tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post735577479387797857..comments2024-01-19T21:33:09.716+00:00Comments on E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK: Adventures In FormEYEWEARhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01900801847916951522noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-69124421204991784752012-04-29T14:51:52.953+01:002012-04-29T14:51:52.953+01:00Jon, obviously I worked as a performance/soundscap...Jon, obviously I worked as a performance/soundscape poet for years in Montreal and know what you mean about its joys. Do you know The Four Horsemen, for instance? And Christian Bok is a crowdpleaser, of course he is. But it is true, I think, to say that some modes of poetic expression are more appealing to a broader audience - not that that means one has to write or compose for that audience. But to deny that is to claim a lie - that art house films appeal more than blockbusters. A Seamus Heaney reading just does appeal to a wider section of society than a reading by Sean Bonney. That isn't a value judgement, it is a fact. We have the sales figures of books and tickets to show for it. As for the lyric pushing for conclusion, how so? Games and rules liberate - all poets know that - but my point is games without some passion or depth of feeling behind the play can lead to aridity of effect. Not necessarily in the short run, but over time. Which French Oulipo poets do you think are "vulnerable" and explore feeling the most?EYEWEARhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01900801847916951522noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-26224162592664972362012-04-28T13:59:47.435+01:002012-04-28T13:59:47.435+01:00Todd, I really disagree with your assertion that O...Todd, I really disagree with your assertion that Oulipo-style constraints "release poets from the jacket of emotion, empathy, and even compassion". As you say, we have irony for that. For me, those constraints (when calibrated correctly) are almost the opposite. Conventional poetic construction is the straitjacket which too often forces a kind of grandiloquence, a pretence of authority or mastery over emotions or subject matter. This is because the lyric pushes for conclusion. Formal constraints are liberating because they foreground the game, or the construction, over the poet's voice, which leaves the poet free to be vulnerable, to explore feeling without having to provide the answers.Jon Stonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17454303789670556539noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-71936449710123047942012-04-28T13:38:23.519+01:002012-04-28T13:38:23.519+01:00"However what does strike one about, sadly, a..."However what does strike one about, sadly, a majority of the po-mo practitioners, is that when heard read aloud their poems, more often than not, fail to engage a wider audience."<br /><br />No. No, no, no, no, no. No. Come on. It is absolute pan-in-the-face absurdity to say that a problem with one particular section/style of poetry is engaging a wider audience, as if that isn't a problem faced by the larger spectrum of poetry.<br /><br />Besides, I went to my first pure sound-poetry event recently, and if anything, it's dangerously close to being far more engaging than the usual kind of poetry reading, for one simple reason: it's closer to music. As soon as the brain realises it doesn't have to knot itself up in an effort to make sense of the sounds it's hearing, you find yourself, oddly enough, more relaxed and tuned in. The experience left me seriously doubtful of the worth of me standing up and reading out text from a book, and aggressively set on finding some way to make it as sublime as what I'd just experienced.<br /><br />"But there's always exceptions that prove the rule, and the one uniquely original exception, at least that I have heard, is the Dundalk poet Ronan Murphy. His Sound poetry (as well as his lyrical stuff) is truly mesmeric on both the page and in performance."<br /><br />This is the second time I've heard this claim, the second time I've read/listened to the example and been baffled by it. Not that he's bad, not by a long chalk, but it sits very neatly in the veins of both lyrical and sound poetry that I'm familiar with.Jon Stonehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17454303789670556539noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-65414403988020122352012-04-12T10:13:16.545+01:002012-04-12T10:13:16.545+01:00"Men escape from realistic limitations on the..."Men escape from realistic limitations on the wings of an artist's fortunate intuitions about his medium.<br /><br />Yet what does <i>form</i> mean? I do not even know what it means to ask the question. All I know is that when I ask it, I am in the existential world. The answer may, in fact, <i>be</i> the existential world."<br /><br />--Carl Rakosi, <i> Ex Cranium, Night</i>vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-79864110248765827262012-04-11T19:04:10.666+01:002012-04-11T19:04:10.666+01:00Having been schooled first at an Oulipian-like alt...Having been schooled first at an Oulipian-like altar in Ormskirk by Scott Thurston and Robert Sheppard, where the core poetic textbooks are Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris's Poems for the Millennium volumes one and two, I feel able to speak with some smidgen of familiarity about adventures in form.<br /><br />And though one's own natural bent tilts more towards a formal lyrical center, this does not mean I am automatically resistant to the post-modern practitioners in po-biz. <br /><br />However what does strike one about, sadly, a majority of the po-mo practitioners, is that when heard read aloud their poems, more often than not, fail to engage a wider audience. Even the poster boy of the British wing of the movement, Sean Bonney, falls, in my ear, flat when ripping through his ditties.<br /><br />But there's always exceptions that prove the rule, and the one uniquely original exception, at least that I have heard, is the Dundalk poet Ronan Murphy. His Sound poetry (as well as his lyrical stuff) is truly mesmeric on both the page and in performance. <br /><br />He was in the Spring and Autumn 2010 editions of Fuselit, along with a recording of him on a CD they produced. Chivers may be unaware of him as he would be up there near the top of the list of poets packing out this anthology.<br /><br />This is a <a href="http://dylanharris.org/wurm/plan/ronan.mp3" rel="nofollow">recording of him</a> reading at Kit Fryatt's Wurm in Apfel night in Dublin on 25 March 2010.<br /><br />The Sound poetry begins just before half way.CoirĂ FilĂochtahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15137576329670368944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-40533284570737522452012-04-11T12:22:13.792+01:002012-04-11T12:22:13.792+01:00Last para, third sentence, "likes" = &qu...Last para, third sentence, "likes" = "lurks". <br /><br />I'm not sure if <em>Adventures in Form</em> would support me, but I'd want to say that new form can expose new content and vice versa, i.e. the dialectic mechanism, so well expressed by Stalin, - 'Content is impossible without form, but the point is that a given form, since it lags behind its content, never fully corresponds to this content; and so the new content is obliged to clothe itself for a time in the old form, and this causes a conflict between them' - this bumpy process can go the other way too. Sometimes a new form exposes the possibility of a range of new insights and emotions. Our conceptions of the human and the spiritual are not immutable; they too are of our own time. Jazz or film noir would both be great examples of form changing the dimensions of human experience. No-one would suppose that they arose in a doodling arid purely-artificial context, yet once we get beyond our reverence and read the history, it turns out that frivolous playfulness and invention did play a part in them too.Michael Peveretthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17090710369630916194noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13726943.post-22250709429816479592012-04-11T11:06:37.059+01:002012-04-11T11:06:37.059+01:00Dear Todd
I love the line 'what has killed po...Dear Todd<br /><br />I love the line 'what has killed poems for most people is the fact they seem like maths homework'. I believe that one of Roddy's many talents is compiling crosswords. And I think that there are connections. For example I quite often find myself searching for a three syllable adjective beginning with, say, B that isn't totally bathetic or banal.<br /><br />Best wishes from SimonPoetry Pleases!https://www.blogger.com/profile/16686247991180317838noreply@blogger.com