From: jtrue@acpub.duke.edu (jtrue)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Re: yes (tedious ramblings of jtrue; skip this)
Date: 12 Dec 92 04:21:13 GMT
Organization: the gospel of zagnut

In article <1992Dec11.184809.14476@wam.umd.edu>, sheilah@wam.umd.edu (Danny-Boy) writes:
 
> Don told me once, I hope he doesnt mind me misquoting him, that I respond
> to things in an assymptotic way. THIS IS THE POINT. (no, it isn't the
> point, but in my head, certain phrases are highlighted. when someone reads
> what I write, the dweebs (TM, Marek) don't highlighted, they just skip
> over it, gets on my nerves. so I have to lie and say things like THIS IS
> THE WHOLE POINT. it is somewhat like my notecards with pictures of
> hot air balloons, labeled, "To notice sea-lions" (but I am on a precipice
> trying to explain this, I have not anaylzed all of this instance yet - later)
> 
> 
> ANYTHING is relevant as you are able to make it so. as you are able to see
> connections.
> 
> Also, when someone posts a poem called "The Name of my Pain" to give an
> example. it is full of gangrenous cliches.

I love it!  You have hit the nail on the head! (uh oh, another cliche)
 
> 
>stuff deleted
> 
> Another example,
> for instance, lately I have been taking Jtrue's name in vain.
> In some of John's poetry - modern images. But I am not sure what the
> word is. It is a topic I want breached. I made a table of contents.
> Was I just babbling? No. I made an insert, about John, about modern
> imagery, I even quoted William Gibson's sentence, as an example, as
> something I wanted to be discussed.

And you've evoked me from the grayscale mists again.  Just like saying
"Cthulu" or H***** the Unspeakable (sorry I can't speak that name).  Except
when I show up I don't really bust heads or anything.

> one example.
> there are patterns of thought in what people say. I consider it a massive
> data gathering project to read what you all say, and to listen to people
> talk. It is all fit for poetry, IN A CERTAIN STRICT sence.

This is a cool idea.  Everything is data.  Or can be reduced to data.  Or
can be believably simulated by a program that randomly generates events
(and people) according to different combinations of parameters.  Ever been
really really bored with everything?  This is why.  When I was in high school
I pumped gas at the Mobil station in Victor NY at the intersection of route
96 and Victor-Holcombe road.  Every day I would pump gas for a linear series
of customers (none of whom I knew because I didn't live in that town) who just
came and went.  To me, they were just individuals who had different kinds of
cars that had gas tanks in different places and wanted either $5 or fill-it-up
with unleaded or regular or super-unleaded.  The whole series of customers
could have been randomly generated by a computer program and placed in front
of me every day.  I wouldn't have known the difference.  And I wouldn't have
given a shit.

>         so let me explain, this involves the irrelevencey accusation also. 
> I do not have a vocabulary for it. Just examples. and hard to make,
> I will try: there are things, once someone posted a haiku about
> wiping a mirror with a tissue and the sound.
> Maybe this is an example. Car fluid, umbrellas, metal joints, gears,
> pavement, desks, cleaner odor. all of these things, and people still
> talk about birds, and flowers, and etc.
> No probablem with birds. But we do not live in a vacuum of past imagry.
> Some people try to draw of it. but usually it is weak. sometimes interesting.
> I will think of more ideas latter, the network has a slow responce and
> is giving me problems.
> 

I have been meaning to talk about imagery.  And I'm flattered that you are
interested in the stuff I use.  I haven't had time to put together an
essay worthy of being in the book for which you have written the table of
contents, but let's see if my train of thought can come up with something
here.  Better yet, I'll just ramble.

There's a lot of stuff in PoMo critical literature about the "decentered self,"
the concept that the human individual can no longer be discretely defined
by drawing a simple physical (or intellectual) line around the conventional
self-contained mind+body (something like that).  Not only have our physical
bodies been invaded by prosthetics and permanently altered by all kinds
of surgery (serious and elective), but what we think of as "us" has expanded
or at least changed in configuration such that things that are outside
of us get identified (by us) as us.  For example, our net persona(e), which
would seem to be a lot different (at least as others perceive them) than
our persona(e) in person (My sample size here is about 4.  I'm not going to do
any statistics.)  But I consider even things as how I arrange my tape
collection at home or my file hierarchy on my hard disk as aspects or extensions
of myself.  This is especially true if I'm the only one who can make
sense of something (i.e. the construct is inaccessible to all others).  Now,
what does this have to do with automotive fluids?  Good question.  The way
I see it, the world I walk around in is me.  Things I consider interesting
and important in that world are mine.  Uninteresting and unimportant things
in that world essentially aren't in that world.  They don't exist.  When
I write, I am free to appropriate anything I want and use it however I like.
I have realized that I am rich.  There are objects all around me.  I work
in a biology laboratory so many of the objects are arcane.  So much the better.
The automotive fluids probably result from my years at the gas station, but
I could as well have used other kinds of fluids (food, bodily fluids, chemicals,
Xerox machine fluids, whiteout).  What does it mean when I talk about automatic
transmission fluid?  Most of the time I can't remember.  The poem is a
wholistic, mindset thing.  And meaning isn't fixed in time.  The mindset
may be somewhat fixed, but it's flexible.  Three years down the road I can
read it again and like it again but for a completely different reason (unless
it was one I did 6 years ago that rhymes, then I either throw it out or 
rewrite it without the rhymes).  The meaning isn't fixed from reader to
reader.  When I write a poem I'm not trying to indoctrinate you.  I don't
really know what I'm trying to do.  I expect most people to skip it.  For most
readers it's not going to click.  For some it will, just as some poets
I read really click with me. I think I've taken up enough bandwidth tonight.
I could go on.  Further topics would include:
	(a) cool word -> hermetic  my definition -> something that is so obscure
that only one person knows about it.  a fascinating concept
	(b) modern humans and machines - if you're less than say 40 years old and live
in or near civilization, there probably has always been whitenoise in the
background; the noises and dynamics of machines affect our art, especially
music (can this be why modern music has such a regular and prominent beat?)
This ISN'T bad.  It just is.  Don might say that this last statement makes
me CP.  Maybe so.
(c) WHY IS THE RIGHT ANGLE DISAPPEARING FROM CONTEMPORARY DESIGN???  Anybody
want to have a seance?  Let's see if we can communicate with Wright or
Moholy-Nagy or somebody.

OK enough I'm leaving.
-jtrue   






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