October 1, 2022
“What makes you different or weird, that’s your strength." -Meryl Streep
It’s been a bit of an effort to scale the Subatack App’s learning curve and get up to speed with posting. I’ve got a not-quite-pathological-but-still-obsessive-fussiness that sent me down seemingly-relevant-for-extended-attentive-bandwidth-rabbit-holes. I wrote elaborate “WELCOME! It’s a privilege to have you here!” letters of introduction; I learned to distinguish “Settings Stuff” from “Dashboard Stuff” so that “My Stuff” could get posted. Then I composed an “Authentic BIO” that I thought would be more irrefutably “Me” than the stingy 250 character-space on offer... but... on second, and then third, or fourth obsess, I thought: though both “WELCOME” and “The Authentic BIO” are the products of an ingenious(?!) imagination, they’re kinda windy so I’ll save them for a little later, just a little.
Here’s the deal: I read with an Xacto-Knife. I cut out and collect words and phrases from old hands-on-newspapers; magazines like Vogue, Arch. Digest, New Yorker, Harper’s, LIFE from late 50’s through early 70’s, Nat. Geo’s from early 20th Century; anything that appeals to me for reasons that perhaps a reader will suggest. I have routinely violated what always seemed like an absolute taboo: cutting from books of any sort I own (but rarely other poets). I’m near 75, who cares! Usually I’ll scribble what I cut in the margin as a note to a future inheritor. If a snip is a longish, direct quote, I put it in quotes, but I can’t keep track of every snip’s provenance. (If someone recognizes where something came from let me know and I’ll attribute... if it’s unique.) Then I keep the snips loosely stuck to pages and pages in 4 looseleaf binders going on 5. I keep reading through them to see what might “fit” and eventually a Phoem takes off, takes over… and just seems to write itself. Some unconscious part of my mind keeps working with everlasting, loyal and steady constancy at what I’ve verily and visually juggled too many times to count. The photo collage at bottom of some pieces can be apropos (here, the dice are a footnote) or not; sometimes it’s just a humorous touch because some of the phoems showcase the bleakish side of my “Not likely to get decked by a falling piano today.” worldview. The captions are not intended to be a part of the phoem, unless you want one, or all of them, to be. For some it will make sense, for others it would be like the Buddha setting fire to wild dogs! Then I photograph the finished piece with hi resolution camera (showing some of the smudgy effort, even sweat stains. You never get to see a writers effort in the finished piece on a clean white background! And in more than one instance, a blood smear, since Xacto blades are ruthless!. The photo lets me print them 13”X16,” suitable for framing. Don’t worry, there will be more posts where I try to explain further “My Stuff” by activating my meta-cognitive gears to discuss what I believe is going on in my “Phoetry.”This process is a way of writing I discovered long before becoming aware of Burroughs and Gysin:
“The cut-up technique (or découpé in French) is an aleatory literary technique in which a written text is cut up and rearranged to create a new text. The concept can be traced to at least the Dadaists of the 1920s, but was popularized in the late 1950s and early 1960s by writer William S. Burroughs. It has since been used in a wide variety of contexts…”
Also in the 1950s, painter and writer Brion Gysin more fully developed the cut-up method after accidentally rediscovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image.”- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique
My Inner Cassandra has just started licking my ear and whining about this blog post getting too-too-expansive. She says it risks demonstrating “Particularly Ingenious Failure” if I keep this part going. “OK,Ok, I’ll get some of the ‘Peculiar Ingenuity’ up PDQ and leave the More Windy Stuff for later." There’s a typed copy after the image in case it’s not legible.
All suggestions, criticism, critiques, kudos welcome. That said, condemnation of any writer’s effort is always VERBOTEN. Please remember that anything which might interfere with another writer’s desire to keep writing should be safely locked away from the light of day.
I love that line: "We have to surprise them." If the future is shaped allegorically by sad robots on modified alert
when the national bandwagon runs out of autistic haikus,
the bald guys with ponytails and vintage beaver epaulettes
will, like bad luck, always comeout swinging. But…
Theoretically it should be impossible to accuse poetry of murder
with out cracking a smile.
The real world is loosely sewn to the cool, delicious flow of words
to intrude on the subtle nucleus of music that actually works.
It's the circuit of your one true love filtered through the tempranillo of a minimal self
ferried
gratis among the star crisp lightness.
If you trv too hard to control the woozy are as of color
their gift for delightful
embroidery will not automatically speak poetry
where those serious cracks in the slight buzz of inspiration
break into tears to redeem language
between words and things.
Long stretches of lingering skittishness are never the right size.
Greater clarity will always start too late and stop too early.
Fortuna won't stop reaching for something that's just escaped.
Come siesta time reality's thumb put an exclamation point on
the world's blind spots. God alone knew why reality
was wide awake.1
DICE IMAGE
1.God may play dice with the uni- verse.
Such a pleasure to read about your process and philosophy as a phoet. I'm inspired whenever I read about an artist overcoming their self-conscious demons that keep them from sharing. This is a prime example of that. The Meryl quote is such a simple, powerful reminder.
"The real world is loosely sewn to the cool, delicious flow of words" - what a truly brilliant line.
Please keep sharing your work here!