The Tristan Tzara Challenge

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The Tristan Tzara Penalty Challenge

First, some information on Tristan Tzara.

The obligatory Wikipedia link.

Here's the Columbia Encyclopedia on Dadaism

A coupla quotes:

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist.... We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

***

Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada. Anti-dadaism is a disease: selfkleptomania, man’s normal condition, is Dada. But the real dadas are against Dada.

***

Here is some of his work:


Vegetable Swallow

two smiles meet towards
the child-wheel of my zeal
the bloody baggage of creatures
made flesh in physical legends-lives

the nimble stags storms cloud over
rain falls under the scissors of
the dark hairdresser-furiously
swimming under the clashing arpeggios

in the machine's sap grass
grows around with sharp eyes
here the share of our caresses
dead and departed with the waves

gives itself up to the judgment of time
parted by the meridian of hairs
non strikes in our hands
the spices of human pleasures


****

Cinema Calendar Of The Abstract Heart

the fibres give in to your starry warmth
a lamp is called green and sees
carefully stepping into a season of fever
the wind has swept the rivers' magic
and i've perforated the nerve
by the clear frozen lake
has snapped the sabre
but the dance round terrace tables
shuts in the shock of the marble shudder
new sober


***


To Make A Dadist Poem

Take a newspaper.
Take some scissors.
Choose from this paper an article the length you want to make your poem.
Cut out the article.
Next carefully cut out each of the words that make up this article and put them all in a bag.
Shake gently.
Next take out each cutting one after the other.
Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
The poem will resemble you.
And there you are--an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.


The Great Lament Of My Obscurity Three

where we live the flowers of the clocks catch fire and the plumes encircle the brightness in the distant sulphur morning the cows lick the salt lilies
my son
my son
let us always shuffle through the colour of the world
which looks bluer than the subway and astronomy
we are too thin
we have no mouth
our legs are stiff and knock together
our faces are formeless like the stars
crystal points without strength burned basilica
mad : the zigzags crack
telephone
bite the rigging liquefy
the arc
climb
astral
memory
towards the north through its double fruit
like raw flesh
hunger fire blood


***

Proclamation Without Pretension

Art is going to sleep for a new world to be born
"ART"-parrot word-replaced by DADA,
PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief

The talent THAT CAN BE LEARNED makes the
poet a druggist TODAY the criticism
of balances no longer challenges with resemblances

Hypertrophic painters hyperaes-
theticized and hypnotized by the hyacinths
of the hypocritical-looking muezzins

CONSOLIDATE THE HARVEST OF EX-
ACT CALCULATIONS

Hypodrome of immortal guarantees: there is
no such thing as importance there is no transparence
or appearance

MUSICIANS SMASH YOUR INSTRUMENTS
BLIND MEN take the stage

THE SYRINGE is only for my understanding. I write because it is
natural exactly the way I piss the way I'm sick

ART NEEDS AN OPERATION

Art is a PRETENSION warmed by the
TIMIDITY of the urinary basin, the hysteria born
in THE STUDIO

We are in search of
the force that is direct pure sober
UNIQUE we are in search of NOTHING
we affirm the VITALITY of every IN-
STANT

the anti-philosophy of spontaneous acrobatics

At this moment I hate the man who whispers
before the intermission-eau de cologne-
sour theatre. THE JOYOUS WIND

If each man says the opposite it is because he is
right

Get ready for the action of the geyser of our blood
-submarine formation of transchromatic aero-
planes, cellular metals numbered in
the flight of images

above the rules of the
and its control

BEAUTIFUL

It is not for the sawed-off imps
who still worship their navel


***

Next: The Challenge.
 
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The actual challenge

This challenge may be addressed one of three ways:



1. Read To Make a Dadaist Poem. Follow the directions exactly. Post the results in this thread.

Bonus: explain how the poem resembles you.


2. A modification on that last exercise: write sets of three kinds of phrases: a noun phrase ("The noon wind", "a feral weasel"), a verb phrase ("wanders amiably", "shakes, rattles and rolls"), and a prepositional phrase ("around your nipples", "on top of the shed").

Place these phrases in separate bags. Draw them out in sets of three. Tweak the tense and pluralization accordingly and make a poem. You may arrange each set of three in different orders if you like.

Bonus: Take 3-5 of these generated sentences and write a glosa with them.


3. Write a poem that is strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding


You have one week from today. Review one another if you like, but review only if someone has requested it.

bj
 
Unbowed by the last challenge I am eager for this one. I'll just have to warm up on the sidelines by scrambling my syntax for a bit.
 
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:) you really must look up the exquisite corpse challenge.

Bride

precocious suede
pinched
the magenta breath,
slowly she drew another

vivacious linen
cramping
her fuscia style
achingly she felt again

traipsing velvet
along a red
carpeted aisle

well over a mile
in ill-fitting shoes,
tight corset
and white satin

for love​
 
cow .... of blue bells
.........quickly blinks
...........shut her eyes
.........before sweet
.........rain falls
from ......tall skies
......above
...........dewy flowers
...........weave around
.........grandiose
.......shabbily
....antique
stall
 
. . . .I

Need I remind you, princess,
They even have it written down somewhere.
. . . .Go! Hurry!
. . . .The mountains have been
Picked clean by the stars. Little scavengers.

The moon opens up the final socket book
How I fished for rockets
. . . . . . . . .In the quiet years
But now I fish for souls.
Childe Perceval to the dark woods came.
. . . . Lo! I must get back! They are calling!

But they have taken away the Earth in
railway cars, one hundred million cows
. . .and cities dark and unnamed.
Taken together it is a diagram of God.
Follow the instructions.
. . . .Anyone can get lost with this map.
 
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. . . .II

Yseult of the two rivers, of the two hills
. . .Bind me to the halo of your name forever.
The winding number of the tower is toward the Alephs
And setting, setting
To where I am entombed with this dream of you.

Be over her music, be the words that part her legs!
Be the clock’s two spears semaphoring distress.
 
. . . .III

At the foot of the volcano the black beach glows.
The sun is the part that is unwritten.

The rooftops! Red from the silence's spilled blood.
All curses and doves return in italics.
 
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I attempted number 2. I tweaked it a bit by writing phrases that were at least vaguely topically similar.


In flashing clouds the bright rush bursts in foam.
Under white tide, the flickering motion makes its way,
sun-struck. Insistent waves soak the earth.
In trickling caverns the tongue of steam flashes, dives
like rolling foam, the deep current coils surfaces.
In simple stone, mottled shadows roll between fields.
And underground, a bubbled path dives and soars
over the skin. Our bursting storm wakes the wash
into wind; silver ships wave like grass
in shifting light. Sharp mist presses through
from the plunge. This carved edge rolls the beat,
rings roundness, the purple shadows trickle in.
 
From bars evening jazz comedy
choices and calendar theatre.
Exciting fly shows, no experience
not number dining enticing below,
diverse mention are Caribbean
live incredible same ship cruises
~~~~~~destination~~~~~~

What does it say about me? I am so excited about the fly show and being enticed below oh and I always get to my destination in the end (I hope)
 
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I've been a lurker here for a week or so, but looking at this fun thread I felt I had to join in with a little effort of my own, cooked up for the purpose.

So hello everyone and here is a teensy bit of DaDa.



Ne croyez pas ceci

Don't believe this: I need it more than love.

Palm fronds grow alongside the white wall, each leaf
the size of a man.
These monsters of the daylight invent their own night-religion
parallel to the world.
A comma scissors through the mummified sky.

Don't believe this: I need it more than you.

In a dream the poison covers the world
like a green ocean.
Awake, she must simply enter a room. Try to wake up.
I am faithful, always, to the white garden
the white sun, the white shavings of the cherry-red sea.

Don't believe this: everything will be fine.
 
Discreet conundrums of meadowseet and willowherb
rosebay or otherwise colour the imagination
but nevertheless creep ever upwards
entangled in suffusion
onto broad banks of concerted memories
with sunshine labouring to reach the dawn.
Dew drenched participles play out the only
exciting grand distinctions between
rhizomes and tendrils entwined.
 

I dunno. Somehow those just don't feel the same to me.

There's just no real substitute for flesh.

But there's this: if computers wrote poetry for us, they wouldn't waste all their time bickering amongst themselves about it.

What we need is a program that will definitively say whether a poem is "good" or "bad."

Problem is, if we set it loose on Lit, it would end up in a situation like this.

bj
 
I dunno. Somehow those just don't feel the same to me.

There's just no real substitute for flesh.

But there's this: if computers wrote poetry for us, they wouldn't waste all their time bickering amongst themselves about it.

What we need is a program that will definitively say whether a poem is "good" or "bad."

Problem is, if we set it loose on Lit, it would end up in a situation like this.

bj

You're kidding — those computers are completely egotistical. Need I remind you of HAL. He'd kill you if you criticized his Ode to a Rheostat.
 
. . .Ode to a Rheostat.
Thermostat Lust

Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs.
—John McCarthy


When it's too hot in here,
I'm bimetallically limp.

But when it's cold? I'm sure
my metal's stiff. I'm plumped! I'm primped!
 
Thermostat Lust

Machines as simple as thermostats can be said to have beliefs.
—John McCarthy


When it's too hot in here,
I'm bimetallically limp.

But when it's cold? I'm sure
my metal's stiff. I'm plumped! I'm primped!
There's another use for a bimetallic strip...
Welcome to my Wheatstone bridge.
 
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