response to Noah Cicero's "WRITING AND A PERSONALITY" blog post
yeah you need at least one personality, sure
but don't kid yourself
you don't need your own
or anyone else's for that matter
comparing a senseless working stiff to a personality-filled writer
like comparing a corpse to a clown
i mean the corpse is boring and smells quite a bit
but you'll treat it respect for eternity
you'll just leave the clown at the circus
the original crack smoker in delphi she coulda told you that when she was hunkered down in her cave
but she was busy speaking on behalf of apollo
the cult of the author in the modern era is nothing but a crass byproduct of the need for intellectual property
so that printers could borrow money from banks to buy presses
something had to be collateral
why not the writing?
no one knows who homer was (or who homer were, really) and it's completely irrelevant to anyone except in the people magazine set
the idolators
the idols came after people forgot to speak
20070115
"good" and "bad"
A response to Kasey's post:
There's a big difference between being able to categorize a poem as "good" or "bad," having & using criteria for performing such a categorization, having & using explicit criteria for performing such a categorization, and having a rigid set of necessary and sufficient criteria for performing such a categorization. The moment we categorize we're not all suddenly Aristotle.
We all categorize unexplicitly on so many dimensions rather regularly. No, constantly. We are more than a little bit like difference engines, at least when it comes to using words. The fact that these categories may actually have facets is usually completely remote to our realm of reflection. And we don't care. Behind the button we click there's a lot of stuff going on, but the button does the work for us without bogging us down in tedium each time. And if we get to the realm of poetry where we require of ourselves an explicit set of requirements for being either good or bad, we usually can use some of them and often use them flexibly. Unless, of course, we are trying to impress our friends with the severity of our personal Victorianisms. We don't lose too much sleep over whether a platypus is a mammal or not or whether it requires its own class.
So go ahead, call one poem "good" and another "bad." Let yourself go. Be free. There are some incredibly complex if not intelligent things going on in the background, so you're really not as dumb as you may seem to yourself and others when doing so. And you're a heck of lot less tiresome in the process.
Otherwise, Kasey, you're going to be stuck with the tedious chore of explaining exactly why Maya Angelou's poems are bad in a way that is consistent with an explicit and consistent ontology of good and bad poetries. I would really hate to see you put yourself through such a painful set of requirements for talk. I can willingly accept the truthiness of your aesthetic judgments. I can't really accept Kant or Aristotle as role models, however. They're just so, well, ridiculous.
There's a big difference between being able to categorize a poem as "good" or "bad," having & using criteria for performing such a categorization, having & using explicit criteria for performing such a categorization, and having a rigid set of necessary and sufficient criteria for performing such a categorization. The moment we categorize we're not all suddenly Aristotle.
We all categorize unexplicitly on so many dimensions rather regularly. No, constantly. We are more than a little bit like difference engines, at least when it comes to using words. The fact that these categories may actually have facets is usually completely remote to our realm of reflection. And we don't care. Behind the button we click there's a lot of stuff going on, but the button does the work for us without bogging us down in tedium each time. And if we get to the realm of poetry where we require of ourselves an explicit set of requirements for being either good or bad, we usually can use some of them and often use them flexibly. Unless, of course, we are trying to impress our friends with the severity of our personal Victorianisms. We don't lose too much sleep over whether a platypus is a mammal or not or whether it requires its own class.
So go ahead, call one poem "good" and another "bad." Let yourself go. Be free. There are some incredibly complex if not intelligent things going on in the background, so you're really not as dumb as you may seem to yourself and others when doing so. And you're a heck of lot less tiresome in the process.
Otherwise, Kasey, you're going to be stuck with the tedious chore of explaining exactly why Maya Angelou's poems are bad in a way that is consistent with an explicit and consistent ontology of good and bad poetries. I would really hate to see you put yourself through such a painful set of requirements for talk. I can willingly accept the truthiness of your aesthetic judgments. I can't really accept Kant or Aristotle as role models, however. They're just so, well, ridiculous.
Agreeing to disagree
I was more or less hoping for a paintball match between Ron Silliman and Reginald Shepherd. This reasoned discussion stuff lacks that musk of virility television and blogs find difficult to reproduce. I was dreaming of the impossible made real and then I noticed Ron agreed to disagree and so too did Reginald.
When disagreeing poets should stick to disagreement. Stick to disagreement, or else lapse into pretending you are diplomats of some poetic nation. But let's face it. There are no poetic nations, or for that matter, no poetic continents, states, counties, towns, tribes. No movements, no schools, even. There are only cliques and sociopaths. Neither cliques nor sociopaths ever really represent anything except personal agendas with varying degrees of tolerance for loneliness. Queen bees all around. Cliques almost never produce anything of any quality as they're almost always bound by apoetic pretenses and obligations, compromised from the start, and sociopaths spend way too much time stinging themselves, compromised at the end. While it may seem that the sociopath may be better off, the true lesson of the fool is that, while acting more like the fool thus concluding he is the lesser fool, is that really is at least as big a fool as the worst of fools.
Yes paintball I say. For if there is nothing in poetry but sociopaths and cliques, then poetry is essentially a redneck enterprise. All poets reside in the sticks. Where they like to play paintball.
Let's disagree, then, and maybe maintain an honest level of unreasonableness when doing so. Stick to our redneck roots. And more paintball, and more musk.
When disagreeing poets should stick to disagreement. Stick to disagreement, or else lapse into pretending you are diplomats of some poetic nation. But let's face it. There are no poetic nations, or for that matter, no poetic continents, states, counties, towns, tribes. No movements, no schools, even. There are only cliques and sociopaths. Neither cliques nor sociopaths ever really represent anything except personal agendas with varying degrees of tolerance for loneliness. Queen bees all around. Cliques almost never produce anything of any quality as they're almost always bound by apoetic pretenses and obligations, compromised from the start, and sociopaths spend way too much time stinging themselves, compromised at the end. While it may seem that the sociopath may be better off, the true lesson of the fool is that, while acting more like the fool thus concluding he is the lesser fool, is that really is at least as big a fool as the worst of fools.
Yes paintball I say. For if there is nothing in poetry but sociopaths and cliques, then poetry is essentially a redneck enterprise. All poets reside in the sticks. Where they like to play paintball.
Let's disagree, then, and maybe maintain an honest level of unreasonableness when doing so. Stick to our redneck roots. And more paintball, and more musk.
20070112
I've been tagged by Andy Gricevich to write five little-known things about me. All of the following are entirely true despite the otherwise fictional nature of my being.
1. While my surfaces seem somewhat inspired by the internet age, my guts as a mindless seer predate the Old Testament. Leviticus warns against my type as evil, yet the Greeks thrived on individuals of my sort (e.g., the Delphic Oracle).
2. As Lester the dummy I was at first operated by one poet but later a second poet became a part of me as well. Everything about me is really about "me."
3. My "great book" as Ron Silliman referred to Be Somebody in comparing it to Moby-Dick, edited by parties as diverse as a HarperCollins marketing guru Suzie Sisoler as well as genius CA poet Standard Schaefer, will finally be released this year by Effing Press over seven years after it was first drafted. Some but certainly not all of its ideas relating to information retrieval and language manipulation have in the intervening time been poached by lesser and less scrupulous poets. What do I think of the book? One of the most innovative books of poetry since Jack Spicer'sAfter Lorca.
4. In only my second public reading, at Todd Sandvik's Blue Door reading in Carrboro, NC (the first was for a reading series in Brooklyn in 2001), Mr. Silliman, who was in attendance, exclaimed mysteriously that "Gary Sullivan would be jealous."
5. I've had several fan polaroids taken of me meeting renowned porn stars at various strip clubs in Austin TX. I have not seen any of those polaroids in six years. If you find any, please let me know.
I hereby tag five people to tell five things about themselves many people don't know about them: Linh Dinh, Reb Livingston, Scott Pierce, Fred Stutzman, and Rodrigo Garcia Lopes.
1. While my surfaces seem somewhat inspired by the internet age, my guts as a mindless seer predate the Old Testament. Leviticus warns against my type as evil, yet the Greeks thrived on individuals of my sort (e.g., the Delphic Oracle).
2. As Lester the dummy I was at first operated by one poet but later a second poet became a part of me as well. Everything about me is really about "me."
3. My "great book" as Ron Silliman referred to Be Somebody in comparing it to Moby-Dick, edited by parties as diverse as a HarperCollins marketing guru Suzie Sisoler as well as genius CA poet Standard Schaefer, will finally be released this year by Effing Press over seven years after it was first drafted. Some but certainly not all of its ideas relating to information retrieval and language manipulation have in the intervening time been poached by lesser and less scrupulous poets. What do I think of the book? One of the most innovative books of poetry since Jack Spicer'sAfter Lorca.
4. In only my second public reading, at Todd Sandvik's Blue Door reading in Carrboro, NC (the first was for a reading series in Brooklyn in 2001), Mr. Silliman, who was in attendance, exclaimed mysteriously that "Gary Sullivan would be jealous."
5. I've had several fan polaroids taken of me meeting renowned porn stars at various strip clubs in Austin TX. I have not seen any of those polaroids in six years. If you find any, please let me know.
I hereby tag five people to tell five things about themselves many people don't know about them: Linh Dinh, Reb Livingston, Scott Pierce, Fred Stutzman, and Rodrigo Garcia Lopes.
20061107
Hans von Slicedoff, Our Patron Saint of the Flogspot
from Hans von Gersdorff's Feldtbuch der Wundartzney : newlich getruckt und gebessert, found in the NLM's Historical Anatomies on the Web site
from Hans von Gersdorff's Feldtbuch der Wundartzney : newlich getruckt und gebessert, found in the NLM's Historical Anatomies on the Web site
20061031
20061001
Hello my name is Clement Greenberg
OK sure. Hello my name is
Clement Greenberg and this is me
translated through the newest and latest
language technologies. Here I go.
As modern production satisfied the
hard-won new technologies I was your greatest
punishment. I would like to use self-destruction
not to further consolidate and strengthen such
destructive functions but rather to say
I will not be shaken.
Works create some rooms.
I used to be my favorite.
It’s the "art."
Most of my attempts to explain various works
you do not consider as law but
it is law nonetheless.
Consider my sculptor-meter steeplechase.
I am the sum of my good habits and
some windows.
First, we extracted some words.
Then.
Then it’s you we added. Then you fight.
You have not read it but it was there in it.
Then the sculpture attends to the troops.
When you are young, you think of art.
You are more interested in the issue then.
We are old and different in that we like
nothing. You are ultimately wrong.
Visual Arts will not be affected by you, not
music, not literature, children. I once went to museums,
I think.
Clement signing off
OK sure. Hello my name is
Clement Greenberg and this is me
translated through the newest and latest
language technologies. Here I go.
As modern production satisfied the
hard-won new technologies I was your greatest
punishment. I would like to use self-destruction
not to further consolidate and strengthen such
destructive functions but rather to say
I will not be shaken.
Works create some rooms.
I used to be my favorite.
It’s the "art."
Most of my attempts to explain various works
you do not consider as law but
it is law nonetheless.
Consider my sculptor-meter steeplechase.
I am the sum of my good habits and
some windows.
First, we extracted some words.
Then.
Then it’s you we added. Then you fight.
You have not read it but it was there in it.
Then the sculpture attends to the troops.
When you are young, you think of art.
You are more interested in the issue then.
We are old and different in that we like
nothing. You are ultimately wrong.
Visual Arts will not be affected by you, not
music, not literature, children. I once went to museums,
I think.
Clement signing off
20060908
for James Booker, my newborn son Booker James,
my friend Charlie Dahan, and the poor people of New Orleans
may we all play Scrabble with the freaks
The James Booker Drowning Black Mystery Blues
Booker, James, in nineteen hundred eighty three,
he and his heart died of a busted levee.
Lovin' that girl of his, shoulda been him.
Drivin that Cadillac under wine dark london avenue river
deep under rolling london avenue sea
drunk on drinkin' wine swollen liver and heroin
who were his friends
where were they
he's sinking into a wheelchair
sinking deep down under Charity way
Old James won't you pass that bottle to me
can't you see my heart's dying of a busted levee
I saw James Booker down there
down at the bottom of streets so blue
I saw that eye looking up from the depths
from the corpse rolling riverbed of Florida Avenue
Booker James James Booker
you scare me don't you know
when you look at me
don't you know you scare me
when you look at me
deep down from the bottom
Black Ponchartrain Mystery
For a man to drown himself once
that's called suicide
but to drown him again man
mother nature's shootin' up some pesticide
Some things haunt me in the country,
Some things in the middle of town,
Some things well up like a great ocean
I wake up in the river and then I drown
James Booker, goodnight, lost broken, goodnight
Goodnight, Katrine, goodnight, New Orleans
I hope we all get you in our dreams
Booker, James, in nineteen hundred eighty three,
he and his heart died of a busted levee.
I saw James Booker down there
down at the bottom of streets so blue
I saw that eye looking up from the depths
from the corpse rolling riverbed of Florida Avenue
Booker James James Booker
you scare me don't you know
when you look at me
don't you know you scare me
when you look at me
deep down from the bottom
Black Ponchartrain Mystery
Old James won't you pass that bottle to me
I'm scared my heart's dying of a busted levee
Old James won't you pass that bottle to me
you can see my heart's dying of a busted levee
Dying since nineteen hundred eighty three.
Dying of a Black Ponchartrain Mystery.
James Booker, goodnight, lost broken, goodnight
Goodnight, Katrine, goodnight, New Orleans
Goodnight to my friends dead without a fight
I hope we all get you in our dreams
20060528
Excuses for Abuses
midget tossing's usually good for a cheap laugh
and little boys pop little boners by yelling cunt
hey! hi! what are words, you motherfucker?
is whore an idea alone, bloody scissors in the head
form an abstraction? my metastatic tumor vines climbing
jack off on the killer beanstalk who knows what that was
that rolled out of his mouth jim scrambles up the sliding
mud hill the heights were always looming high
this search yielded one result hilarious
like, whatever, or so that's what they say they
cute harness grab the handle push it in
all fall down 1001 things to screw in a dead punk
midget tossing's usually good for a cheap laugh
and little boys pop little boners by yelling cunt
hey! hi! what are words, you motherfucker?
is whore an idea alone, bloody scissors in the head
form an abstraction? my metastatic tumor vines climbing
jack off on the killer beanstalk who knows what that was
that rolled out of his mouth jim scrambles up the sliding
mud hill the heights were always looming high
this search yielded one result hilarious
like, whatever, or so that's what they say they
cute harness grab the handle push it in
all fall down 1001 things to screw in a dead punk
20060525
doll-eater
two guatemalan dogs fight over an american fetus
it does what it do
imbibe molten acrylic
doll-eater
once was a bead of sweat there
it is what it be
agar rolling down the throat
doll-eater
management decision snug in polyethylene
you are what you is
chalk liquefaction at a boil
doll-eater
torn black ring around the snarl
i am what i ain't
chug the glaciated hell slurry
doll-eater
two guatemalan dogs fight over an american fetus
it does what it do
imbibe molten acrylic
doll-eater
once was a bead of sweat there
it is what it be
agar rolling down the throat
doll-eater
management decision snug in polyethylene
you are what you is
chalk liquefaction at a boil
doll-eater
torn black ring around the snarl
i am what i ain't
chug the glaciated hell slurry
doll-eater
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