in no particular order
So many ideas have to occurred to me lately in connection with my writing that I need to set them down, in no particular order, simply to see what they are and what they mean.
1) The world is full of text. Although I have previously argued, and still believe that we are primarily an audio society (as opposed to the mediaeval and renaissance visual society), the amount of text in our world proliferates. More and more of this colossal volume of text goes unread. Some examples: CCTV alert notices in residential areas, a complete list of ingredients for the generic back panel of a range of bagged sweets, health warnings on cigarette packs, credit lists on movie posters. Often the text is there for legal reasons, and although mainly unread, would be a source of great trouble if left off.
2) title to go here is, I think, one of my most optimistic works for a long time. I initially thought of it as a text degrading, but I think it would be more accurate to see it as a text coming into being. The point was to type randomly and generate a page of nonsensical text. As all of us know who've ever mashed a keyboard, typed randomly just to fill space, or looked at a text in a language we don't understand, sense begins to emerge from the chaos. Not whole or even fractional sentences, not the beginnings of arguments or ideas, but stray words. And things that look like words we know interrupted by stray characters or spaces, or like words we know in another language. That was the point of highlighting some of the words that stood out from the crowd, to allow them to act as nuclei from which the reader can explore the text. So that your eye is drawn to 'as', then you notice what look like 'joke', 'hush', 'use' and 'wedge' around it. The text, from being a formidable collection of the unreadable, opens out into a proto-poem, and comes alive.
3) I've been reading a lot about Dada and Performance Art lately, as well as returning to the French poets of the late 19th/early 20th century. One of the things I've begun to wonder is whether poetry as it stands really qualifies as art at all. It strikes me that a large amount of what's written and accepted as good poetry is just so much noise. In the struggle between expression and self-expression on the one hand, and technical ability on the other, the power of poetry to touch and to mean something is compromised. Sentiment, nostalgia, and universalised subjectivity against precision, defamiliarised circumstantial detail and structured arcs of narrative and/or argument. Neither side has much going for it, and even where the odd skilled writer manages to reconcile the two drives, there's usually still an underlying sense of the poem's 'poem-ness'. It's that poem-ness that I dislike. I think writers are often too concious of the tradition they're working in. In the way the Cezanne advised a sitter to 'Be like an apple', in order to avoid cliché, so poets should try to write bus tickets, or write like they're a light bulb to get past their default responses.
4) I'm beginning to suspect that some of my favourite poems, especially some of the better political pieces don't really work. The reason for this is that they can't get far enough inside the experiences they describe to generate the kind of ambiguity needed. The tendency is for the poems to be very directed - to have particular aims and points in place from the beginning. I think to have an end in mind, which you then get to by largely pre-determined means is to weaken a piece of work. Especially something as compact and intense as a poem. Far better to have a broad idea of where you want to go, and then allow the act of creating to guide you. If you know why you're writing a particular piece, then what's the point in writing it? There must always be room for the unanticipated, to be taken by surprise by your own work.
5) And finally a fragment I haven't really pulled together properly yet. From a review by Steven Poole of Haunted Weather by David Toop, in Saturday Guardian Review 3/7/4, "Tokyo-based artist Yoshio Michida tells Toop: "John Cage said he can enjoy listening to all sounds, except the sound with someone's intention. I feel so too." Is this allergy to intentionalised sound resentment born of a lack of traditional musical ability, or is it something more ideological." Following on from that I realised that one of the things I dislike about a lot of nonsense, and about early 20th century 'sound poems' is that they're an uncomfortable half intentional, half random amalgamation. What I like about assembling found elements, or handing things over altogether to chance is that it reflects the environment around you. Of course you can't do this all the time, but I feel it's better for a piece of writing to be wholly intentional or wholly determined.
1) The world is full of text. Although I have previously argued, and still believe that we are primarily an audio society (as opposed to the mediaeval and renaissance visual society), the amount of text in our world proliferates. More and more of this colossal volume of text goes unread. Some examples: CCTV alert notices in residential areas, a complete list of ingredients for the generic back panel of a range of bagged sweets, health warnings on cigarette packs, credit lists on movie posters. Often the text is there for legal reasons, and although mainly unread, would be a source of great trouble if left off.
2) title to go here is, I think, one of my most optimistic works for a long time. I initially thought of it as a text degrading, but I think it would be more accurate to see it as a text coming into being. The point was to type randomly and generate a page of nonsensical text. As all of us know who've ever mashed a keyboard, typed randomly just to fill space, or looked at a text in a language we don't understand, sense begins to emerge from the chaos. Not whole or even fractional sentences, not the beginnings of arguments or ideas, but stray words. And things that look like words we know interrupted by stray characters or spaces, or like words we know in another language. That was the point of highlighting some of the words that stood out from the crowd, to allow them to act as nuclei from which the reader can explore the text. So that your eye is drawn to 'as', then you notice what look like 'joke', 'hush', 'use' and 'wedge' around it. The text, from being a formidable collection of the unreadable, opens out into a proto-poem, and comes alive.
3) I've been reading a lot about Dada and Performance Art lately, as well as returning to the French poets of the late 19th/early 20th century. One of the things I've begun to wonder is whether poetry as it stands really qualifies as art at all. It strikes me that a large amount of what's written and accepted as good poetry is just so much noise. In the struggle between expression and self-expression on the one hand, and technical ability on the other, the power of poetry to touch and to mean something is compromised. Sentiment, nostalgia, and universalised subjectivity against precision, defamiliarised circumstantial detail and structured arcs of narrative and/or argument. Neither side has much going for it, and even where the odd skilled writer manages to reconcile the two drives, there's usually still an underlying sense of the poem's 'poem-ness'. It's that poem-ness that I dislike. I think writers are often too concious of the tradition they're working in. In the way the Cezanne advised a sitter to 'Be like an apple', in order to avoid cliché, so poets should try to write bus tickets, or write like they're a light bulb to get past their default responses.
4) I'm beginning to suspect that some of my favourite poems, especially some of the better political pieces don't really work. The reason for this is that they can't get far enough inside the experiences they describe to generate the kind of ambiguity needed. The tendency is for the poems to be very directed - to have particular aims and points in place from the beginning. I think to have an end in mind, which you then get to by largely pre-determined means is to weaken a piece of work. Especially something as compact and intense as a poem. Far better to have a broad idea of where you want to go, and then allow the act of creating to guide you. If you know why you're writing a particular piece, then what's the point in writing it? There must always be room for the unanticipated, to be taken by surprise by your own work.
5) And finally a fragment I haven't really pulled together properly yet. From a review by Steven Poole of Haunted Weather by David Toop, in Saturday Guardian Review 3/7/4, "Tokyo-based artist Yoshio Michida tells Toop: "John Cage said he can enjoy listening to all sounds, except the sound with someone's intention. I feel so too." Is this allergy to intentionalised sound resentment born of a lack of traditional musical ability, or is it something more ideological." Following on from that I realised that one of the things I dislike about a lot of nonsense, and about early 20th century 'sound poems' is that they're an uncomfortable half intentional, half random amalgamation. What I like about assembling found elements, or handing things over altogether to chance is that it reflects the environment around you. Of course you can't do this all the time, but I feel it's better for a piece of writing to be wholly intentional or wholly determined.
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