feel bummed, or protective indignation on an equity issue, or to illustrate the point that scary things are scary but it’ll all get better when the sun shines or whatever comforting or dramatic point. But the point isn’t the only point.
Part of it is about caring about the person not the subject. Any subject or style is just a way to pass the time. But if the subject or style is an impediment to the person, then what?
Chus Pato/Erin Moure in Charenton p. 88 in Trip: Itinerary

**essentialism: “ratio” (poem) centred in a unidirectional subject”
[…] METAPOETICS, for more information consult this author’s other works in prose

Which I found laugh out loud funny, as I did in several places, such as after a firmly words quote attributed in the body of the text was footnoted, basically, yeah, made up by the author. It breaks the laws of how things are done, which is a reliable sort of pleasure.
But back to that unidirectional subject.
People like things that track. It’s gratifying to reflect back and see there was a bread crumb trail all along and a new pattern is visible with hindsight, or if you’re clever enough, with foresight so you suspect where this is all going but like a well-built mystery, there are plausible red herring that you might be able to distinguish and you get a confirm at the end.
That makes for a participatory experience for a novel or movie. One can get pleasure in the retelling a story by the skill of how it is woven.
But it’s not the only way to make meaning.
Steph run’s Keats Kingdom and in the article there on Negative capability,

one had to be able to remain in what may be states of conflict without ‘irritably’ reaching after facts or reasons. By not imposing one self upon the doubts and uncertainties which make up a conflict, Keats would rather we were open to the Imagination.
The word ‘doubt’ it from the Latin, ‘dubitare’ and comes from ‘two’ as in two minds. In most conflicts, two people (i.e. two minds) oppose each other. Yet instead of fighting the other, Keats finds the situation to be one that is open for creativity.
In this sense, Negative Capability is a sublime expression of supreme empathy.

Empathy is staying open more than you have to, or perhaps, want to. Empathy requires being in a place where you’re not overwhelmed, life at the red limits. If you sustain empathy or lack of empathy too long, and get nothing, you get something: stress with no payoff, eventually a sense of martydom at trying. You’re in a mental posture to receive but aren’t getting anything and holding any position is tiring. That becomes a matter of trying too hard, straining emotionally, muscles tight.
There is a distinction between being able to absorb all fluxing sides, remain bothered without, for the sake of ease, deciding there is a binary right and wrong.
People seem to prefer to be told what the pov is and be persuaded well of one position so they know how to back it, or argue against it. One can respond emotionally and then respond differently emotionally or by argument and go back in forth in a tidy promenade. That seems to create a sort of artificial structure on top of things. It seems to think for people so they can then feel and move to thinking then argue a feeling to move you to think. It’s an odd little pingpong that makes things ever so handily sayable because the field of what is is made into a line drawing that animates.
We like boundaries of people vs. animals, inside vs. outside, nature vs. cities but they’re false distinctions. Sandra Alland in Blissful Times,

can you guess gender
from the shape of tongue
or the path of falling tears […]
tell the dictionaries to reconsider,
ask for it again

Most things aren’t distinct.
Back to that “unidirectional subject”. Communicative ease is things that are true, relevant, and precise as it needs to be for the context. But poetry isn’t chitchat and isn’t a business meeting with objectives to get to particular outcomes that are achieved or not achieved.
Why read what you already understand, and agree with? The impact and outcomes will diminish or exacerbate but not explain themselves. You might glean a tidbit for confirmation bias.
Why read what is beyond you? If one can enter the emotional payoff of being a junkie for feeling something emotional in a poem, can one not also be a junkie for being disoriented? I like reading a text that doesn’t direct me or itself to any great degree.
Mark Truscott wrote in his post The Mechanism of Meaning that in the context of editing for meaning to be precise that

implies the relation of one discrete thing to another through reference or contiguity, with a limited tolerance for bleed. Any spillover is then quickly taken up through notions of connotation and the like.

What if the function and purpose is not to create one emotional cascade towards closure? What if the purpose is open-ended exploring what is, not to present for inspection a set of decisions to have assessed as if it were a debate where each step can be met with a metric of classic argument and logic that supports or negates the thesis of the poem?
Back to Mechanisms of Meaning

[it] does not, as one might suspect, imply inattention or inarticulateness (though at one point the artists do advocate a “suspended confusion”).

The risk is the reader not feeling directed enough to consume all, not being self-motivated to engage or not as an equal explorer. In frustration the person expecting the writer to perform something of deep abiding meaning to lead the reader to a higher plain, doesn’t. The reader feels cheated and says the blame is the writer where the cause is the expectations. The writer in that case however may be playing a different game. Allowing conflict and confusion without resolution is just another kind of emotional tripping, another way to be dazzled, not by clarity and conviction in this case, but by a possibility like considering Schrödinger’s cat.
If one refuses to make one meaning, one is doing other things as well, refusing the mental syntax of hierarchy of writer over world, over reader, and the posture of binary. If one refuses to catalogue only what is affirming order in the world that is transcendent, one is backing the view, perhaps, of chaos theory over divine plan. The subtext of the choice to muddle and include and be oblique and be irrational without embracing the manically emotive is to position oneself in the world as an advocate of neutral and outwards rather than upward or downward spiral.
Is it compelling reading to watch someone sit and have no point to get to? Is that not just self-indulgent non-information that one need not attend to? If there’s a going that needs getting to. Is there is only now and paying attention and looking is an end in itself, that’s different.
Just as it can be a cop-out to always seek the click of closure, it can be deadening to the mind to by habit refuse that possibility. It’s not natural to relegate oneself to only 4/4 time or only to cacophony. It caricatures the self to roll selective perception into being identity. Some experiences are appropriate for form verse. Some things are appropriate for critical dissection, for dissolving grammar. Some things are at their core simple and served by simple contrasts. Some are bettered by letting the door open and letting a motley crew in. The author may monitor or control, understand to some degree or have just have a language house party with no one upshot. It is driven by the curiosity of the writer more than reader the oratory-need to convince that person. The reader is allowed to witness but is not directed. The readers can jump into conversation or go on and tell what they gleaned to themselves or others to keep the culturally useful bits moving within society. Eventually they may comprise components for the making of a new pat presumed meaning of how things work. They may be part of a future aha. If one only reads the pre-made aha! that is ready for consumption, the diet (or to keep the old metaphor the wardrobe, or to introduce another, the genetic variability among memes) is smaller.
Why would one want to say something to an audience without a leading argument instead of choosing silence or another thing to say?
To write open-ended is not a matter of early stage processing only and not only a matter of not cooperating ideologically. It’s also a matter of not being rushed to closure for closure’s sake. If you look without attempting to cap a morale onto things asap, larger and subtler patterns may rise. it’s not a denial that patterns can exist but an insistence that there isn’t only use in seeking patterns and in the patterns. It’s literally all ~~good~~ ~~neutral~~ a mixed bag.

autobiographical reflection

Versefest

Upcoming Reading: Winter In Air/Air Out launch

Refusing to Make One Significant Meaning

On Impurrfection

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