a point arose about this is not poetry

[rayheinrich]

Welcome leesharks. I actually 'googled' a segment of
your text in the belief that it was plagiarized. The person
from who these comments had been pilfered, I reasoned,
was not only observant, thoughtful, and of right opinion
(being in that they were in agreeance with mine own);
but knew how to commit said to paper or, as it be,
ferromagnetic disk.

The verity, it seems, is that you have plagiarized yourself.




P.S. Leanne is our Athena (excepting the virgin part) on the even
days, and our Dionysus on the odd. Dale, a.k.a. Erthona, is our
metaphysical conquistador. And as for billy, he speaks with a
candor that would embarrass euphuists, such as myself, could they
but be embarrassed.

[leesharks]

Ah well, at least the fancy degree is good for something, if not employability.

But relevant, still, to my life.

It's frustrating how seldom I'm able to convincingly plagiarize myself.

Nice to meet you, by the way.

[Leanne]

1 or 2% of newbs write decent stuff. The rest need to go to AP purgatory until they have done enough penance to allow entrance into Pig Pen heaven.

Dale, that's terrible. Nobody deserves AP purgatory. We have our own purgatory and there's wine.

The fact is, 1-2% of the poetry world writes decent stuff -- actually, even the decent writers probably only write 1-2% decent stuff and the rest is crap. At least here you're in good company, with people who are prepared to help clean up the crap. And did I mention there's wine?

---

Pfft. Dionysus. Where'd you get that idea, Ray?

[abu nuwas]

1 or 2% of newbs write decent stuff. The rest need to go to AP purgatory until they have done enough penance to allow entrance into Pig Pen heaven.

Dale, that's terrible. Nobody deserves AP purgatory. We have our own purgatory and there's wine.

The fact is, 1-2% of the poetry world writes decent stuff -- actually, even the decent writers probably only write 1-2% decent stuff and the rest is crap. At least here you're in good company, with people who are prepared to help clean up the crap. And did I mention there's wine?

---

Pfft. Dionysus. Where'd you get that idea, Ray?

Quality aside, this old chestnut of a debate always seems, to me, to overlook something: prose.

We repeatedly refer to it, and contrast it with poetry, which implies that we do know what prose is. And if all written material is either one or the other, then all that is not prose must, by definition, be poetry. Problem solved.

Absolutely no need to muddy the waters with talk of a 'prose poem'. Fine for French intellectuals like St-John Perse, but otherwise, a red herring. N'est-ce pas? Un hareng rouge, pour ainsi dire...

[Leanne]

Absolutely. Prose is a fluid form as well, and its definitions are (or should be) constantly changing as the boundaries are reached and broken through. Labels hurt both prose and poetry, as "prose" always seems to get thrown around as being the less impressive of the two. This is terribly unfair. Not all prose is "prosaic".

Whether it is or isn't poetry or prose should be less important than whether it is or isn't fresh, well-written, demonstrating skill and originality, exciting, passionate, dynamic or a whole bunch of other rather cool things that interest readers who are otherwise terribly jaded.

Now, where's that herring? I need to cut down the tallest poppy in the forest.

[rowens]

In my experience, prose uses punctuation as grammatical signs, prose poems use punctuation as musical notations. And poetry does whatever you want and need to do.

[billy]

where you have more than one form of a similar yet dissimilar thing there will always be a crossover that isn't black and white.

[leesharks]

Though he meant it sarcastically, I'll quote Erthona here:

Well and one has to be serious to make the poem work, if your not serious then the poem can't work in any non-meaningful way, but no matter how much a poem works, it rarely makes any money, and certainly not enough to support itself, so in that sense a poem is like an ugly girl, which is to say they are better left dead. At least that's what Lee and Han Son told me before Carrot Sale made a damn fool of himself again, but he can't help it because he's too stupid to know he is doing it, so in that way too he is like a poem. When you think about it everything is like a poem, except a poem, which is a poem.

"When you think about it, everything is like a poem, except a poem, which is a poem."

I'm not sure there's anything left to be said on the subject.

[milo]

Every couple months someone joins the site and beats this dead horse a little more.

[rayheinrich]

Every couple months someone joins the site and beats this dead horse a little more.

    Aye, we be floggin, faire enow; the last be Roan, this be Palomino.

[Leanne]

You can't tell it's dead until you poke it.

[billy]

a bit like me ex

[rayheinrich]

Though he meant it sarcastically, I'll quote Erthona here:

... When you think about it everything is like a poem, except a poem, which is a poem.

I'm not sure there's anything left to be said on the subject.

"There's nothing left that cannot be added to." -Giacomo Luigi Ciamician

Categorization is useful for scientists and, to a lesser extent, for
literary academicians. I can't see where it's that useful for writers.
Well, you might say, wouldn't that ability be a help when submitting to
publications? Ha! It's much better to have no preconceived notions here;
you read the publication and use the editor's definition.

"Constructing pigeon holes is time not spent in flying." - Felix Hoenikker

But, being as how I don't give two whiskers of a wit's ass what the
wordage's called, I graciously condescend to authors and allow them
to call it any damn thing they want. If they want to call it a strawberry
milkshake*, I'm more than happy to oblige them. (That I might proclaim
that their wretched little milkshake leaves a taste that only camel turds
could cleanse is up to me.)


*Somebody or other wrote a poem about this very thing
and posted on this site on 01-13-2012 at 05:57 PM
To peruse said contrivance click HERE.

[shemthepenman]

I was reading through this thread and started to remember the stuckist manifesto, or a version of it; and in particular point 3 of the anti-anti-art revolution (revolution with a very very small r).
I used to be a member of the stuckists many moons ago, but not for long as my two only reasons for joining were that I liked Billy Childish and had an utter distain for conceptual art, (and also a certain admiration for people who had such strong convictions about art that seemed to fly in the face of common sense, i.e., only painting is art), which are not substantial enough to justify my membership to that 'club' for any great length of time. Also, it became apparent that while Charles Thomson made a few reasonable points, he was essentially an idiot (even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day [I really must stop using that phrase, I'm starting to sound like a stopped clock myself]).
anyhow, I think that art (including poetry) announces itself regardless of the demarcations that are used to try to hem it in, a rose by any other... (in this sense, there is something materially definable about art or poetry, that is objective and sensory [but I won't go into all that now]).
The problem is of course, why stick with one word, poetry (for example)? Why say that a urinal on its side is art, why not a new name? Sculpture? but sculpture is art, isn't it? Why not Fountain? Duchamp never said his Fountain was art, he specifically said it was anti-art (which is in itself a odd way of going about things: building a machine on the very foundations its purpose is to destroy). The fact is, a regress is no good, i.e., poetry, writing, communication, sense experience, matter, energy: let's call everything energy and be done with it. Likewise continuous addition, though slightly more practical, deterritorialises but never reterritorialises, and we don't like that at all (if it is possible) [although subcategories are used, prose poetry for example, we do not like continuous addition, it feels clumsy and a bit of a joke]. So let us stick to the word poetry, it's as good as any other, with the benefit of being well known.
Now we ask, is it poetry? There are, as I think has been mentioned, certain historical structures in place to help us out. That's good, it makes it easier all round. A sonnet is certainly a poem, and not because it, this particular sonnet, is any good (simply by virtue of being a sonnet), but because we know that the structure of a sonnet has worked in the past. There is of course an element of taste and subjective interest, but by-the-by, few would deny even the worst sonnet is a poem; it may lack poetry, but it is a poem, none-the-less. There are many more historical structures that one can easily tick off. It isn't always so easy of course, but as long as the poem adheres to the majority of them and attempts to implement the rules as best it can, knowingly, then the benefit of the doubt is given to even the very worst poems [for example, you could write a sonnet in all sincerity and another person point out that structurally it doesn't quite meet the requirements of a sonnet, however, it is still a poem, just not a sonnet].
So, here we are all comfortable again: this is a poem/work of art because it conforms, to a certain degree, to the structures laid down before us... and then, all of a sudden, some fuckwit goes and ruins it all and writes Finnagans Wake, or paints Guernica, or puts a glass of water on a glass shelf and calls it an oak tree (possibly the most beautiful work of art I have ever seen - however, this is a controversial point as I seem to be the only person who finds the aesthetic quality of it just as, if not more, interesting than its conceptual element; or at least I think that both elements could be removed and little loss of value would occur on either side). What are we to do with all that. We think we like it (art announces itself), it's interesting and it has an emotional, physical, spiritual, intellectual, impact. But it doesn't look like the old model, it bears some resemblance to the old rules of the game (it is writing, it is painting, it is aesthetically pleasing), but not many. And still, it doesn't seem to fit anywhere else, either. So we make a concession: Finnegans Wake looks a bit like a novel, we'll call it that. Guernica is definitely a painting, that'll do. An Oak Tree... er... a glass of water on a shelf? A philosophy essay? I don't know. But luckily, we don't really have to make these decisions, and in Reality we never do and we don't really care. And by we, I mean individuals. Few people read Finnegans Wake before it was already a book, or looked at An Oak Tree before it was in an art gallery. In which case, by this stage, it is a value judgment not a categorical one. By the time a dog turd is exhibited in an art gallery, arguing over whether or not it is art is a bit redundant (is it? I'm not sure, I think you should question that). And then we start feeling all depressed because we realise how insignificant our little controversies are and how little control we have over the world around us and even our own thoughts and opinions.
—This dog turd isn't art! You say.
But it doesn't matter because it is already part of the status quo, part of the apparatus, and you have already been forced into taking a position against something that otherwise would mean nothing to you. By arguing (and it must be an argument, not simply a statement) that something isn't a poem one is already giving it credit for something. I used to find this if ever I argued with a Christian about the existence of God. I found the whole idea of god so absurd that it was laughable that I should be having a debate about it, and just by getting involved in such a discussion I was somehow conceding a point.
I am not saying that we should be quietists. If I think something is bad poetry, art, sculpture, I will be vocal about it. But getting into a categorical debate just seems pointless and has no positive value. (less so for the plastic arts, but definitely in terms of poetry — there is a political aspect to categorising art that shouldn't be ignored).
There is not one jot of positive value added to my experience of reading a poem by calling it a poem. But, in many ways the addition of categories muddies the water a little bit, because then the question is raised "would you still find An Oak Tree beautiful had it not been in an art gallery and clearly classified as art?" The answer is, of course, probably not. At least not if I had just seen it in ikea or somewhere. Classifying it as art does create a certain space. A physical space, at that. And this is all to do with a language game having effects. It works within society. And calling it Art in effect creates a space where the attention can be focused. But I think poetry is different. Writing is different in the sense that, though it is nice to have a clear and appropriate space to view it (a book or something) as the result of categorising it as a novel (and all the wheels and cogs being set into motion to create a book), writing and words naturally draw our attention, no matter where they are. So, had Altarwise By Owl-light been scrawled in excrement on a pub toilet wall, I think it's essential quality would have declared itself and I would have been in no doubt about whether or not it was of value (poetry, not-poetry, who cares). This is the difference between art and poetry. Art has become a big lumbering beast that appears to have no boundaries. Art can be anything. A poem, on the other hand, is restrained by language (even more fundamentally, sound), just as painting is restrained by paint. Ironically, this means that poetry (and writing in general) is freer from its name than art is; because poetry has a solid foundation. Art, in this day and age, is all over the place; and many artists nowadays rely almost entirely on the word Art for what they create to be taken seriously, exhibited, make money money money! Poets never make money, so it makes no difference what you call their writing.

I am not sure if links are allowed or not, but here is a link to the Q&A part of An Oak Tree. It is very funny

http://dullwitch.wikispaces.com/The+Oak+Tree

and here is an extract for those lazy bastards:

Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?
A. Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.
Q. The accidents?
A. Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size ...
Q. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?
A. No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.
Q. It looks like a glass of water.
A. Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a glass of water, it's an oak tree.
Q. Can you prove what you've claimed to have done?
A. Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see, I have. However, as one normally looks for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form, no such proof exists.
Q. Haven't you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?
A. Absolutely not. It is not a glass of water anymore. I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.

oh, and I just realised I didn't post the Stuckist bit, which was my only intention

so here it is, and this is funny too (but without knowing where it is being silly, which makes it also a bit embarrassing):

4. The naming of names and the demarcation of the arts.

It is not fascism to name a brick a brick, a shoe a shoe, a horse a horse or a painting as art.

Standing on the ground is not a type of flying. Calling walking walking does not devalue walking or suggest that walking is some how inferior to jumping up and down. Declaring a dead horse hung from the ceiling of a gallery not to be art is not racism or hatred of dead horses. It is a value judgement, and here on earth value judgements are of value.

The making of video films and the reproducing of computer images are not the avant-garde. They are a comfortable niche for people who are afraid of energy and don't like getting their hands dirty.

Computer 'art' is patterns and bad graphics. You have good film making (subjectivity, emotional engagement, moral dilemma) and you have bad film making (immoral, objective and boring), and you have art film making (just plain boring). By boring we mean it could be there or not be there and it would make no difference, but it would be better if it wasn't.

You have a painting department. You have a sculpture department. You have a film department (where you make films). You have a fashion department, which is clothes.

The painting of pictures is the painting of pictures. People agree that a shoe is a shoe and a brick is a brick, not out of dogma or closed-mindedness but to avoid walking around with bricks strapped to their feet.

A sculpture is a sculpture.

What is wrong with mixed media? What is wrong with earth, salt, mustard, a fried egg, chewing gum, marmalade and a sausage on your dinner plate?

[leesharks]

shem--it's no surprise to me that your views are characterized by the kind of deleterious, if subtle, dead horse racism so prevalent in the literary-aesthetic-industrial bloc of our times.

I am both sickened and elated by the manifesto-like vitriol of your stuckist/post-stuckist dog turdism.

You make me want to smash myself in the face with gasoline and set my hair on fire.

You make me want to run through the aisles and jump over the seats to stand inside your personal space and get up in your quote unquote your grill

And aggressively take this container of tic tacs and smash it on my forehead and crush each tic tac individually into my eyeballs and ask you if you like my poem

And if you like my poem, then eat my poem

And then we will have a long and rewarding lifelong friendship despite our differences in political and religious quote unquote our worldviews

And I will name my poem, "BFFs."

[Leanne]

shem, I adore you, but you are not getting chewing gum for dinner ever again -- it plays havoc with your bowels and the place is uninhabitable for days.

What makes a glass of water on a shelf into an oak tree? Context. I don't understand how this fundamental concept can have escaped entire generations -- probably thanks to the education system's relentless modernity and boxes and labels and standardised bigotry.

Taken in a vacuum, virtually nothing is anything but its most obvious elements. A painting is colours on canvas; dinner sustains our physical being; a dog whistle is a shiny silver object; and a poem is a selection of words on a page.

Context allows me to draw upon prior knowledge and understanding to recognise that Paul Klee's Flower Myth is not just variations of red to go with the decor; that Heston Blumenthal can charge £300 for a cucumber starter because it's gastronomical; that the dog whistle is the one that was used by that sick bastard down at Number 12 to control his daughters; and that a selection of words I've never seen before is a poem, because it's posted as a poem with the intent that it be read as a poem and it uses poetic devices, even though they're in an unusual pattern.

That's not a value judgment. It is not necessarily a good poem because it is new and interesting -- and it may be a terribly bad poem because the only reason it's presented that way is that the writer had no clue how to present a poem, therefore had no idea what other elements go into a poem other than the very basic and obvious element of structure.

But because it's presented in the context of being a poem, then as a critic we should read it as such, then make suggestions on how to make it a better poem, not how to alter its structure to make it what we've seen before.

[shemthepenman]

Leanne said she adores me, nah nah nah nah nah I win

"I considered that in An Oak Tree I had deconstructed the work of art in such a way as to reveal its single basic and essential element, belief that is the confident faith of the artist in his capacity to speak and the willing faith of the viewer in accepting what he has to say. In other words belief underlies our whole experience of art: it accounts for why some people are artists and others are not, why some people dismiss works of art others highly praise, and why something we know to be great does not always move us."


(Quoted in Michael Craig-Martin: Landscapes, [p.20].)

[Erthona]

I would like to address this sentence (because addressing the whole thing is simply to tiring, and I am only addressing this because I wrote of it in a poem. He said,

"And then we start feeling all depressed because we realise how insignificant our little controversies are and how little control we have over the world around us and even our own thoughts and opinions."

"Are we a fingerprint miniscule?
A hangnail fallen from the maker,
Flake of skin from the baker?
Or is it only our loafs conceit,
because of infinite inherit frailty,
we think ourselves more than wheat?

No more upon canvas than a flick,
of paint on landscape so sublime,
a single vibration in a chime,
one airy molecule in God’s chant?
Then how mundane our great thoughts,
how pitiful our angry rants?"

...and what is this about but that which existentialism ran head first into. If we perceive the world through our egos, or "being" with a small "b", as opposed to "Being" with a big "B", we come to nihilism, or nothing. Nothing means everything is valued as having the same value, because there are no longer any ways to judge if one thing is better than another. Ultimately suicide or hedonism is the only answer to the question of existence. The question has to transcend beyond "being" into "Being", unless we wish to go down the road of "nihilism" we must allow that there is something greater than our rational minds can figure out, and that thing most often revels itself in what we call art. Art is not what is meaningful in life, but it does point us in the correct direction. If you wish to argue this point, then you have missed the point. Art points to something beyond our reason, our logic, and our small ego selves. There is no argument about it, either you choose nihilism, or you choose the idea that there is something greater than the individual. The (Philosophical) modernist did a very good job of killing off such things as God. They did this because such things like that embarrassed them, they reeked to much of fairy tales, or were only believed by the ignorant yokels, with which of course they wanted no association. However in doing so, they also began to dismantle any structure that superseded the individual self, and that is where we find ourselves today. We are left trying to figure out if a "painting" where someone has shoved paint up their ass and farted it onto a canvas has any less validity than the Mona Lisa. We did kill God you see. Not God the creator (for if he does exists, we do not have the power to kill him), but we killed the god within us that can apprehend things beyond the mere conscious mind that can reason things out and make logical arguments, and tell when the light has turned from red to green. So there is only a choice, not an argument, for you see logic and reason cannot apprehend beauty, truth, or anything of a transcendent nature. "In the beginning was the light and the darkness comprehended it not." John 1:5 (BTW, I am not a Christian, but as the Sufis say, "I will take my truth where I find it.")


dale

[billy]

shem is a tomato

[Brownlie]

shem is a tomato

So much depends
upon

a red tom
ato

bordered in gray
boxes

beside the last
posting

There, Now we can all be imagists!