Reading Week 2
Class please take a look at these short poems/writers' commentary
1. Listen to Writing Techniques / Selection from “The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah” by William S. Burroughs
2. Read: “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin” in New Media Reader pg. 89-91
3. Read “For a Potential Analysis of Combinatory Literature” in The Oulipo section of the New Media Reader. pg. 177-187
4. Mac Low, Jackson. Representative Works: 1938-1985. New York: Roof Books, 1986: (email .pdf)
5. Williams, Emmett. Selected Shorter Poems 1950-1970. New York: New Directions, 1975: (email pdf)
in Class Reading Tuesday February 16th:
engage CODE POEMS pg. - and “a short interlude to discuss voices” pg. 126-127. by Hannah Weiner in Hannah Weiner's Open House. (class-handout)
1. Listen to Writing Techniques / Selection from “The Last Words of Hassan Sabbah” by William S. Burroughs
2. Read: “The Cut-Up Method of Brion Gysin” in New Media Reader pg. 89-91
3. Read “For a Potential Analysis of Combinatory Literature” in The Oulipo section of the New Media Reader. pg. 177-187
4. Mac Low, Jackson. Representative Works: 1938-1985. New York: Roof Books, 1986: (email .pdf)
5. Williams, Emmett. Selected Shorter Poems 1950-1970. New York: New Directions, 1975: (email pdf)
in Class Reading Tuesday February 16th:
engage CODE POEMS pg. - and “a short interlude to discuss voices” pg. 126-127. by Hannah Weiner in Hannah Weiner's Open House. (class-handout)
posted by sgorman at
12:17 PM
8 Comments:
The sheer joy of making things... the fascination of fashioning complex puzzle-like objects of interlocking moving parts and watching them work in subtle cycles... the delight of working in such a tractable medium. The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination. -Frederick P. Brooks, "The Mythical Man-Month", 1972.
[put thru cutup machine]
cycles... parts creating only the fascination of Man-Month", 1972. the The medium. puzzle-like imagination. programmer thought-stuff. in watching such the He castles in from air.
I loved finding out about the auxiliary methods that MacLowe and Williams discovered to create the chance for their work. For me, the readings highlighted the fact that, as humans, we cannot create chance by ourselves. I enjoyed Williams' poems more than MacLowe's because I found them to be more amusing. Maybe this is because Williams only uses one chance method and MacLowe combines a bunch of methods. MacLowe also incorporates chance into the time element of his work. It seems as if MacLowe even tries to be random with the randomizing methods he uses. I probably enjoy Williams' poems more because I find text that is only slightly off (in regards to spelling, grammar, page location, etc.) to be more hilarious. Also, the image that comes to mind of him taking a pickaxe to a cement-covered book, in search of words, is amazing.
The works of MacLowe and Williams reminded me of John Cage's use of chance operations in his compositions and of the use of sampling in music today. The methods used are not unlike creating a sound collage of pre-recorded material. I would have liked to read their work without having known the process behind their creation, as I would like to have seen if I could have discovered any patterns on my own. It made me wonder whether the process detracts from the content, but I think the text itself still retained its own value.
The other day, a defeatist friend walked into my room and proclaimed, upon seeing the ungainly mash of magnetic poetry on my fridge, "This stuff's so hard to do! There are too many words to choose from!"... the obvious irony of which is the very fact that that is the very difficulty in writing to begin with. (Or joy.)
So it is really interesting to me to see the reactions and approaches people have to varying degrees of constraints (self- and medium-inflicted) in writing. I like to see how people choose to act meaningfully within parameters, and how people might restraint themselves purposefully (or systematically even, as in these various cut-up methods) to develop or draw out certain things. But what room for intention and meaning does poetry leave when it has been reduced to form, rules, and arbitrary ones at that? How do these, and like-minded, procedures carve themselves out as "legitimate" art, and not just exercise?
I'm not entirely sure if I'm reading the Williams pdf correctly, but I think (p122) Daniel Spoerri says, "Emmet Williams's concretions take their form from the regularity of the machine, they achieve their meanings through the systematic employment of signs. Of the available signs on the machine, only the letters of the alphabet and fixed spaces are used." Marcel Duchamp (?) goes on to say, "The meanings of these poems were said to be contained in the systems, and to presuppose the systems. The position of the poems on the page was left to chance, they explained, because te concretions were systematic in themselves and related only to themselves."
Is this to imply that the art, in fact, is within the exercise?
Fraser: interesting observation in the role of duration in “time-based” art of writing :
“I enjoyed Williams' poems more than MacLowe's because I found them to be more amusing. Maybe this is because Williams only uses one chance method and MacLowe combines a bunch of methods. MacLowe also incorporates chance into the time element of his work”
Q: Did the knowledge of “chance” as a process lesson the pleasure of your reading experience? What is the agency of the author in this case? How much of the author's voice can they still insert in the process? How much does the writing/composition process really differ for Maclowe and Williams? Are the lines of composition with acrostic/chance so clear cut as different approaches to similar writing experiments?
Jonno128:
“It made me wonder whether the process detracts from the content, but I think the text itself still retained its own value.”
I think this is a really essential question to ask. Both in terms of the writing process and product. If you were to use this in you own work, it might be helpful to think about your role in the process and how your actions and decisions of composing with chance operations still impact the output in a meaningful way. Also, what do you consider to be the qualities of the text that lets it retain “value”?
Diane:
“the obvious irony of which is the very fact that that is the very difficulty in writing to begin with.”
Hee hee!
“But what room for intention and meaning does poetry leave when it has been reduced to form, rules, and arbitrary ones at that? How do these, and like-minded, procedures carve themselves out as 'legitimate' art, and not just exercise”
This is another legitimate question. Ultimately, one has to consider if the approach is conceptually interesting and holds theoretical sway on the writing process. If so, does it add/impact/detract to/from the writing and is the process revealed to the readership? On the other hand, can the text still evoke meaning if the process behind it is obscured? Many poets do not reveal how or why they were compelled to write what their readership consumes.
Chance is an incredibly interesting thing.
In computer science, randomness is always desired but never fully realized. When humans create something out of AND and OR gates (or on an even more micro scale, out of 1's and 0's), we produce things that are logical in their creation and implementation. While almost impossible to really tell the logical underpinnings of something that was produced randomly by a computer, it's still interesting to think about how it was technically created by choice and reason.
I also find it interesting that this cut-up method changes the very construction of a text. Any text that is run through any sort of cut-up method becomes less of a unified work and more of a collection of parts. Parts that play different roles based onto their context. Parts that become building blocks for an entirely different work.
While I have no direct experience yet with the cut-up method, it reminds me of something I used to do when I was younger. By taking a sentence (a song lyric, a poem, etc.) and running it through google translate over and over from one language to another, you eventually get something incredibly different from the original source and often something extremely interesting. For example, by running the Smith's lyric "Why ponder life's complexities when the leather runs smooth on the passenger seat" through google translate, converting to korean, back to english, korean again, and finally english again, you get the sentence "Why the complexity of life is very hard to run when the soft leather of the passenger". This process is interesting to think in terms of randomness and chance. Online translators are notoriously not very accurate. Almost inaccurate to the point of randomness. The small glimpses of logic they hold after multiple translations almost all correlate to similarities in language, or importance of words. The combination of logic and chance derived from a single work or text makes this process very similar to the theoretical ideas of the cut-up method.
In the philosophical sense, chance is not really "chance". Chance is something that was left up to the will of the universe. As Hegel would say, it was left up to the "Spirit". In Hindu philosophy, the kundalini or shakti represents the vibrational energy that all beings must operate on. This shakti is responsible for all of the essential things that humans themselves do not have any conscious power over (like the heartbeat). When an artist cuts his work into fragments and rearranges them randomly, he really just allows the vibrational energy of the universe dictate where the pieces may fall. While not something I would readily take into account as an artist working with this process, it would personally be plausible for me to analyze the resulting works with this philosophical framework in mind. Except this philosophy is also probably relied upon by many sketchy tarot card readers.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home