Challenge: Full of Sound and Fury

[unpredictablebijou]

This may seem facetiously overstated at times, but I'm really trying to get at something important here, so bear with me.

We all seem to agree that images are essential to poetry. They are almost as essential to poetry as the words themselves. But if poetry does nothing but communicate an image, albeit with emotional overtones – if it does nothing but show a picture or series of pictures that have an underlying meaning, then really it is a secondary medium and simply a poor substitute for visual art. Paintings, photography and film all do the same thing even more efficiently, by actually showing a picture and adding a story, an emotional overtone, an implication. They use color, focus, shape and even, in the case of film, sound, movement and dialogue to do many of the same things we claim to want to do with a poem: put a reader into an image, a scene, a situation.

So why bother writing words on paper to communicate an image? Why not just communicate the image more directly, with, well, an image? Or a whole scene, scripted and directed, with special lenses and sound to add all the information and meaning you want to impose?

Which is the sort of thought process that leads me to the whole question of language and whether or not it's a virus from outer space.

What are words for, anyway? What do they do to, and for, an audience that visual art and film cannot do, if anything? Why use words alone, if the goal is merely to tell a story, describe a scene, display an image, imply a meaning or context or conclusion for these things?

I suggest that words can work on the brain in ways that move entirely beyond, underneath, their actual meaning.

The first levels of that argument are obvious. They have to do with the sound of a particular word, and with its connotations. If I'm writing a poem about falling heavy rocks, I generally choose words with a particular assonance, and if I'm writing about falling delicate snowflakes I'd probably use different words. Okay so far? And obviously, one does think quite deeply beyond the denotation of a word when it is used in a poem. “Light”, “pale” and “white” all have different tones within a poem.

Nu?

Okay, what I'm getting at is that sometimes words work even more deeply than that. Irrational syntax, weird portmanteau words, phrases chosen MORE for sound than meaning, MORE for their rhythm, or their impact on the other senses, or perhaps for something they do to the hindbrain.

In the following posts are a few famous examples in which I see this happening. They break rules. They contain weird words and phrases, things that are unconventional, things that don't make sense to the rational mind. They have been vilified for their incomprehensibility. There are folks in this village who would perhaps assert that they are pieces of worthless crap. But they work, at least for one or two people, at least for me. They clearly have an audience. And when I read them, with my entire mind open to the sensation, before I start taking the syntax apart, important things happen and messages get through.

The challenge for this thread is both formal and informal. Informally, I dare you to find more examples, and figure out why they work, if they work, and what exactly it is they “do” that “works” or “doesn't”.

I also dare you to post your own attempts, or pieces in which you felt like you were moving toward this sort of approach.

And furthermore, I dare you to choose one of your own pieces, most preferably something that could be called “erotic,” to enter into a contest I'm calling, quite randomly, “Full of Sound and Fury.” Here are the details:

Poems for the (first wave of the) contest must be posted on or before Sunday, January 20th. I will take those submissions somewhere. I haven't decided yet. There's this coffeehouse that would probably let me post them as an art exhibit. There's the bar, or shop customers, or else I know several other groups who might let me abuse them with some poetry.

The question I will ask of those audiences is this: Is this poem better read aloud or silently? I'll encourage other comments as well, and I think that's where the real response to the poems will be apparent. I welcome anyone else to take the same pieces to their own microcultures and get some feedback.

If you just want to post some stuff in this thread and get discussion about its effects, feel free to do so. I will only include pieces that are clearly marked “Challenge Entry” or something like that in the set that I take round with me and have critiqued by various audiences.

So get yer right brain all limbered up. For myself, I know I've gotten real buff on the dorsolateral functions lately but could maybe use a little more of a limbic workout.

affectionately
bijou

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Some interesting examples

Fever 103°
by Sylvia Plath

Pure? What does it mean?
The tongues of hell
Are dull, dull as the triple

Tongues of dull, fat Cerebus
Who wheezes at the gate. Incapable
Of licking clean

The aguey tendon, the sin, the sin.
The tinder cries.
The indelible smell

Of a snuffed candle!
Love, love, the low smokes roll
From me like Isadora's scarves, I'm in a fright

One scarf will catch and anchor in the wheel.
Such yellow sullen smokes
Make their own element. They will not rise,

But trundle round the globe
Choking the aged and the meek,
The weak

Hothouse baby in its crib,
The ghastly orchid
Hanging its hanging garden in the air,

Devilish leopard!
Radiation turned it white
And killed it in an hour.

Greasing the bodies of adulterers
Like Hiroshima ash and eating in.
The sin. The sin.

Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

Three days. Three nights.
Lemon water, chicken
Water, water make me retch.

I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God. I am a lantern ----

My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.

Does not my heat astound you. And my light.
All by myself I am a huge camellia
Glowing and coming and going, flush on flush.

I think I am going up,
I think I may rise ----
The beads of hot metal fly, and I, love, I

Am a pure acetylene
Virgin
Attended by roses,

By kisses, by cherubim,
By whatever these pink things mean.
Not you, nor him.

Not him, nor him
(My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats) ----
To Paradise.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Examples from Gertrude Stein

Susie Asado

Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.
Susie Asado.
Susie Asado which is a told tray sure.
A lean on the shoe this means slips slips hers.
When the ancient light grey is clean it is yellow, it is a silver seller.
This is a please this is a please there are the saids to jelly.
These are the wets these say the sets to leave a crown to Incy.
Incy is short of incubus.
A pot. A pot is a beginning of a rare bit of trees. Trees tremble,
the old vats are in bobbles, bobbles which shade and shove and
render clean, render clean must.
Drink pups.
Drink pups drink pups lease a sash hold, see it shine and a bobolink
has pins. It shows a nail.
What is a nail. A nail is unison.
Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea.


***


A LONG DRESS.

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is
the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is
this current.

What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark
place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue,
a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line
just distinguishes it.



A PETTICOAT.

A light white, a disgrace, an ink spot, a rosy charm.




A WAIST.

A star glide, a single frantic sullenness, a single financial grass
greediness.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

From Dylan Thomas

If I Were Tickled By the Rub of Love


If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.

Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.

Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the loin
Nor the outspoken grave.

If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the crabs and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.

This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.

And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his sex
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.

And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Two final examples

i have found what you are like
by e.e. cummings

i have found what you are like
the rain

(Who feathers frightened fields​

with the superior dust-of-sleep. wields
easily the pale club of the wind
and swirled justly souls of flower strike
the air in utterable coolness
deeds of gren thrilling light

with thinned​

newfragile yellows

lurch and.press​

--in the woods

which​

stutter​

and​

sing​

And the coolness of your smile is
stirringofbirds between my arms;but
i should rather than anything
have(almost when hugeness will shut
quietly)almost,

your kiss​

***


Cinema Calendar Of The Abstract Heart
by Tristan Tzara

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

 

[Angeline]

Art is effective to the extent that it engages the imagination, yes? But what does effective mean in terms of art? For me it's the concept of the willing suspension of disbelief, which is normally used to describe an audience's reaction to a play. If you are in the audience but become so involved in the action of the play that you are, in your imagination, transported into the experience of the play, you have suspended your disbelief. I think this happens when we react to a certain painting or sculpture, when we listen to music that really moves us, and when we read something that really touches us. It's beyond intellectual understanding. I can appreciate something for its skill or brilliance, but it's not the same as the emotional, visceral reaction I have when I listen to certain jazz compositions, for example.

And in terms of poetry, I have a great intellectual appreciation for T.S Eliot and Wallace Stevens (again, for example), but I don't feel their poetry in my heart the way I do with some poems that have, I guess, an incantatory, musical quality.

Here is a poet who has this quality for me. Her name is Forugh Farrokhzad. All her poems I've seen are translated from Persian (though I believe she also wrote in English), and sometimes the translation obviously fails, but even so her poetry has a beautiful, chanting quality to me.


Forugh Farrokhzad
Border Walls
(Translated by Layli Arbab Shirani)

Now again in the silent night,
sequestrant walls, border walls
like plants entwine,
so they may be the guardians of my love.

Now again the town's evil murmurs
like agitated schools of fish
flee the darkness of my extremities.

Now again windows rediscover themselves
in the pleasure of contact with scattered perfumes,
and trees, in slumberous orchards, shed their bark,
and soil, with its thousand inlets
inhales the dizzy particles of the moon.

Now
come closer
and listen
to the anguished beats of my love,
that spread
like the tom-tom of African drums
along the tribe of my limbs.

I feel
I know
which moment
is the moment of prayer.

Now stars
are lovers.

In night's refuge,
from innermost breezes, I waft.
In night's refuge, I
tumble madly forth
with my ample tresses, in your palms,
and I offer you the equatorial flowers of this young tropic.

Come with me,
come to that star with me
that is centuries away
from earth's concretion and futile scales,
and no one there
is afraid of light.

On islands adrift upon the waters, I breathe.
I am in search of a share in the expansive sky,
void of the swell of vile thoughts.

Refer with me,
refer with me
to the source of all being,
to the sanctified center of a single origin,
to the moment I was created from you
refer with me,
I am not complete from you.

Now,
on the peaks of my breasts,
doves are flying.
Now,
within the cocoon of my lips,
butterfly kisses are immersed in thoughts of flight.
Now,
the altar of my body
is ready for love's worship.

Refer with me,
I'm powerless to speak
because I love you,
because "I love you" is a phrase
from the world of futilities
and antiquities and redundancies.
Refer with me,
I'm powerless to speak.

In night's refuge, let me make love to the moon,
let me be filled
with tiny raindrops,
with undeveloped hearts,
with the volume of the unborn,
let me be filled.
Maybe my love
will cradle the birth of another Christ.

*************************************
Forough Farrokhzah
The Wind-Up Doll

More than this, yes
more than this one can stay silent.

With a fixed gaze
like that of the dead
one can stare for long hours
at the smoke rising from a cigarette
at the shape of a cup
at a faded flower on the rug
at a fading slogan on the wall.

One can draw back the drapes
with wrinkled fingers and watch
rain falling heavy in the alley
a child standing in a doorway
holding colorful kites
a rickety cart leaving the deserted square
in a noisy rush

One can stand motionless
by the drapes—blind, deaf.

One can cry out
with a voice quite false, quite remote
“I love…”
in a man’s domineering arms
one can be a healthy, beautiful female

With a body like a leather tablecloth
with two large and hard breasts,
in bed with a drunk, a madman, a tramp
one can stain the innocence of love.

One can degrade with guile
all the deep mysteries
one can keep on figuring out crossword puzzles
happily discover the inane answers
inane answers, yes—of five or six letters.

With bent head, one can
kneel a lifetime before the cold gilded grill of a tomb
one can find God in a nameless grave
one can trade one’s faith for a worthless coin
one can mold in the corner of a mosque
like an ancient reciter of pilgrim’s prayers.
one can be constant, like zero
whether adding, subtracting, or multiplying.
one can think of your --even your—eyes
in their cocoon of anger
as lusterless holes in a time-worn shoe.
one can dry up in one’s basin, like water.

With shame one can hide the beauty of a moment’s togetherness
at the bottom of a chest
like an old, funny-looking snapshot,
in a day’s empty frame one can display
the picture of an execution, a crucifixion, or a martyrdom,
One can cover the crack in the wall with a mask
one can cope with images more hollow than these.

One can be like a wind-up doll
and look at the world with eyes of glass,
one can lie for years in lace and tinsel
a body stuffed with straw
inside a felt-lined box,
at every lustful touch
for no reason at all
one can give out a cry
“Ah, so happy am I!”’



I have to think about who else does this for me. Definitely some of Yeats' poetry, probably some of Ted Berrigan's, too, but Farrokhzad's poetry sounds ancient and biblical to me. Sort of like the Song of Songs (Solomon).

 

[Liar]

So why bother writing words on paper to communicate an image? Why not just communicate the image more directly, with, well, an image? Or a whole scene, scripted and directed, with special lenses and sound to add all the information and meaning you want to impose?

Which is the sort of thought process that leads me to the whole question of language and whether or not it's a virus from outer space.

What are words for, anyway? What do they do to, and for, an audience that visual art and film cannot do, if anything? Why use words alone, if the goal is merely to tell a story, describe a scene, display an image, imply a meaning or context or conclusion for these things?

Why use words to comunicate a picture instead of showing a picture?

Why use brush and paint to communicate a picture instead of just showing a photograph?

Because you don't communicate a picture to show what's there. You communicate a picture to show what you see. Big difference.

A photo is actually a quite tricky tool to communicate a picture with. It has a tendency to leak irrelevance into the picture - information that decrease the signal-to-noise ratio you attempt to maximize. A poem is much better at this. It can effectively filter out all the useless info, and focus exclusively on what is important in a certain image.



I'll have to get back to you on the challenge bit of this. I suck at digging up poem examples. And most I read are not in English anyway.

I know I've done what you are looking for in many of my own poems though. I once proclaimed myself to be a "prosody artist" instead, when discussing the subject with someone with a more puritan approach to poetry than me. Lemme see what I can find.

 

[champagne1982]

What are words for, anyway? What do they do to, and for, an audience that visual art and film cannot do, if anything? Why use words alone, if the goal is merely to tell a story, describe a scene, display an image, imply a meaning or context or conclusion for these things? <...>

The challenge for this thread is both formal and informal. Informally, I dare you to find more examples, and figure out why they work, if they work, and what exactly it is they “do” that “works” or “doesn't”.

I also dare you to post your own attempts, or pieces in which you felt like you were moving toward this sort of approach.

And furthermore, I dare you to choose one of your own pieces, most preferably something that could be called “erotic,” to enter into a contest I'm calling, quite randomly, “Full of Sound and Fury.” Here are the details:

Poems for the (first wave of the) contest must be posted on or before Sunday, January 20th. I will take those submissions somewhere. I haven't decided yet. There's this coffeehouse that would probably let me post them as an art exhibit. There's the bar, or shop customers, or else I know several other groups who might let me abuse them with some poetry. <...>

So get yer right brain all limbered up. For myself, I know I've gotten real buff on the dorsolateral functions lately but could maybe use a little more of a limbic workout.

affectionately
bijou

Well, I may not be full of sound and fury but I am full of something, probably resulting from the past 2 days worth of feasting and over-indulgence.

I use words, alone, to tell a story, simply because words are intimate. My love poems are meant to be whispered by lips feathering breath against my darling's ear, my fuck poems should be enjoyed with pitch modulation adjusted to fit the stages of arousal... I hope I choose words that sound like that. Language carries so much expression of emotion that to deny a story the fullblown beauty of words is to deny our imaginations the pleasure of forming our own impressions.

I'm proud of this erotica (Red Pulp Underground likes it, too and has promised this and another a berth in their soon-to-be launched print anthology). Please feel free to use this in your challenge thingie.

I think my word choices have just the proper amount of sibilance to insinuate the secret naughtiness of masturbation and a perfect liquidity to annotate wet arousal. At any rate, if it's not successful for anyone else, it definitely hums against my sexiness.

Breathless Metamorphosis

I can't keep my hands still
against the cool linen sheets
instead they stretch
each finger luxuriates
catlike as they press nerves
into sensation.

I can't stop my touch
wandering closer
heat beckons fingertips
with warmth and promises
pleasurable wetness.

My metamorphosis so sudden,
from hand to tongue, the tip
twisting infinity around juicy
sustenance, served on platters
of pelvis and hip. Offered
without reservation and taking
much more.

I don't want my fingers to stop
the pressure; swollen, burst,
splash of scalding heat
over my belly and dripped
along the crease to spill
over into amazing.

 

[hmmnmm]

So why bother writing words on paper to communicate an image?

Because I can't draw.
I wish I could draw cartoons.
I'd rather be a better guitar player.
but expressive imagery comes easier to me with words than with drawings or guitar notes, so it's what I'm stuck with, although I do love the camera (film, not digital) and shooting flowers and trees, but haven't carried it around in a long time.
Well, this tempts an entirely different thread topic, another I've pondered long.
Why is life this way?

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Art is effective to the extent that it engages the imagination, yes?

***
And in terms of poetry, I have a great intellectual appreciation for T.S Eliot and Wallace Stevens (again, for example), but I don't feel their poetry in my heart the way I do with some poems that have, I guess, an incantatory, musical quality.

***
.

"Musical" is an important quality. These are excellent points. And yes (remember I did say I was wandering toward the facetious with this argument, just to get it going) what words do that a photograph or artwork cannot is "chant" - it is an incantation.

Liar:
Why use words to comunicate a picture instead of showing a picture?

Why use brush and paint to communicate a picture instead of just showing a photograph?

Because you don't communicate a picture to show what's there. You communicate a picture to show what you see. Big difference.

A photo is actually a quite tricky tool to communicate a picture with. It has a tendency to leak irrelevance into the picture - information that decrease the signal-to-noise ratio you attempt to maximize. A poem is much better at this. It can effectively filter out all the useless info, and focus exclusively on what is important in a certain image.

Well said. Although, to continue to be a bit facetious, it is possible in both photography and visual art to sculpt an image, through effects, lenses, shadow, mise en scene, that sort of thing, to show an audience what you see, to filter out everything but the idea you want to communicate. Technology has made it possible for even amateur artists to do exactly what they want to do with visual artwork. My point is only that if an image, a visual scene or visual event, however colored by emotional context, is the only thing a poem communicates, then most poems would be better as visual art, at least now that we have nearly infinite artistic capability through computerized tools.

I'm not arguing, really. Just exploring these ideas.

Champagne:
I use words, alone, to tell a story, simply because words are intimate. My love poems are meant to be whispered by lips feathering breath against my darling's ear, my fuck poems should be enjoyed with pitch modulation adjusted to fit the stages of arousal... I hope I choose words that sound like that. Language carries so much expression of emotion that to deny a story the fullblown beauty of words is to deny our imaginations the pleasure of forming our own impressions.

I'm proud of this erotica (Red Pulp Underground likes it, too and has promised this and another a berth in their soon-to-be launched print anthology). Please feel free to use this in your challenge thingie.

I think my word choices have just the proper amount of sibilance to insinuate the secret naughtiness of masturbation and a perfect liquidity to annotate wet arousal. At any rate, if it's not successful for anyone else, it definitely hums against my sexiness.

This is an excellent point, (and very sexily made, by the way - I have the vapors now) and perhaps part of why I thought a good way to judge these pieces would be to think in terms of reading them aloud. Spoken words are incredibly powerful, and even when one reads a poem silently, one can often "hear" the words in one's head. I find I'm tempted to make many of my pieces in second person, some imperative or direct address, and I think that's why - that I hope a reader will hear my voice. That's what becomes more powerful than images: the sound of a voice.

hmmnmm:
Because I can't draw.
I wish I could draw cartoons.
I'd rather be a better guitar player.
but expressive imagery comes easier to me with words than with drawings or guitar notes, so it's what I'm stuck with, although I do love the camera (film, not digital) and shooting flowers and trees, but haven't carried it around in a long time.
Well, this tempts an entirely different thread topic, another I've pondered long.
Why is life this way?

lol! good point. I can't draw very well either. But I can make words all day. Not necessarily good words, but there's generally a pony in there somewhere.

That's TWO threads you need to start now.

bj

 

[Liar]

Well said. Although, to continue to be a bit facetious, it is possible in both photography and visual art to sculpt an image, through effects, lenses, shadow, mise en scene, that sort of thing, to show an audience what you see, to filter out everything but the idea you want to communicate. Technology has made it possible for even amateur artists to do exactly what they want to do with visual artwork.

True. But at some level of control over the photographic content, it does in fact become, for all intenyts and purposes, a painiting. Only "painted" with different tools. And that's only a level or three of abstraction away from a non visual cue. Consider the classic semiotic example of...the chair.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e394/mi_liar/abstraction.jpg

My point is only that if an image, a visual scene or visual event, however colored by emotional context, is the only thing a poem communicates, then most poems would be better as visual art, at least now that we have nearly infinite artistic capability through computerized tools.

I'm not so sure. Again with the chair. At what level of aabstraction did it stop being a chair? Never. What it did was stop being a specific chair. The idea of the chair remains intact with the word. If you need to specify a property of the chair (and most of the time you probably don't), add the right adjective. The first image contains a hundred adjectives. The second still have a dozen, even the fourth has properties that may be irrelevant. But the word is the essence of the idea.

it also makes the image universal. The reader can apply whatever properties they feel comfortable with. If you show a picture of a "comfy chair", you'll have a part of your audience thinking "oh, much too soft, that will kill my back". If you say "comfy chair", it's everybody's comfy chair.


Now, considering this has squat all to do with sound and fury, maybe it's a topic for a different thread?

 

[champagne1982]

"Musical" is an important quality. <...>

This is an excellent point, (and very sexily made, by the way - I have the vapors now) and perhaps part of why I thought a good way to judge these pieces would be to think in terms of reading them aloud. Spoken words are incredibly powerful, and even when one reads a poem silently, one can often "hear" the words in one's head. I find I'm tempted to make many of my pieces in second person, some imperative or direct address, and I think that's why - that I hope a reader will hear my voice. That's what becomes more powerful than images: the sound of a voice. <...>

bj

Yes, musical rhythm and tonal qualities are important in many poems, Ang captures this so well in many of hers. (What was that challenge over in Eve's Habit, where we were to try to create a poem that was almost onomatopeic? Do you remember, Ang?)

The other point you stress is the oral nature (aural?) of poetry. Consider our (English and Gallic) history of teaching and entertainment. No one except priests and those of non-Christian faiths could read and write so most lessons were taught in church or by the minstrels and bards that wandered as part of a mummer troupe. Most were in sing song, chants and rhymey tunes so that they were mnemonic in nature and unforgettable by the populace.

That's where the beauty of it all lies, is to carry the hope that we will be unforgettable in the poetic lessons we teach. I'm going to show you a couple of my more iambically playful rhymers... I don't think they are designed to arouse in a sexual way, but I like to imagine people tapping their toe or nodding their head in some kind of dance...

Naked Mango

Move inside the rhythm,
my sexy dancer boy.
Your hips in measured drumbeats,
my luscious, mango toy.

I want to feel you push
the song, in two four slap:
your hips, in pleasured heartbeats,
baiting the mango trap.

We speak of mango sunsets
and of sweeter mango pink.
I'm sure there's mango juice
dripping in my kitchen sink.

I swear I stand here naked,
my melons, firm and round,
my skin, unblemished and stretched tight.
Look! A mango found.

Step in close behind me,
wrapping all around our dance.
How I need your strength tonight,
to lead our mango trance.

You twist and mango twirl me
and kiss my mango throat,
on my stove, cook mango syrup,
float my mango gravy boat.

Now we've found the rhythm,
my sexy dancer boy.
Dancing tangos in my kitchen
bringing love and mango joy.

and even more nonsensically:

Papaya Lane

I'll show you the way down papaya lane,
to the place where the mangos grow,
then lead you astray in our little grass shack,
at the edge of a coconut grove.

We'll dance in the light of the tropical sun
to the music of butterfly wings,
as they dip their tongues in deep nectar wells,
making wax-petalled orchid blooms sing.

Come hula with me; sway those luscious hips,
in that sinuous way you dance.
Twisting your arms, in hypnotic swirls,
spin a libidinous trance.

Sweet lover of mine, I cannot deny,
the need that your presence inspires,
in my secret place of flower-lipped dew,
grown steamy in dark-eyed fires.

Now, lead me astray in our little grass shack
with your kisses of nectar-sweet wine,
and when the moon glints off the waves of the bay,
I'll love you and make you mine.

Neither of these poems are meant to make cooking or botanical history. I just wanted to rouse a smile. If I wanted to get up to something else, I definitely wouldn't have used rhyme and iambs (at least without enjambment tempering the lyrical qualities). Go on, have an orgasm on me you lil auralsexual ...
:caning:

 

[unpredictablebijou]

True. But at some level of control over the photographic content, it does in fact become, for all intenyts and purposes, a painiting. Only "painted" with different tools. And that's only a level or three of abstraction away from a non visual cue. Consider the classic semiotic example of...the chair.

http://i43.photobucket.com/albums/e394/mi_liar/abstraction.jpg

I'm not so sure. Again with the chair. At what level of aabstraction did it stop being a chair? Never. What it did was stop being a specific chair. The idea of the chair remains intact with the word. If you need to specify a property of the chair (and most of the time you probably don't), add the right adjective. The first image contains a hundred adjectives. The second still have a dozen, even the fourth has properties that may be irrelevant. But the word is the essence of the idea.

it also makes the image universal. The reader can apply whatever properties they feel comfortable with. If you show a picture of a "comfy chair", you'll have a part of your audience thinking "oh, much too soft, that will kill my back". If you say "comfy chair", it's everybody's comfy chair.


Now, considering this has squat all to do with sound and fury, maybe it's a topic for a different thread?

No no, this is sorta what I was looking for, in my bizarre and tangential way. It's not that I actually think poetry is pointless, obviously. I wouldn't be here. I just like the idea of exploring what words do within a poem that is, as much as possible, independent of their actual denotation.

Like when I read Stein, and seem to really understand exactly what she's describing, what she's trying to say in a piece, I tend to want to know why. Susie Asado is one of my favorites of hers, because on the surface, with only the left brain engaged, it's gibberish, but with the entire system engaged, it's a hot lesbian sex scene.

Why? What do those words do, that makes that happen? I don't pretend to have the answers. That's why I started this thread.

I've tried to emulate her, or Plath, or Thomas in this way. What I notice is that some pieces work and some are beyond stupid, and even if I know which is which, sometimes I don't know exactly why.

At the bottom line, it just sorta fascinates me, this particular function of Words.

Champagne:

The other point you stress is the oral nature (aural?) of poetry. Consider our (English and Gallic) history of teaching and entertainment. No one except priests and those of non-Christian faiths could read and write so most lessons were taught in church or by the minstrels and bards that wandered as part of a mummer troupe. Most were in sing song, chants and rhymey tunes so that they were mnemonic in nature and unforgettable by the populace.

That's where the beauty of it all lies, is to carry the hope that we will be unforgettable in the poetic lessons we teach.

Gorgeous. Indeed. One example: during the Burning Times, those folks who were still actually practicing the old religion could get brought up on charges for keeping a book of spells or lore. So everyone went back to the old way, teaching concepts with rhyme. One way I often know that a teaching is pretty old is because it's a memorable little rhyme. Like "water and earth, where thou art cast, no spell or adverse purpose last, Air and fire this charge I lay, no phantom in thy presence stay." Probably very old, and quite easily taught.

Neither of these poems are meant to make cooking or botanical history. I just wanted to rouse a smile. If I wanted to get up to something else, I definitely wouldn't have used rhyme and iambs (at least without enjambment tempering the lyrical qualities). Go on, have an orgasm on me you lil auralsexual ...

If anyone needs me I'll be making a call on the Princess phone.

bj

 

[Liar]

For a little something where the sound and location (or sometimes dislocation) of words is as important as the message they are supposed to communicate... here are two piece I wrote. They (and especially the first one) are attempts to let the sound and rhythm of the words reflect the imagery or concept I try to write about. Whether it succeeded or not, I'll leave to someone else to judge.



Little By Little

Little by little
and by and by and by
means so small
that fidget and fiddle
and ache and make
would make no sound at all,

you skiddle and fiddle and
fidget finger by finger that step
and stop and linger
on anger and hunger and
anything in between
that rather and really
should stay if not untouched
at least unseen.

Little by little you
trip on a tremble
and flutter and blink,
turn coal into carousel scarlet
and brick into butterscotch pink.

Flutter and blink and flicker
and twink and fiddle and skiddle and fun,
you fumble and lips tips stumble
across this tense, and if you mumble
this close something might make sense
just a little by little
leave little fingerprints by and by
to guide down the sun.

It needs to be nothing but little by little,
a fumble a stumble a fiddle,
to get the job done.




Tessa Monia

send me spinning
through words like vapor
virelays wielding vocal wings
tuning this lyre
with silken spun strings

the first tremble
tries to assemble
articulation and arpeggio
without arrière-pensée
and nothing but a naked
virginal ethos
that can harmonise
with an everlasting
escalation
of your
song

it is music
but it is whispered
through grapevine illusions
and memory mist
hiding a risible swarm
of pure intentions
ready to break through
and sink
a sharp but sweet
sting of jubilance
into my veins

 

[unpredictablebijou]

*laughing, clapping hands*

but EXACTLY.

Here's a thing I notice, and maybe this is one keystone in what happens.

Even in the most radical examples that I posted, the pieces by Stein and Tzara (Tristan, not Our Own) and in your two pieces, there is still a clear syntax. There are sentences, with relatively standard structures. Within them the words may do very strange and unconventional things, but the ear hears a string of what seems to be complete thoughts, with standard connecting words.

The articles, the helping verbs, the conjunctions, these are the "least poetic" words, the ones we are told contain no real poetry. Yet here they are the basic framework on which these Chihuly-like constructions grow in their weird ways.

Just having a moment of hm.

bijou

 

[Liar]

The articles, the helping verbs, the conjunctions, these are the "least poetic" words, the ones we are told contain no real poetry.

Yah, I've always thought that's a bit of shennanigans.

Look at this poem by a Lit author from my Bookmarks stack.

The poetry is IMO here not in the active nouns and verbs, or even in the images so flowery described. It's in the article "you" and in the shift in style and voice between the main body of the poem and the repeated parenthesis. And in the slightly obsessive repetition of this shift in perspective.

If poetry was all about the images, all about the information dense words, and nothing about prosody, cadence, style, voice, tense and tempo choices, then this wouldn't be a poem.

Some might say it's not. Their loss.

Sky
by No Bagles©

Tonight the dome glows
like a dome just can't,
(you would say)
not actually for real, right?

Mirages of racing Laputa rocks
skims the horizon,
spider web superstratic
mist trails shift from purple black
to cotton candy pink
and back, an impossible
(again, you)
kaleidoscope of cloud,
until reaching zenith.

Then evaporate
with the cyan to black enigma
into a deep space vacuum.
Constellations wink in jest
behind our backs.

And the moon,
well,
(just like you)
the moon is nowhere
to be found.

 

[Angeline]

*laughing, clapping hands*

but EXACTLY.

Here's a thing I notice, and maybe this is one keystone in what happens.

Even in the most radical examples that I posted, the pieces by Stein and Tzara (Tristan, not Our Own) and in your two pieces, there is still a clear syntax. There are sentences, with relatively standard structures. Within them the words may do very strange and unconventional things, but the ear hears a string of what seems to be complete thoughts, with standard connecting words.

The articles, the helping verbs, the conjunctions, these are the "least poetic" words, the ones we are told contain no real poetry. Yet here they are the basic framework on which these Chihuly-like constructions grow in their weird ways.

Just having a moment of hm.

bijou

Did you say Chihuly? Like Dale Chihuly? Oh I love his work. When I win the lottery, I want one of his glass installations, hmmm maybe around my bathtub or in my bedroom. He manages to be alien and organic at the same time. I may do an Eckphrastic of his art.

http://www.askart.com/AskART/assets/artist/88892/DaleChihulySummary.jpg

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Yah, I've always thought that's a bit of shennanigans.

Look at this poem by a Lit author from my Bookmarks stack.

The poetry is IMO here not in the active nouns and verbs, or even in the images so flowery described. It's in the article "you" and in the shift in style and voice between the main body of the poem and the repeated parenthesis. And in the slightly obsessive repetition of this shift in perspective.

If poetry was all about the images, all about the information dense words, and nothing about prosody, cadence, style, voice, tense and tempo choices, then this wouldn't be a poem.

Some might say it's not. Their loss.

Sky
by No Bagles©

Tonight the dome glows
like a dome just can't,
(you would say)
not actually for real, right?

Mirages of racing Laputa rocks
skims the horizon,
spider web superstratic
mist trails shift from purple black
to cotton candy pink
and back, an impossible
(again, you)
kaleidoscope of cloud,
until reaching zenith.

Then evaporate
with the cyan to black enigma
into a deep space vacuum.
Constellations wink in jest
behind our backs.

And the moon,
well,
(just like you)
the moon is nowhere
to be found.

An initial aside. Yes, Ange, The very same Chihuly. I love his stuff. You are hereby commanded by the gods themselves, via me, to do an ekphrastic piece about Chihuly.
My father got to go see the Venice installation in 1996 and lorded it over me for months afterward. He brought me a little programme from the exhibit. Bastard.

anyway, so this poem is a great example of something that works beyond the meaning of the words. But what I noticed, and it's part of what I'm starting to explore with these techniques, is this one set of lines that hiccupped for me, not because of the word choices, but because my mind thought it noticed a subject-verb agreement problem, right here:

Mirages of racing Laputa rocks
skims the horizon,
spider web superstratic

And here my mind, all entranced by these very abstract ideas, says, wait. Shouldn't that be "skim"?

So can we then deduce that part of what a piece like this does is make a sensible frame, in order to keep the logical, language-based bits of our minds happy, and that that framework then allows the left brain to feel secure enough to let the right brain participate more fully in the experience?

Language is a function of the left brain. (the trendier theories are now referring more to a difference between dorsolateral and limbic functions, rather than left and right brain, but I'll stick to the familiar here)

So if poetry is made of language, it must by definition pass through the linear, rational gates of the left brain if it wants to get anywhere at all. Traditional syntax allows it to do so, but puts the rational bits off guard with non-traditional usage within this frame: "What is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist", and the emotional agenda of the poem can sorta sneak in under the fence while the border guards are still trying to figure out what's going on.

Just a theory, of course.

bijou

 

[Tzara]

Did you say Chihuly? Like Dale Chihuly? Oh I love his work. When I win the lottery, I want one of his glass installations, hmmm maybe around my bathtub or in my bedroom. He manages to be alien and organic at the same time. I may do an Eckphrastic of his art.

http://www.askart.com/AskART/assets/artist/88892/DaleChihulySummary.jpg

Oh please no. The guy is, well not exactly a fake, but hardly IMO great artist. I could recommend like several glass artists more distinctive. Chihuly is The One Who Is Known.

I can't get away from the guy. He lives in Seattle and I've run across him traveling to London and Venice and Paris and New York and like almost Bumfuck, Iowa. He's the McDonald's of glass art.

Sorry. Tense.

Try William Morris or Lino Tagliapietra or Ginny Ruffner. I mean, like, Chihuly isn't bad, but like everywhere.

Guy basically invented modern studio glass. I'll give him that. Maybe I've seen too much. He's like everywhere in Seattle.

He could probably do a good bathroom for $50,000 or so.

Try someone like Jeremy Lepisto instead. Value for money, eh?

Ah, hum, art. Opinioniatialé.

DC's OK, I guess. Not (as you might guess) my choice.

Bedroom? Prolly too fragile. But then the missus and I wander. Just sayin'.

 

[annaswirls]

Lino Tagliapietra

damn, this is some gorgeous work!

 

[Angeline]

Oh please no. The guy is, well not exactly a fake, but hardly IMO great artist. I could recommend like several glass artists more distinctive. Chihuly is The One Who Is Known.

I can't get away from the guy. He lives in Seattle and I've run across him traveling to London and Venice and Paris and New York and like almost Bumfuck, Iowa. He's the McDonald's of glass art.

Sorry. Tense.

Try William Morris or Lino Tagliapietra or Ginny Ruffner. I mean, like, Chihuly isn't bad, but like everywhere.

Guy basically invented modern studio glass. I'll give him that. Maybe I've seen too much. He's like everywhere in Seattle.

He could probably do a good bathroom for $50,000 or so.

Try someone like Jeremy Lepisto instead. Value for money, eh?

Ah, hum, art. Opinioniatialé.

DC's OK, I guess. Not (as you might guess) my choice.

Bedroom? Prolly too fragile. But then the missus and I wander. Just sayin'.

Well, I know little (comparatively speaking) about visual art and less about glass art. I imagine Chihuly is very big in the Northwest, apparently to the point of uh big oversaturation huh?

I had never heard of him until I saw a special on him on pbs a few years ago. The other arts you linked are wonderful, especially Lino Tagliapietra (as Anna said--hi Anna ) . I just really like blown glass, something about the combination of the curves, what light does to the colors and it's fragility appeal to me.

And bedroom is ok by me as long as it's hanging from the ceiling or on a high shelf.

http://www.haystack-mtn.org/images/lino_medusa.jpg

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

damn, this is some gorgeous work!

I biblically cover this.......

http://www.linotagliapietra.com/ala/images/piece_24.jpg

 

[Angeline]

I biblically cover this.......

http://www.linotagliapietra.com/ala/images/piece_24.jpg

I want to take a pen and draw a grafitto face on your av. Is that bad?

 

[GuiltyPleasure]

I want to take a pen and draw a grafitto face on your av. Is that bad?

Not unless you make it cross-eyed with a 'tache. I thought it vaguely Benazeer(sp)-ish.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

Not unless you make it cross-eyed with a 'tache. I thought it vaguely Benazeer(sp)-ish.

Avoid the 'stache. Excessive facial hair traumatizes LeBroz. We must be kind.

bj