Scarecrow

Scarecrow

no bird wings here or walks the spacey

the turning shot light pilots to wind

sudden string change or swimming

least wanted change it

seeming back and shell again—name of the

other—cherry but no peck yet peckering will

bright shimmering CDs in garden foil

(An earlier version of this poem appeared in Zone

in 2007.)

Lines, summer

Lines, summer

Gap of night, brain through

the wire, not as barbed but sleek

bright forward-run uncolor.

It glistens between root sheath

once vein,  chop-star in

yellow; green. The surge

of red leaf bewails the crept

sap expanses. Vibrant summer.

(As originally published in Zone, 2007)

Dance

Ten dance axioms.

 

The world is all that is the case.

Colors dance, like form.

Form dances, like color.

Dance is a waveparticle.

Dance, well, uh, dances.

A wise ol’ critter, is ol’ Dance.

Dance is a styrofoam cup blown along the street while eating its breakfast.

Dance is differAnt readings to tease re-de-constructionists with.

Dance is the right to choose a channel.

Dance?

Postscript: The penultimate axiom restates Sean Snyder’s “Freedom is the freedom to choose a channel,” read in the video Schema (at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, till January 2008). Wittgenstein would, I think, agree. Thanks to Georg Pedersen and Round Online for the theme. More information on Snyder's work is available at the Stedelijk website and the website of the Israeli Center for Digital Art, which also includes outtakes from different videos.

Harpist

Harpist

Fingertips poised these thousands of years, adjusting

flutter of a gull’s wing over roof, or under chandelier.

The apparently effortless rays burgeon, strings now not

of the instrument, not exactly, but of deep-sea fishes

bellying fin up, fin down, fin over. Love position after regard

trails eye. The charcoal baton, somehow, as if the drawing

implement were the drawn itself, prehistoric strings

vibrating in a way imprecise to me now.

sky patch

sky patch

above the frame of

real steel girder in the photograph’s

mirrored space

"New and future literatures"

The "new and future literatures" Alan Sondheim speaks of in “Introduction: Codework” in the September/October 2001 issue of  American Book Review variously impact e-poetry. It is a truism that e-poetry can be defined as poetry written in (programming) code. But poetry first circulated on paper and later published on electronic supports can also be termed e-poetry. When we define e-poetry in the first manner, we are using the word code “in a narrower sense [to mean] a translation from natural language to an artificial, strictly defined one” (Sondheim, ABR, 1). But a quick example of the second kind of e-poetry is Julio Cortázar’s “The Lines of the Hand” (as well as myriad other texts). Sondheim uses a tree metaphor as a rough classification for codework. Thus, there are “multi-media and hypertextual works” rather like leaves or flowers, he notes, and these “may playfully utilize programming terminology” without “refer[ring] to specific programs” (ABR, 1). However, work where “the language becomes increasingly unreadable at times” are analogous to “tendrils and branchings of the tree, half surface and half root” (ABR, 1). The works in this category, then, are “works in which submerged code has modified the surface language—with the possible representation of the code as well” (ABR, 1). It is obviously slippery ground we are on, for if natural language is also code, it would seem that even on a level of expertise that goes as deep as Sondheim’s, terms like code and codework are sometimes interchangeable. However, his third classification, the roots of the tree, involves “works in which the submerged code is emergent contents [and] both a deconstruction of the surface and of the dichotomy between the surface and the depth” (ABR, 1). In this third category, the programming language may actually run a program. So it’s important to distinguish between imperative programming (Sondheim’s first classification) and object-oriented programming (Sondheim’s third and, sometimes, second classifications). I think it’s good to return to Sondheim’s article today and to share his enthusiasm for codework’s movements around “vast uncharted domains [of] new and future literatures—domains that recognize the vast changes that have occurred in human/machine interaction—changes that affect the very notions of community and communality” (ABR, 2). The article, abbreviated here as ABR, is available online.

"The Lines of the Hand"

Julio Cortázar’s “The Lines of the Hand”

In a conversation with friends the other night thoughts about inspiration and writing came up. We talked a little about how you can force yourself to write when you don’t want to—that is, when you don’t feel particularly inspired. Also about inspiration-directed activities that go along with writing, among which are the usually mentioned reading, correcting proofs, planning new work, recitals. Several days later, which is to say today, I found myself thinking back on what we said, and also on Cortázar’s short-short story or flash fiction piece “Las lineas de la mano.” This piece can be found on the internet, in the original Spanish and in translation, and also in adaptation as a video. But in terms both of narrative and of stylistics, I think a good deal can be gained from re-reading (or re-viewing) what Cortázar presents. It’s tempting to publish the story here, and I somehow doubt there would be any difficulty with copyright, but I think it’s best just to note a few ideas for the time being. I’ve already said most of what I want to say about it in relation to inspiration. So in the space I have left, I’d just note something Cortázar has done very well, obvious yet not so obvious: It is the allusion to François Boucher’s Nude on a Sofa. It seems obvious that the eighteenth-century reference is planned. What I wonder is: Where do planning and inspiration meet? In sum, I hope others enjoy the piece as much as I do.

story for 54

story for 54

I personally can’t see why

it can’t also be turning to look,

your wife driving, the wheel,

the open window, roadside,

and green wheat fields and vines,

houses and outbuildings white or gray or brown

against the field, red poppies filling the whole top left corner of the canvas.

21 May 2007