tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73994022155190917062024-03-12T19:31:48.411-07:00Concrete Formalist PoetryVarious topics specific or related to notions and procedures of concrete formalism, by which I mean poetic practices that carry a formal visual element.Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.comBlogger227125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-1868495450743324492019-03-02T09:07:00.002-08:002019-03-02T09:10:20.600-08:00Enough thought to last for a timeI have come to a sort of working comprehension of who I am in reference to myself. This is a pleasant understanding, and one achieved by slight but significant shifts of effort and emphasis over the past few years. I am less and less concerned with what needs to be done, or that category has simply lightened for me; while that which has been or is being done seems more complete and generous. So the work people accomplish and share delights me whereas, when I was younger, I woke up mornings with a critical gaze at everything around me. But then I was raised in a meritocratic family and cultural environment.<br />
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Even then, one's notions of what merits "merit" change over time. I care for honesty now like I did when I was a kid, so perhaps I have jettisoned intervening baggage or the baggage was kicked off the train by others. Hard to know. I am capable of silence. I am capable of speech. And somehow I am capable of knowing the difference and making better choices between the two. It has not always been that way with me.</div>
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And, for another thing, I have got poetry and publishing right for me. I am convinced that the best poems make for more poets, that the fact of writing is the purpose: full stop. I have returned to writing and publishing my books through the avenue of prayer, I believe, not by praying to write (God forbid!) but because the relevant mental/spiritual states are strictly analogous if not actually overlapping. It remained only to divest myself of certain inhibiting mental states (baggage, he says) that accompanied the act of writing - the presumptions and insecurities, generally speaking - and here we are: clean and alert. Happy to do nothing today or to write volumes. It's all the same to me.</div>
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So poems are written, sometimes drawings are drawn, assembled at some point, a cover is created and a title conceived (at times I have written to the title or even drawings, first, but that is not standard practice) and the whole is published via lulu (an independent, self-publishing platform), proofed, and approved for distribution. And I am done, free and open for what may come. I am my own editor and publisher. My publicist is sadly neglected as I do no readings, send out to no magazines, and basically do nothing more than to post the latest book to Facebook. I maintained for years a delicious shame originating in the idea that I did things this way because I could not do them the other way - by the way, don't delude yourself that shame is endemic only to religion: secular forces such as ambition prompt shame as surely as the Sunday sermon and with fewer recourses to remedy. </div>
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But shame falls away with prayer, and perhaps that is how I returned to writing "clean and alert." I am not thinking of what isn't - which is a large, large, large category - but of what is, which is personal and thought-out. I no longer think of my writing against other writing. It is an act of conscience. The task then is to carry out the act conscientiously. This, lulu allows me to do. Thanks, lulu. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Endi and Jackson. And thank you, God. The more time I spend with you the more I enjoy being with myself.</div>
Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-49159830634772382512019-01-13T10:27:00.000-08:002019-01-13T10:27:31.356-08:00Appraisals for the MereI published a mere 18 blogs in 2018 - 6 here and 12 at the other place (OpenCatholic). "Mere," which is fair, but not sad-making. Blogs seem quite old-fashioned of a sudden. I mean, who bothers to write occasional essays anymore, and in the sort of hum-drum language I use? I tried reading an article over at SI (Sports Illustrated) on the NFL (National Football League) playoffs and had to give it up; so exciting was the prose that I had no idea what was being communicated, except excitement. So I'll take my 18 in '18 and go about making it 19 or more this year, but whatever I end up with will be a good deal more than if I quit, which I have never seriously considered doing.<br />
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The WOP (World of Poetry) is exciting too, or what I hear of it. I see that I write blogs, as do a few other souls, and I even write poems - again, occasionally. I enjoy not writing even more than writing; or I am fond of it, dwelling on the afterlife of furious conceit. Thank God that's over, I think, and then I go about not writing poems. It's wonderful.<br />
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I merely work, tend to my family and friends, pray, run, read. As one example of what I do that is not writing, I've just come back from drinking coffee from my wife's cup. Does it taste better from my cup? she asked. It's more satisfying, I replied.<br />
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Good writing posits one in distinctions, and so silence is good writing, too. Quiet is better than a shout in Elecro-Land U.S.A. How I enjoyed playing the pinball machines at C.B.G.B.'s, especially PP (Pink Panther). Never did I dream I would live the last half of my life in one.<br />
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But writing that is useless - and I hope we are all agreed that the good poem at least offers itself as being useless or, strictly speaking, of no practical value whatsoever - that is almost as good as silence itself. Though I am wary of writing from a position of silence. That seems a bit hypocritical: isn't actual, effective silence the best possible argument against noise? I mean if we are committed to living our ideals, etc.<br />
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And, so, I have been churning in the background somewhat. I could and perhaps even should do more - upgrading websites to Wordpress, making some decisions to streamline this and regulate that, getting the "word" out. blah. blah. blah. But no. I like things just as they are, right now. Exactly now. I don't see that I have a position or school or point of view definitive enough to evangelize or defend. I think I will leave my religion to my religion and my poetry to the poetry and let it all come out as it will. Or perhaps life is made perfect in silence. I wonder....Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-13808302310685933432018-12-09T07:48:00.000-08:002018-12-09T07:48:27.463-08:00Important in CommonA poet friend heading out to a performance by a local band (an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band, if you must know) suggested I come along. I deferred for now, but this got me to thinking about what we do and what we have to show for it.<br />
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I suppose, if you write, and you continue to write, you have yourself to show as a writer for what you do, having written. I would say about 90% of what there is to show for being a writer is held in common to all who write: they, themselves, as writers, and the work they have produced. Add to that friendships with other writers. Add to that the occasional glimmer of recognition in whatever form that all writers can recount for themselves: small, scattered publications, a reading, a friend asking for advice on a cover letter - and I should not forget perhaps the greatest reward, that of reading other's books as one who has written or at least made real efforts in that direction.<br />
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We have gone a ways here in describing all writers. It remains to distinguish those who publish books, who are reviewed, who have careers and perhaps teach. All this I would say is something like 5% of what a writer can be. It is a terrifically important 5%, no doubt, and critical no doubt for the writers who experience these forms of the writerly life - and certainly all writers are grateful for the success of a few given the nature of the writing itself. This is important to keep in mind, that the success of John Ashbery, for example, is not owning to the person of Ashbery, John but to the quality and effect of the work he produced.<br />
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All writers have in common the process and effect, the life of writing. Life seen through the lens of one who can write either about it or from it is something different than otherwise; but this is true also of one who can paint or take good photographs. Perhaps too of people who can dunk a basketball. My point though, or the purpose of this small essay, is to point out what all writers share not whether they can dunk a basketball, though I'm sure there are some who can. Writers who experience the 5% that I will call, for lack of a more clever term, success, share also in the 95% I have described as the life in common to all writers. Logically, I may have more in common with John Donne than with Shaquille O'Neill, and although that sentence makes my head spin a bit it is true as far as it goes in acknowledging the writer's practice as recognizing (and not "defining") who one is in relation to the world.<br />
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As a young writer I was very taken up with what I would have to show for being a writer. I almost assumed I would conquer worlds. And if I have done so it's news to me. They would have had to be terribly fragile, mysterious worlds, the kind that are frightened into nothingness at the turn of a page. I have made my peace with all that, as writers do, eventually, even if it has to wait for the first drop of earth on an oaken box, but what a nice surprise it was to be asked to see a band by my poet friend, simply because we are both writers and have known each other for years, and are friends, and share some of the same friends, and trust each other the way people do who have something important in common.Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-40099481890647949152018-08-08T19:42:00.002-07:002018-08-08T19:42:50.956-07:00Poems, Think. Think, Poems, Thoughts.Not thinking is not a crime, and no one doesn't think. No one you know does not think and you think thinkingly or not. We are all alike this way, alike and true and free. Free in being, in thinking.<br />
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Thinking is not evinced (made evidential; trace leaving; culpable; guilty; condemned) in the thought thought but in the thinking thought. The product is not necessarily even the result of the process because many oh so many other processes are involved before we have a product that we can agree is a product. A product of what? Exactly.<br />
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When we argue - and even agreements are a kind of argument - we point to thinking, thinkingly or not, not to varying degrees so much but in the way we point to preferred sections of a color spectrum. Do you think this way? You may as well have been a robin laying speckled eggs.<br />
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Because we argue or die tryingly we continue to speak as if thought were, well, not a solution, but a gateway or key to solutions. I know people so beholden to thought that they have never had children. I know children whose thoughts are to their parents' thoughts what Pavarotti's voice was to when his parents would argue. No one can stand anything without taking time to think about it and this is what matters when we talk about freedom.<br />
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At some point, you will want to put aside mere facts and do some thinking. You will want to wrap up your facts in a little blanket you fashioned from an old flannel pillowcase and, humming, lay them to sleep, then tip-toe out and away to do some thinking while the night is still young.<br />
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I do not know if you want to consider anything. That seems pointless at times like these. I do not mean time in the political sense but the stereoscopic sense, where the colors blend to reinforce and challenge each other. Time in the Sam Francis or Helen Frankenthaler sense, but you can think what you like.<br />
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Every thought will find its way.<br />
Every thought is a nightmare.<br />
The thought not thought is the life not lived.<br />
Thinking rearranges the keys.<br />
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In my mind, we meet and are happy simply to meet. Everything is blank thereafter. You can't expect sense where thinking is involved, and even for those thoughts that tend toward sense, you will be no wiser than when you started out. Who is the man who does not think, or the thought that cannot feel? We were original once. Everything else is like starting out with a thought.<br />
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<br />Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-52552594686128415542018-07-21T09:55:00.002-07:002018-07-21T09:55:30.588-07:00I think a thought and thoroughlyI think what I will do now is send out poems to magazines. I have a few new poems and I will send them out and wait to see if they are taken. If not, I will send them to another magazine. While waiting, I may write one or two more poems. Over time I will accumulate a pool of poems for sending out to magazines. After a time, I will probably publish these poems in one of my books, unless the poems are unimaginably popular, in which case somebody else can publish them.<br />
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I will do all this because Endi does this - the sending out to magazines - and I want us to do things together. She is much better and more diligent poet than I am, so I will send to magazines that she has painstakingly vetted and culled from the literary maelstrom.<br />
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I have said what I will do, and I will not do anything else. I will not read the magazines I am sending too. I will not give readings. I will not talk about my writing when I meet other poets, unless they ask, and they never do. They think all I really care about these days is my family and religion, and they are right.<br />
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But I do care about poetry and other art-making activities for what they can do to relate truth and beauty, and to bring us closer together. Writing poems and sending them out and generally behaving like a normal poet because your wife does so seems like a reasonable, pleasant, positive activity.<br />
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Don't you agree?Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-32664072199095104342018-03-24T11:15:00.002-07:002018-03-24T11:15:50.540-07:00Art and PromiseCan art change the world? No, but it can suggest what needs to change. Art can motivate us to change the world. The question is, what will we do to fulfill the promises of art?<br />
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What is art? Art is (A) the choice not to do anything other than art, at least for the time it takes to make art, and (B) the thing or notion or event that has been created in that time. If everyone made art there would be less conflict and fewer wars. That is probably true, though artists or at least poets are fond of arguing. Still, one cannot force people to make art or legislate such a thing, and arguments among artists are at most a distraction. The world little notes what a person thinks about what they do.<br />
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We try though, in subtle ways, to suggest that people should be creative to make art, to be original, to express their inner selves, etc. And this is good in some ways, but while the rest of us are pondering art projects those in power are pondering how to acquire more power. And the wonder is that everyone is successful. There is more art in the world now, I think - visual renderings, books, music - all to various purposes and offerings differing degrees of interest - than ever before, while power is held by fewer persons than ever before. And, unlike art, power is pure. There is no good, bad, or indifferent power. It delivers on its purpose every time.<br />
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Is art then simply a form of consolation or promise? Is it, after all, our modern religion, the thing we turn to as we once turned to prayer? Holding on to hope, plying the keyboard, the sable brush, the stylus, as once we fingered the beads of the Rosary? I think so. I think that art is, after all, a form of consolation and promise. No art is the exact form or model for what the world should be if the world were just, but in an unjust world art, like prayer, is the most suitable form for stating for ourselves what the world should be. I should say art and prayer can be that, but not all art and not all prayers are necessarily oriented toward a just society. We should be careful as individuals and as a society not to treat all art as sacred, nor all prayers as holy. There is a great deal of personal interest that enters into our prayers and our art.<br />
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But we will make art, aiming at what is true art. We will not call it holy or sacred, but we will aim to make it true. We know that what is true is holy, but we are not the ones to judge. We will do our part. We make art because no activity serves so well to put what's in our heart before all mankind. And we will continue to pray, in word or spirit, because no activity serves so well to put what's in our heart before God. We care for our neighbor and we serve the truth. It is all really very simple.<br />
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And what about change? That too is a personal and communal decision. We cannot be mere entertainment or solace. We must endeavor to own, to a just degree - neither too much or too little - the tools we use to create and the means by which we live. We must set an example, not only in rendering the truth of the human heart, its consolations and promise, but in acting to turn that promise into a reality. Poverty, war, violence, and greed insult the heart. As long as they exist, we have failed art as we have failed the truth.<br />
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Therefore, I would like to suggest an expansion of the definition of art. Art is (A) the choice not to do anything other than art, at least for the time it takes to make art, (B) the thing or notion or event that has been created in that time, and (C) art is what is done about the art, or how we follow through. If we merely visit art - on the museum wall, in a chapbook, on Facebook postings - and do nothing to seize the power that guarantees freedom for all humankind, then we will have lost time and opportunity while other consolidate and strengthen their hold on an unjust world. We will be guilty of compliance, voicing empty prayers from broken hearts.Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-9464400752442077182018-01-15T16:46:00.000-08:002018-01-15T16:46:04.188-08:00Poems in Ordinary Time<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">On the one side is what we recall, on the other is our hopes. We occupy, or say we do, a constantly shifting middle ground called "now." Or are we occupied by it? Who's the host in this arrangement and who is the guest?</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">You may fall in love or you may sign a contract. You will want to fall in love and then sign a contract. You do not want to be signing contracts that look like love but are not love. You do not need to put yourself under self-induced obligations to anyone or anything other than the few, the very few things you love. I do not need to tell you what you love. You can tell me. But I may say to you, Then why are you contracted to this thing that is not among the things you love? And you may say, Oh, I love that too. And I will say, I wonder if that is strictly true, or have opened the door to the slippery slope of disregard, by which many false, sad contracts are signed? Love is not accommodation, though can love and be accommodating.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Failure is not a thing one needs to induce or enter into in order to know the world or the love of the world. It may seem that way, by way of explanation or making excuses for ourselves, but it is not strictly true. Nothing is true which must be known by failing to get at another thing. You say, Failure made me humble. I say, do not treat humility as the offspring of failure. Failure made you aware of the sadness you carry within. You looked with yourself, having nowhere else to turn, and recognized sadness. Did you realize then that we all suffer in this way? That is a great gift and accomplishment, but it was not the result of failure. Instead, failure was the result of the sadness you could not bear. You acted as if you could not afford to be sad but now here you are. Now you know that you have nothing to fear as long as you remember that sadness within you. If you can keep in mind the sadness of others you will see failures for merely being failures. One does not need to fail in order to know the world, but the world knows us despite our failure to know ourselves.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Properly speaking, there is nothing that does not exist. Even dreams are an effect or property of effect. The idea of a thing exists as that idea. A saxophone-playing bicycle. Simple. I am interested in the notion that one can escape in dreams when of course there is no escape. Failure may overwhelm you and so dreams are a practical means of defeating that failure. A starving man needs bread; a failed man needs dreams. I take dreams quite literally as I do any signpost. There is no harm in this sort of conservative investment. Discounting dreams is a tactic employed by people who are inclined to over-invest in other fantasies, such as purpose and power. Purpose and power are as real as dreams, of course, but over-investment contorts the boundaries of purpose and power and creates fantasies and, often, poor behavior. Dreamers are likely to be better behaved than fantasizers. Or, one is bound to behave better dreaming. A dreamer has a goal to work toward, while a fantasizer misshapes and corrupts the form and nature of a thing that, for all we know, may serve as another person's dream. So, while there is nothing that does not exist, there are some things that should not exist. But even these things exist and serve a purpose, describing not paths so much as boundary limits.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">One who loves posits the question whether they are loved in return. One who hates does so at no risk to themselves.</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><br style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">Hate is a means for evading the question, Do you love me too?</span>Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-54300136204076367512018-01-05T17:13:00.002-08:002018-01-05T17:13:39.112-08:00It is 2018, or Time for NowThis could be a story, sitting where I am writing, or the poem of what's written being here before me. This may be the middle part of a column - I mean a column intended to support another structure - which the eye travels past, from the bottom to the top, from the top to the bottom.<br />
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This may not be a wave. I do not allow it permission to be the fact of the potential for breaking toward the shore. Oh wave. You broke and the pieces were absorbed. You did not really break at all.<br />
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All of this is based on shoddy research, the best research. Research you did not even know you were collecting until it occurred to you to write conclusions, and a conclusion is not a false hope. Have some respect for false conclusions.<br />
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Projection, too, is not a conclusion or false hope. So many ways we interfere with process. You may only occupy the middle part of a column that never made it past the gates. Praise.<br />
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But we project pictures at least these days, being interfered with. I say we project pictures, snapshots of daily occurrences. Crossing the street, newscasts. You call what you see interesting or provoking, banking on the kindness of neighboring events. It could be a warning that we are at our best while asleep.<br />
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I see constant turnover, recycling projections. The sound sound sound of light. The sort of advertising that puts no one off. That problem. That disposition.<br />
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Now, I'm not about to change your mind, and that's not my purpose anyway. I have no interest in replacing one thing with another thing. What I'm doing here is its own excuse, deciding what key to hit. I felt an urge, a strong urge. I think that much is clear.<br />
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But I have no will to interfere.Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-38520039981141372172017-12-03T19:01:00.003-08:002017-12-03T19:01:45.861-08:00We Review ALPHABET NOIR, by Nico VassilakisI am very glad that Nico Vassilakis wrote <i>Alphabet Noir</i>. I don't know how else to put it or what better recommendation I can make, so I will spend some time discussing the book speaking to those who have not read it as well as to those who have.<br />
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A distinguishing aspect of persons who know what they are doing and enjoy doing it is that they <i>may </i>be capable of writing a book about what they do that is worth reading. <i>Alphabet Noir </i>is that book for Nico Vassilakas and for those interested in visual poetry, or vispo. Nico takes care in these 17 essays and poems, or events, you might say, to provide helpful and interesting indicators of the basis, form, and future of vispo, all against a ground of clear intent.<br />
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"I think of vispo as preparation for a future language event"</div>
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<i>Alphabet Noir</i> is not a complaint. It is not a naked cry. It is a consideration and reconnoitering and it is very useful, very interesting, and very helpful. I am glad for the fact that a person named Nico Vassilakis wrote this book called Alphabet Noir because it is a small, thoughtful, well-designed book that suggests to me that everything will be okay. That even as the world complains and cries - even as perhaps Nico himself has difficult days, as indeed he must - we can make a point of discussing what we do that may be of interest to someone other than ourselves and our dependents.<br />
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"Reading is an intentional look"</div>
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I incline toward the view that any poet or artist - perhaps anyone at all, really - should provide the rest of us with some written evidence of what they understand so that others can understand it too. There is a certain degree of sex and religion in this book as Nico likes to speak to letters and their intent. I like a writer who invests their subject with sex and religion but who holds their subject forth as, first and foremost, functional. There is not a little <i>Moby Dick</i> in <i>Alphabet Noir</i> for this very reason, that the turn from suggestion to application is rapid with purpose. </div>
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"When you turn your head the same time someone looks at you"</div>
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<i>Alphabet Noir</i> holds forth the will as hand maiden to the accomplished fact, and that's okay with me. At the same time (or concurrently) the self is made subject to the the letter, the building block and progenitor of the word. Nico asks his reader to read the letter as the letter, the parts of the letter as parts. Nico suggests that the exploration of the parts of letters is akin to atomic theory, and I have no problem with that suggestion. The clear, kind, playful tone and intent of this book allows exactly such a suggestion. Why not. Why not allow the author to suggest, to create?</div>
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Over that land</div>
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Is more of it.</div>
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The romance of <i>Alphabet Noir </i>is not without starkness. I am of a mind to enjoy one's heart taken to task, knowing that all this, all of it, will be called to account - by the reader, principally, and by the writer's better self. I trust that the words (and even the letters) in this 72 page volume were chosen very carefully. For a poet and/or visual artist, for a student or teacher, here and now or in some future time, why should one not read <i>Alphabet Noir</i>? Oh, well, we make all kinds of excuses and the world is chock full of good books.</div>
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You will finish this book inclined toward thoughtfulness, not regret. You will not be angry. You may even get ideas about things that matter not because of the big picture but because small things, like letters, like you and me, are sometimes more true than what we amount to, or how we are commonly understood - without, that is, consideration.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
"ssS So So O So o S s au Ss o os Os so Ssss"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
*****</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>All quotes are from Alphabet Noir, c_L Books, 2016</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>This review is for my son, Jackson Thoreau Hartigan, because we need to write what we understand</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-2499220367025353172017-11-25T14:18:00.000-08:002017-11-25T14:18:24.505-08:00Writing for Writing and Certain Goals SpeakI have blogged very occasionally over the past several months, meaning I have blogged rarely, or only a few times, lacking the principal opportunity to blog, that being motivation. Rather I have been motivated with respect to other things. These things did not keep me from blogging. I kept me from blogging or, to be accurate, I had no cause to blog except blogging itself, which was insufficient reason to blog.<br />
<br />
Even blogging at this moment - being engaged in blog formation as we speak, so to speak - I am not sure one needs a reason to blog or a purpose toward which to blog. I mean, here we are, five sentences into this blog and there's hardly anything like a topic <i>per se. </i>But I am in a mood to blog, that much is apparent. Maybe one needs to be in this mood, to frame the desire to see oneself writing a blog in order to blog. I think this is true, and I also think that, when you are working on other things, you may not be in the mood to blog.<br />
<br />
So what kinds of things have I been working on? Well, I think about what I am working on all the time, as I'm sure you do, but it's hard putting it into words when it's several things, really, and they all sort of jumble together. So, when I look back from a certain perspective - and I think I have reached a point where I can look back at what I've been doing and say something about it - I often feel like I am embarking on a guess. I feel like I lack proper documentation to represent actions and thoughts as they occurred and influenced each other, and - here's a more critical dilemma - with having reached a point of perspective and looking back, it's as if context has been lost to me. The reference points have been largely erased. I must rely on recall - not my strong suit. Adding to the confusion, I am almost never motivated to explain in precise detail what I am about, being convinced it is of no real consequence as long as certain goals are met.<br />
<br />
Now, we have actually, unexpectedly, struck upon a notion that draws very close to the theme, if there is such a thing, that dominated the last several months of my waking thoughts, but I am faced, in this blogging moment, with the choice of going on with the show in relating the jumble of things I've been focused on and getting the theme, or developing the theme in lieu of recollection. I choose the latter tack as it should illustrate for the reader and myself what I am getting at better than if I try and capture it otherways. So here goes.<br />
<br />
<i>I am almost never motivated to explain in precise detail what I am about, being convinced it is of no real consequence as long as certain goals are met.</i><br />
<br />
There is a great deal of life and thought wrapped up in this sentence. It strikes me as a predominantly Christian sentiment and that does not surprise me as most of what I think about is Christianity, either as I live it or it is lived by others, though not directly (rule keeping, etc.) , or I mean to say insofar as I am a moral thinker, or I think about morals, not morality. I think about the will and I think about what is good. A lot. And when one thinks a lot about something pone tends to lead the life of a person who thinks about those things. I do not mean that thinking about the good makes me good - no, I mean that I am preoccupied in a certain way and my actions show it. My behavior and tendencies reflect my concerns - no surprise there. The surprise and difficulties of the past several months - and really the last couple years - has been a shift in perspective that can be located in the above sentence I italicized.<br />
<br />
Simply put - and I know no better way to try and state a fact - as a writer my goal was to discover goodness in the act of writing. A well-written poem would be a good poem, and good art was the best thing I was capable of, and the only reasonable goal I could be sure of having the opportunity of meeting. I lived this way all my adult life, really, up until I was married - about 20 years I guess. At that point, the writerly goal remained intact but was complicated by the goal of a happy, successful marriage. That was a wonderful learning experience and it altered, over the course of several years, not the writing itself, but the purpose or expectations of the writing. The core or purpose of writing remained the same, but the purpose of the poem once written changed from being a means of personal validation to being an accomplishment in itself. I found the means, therefore, of self-publishing and participating in other ways as I saw fit, while supporting the writing of my wife, Endi. Being a good father to my son, Jackson, simply reinforced this movement toward a self-sustaining practice, where the poem was good in itself both as an independent object and for the good it did the writer (me) in having written the poem. A process that was bound to draw me closer to whatever ultimate good or truth this life might lead me to.<br />
<br />
Therefore, the more I wrote, the better I became, was the theory. And I wrote a great deal. Writing however was not enough and living with the writing was not enough. Writing was good, yes, and there was truth in writing, but could I ever know that the good or the truth I had obtained was any better or worse than what I might achieve the next day or a year later? In fact, I had not only plateaued but I began to feel enervated and realized that I had reached a critical juncture. Having exhausted all previous, interior means, including such political and artistic practices as often are made to represent ourselves, I reached outside myself for God. I was catechized, baptized, and confirmed in the Catholic church.<br />
<br />
I continued to write at a furious pace for three years or so, then slowed to something like a trickle. I spent the last 13 months on a manuscript of poems written in fits, here and there, entitled <i>Parades for You. </i>And all this time, running through my head, weren't poems as much as questions: Why write when the words of ultimate good and truth are here before me in the scripture? How do I write (and seek the good in the process of writing) when my goals are set before me as a Christian? I would read at Mass and I could not deny the effect. What joy it was to read the word of God, and what a small thing it was to write for oneself. And could I state otherwise? My writing was indeed largely for myself. I would share it with my wife, a couple people might see it online, and I continued to host my Concrete Formalism Facebook group dedicated to concrete/visual poetry, and I continued to write for my OpenCatholic blog and website, but clearly a reckoning was in order. And really this is what my mind has been working on for a good while now. And while it was working on this reckoning and reordering it was not particularly motivated to engage in creative or polemical writing.<br />
<br />
Now, however, I have gotten somewhere. What to call it is a challenge though. I should make clear that the preoccupations of the past couple years were not administered solely in the dim light of my consciousness. Oh no. Everything was thrown into the mix so as to be sure that whatever came out of it would be a fair conclusion or at at least a working assemblage. The purpose in fact was to test myself, I suppose, or decide if writing could continue in light of the Christian <i>certain goals </i>alluded to above. So where did I get too, and what makes it somehow definitive, a point of perspective? I suppose that the best and most succinct answer to that questions lies in the manuscript of <i>Parades for You, </i>in the movement between the first poem, written in October 2016, to the last, written in November 2017.<br />
<i><br /></i>Here is the October 2016 poem:<br />
<br />
*****<br />
deserts and streams<br />
deserts and streams<br />
deserts and mountains and streams<br />
<br />
mountains and streams<br />
mountains and streams<br />
deserts and mountains and streams<br />
<br />
streams and streams<br />
streams and streams<br />
deserts and mountains<br />
deserts and mountains and<br />
deserts and mountains and streams<br />
<br />
mountains, streams<br />
mountains<br />
mountains, streams<br />
mountains and streams<br />
mountains and streams<br />
mountains and streams<br />
and streams and streams and<br />
deserts and mountains and streams<br />
<br />
mountains<br />
mountains<br />
deserts and streams<br />
<br />
deserts and streams<br />
mountains<br />
mountains and deserts and streams and mountains and<br />
mountains and deserts and streams<br />
<div>
*****</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And here is the poem from November 2017:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
*****</div>
Most of time and mountains<br />
most of time and true<br />
true into mountains and time is mountains<br />
true into time and true<br />
<br />
This with time and mountains<br />
this with rivers and true<br />
this with mountains and rivers and time<br />
is time into mountains and rivers and true<br />
<br />
Send me into time and mountains<br />
send me mountains and rivers so true<br />
Let me fall into rivers and mountains<br />
and mountains and rivers and mountains so true<br />
<br />
All for time and all for mountains<br />
all for rivers and mountains so true<br />
all for mountains and rivers and mountains<br />
and mountains and rivers and rivers so true<br />
<br />
Watch for this, watch for mountains<br />
Watch for time and watch for mountains<br />
Watch for rivers, mountains for rivers<br />
mountains for rivers and rivers so true<br />
<br />
I am where eyes were, mountains for rivers<br />
rivers for mountains and mountains so true<br />
I am where rivers, rivers for mountains,<br />
mountains for river and rivers so true<br />
<br />
True is the mountain<br />
the mountain the river<br />
true is the mountain the river so true<br />
true is the mountain the river so true<br />
<br />
Now is the mountain, now is the river<br />
now the the mountain the river so true<br />
now is the river, the river so true<br />
now is the mountain the river so true<br />
<br />
Come with me the mountain the river<br />
come with me the mountain so true<br />
Fall with me for rivers and mountains<br />
fall with me for mountains so true<br />
<div>
*****</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The second poem is clearly more engaged with its topic than is the first. The first poem recites; the second incites: it makes apparent the poet behind the poem and enlists and beseeches the reader. It is active and in the context of this blog it is clearly reflective of <i>certain goals, </i>whereas the first poem chooses instead to offer a kind of product, not goals. One can choose to take the first poem however one wishes to, for whatever purposes. You might worship the deserts, streams, and mountains or you might merely enjoy them. Or you might build vacations homes on them or store nuclear waste in them. Whatever. The poet offers only the rhythm of the deserts, streams, and mountains while hoping, perhaps, that the reader will empathize and appreciate both the poem and the things poeticized and, by extension, the poet. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The second poem presents a very different scenario or dialogical space. The poet addresses the reader directly with sum conclusions regarding the deserts, streams, and mountains which are assigned active and particular values. There is no getting away from the fact that the poet is calling to the reader from out of his understanding and experience of the deserts, streams, and mountains. Here, the deserts, streams, and mountains are strictly valued, esteemed, and fraught with both personal and essential values. Our options of what to do with the deserts, streams, and mountains are vastly reduced to the point where we are incited not merely to witness them with the poet but <i>to fall </i>for them.</div>
<br />
Now, someone could read this blog and think, Oh he's assimilated his religion in his writing. And maybe they would have a point, but I can't say that's right, not exactly. I'm quite sure I've assimilated next to nothing. Instead, I've had to leave the comfy confines of myself and go out and meet something I was never expecting to meet, and which all my reading and education had not prepared me to meet. And I can not do this alone, and I can not pretend that it is enough that I do this alone even if I could. If I were in a desert I would feel compelled to preach to the rocks, to see what I see, to become as I have learned to be. Anything less would be hypocritical and impossible in light of <i>certain goals.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>So what's next, as I turn back to look toward the future? Good fellowship, hard work, and peace, I hope. Peace, first and foremost. And I hope for nothing less for those I love including anyone who has kindly read through to these final words of this blog.Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-51830372661997450482017-07-15T08:30:00.003-07:002017-07-15T08:30:44.153-07:00Is there life beyond being a book?...or books beyond books, and what would that be called? Let's be oppositive for a time and see where it takes us. Premise, that the welter of life is lived either (A) online, or (B) offline. Digital or analog. Connected or not.<br />
<br />
I like books to be books. I tried e-reading and did not like it. I like books to be books. I have written books, self-published books, and that was okay. It was more than okay. But now I think I don't want to publish in any currently recognizable form but to release, broadcast, let go.<br />
<br />
One writes a book. But is it a book if you do not release it as a book? It is a project, a work, a collection, an assemblage. The author - or assignor - designs a beginning, middle, and end. This effort is initiated. There is a point, urge, idea, construct. Where we had books, we now might have....what?<br />
<br />
I feel inclined toward that <i>what </i>as a motivating factor. I am a poetic counter-puncher.<br />
<br />
So, what would this look like, this <i>publishing </i>of a<i> book </i>that is not a book being published? I am in a good position to work this out having little stake in publishing for profit or reputation. But then I am not tied to being ground-breaking either. Efficacy speaks to me, and transmission of the clearest possible source, at least as I am able to make out. That's what guided the self-publishing for the past nine years. My idea, book edits, format, cover. Done. And how able being able to convert my current books, all 30 or so of them, into a new form to broadcast? That sounds like a fun bit of mayhem.<br />
<br />
I see two threads (we're oppositive for a day, remember). Online: a website or Facebook...book. Maybe a group page of some sort. On the analog side, a form of free distribution. Leaflets of a sort left about randomly. Planted in odd spots.<br />
<br />
Stepping out the oppositive mode, the real questions are (A) what does all this mean, and (B) what's the writing going to look like going forward? I'll have to think about that!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-85372562403969140472017-07-05T19:02:00.003-07:002017-07-05T19:02:35.215-07:00Are We a Settled Fact? I think not!Concrete Formalist poetry. I defined this page and the group I set up and the writing I do nine years ago. In that time the postings have moved toward asemic poetry and visual poems, which is interesting and relevant. So I thought to take a moment to look at the term Concrete Formalist and ask, Is that all there is to a fire?<br />
<br />
The current statement runs, in part:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: #fefdfa; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">I work in form and am therefore a formalist; I happen to work in only one form; that form has strong visual markers, and is therefore "concrete." This blog also addresses concrete formalism as I perceive it in formal and informal pictorial or visual work and signature events, whether in my work or others' such as I am privileged to know.</span><br />
<br />
I do not think about concrete formalism any more than I think about the term human being. So, the term appears to be a solution and a proposition and fluid in both respects. Concrete Formalism sounds like Orderly Bricks, or Art According to Hoyle. It is, I suppose, exactly those things or it is the title of a book, "book" defined loosely. I have never considered drafting rules or outlines of Concrete Formalism. I am not sure that what I am writing conforms to anything other than the rule that it should feel right, though those feelings are complicated. They have a history. They have training.<br />
<br />
The temptation to state then that one who knows the alphabet or has access to a typewriter or iPad is a formalist (in concrete terms) does not enter here. I feel no such temptation.<br />
<br />
I could massage the current statement to explain the non-block poems I write. I could do all sorts of boring things. The most boring thing I do - and it's not even close - is to do nothing because I doubt the work, its purpose, its effect, etc. All those nagging, debilitating writerly, artistic doubts. Boring boring boring.<br />
<br />
Certainly the contributors to the Facebook page are not boring. You know who you are! We have 300+ members and, who knows, perhaps we help each other to feel, well, alive. I mean, I guess that's what this is all about. How else is being human bearable except to feel alive?<br />
<br />
So. Are we a settled fact? I think not! Members come and go, and reappear. Interesting factoid: I think you are all brilliant. I can't be any more concrete, formally speaking, than that.<br />
<br />
Merci, Felicitations, and Thank you.<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-10241953176598815042017-06-13T19:03:00.001-07:002017-06-13T19:03:11.876-07:00Poets, guidebooks, and parking lotsYou are alone in nothing, who write poems.<br />
<br />
What a terrible decision never to be alone!<br />
<br />
You feel that you are lone. Liar! Who brought you here if not a writer? Who can stand you but another?<br />
<br />
The musician records tracks. The painter blankets the canvas. The writer, aternal, begins. But what can the end be to beginning with friends who never die? I am a baritone (bordering tenor, my mind is clear) to Keats. Should I apologize for no choice? While in amongst all this I choose: I am a guide to Jupiter's pocketbook.<br />
<br />
The poet is not the guide to the poet.<br />
<br />
The poet is the accident to the guidebook.<br />
<br />
The poet is the guidebook falling out of one's pocket into the fire or onto a muddied trail, picked up by a fellow traveler who thinks about asking around at the parking lot for who dropped the guidebook, but hesitates, climbs into their car, and drives home.<br />
<br />
What lonely work it is! Writing the poem, reading the same poem.<br />
<br />
What can we do but write poems? It's the only thing we can do!<br />
<br />
It's the only thing we must do.Patrick Playter Hartiganhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09204609979194013074noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-77937516070893366912017-06-10T19:08:00.002-07:002017-06-10T19:10:23.641-07:00LEASH and RELEASELet's not fool ourselves.<br />
<br />
Whatever we have to say about poetry we are poets who find that we write poems.<br />
<br />
We are poets who find or forget that we write poems that recall or forget poetry.<br />
<br />
We who forget are not forgotten to ourselves.<br />
<br />
Poetry is not a matter. It is not the idea of poetry.<br />
<br />
The fact of writing is the being of a poet who, writing, ratifies the first principle.<br />
<br />
Poetry, whether written, oral, or visual, is the smell one gives off, whether in heat, being pursued, or as a matter of recollection.<br />
<br />
Let's fool others. Sorry, but there's no other way. Poetry offers various platforms for PRETENSE, such as authority, intent, material positioning, and ideology. One dwells in one or another pretense and then finds one writes poetry quite independent of the foregoing.<br />
<br />
Ah, well. Spring after all is spring.<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-41570778593292597192017-03-19T08:24:00.002-07:002017-03-19T08:24:26.474-07:00Writing, contentOccasionally I have an idea for a blog entry, an essay, or a poem. I think about the idea, toss it around mentally, but I never sit down to write it out. After a while, a day or two, the idea submerges or slides off stage - pick your metaphor for quiet disappearance - and life goes on. I am aware that I am letting an idea pass. I watch myself letting the idea dies out, "at least for the time being," I say to myself, and I am unconcerned. There may be a tinge of regret as I recall when my life seemed to hinge on the next thing written, but those days are past. I no longer depend on what I write.<br />
<br />
I've taken to believing that a thing, if true, written or not, remains true. I have always held that only true things matter for writing and that writing matters for revealing the truth. I still believe this, that the effort of writing is a critical one for for the well-being and salvation of the human race and of ourselves as individuals. I believe this. I also believe that all truth is connected at the source of truth which is God. So, the truth that is writing is connected to the truth that is love, to the truth that is kindness, to the truth of eternal law.<br />
<br />
I have worked hard over the last several years to live in truth; for my behavior and dealings with others and toward myself to be truthful. I've had to understand and change some things about myself. This is an ongoing process. And there are times when I recognize thoughts and feelings I have not had for many years, even since I was a child.<br />
<br />
I am happier now than I have ever been. Writing is different though. Writing is not, as it was for many years, even decades, the solitary device which saved my life and brought me to the world. All parts of my life have this value now. In light of this, what should my writing be? What can it do to justify itself?<br />
<br />
I would like to write in such a way that maintains silence. I would like to write is such a way that the reader is affected but not swayed. I want the reader to think first and foremost about themselves. I would like the reader, while he or she is reading this writing, to be able to think about themselves better, more clearly. I would like the reader, when they have finished reading, to be thinking about themselves rather than me or my name. I would like a kind of writing where I disappear from the reader.<br />
<br />
I do not know what this writing would look like or even whether it exists or can exist, but that is what my writing would have to look like for me to want to create it. That is what it would have to be to make an impression on me in the life I currently live, if I'm going to be honest about it.<br />
<br />
And why not be honest about it? Until I am capable of writing that makes sense for where I am now, am I not bound to be content with my life as a whole? And even if I were able to produce this writing, would not the same conditions apply? <br />
<br />
I no longer depend on what I write but on how I live my life as a whole. I think this frees me up as a writer, whether I write or not. It certainly frees me up as a reader. I read more and with less concern for myself (as a writer) than as a person receiving another's work. I enjoy hearing new work at poetry readings. Anything is fine with me. But I like also reading old favorites, Robert Lowell in particular. Walking familiar roads and seeing things afresh, with a more generous, open heart.<br />
<br />
I really have no idea what's next for me in writing, or painting, or anything of that nature. I am strangely content (and a little excited) waiting to see, turning ideas over in my mind only to watch them fade and disappear. It's a pleasant sadness, the notion that does not adhere, this qualified peace.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-82278095633957555362017-01-14T09:27:00.000-08:002017-01-14T09:27:01.627-08:00The Political Option, as a RuleThere are no adequate histories and there never can be. A pure biography would be required to replicate the life it wishes to describe. The reader (or audience-individual) would have to be subjected to the physical realities and effects of the subject in real space and time. And we could only trust an audience-individual whom we could divest of personality and experience so that they could fully absorb the lesson that is the life of the subject. And so we make due with substitute actions rendered in words, pictures, sound, and performance. Some of these substitutes, such as written biography, serve the purpose of providing material for discussion. They can prompt or support action, or at least allow a person to a means of explaining themselves. Of course words and explanations, recorded or not, are largely a means of rendering daylight meaningless. We are all wanting sleep. I will return to this point.<br />
<br />
Besides art there is politics, which is another form of anxiety. The great virtue of politics is that it makes life into a game, with winners and losers. A person who adopts politics for their artistic model is rewarded with a label. This label is a word that describes the person to others and most importantly to themselves. The person can customize the label to suit temporary or long-term circumstances. It is a handy thing to have a label, as opposed with being unlabeled. The one who is labeled can be confident of friends and small-talk and, as I have mentioned, words and explanations, recorded or not, are largely a means of rendering daylight meaningless. We are all wanting sleep.<br />
<br />
This sounds like I am making fun of politics, and I am. But that is not to say that I do not take politics seriously, because I do. I have no choice, which is why I make fun of politics. I must take politics seriously because I care about my life and the lives of others, especially those who are vulnerable to the realities of life, such as proper food, shelter, and understanding. It is because I take people seriously that I take politics seriously, and it is because I take people very, very seriously that I hold politics in perspective.<br />
<br />
Held up to the light that is the human race, with all it foibles and splendid accomplishments and potential, politics appears the most useful, or utilitarian, of our pursuits. Politics is, to my way of thinking, a framework of skeletal design on which to hang the skin of our hopes and desires. I am not especially "political" by nature, but I know you won't get anywhere without some sort of structure. Politics cannot explain why we are here or where we are going, but it makes for interesting conversation. And, of course, words and explanations, recorded or not, are largely a means of rendering daylight meaningless. We are all wanting sleep.<br />
<br />
Therefore, to the point of what constitutes history, do we mean history in its perfect, meaningful, or practical forms? Let's be clear why we ask the question and what we expect or hope to do with the answer. We can consciously insert ourselves into the conversation how we like, labeled or not. We can operate in groups and/or individuals. We can create work. That work can be perfect, meaningful, or practical. It will be more or less useful to a person or group of persons depending on circumstance. We can comprehend the political, as an option, even as we acknowledge that we function politically, as a rule. The logic is: you can stop or go. I suggest you do both and as often as it is practical to do so.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-73971182966495085732016-11-26T10:45:00.003-08:002016-11-26T10:45:49.938-08:00Poems like Silence; Form, too.I have written a few things lately, about five poems, that show a kind of light promise of developing toward a book, and that is a little unexpected and nice. Only one of the poems is in the block form, and I really don't think many of the poems in this book will be in the block form, which has served as the foundational form I work in and justifies, if that's the word I want, the term Concrete Formalism.<br />
<br />
Now, I could easily shift mentally into a particular gear and say to myself that these poems are a development of concrete formalism, even as they do not conform to certain formal principles. Other principles are in place and no doubt exhibit formalist features rendered visually, either directly or allusively. I could say this, but I am tired of my voice saying things. Many of us who have been around for 50+ years have tired of hearing ourselves speak, I am sure of that. For my part, I prefer hearing nothing from me that concerns myself directly; better yet, I like to hear myself contributing to universal silence, in my small way. Silence is a lovely foretaste of death after all. I am quite sure that one who can enjoy silence will have a better time of it when death comes knocking. We'll be trained for it, you see.<br />
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The writer who like the sound of not hearing his own voice, whether audible or not, is a harbinger of the peace that comes to all. In the end, what other poems should we write? We cannot write from the perspective of death unless we somehow share in death in our lifetime. The silence of a writer speaks volumes of how death takes one by the hand and stills the beating heart. <br />
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So I will write these poems, but I will not spend too much time explaining them to myself. Like a day's journey with no particular destination in mind, whether along highways or over country roads, through meadows and forest, I will wait for and view with interest these poems as they occur, when they occur, however they occur, and for whatever end.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-14681242429453292582016-09-03T08:13:00.004-07:002016-09-03T08:13:43.437-07:00Next Stop: Go!I believe it is possible to compose as many different books as one has poems, rearranged in as many different ways. In other words, I could take 45 poems (to pick a number) and create 45 different books. Each different in that he reading experience is different because of the different ordering.<br />
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There's a project, to write the poems that would amplify or project this structural thesis. I don't think there is a logical way such poems would read, necessarily, but one could set to work under the influence of this idea and see what happens.<br />
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This idea perhaps would not have occurred to me except that I have the platform to do it. Via publish-on-demand (lulu.com) I can create as many titles as I have time for. Note though, I would NOT publish 45 books of the same poems rearranged simply to prove my point. I present the idea as concept which has better practical value in pointing out the effect of ordering, of sequence, accumulation, etc.<br />
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On the publishing front I am coming out of an eight-month hiatus. I had <i>numinous odds</i> all set to publish in late December 2015 then pulled it back and cancelled it. I also stopped writing poems until just recently. There were reasons for this, principally, that I wanted to focus on more significant personal and religious matters because, well, they merited that attention, and also because it was the only way to loosen myself from the rut I had gotten into with writing. I mean my approach and expectations, or lack thereof. I came out of this hiatus by attending a reading where I read a couple poems at open mike, feeling refreshed and open as well. I started writing poems and blogging again a bit a couple weeks ago<br />
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I opened up lulu.com and looked over things and thought, Okay. All this still makes sense. It would not have bothered me if for some reason none of it made any sense because I had reconciled myself to writing and what it has given me, which is to say, my life. I met my wife through the Writer's Workshop in Iowa. My career as a trademark paralegal and success in that has been made possible through my writing. Writing well and reading well has guided my difficult yet sure path in my faith. With all that - I repeated to myself every now and again over my eight-month break - not to mention the 30-odd books I have written (and self-published, true), why should I bother to write anymore?<br />
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The answer of course is because I feel like it and at some point a better reason will be made apparent. Or in short, Onward!<br />
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To the original point of this blog, <i>numinous odds </i>includes poems I published in <i>miasma </i>along with some newer ones. I have altered the dedication, to "those who stop and stare and stop." And the book is a kind of incarnation of stopping, of ceasing of effect. It plays from the moment and I think looks out on the current political landscape a bit and comments. I need to redo the cover art, then out it goes.<br />
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I just remembered that I wanted to write something about visual poetry today. I guess it will have to wait!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-74192305523477587632016-08-19T14:17:00.002-07:002016-08-19T14:17:33.019-07:00Freedom Will Not Set You Free, and Related ObservationsYou may not find truth if you are looking for mere facts. <br />
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You may not know the truth if you know only facts.<br />
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You may not reflect the truth if you are turned only toward facts.<br />
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Our world is awash, it reels in a deluge of information and facts. Those facts may be statistical or be facts of imagery and sensation. That which can be received and immediately comprehended is a fact. Ours is an informational Age. We decry limitations in the name of the idol of access.<br />
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When everyone can be anything and all knowledge can be everywhere...that is freedom. Freedom as an end, not as a means. Since when did freedom become an end in itself? Perhaps when people tired of explaining why it mattered, or when they forgot why. Or when the ends of this world had disappointed too many too soon for the call to freedom to mean anything but as an end in itself, to serve the best possible outcome in any given situation.<br />
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Freedom without an end, love without an end. What do they mean? Can love exist without an object, a beloved? Can freedom exist without a goal: the right to vote, free speech, equality of the races, equality of the sexes? Does it make any sense to speak of freedom without an end in mind? Is information valuable merely by being information?<br />
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I believe that freedom has lost its object, and that our love of information in lieu of truth is to blame.<br />
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To my way of thinking, the artist stands in two worlds. In one, his work satisfies a particular end composed in his time, created from out of a self that positions itself, consciously and unconsciously. with respect to a culture or cultures. That is one aspect of the artist.<br />
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The artist also stands in a world outside particular reference in that his work and life participates in the lives and the work of those around him, and in his predecessors and his successors. The language of one's medium is, in this sense, the information one needs to work. The goal is the work of art itself. Even as artists are pressured to deconstruct the object they continue to compose meaningful work.<br />
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Much of what is written these days seems mannered or insipid. Sentimental, mostly. But the painterly, visual arts are strong. In this Golden Age of Information - rather like the Renaissance in its outward show of worldly profundity - the visual arts are where the action is. As a culture we rush to the video tape as if the truth finally will be revealed. The crime scene, the family photo, even pictures of cats. Anything to cut through the haze of all-access all the time.<br />
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What is truth in the present Age? It is what truth has been in all Ages, of course, we can be sure. The question is how do we as individuals serve that truth, how do we orient ourselves? What do we address, and to what end? Will we be satisfied with information as an end in itself? What's the plan for getting from here to there, where truth resides?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-1821747653042196992016-08-06T13:53:00.003-07:002016-08-06T13:53:31.075-07:00A Narrative Arc, a Word of SurpriseLike a thief in the night, I appear happy in poems.<br />
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Most artists will relate to this I believe or see something familiar. I throw myself into things immensely and intensely. It is my personality, my calling to be this way. In part it is because I fear regret, the idea of reaching the end of my rope with something undone. I have never minded the thought of lack of material success, but to hold back on commitment: that is failure.<br />
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And certainly the poetry, with 30 or so self-published books, designed exactly as I wanted them to be, bear out this tendency. I began publishing in earnest in 2008 on Lulu.com. I was publishing occasionally in magazines, but I was not connecting really, and did not feel I had any kind of place in poetry. I had written 8 manuscripts or so, and the weight of that unpublished work was such that I found myself thinking I could not write another word until they were published. But how can I publish them?<br />
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Behold: the Internet.<br />
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I stopped sending out to presses and magazines because I did not care about what they offered. I did not care what the poetry world was, and how it viewed my work. I decided to publish my own work in a way that was faithful to that work. In a design that was consistent and supportive of the poems. In books that were whole, complete, and sense-making. I wold be able to write to a book, to a purpose, and move on. I would develop as an artist and as a person without the fear that publishers or critics would hold me back.<br />
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I decided that the poems would find their way into the world to the extent that the world wanted or needed them. In truth, I cared less about my work for being mine than for great poetry per se. If my poems were significant they would find their audience. In truth, they would find their audience in any event.<br />
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I would produce these books and they would be for sale through Lulu.com. I broadcast the books on Facebook, to friends, and on the Concrete Formalist Poetry group page, and in this blog. Oh, I formed the term concrete formalism to describe what I did and wrote about that.<br />
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I invited others to my group page and they saw my work. I occasionally - well, 2 or 3 times - read my work in public here in Portland, Oregon. I gave my wife, Endi Bogue Hartigan, a copy of every book as it published. I shared the books with friends, as gifts. I shared them with my son.<br />
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I stopped reading poetry but I wrote volumes. I wrote as I lived, dedicatedly and passionately. The covers always featured a drawing I had made, and some of the books included drawings inside them. I did all this up to a point a year or so ago and then I stopped.<br />
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I stopped because I was conscious only of silence. I felt that any book I produced from that point would simply fall to silence as one further instance of a project that had, in realistic terms, made its point. I am not a fan of bullying behavior, and putting out book after book in the manner I had been doing so seemed suddenly a stubborn preoccupation. Over-insistent and boorish.<br />
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So I stopped. I stopped writing. I stopped thinking about writing. In a sense I exposed myself, my process, to the light of day or better yet to the light of my conscience. I upended the turtle of self, and I left it there to die. I put a stop to expectations, to the internal narrative arc where I could have come back after this Lenten retreat and picked up again where I left off. I cut off my poetry at the knees, and I had no regrets doing so.<br />
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Since then, I have to say, my life has improved on every front. Family, at work, at church, exercise-wise, and intellectually. he poetry life was a siloing one. I felt I had this pursuit, a vocation, which was quite simply at odds with everything else, which I had to defend against incursions of time and energy. In the end I was asking myself, why am I doing this? What's the point? I have published 30 books and nothing has come of it. Do I really need to do another? If I were to die, I thought, I would do so knowing that I had done all I could, written the best poetry I was capable of writing, and was true to my decision to produce and publish in a way that I had to.<br />
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So, I waited. And, after several months, occasionally I would wonder what coming back to poetry-writing would look like if I ever did it. I really had no idea, other than not wanting it to be as it was, but that's not to say I had rejected any one specific tenet. I simply had no interest in revisiting the scene where I very good decision had been made.<br />
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My ego, in short, was out of the picture, and that was the last thread, the pure point of release, when I not only did not care about what I did in poetry, but about what I had done. I viewed all those years, hours and hours or writing, of consternation and wrenching existence, as an absolute boon. Writing has provided me with my education (grants at PENN); it had brought me together with my wife, Endi (at Iowa) and therefore my family, including Jackson. Writing had given me a rewarding career as a trademark paralegal. Therefore, it had given me the house I sit in and the clothes on my back.Thinking about it now, I can see that writing allowed me to follow through on the intensity-tendency I referred to above as nothing else had, so that I could see what it was about up to the very end and, ultimately, that exercise matured me, it helped me develop a self-knowledge, a conscience, that would lead me to the Church. It made me the kind of husband, father, and friend I would otherwise have been incapable of being.<br />
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Add to that the 30 books, almost as an afterthought.<br />
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With all that, do I really need to write another poem? With all that, why exactly have I bothered to doubt myself? I have doubted myself as a means of at least exposing myself, my ego. Now I feel inclined to believe that I could write and will write if the need to do so is made apparent to me. If a project or idea or any sort of prompting force makes itself known then, yes, I would write again. But I do not have it in my mind to do anything now, to do anything "differently," or to regret anything of what I have done.<br />
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I am glad for art. I am grateful for art. I am open to art, and I am about as free of a personal agenda as anyone I have ever known. That surely means something in itself, which may be, quite simply, that I am somehow content through and through. And what a nice surprise that is.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-11789868798675871132016-01-23T08:44:00.003-08:002016-01-23T08:44:39.013-08:00Trends and Titles, Pictures and PoemsThe visual pieces here or asemic writing, for that is what we see a lot of lately, is tending toward color and multi-dimensional effect. Gone are the days where the visual poem sought simply to make a point. Past are the more recent days when asemic poetry yearned for a place at the table of contemporary art. The visual poem and its proponents are situated and now flow in and out of conversation, almost unconscious of not belonging.<br />
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What art is once it has arrived may not seem as compelling as how it got there, but only to the mere spectator. I don't know that anyone these days is happy to spectate, merely, or believe that such a thing is possible. Get closer to the thing on the wall, the pile of stones in the field, the screen before your nose, and you will know that art is as it comes into being, whatever trajectory is perceived by the so-called public eye.<br />
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My impression of the present generation of visual artists is that they are a hell of a lot more interesting than any previous generation. Certainly, they appear kinder and gentler. They are a landscape crowd. They take their time in offering, as opportunity allows, the kind of thing one might happen upon in a walk, or on a vacation, circumstances depending, but here it is in your living room, artfully so.<br />
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Art is better, because artists are better as people. They communicate more. They have to, and because of that, they do; and then they make things out of that communication, or use it. That is what an artist does. And once they do this, they go back for more because it works. People who communicate are generally better than people who do not. We have tired of the raging individualist. Oh, the archetype will not and should not disappear, but it seems to me to have been more properly positioned in the artistic consciousness of late.<br />
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As I look through the images, asemic and pure-visual, that have been posted on this page, I sense that intelligent, thoughtful people are at work. They are determined to create, refine, and publish the art that they want to see in the world, and that is good enough. I see permutation, growth, sensitivity. I do not see dogma, didacticism, or grave-digging.<br />
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I speak to visual arts, not poetry per se. The poetry world continues enmeshed in narrowness and weak tragedies, in silo-building. With some notably exceptional individuals who keep their borders open, the reader of current poetry is bound to feel like they have made a political choice as they read. The reader of today is a paper soldier, and the poet a cultural troll, hacking away at one thing, promoting another, and in their spare moments decrying what they perceive as contrary formations.<br />
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It is no coincidence that many asemic art composers once wrote verse, then, appalled by the atmosphere, abandoned ship. Wise, wise, wise. I generally write poems, and when this group began filling up with images rather than words, I wondered what was happening. I had already grown out of trying to think like a poet though. I was engaged with what was before my eyes in terms shared with the artist, not exclusive to myself. But it is a challenge to grow in writing in these times. to write and share responsibly.<br />
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We should not be to surprised if one day asemic writing were to show poetry and poets the way forward, on its own terms. Or do I dream?<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-81674091262567165332016-01-16T18:53:00.001-08:002016-01-16T18:53:26.901-08:00Bad Books, or Words AnewLet's start out by allowing that we wrote a very, very, very bad book. I collected what I had done for months and put it out on Lulu, and even before the proof showed up I knew I would kill it, deleting the book, burying it.<br />
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I am thinking about my creative work with absolute dread. I appear to have hit some kind of weird vortex of stupid - no imagination or spark or desire, at all. I blame Church. Ha! Well, Church is a factor in my life of which, purportedly, poetry is a part.<br />
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But how to write a poem when every week or two you stand in front of the Tabernacle and read to the congregation prophecies of the Old Testament, and Letters of the New? What am I supposed to write? It's not like I spend my time with the New Yorker or even Charles Olsen. The Apostle Paul! What can I add, or do, when I live day to day, hour by hour, in love with the word of God?<br />
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Well, the answer is that you write terrible poems for a while, and you publish them and regret it. Then, you somehow feel fine anyway and think, Let's just write and see what happens, and so you are free in a way that maybe would not have occurred otherwise, if you had not written such dreck.<br />
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Dreck. I love that word. I love failing then waking up to a narrative. Well, we'll see. Or I'll see. Cats. Tangerines. Bandoleers. Also, I am getting older. Is it obvious?<br />
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Thanks for reading.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-49016245976496825522015-12-10T17:26:00.002-08:002015-12-10T17:26:52.236-08:00Not the What but the Here; not the Here so much as YouPoetry<br />
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Poetry Poetry<br />
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Poem Poem Poetry<br />
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Poetry Poem Poem<br />
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No concern that one will be misinterpreted or used for evil purposes, poetry is the feeling that is called poetry, as a beauty pageant queen is the feeling of the contest that made her queen.<br />
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The feeling can be put into words, which is always encouraging for a writer.<br />
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The written word is to poetry what the bouquet of roses is to the beauty queen.<br />
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***<br />
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Like Kant (that Kant) I work best in public, either writing or talking, in a cafe setting, which in this time is represented not by the fussy life-style spaces coffee shops have become, but by the <i>dive bar,</i> where humanity circulates in an unvarnished state. I write best with background movement and noise. I think better, and speak more intelligently, when in company I cannot account for. I like people as they are, without filters or preconditions, because when I write I hope to put on paper unfiltered feelings, ideas, images, and such constructions or works as we call poetry.<br />
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Poetry. What is it? I am sorry to say, it is what gets done today and what, once accomplished, prompts refusals and good mistakes.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-77074739499463463272015-11-07T18:28:00.003-08:002015-11-07T18:28:34.400-08:00Of Poetry and OthersI love poetry. This statement is incomplete. I have loved poetry for many years.<br />
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Poetry was was my first real friend and my first love. My first confessor. Poetry was my unfailing bartender. My son and my father.<br />
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Poetry is what happens when nothing else matters.<br />
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Even for the religious, poetry claims and saves. The poetic calls one to <i>faith, </i>anchored. Poetry puts one into a state of debt and we turn toward...you name it. In that place and time, the limit of one's soul, the ideal for worship and address.<br />
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All acts and works, gestures, and effects, publications and performances, that calls themselves <i>poetry </i>participate in essence in the central fact of this aspect of being that cuts across time, place, culture, gender, politics, and purpose.<br />
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I maintain this belief or position regardless of what anyone writes. I do not read a lot of poetry. This statement too is incomplete. I read almost no poetry. I read enough of one or another person's poetry to recognize that the work of that person in opening their hearts to others is accomplished, and then I put that book down. I, for one, cannot be informed on the topic of opening my heart. That a person opens their heart in a way that is novel, or unexpected, or entertaining, does not interest me. That is their concern. I wish them well.<br />
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Much of the effort that goes into the writing of poems in this time seems to me to have been, in other times and places, devoted to either religious worship or labor union organization. Or marriage. It is difficult and unrewarding to figure this sort of thing out. As is right, poetry in this time (as any other) is principled upon yearning. That is the good. That good is justified as the words connect with persons similarly composed and concerned.<br />
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But I am not concerned, or composed to listed to poets for what matters. Far from it.<br />
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Rather, I believe that poetry is music the mind composes, on the spot, to reflect the urging of the heart. In this, I trust. I love poetry, and I love poets.<br />
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This statement is incomplete. I married a poet, Endi Bogue Hartigan, whom I love more than anything I have written or will write. This, I promise.<br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7399402215519091706.post-57357584970342930362015-09-27T16:28:00.000-07:002015-09-27T16:28:04.513-07:00Form that is the PointOne can live forever, but today you pick up a brush loaded with pigment, or<br />
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<ul>
<li>select a rubber stamp</li>
<li>grab some scissors and a magazine</li>
<li>open up the computer</li>
<li>pick up a pencil</li>
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What is life forever if you do not now live? Rather, can one live forever unless one choose, now, to live?<br />
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And you choose, by habit and talent and urge, friends. Live now, or forfeit forever for a forever that denies what must be done now.<br />
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What is form?<br />
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Form is everything that is not giving up and others. Always others, and always oneself.<br />
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Surrendering vacates the point, and the point is the building block of form.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00005587475387261208noreply@blogger.com0