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Week One: Williams’ Paterson, Book 2

Sorry this comes a bit late everyone! I promise to be more prompt from now on … Something I’ve been mulling over for awhile:In a letter to John C. Thirlwall, dated June 13, 1955, William Carlos Williams writes: “The passage from Paterson which prompted my solution of the problem of modern verse…is to be found in Book 2, p. 96, beginning with the line: ‘The descent beckons.’ That after having been written several years before, where the implication of the variable foot first struck me” (Selected Letters 334). He then goes on to say that Einstein’s theory of relativity, the new “space-time,” has made necessary the creation of a new poetic form: “When Einstein promulgated the theory of relativity he could not have foreseen its moral and intellectual implication. He could not have foreseen for a certainty its influence on the writing of poetry” (Selected Letters, 335 – 336). In other letters, other essays, Williams also writes of how this new measure—the variable foot—must both sound over time and spatially mark the speech patterns of Americans (ie the poem must rhythmically unfold over time and it must spatially mark this particularly American rhythm). So for Williams, there is no such thing as a poem that is not both temporally and spatially alive. I’m fascinated with the variable foot – with the idea that a bookbound poem, as a precursor to a digital poem, is an object with its own kind of pulsating time and space. But it’s also a particularly elusive concept – just look at this excerpt from Paterson that Williams claims shows us the solution to the problem of modern verse! And what an impressive claim to make….

The descent beckons
        as the ascent beckoned
                Memory is a kind
of accomplishment
        a sort of renewal
                even
an initiation, since the spaces it opens are new
places
        inhabited by hordes
                heretofore unrealized,
of new kinds—
        since their movements
                are towards new objectives
(even though formerly they were abandoned)

There is something about the three-tiered line—strangely enough it’s the spacing!—that drives your eyes and mind on—it insists on a durational reading and insists that you not, as Williams writes only a few pages earlier, “Time Count! Sever and mark time!”

one response to staging … by 10 year old

[what if conceptual art was taught in fifth grade? here is the assignment for this week, but accomplished by a 10 year old — and I will think about it this week]

In one year and out the other

From the point of view of 2006. We start off in INT. 2006’s apartment. 2006 items: various different bumper stickers, magazines, Meals, books, and other things from 2006. In the room there is a very, very white television in the center, and 2 very, very white telephones to either side. Other then that, everything in a cluttered mess there in the middle of this mess is someone in a costume that at first just looks like a very large pile of the same mess that clutters up the room. 2006 stands up and turns on the T.V. JOHN and JAMES and EMILY, the newscasters, are standing stage left, middle, and right, respectively.

Continue reading one response to staging … by 10 year old

wk one time: e.e. cummings “you said is”


you said is

you said Is

you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body,to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?Looking into
your eyes Nothing,i said,except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever…..and through the lattice which moved as
if a hand is touched by a
hand(which
moved as though
fingers touch a girl’s
breast,
lightly)Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered

Week 2: Context

Can a poem be implied?

Create detailed “stage directions” for the piece.  Be as empirical, phenomenological, or philosophical as you like.  Use any means or media to communicate your directions.You have until July 15th! Until then, take the time to read and comment on your colleague’s work.

Temporality in Mallarme’s “A Throw of the Dice”

What is fascinating about the presence of the temporal component in Mallarme’s “A Throw of the Dice” is the way in which the poet alludes to the notion of time/life verbally that is at its lexical level and simultaneously renders it visible in the particular arrangement of its words, lines, stanzas on the page(s). In some regards, the temporal and spacial elements intermingle in an harmoniuos and unique way showing that there isn’t quite an accidental “throw of the dice,” as words are not simply thrown on the paper, instead there is a foreseen arrangement, in which the space becomes essential in an interesting interconnection with time.

 

The first word on the left page of the poem on which it starts is “BE,” which, temporally speaking, signals the beginning of something/life that is followed by there is “the ABYSS,” which refers to a endless hole, or even to emptiness. Semantically, these two words, the only ones written in capital letters in the whole poem, are in a clear opposition and may send to the momentary nature of time in general in between two inevitable stages: life and death as well as to the shape of the poem: half a page populated by words (life) the other part left empty because the rest of the poem continues on the right page. This movement of the text on the next page is expressed through the separation of the word “al-ready” into two syllabuses in order to keep the words and the poems connected and indirectly to maintain a certain feeling of duration.

 

What also contributes to the feeling of death, of falling down is the stairlike configuration of the placement of the words on this page while the selection of several words such as “maddened”and “slides desperately”sends to the image of endless deepness and a slow loss of temporality. Suddently, and, more precisely, right in the middle of the poem, the text from the right page“ends” leaving a large space under the last word “al-ready”and marks the space of an absence, of an empitiness, which comes to be continued on the right page. In this respect, “A Throw of the Dice” tends to be more than one poem, as it may very well be viewed as two poems, as two finished entities.

 Moving on the middle of the right page, the text gets density and the feeling of decay becomes predominant as the word-populated space abounds in verbs as “fallen,” “covering,” “buried,” which foresee an end/death. It is the end of everything that only seems to last as it is just temporary. In other words, now, time is not longer patient or passive in the same way in which it left the impression at the very beginning of the poem. Time governs the abyss and is ready to annihilate the space, words are everywhere and a claustrophobic feeling is floating in the air. At the very end of the left page, temporality has found its end and place and rests silently, “BE that the ABYSS.”

time in one year …

I think I am going to choose another score by the same author — ken Friedman (of Fluxus).

“ In One Year and Out the Other

On New Year’s Eve, make a telephone call from one time zone to another to conduct a conversation between people located in two years. After midnight, call the other way.

Ken Friedman

1975”

Week 1: Time

What is the “time” of the poem?

By now you have selected a poem that you will use as a jumping off point for this symposium.

Identify the poem's temporal element. Consider its duration, its moment, its progression, its pace, its beginning, and/or its end.

Use any means or media (a written explanation, a series of images, a video, another poem, a song, a hypermedia piece, or something completely new) to communicate your insights about the “time” of the poem to the rest of the group. Your contribution can be witty or obvious, straight or unconventional. You can be concrete or abstract. Just think about the poem and the time it represents. And then do whatever the hell you want to.

Note: If you want to read about time, start with the Wikipedia entry, here.

Post your results by the end of the week (July 8th). And have lots of fun doing it.