Jammin with poetry

Gene (Fowler) writes...
Post: Last + 2

Anybody who's interested in a sort of gathering up (I never *sum* up, or
get any final thing) of my bouncing off the idea of a "three line" poem
as a form and the "substituted" idea of a "two line-break" poem, the
line-break,
, being an event, a sort of super-phoneme, and a rich
sense of how line-breaks communicate making it useful ...c'n read the
gather. I've put a copy on my site. No visible link there, but you can
use this link to pull it into your browser. Use View Source to get a
copy if you want one for your eDen (I used to call it a personal
elibrary): http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/JammingBalladGreenSky.htm

It's the jam session on "Ballad of the Green Sky" and it's wrapped up
in a letter to the Juice Squad I sent along thinking it might fit in
Juice 2005 eletters. I'll put it up before I mail this to Mother Poetry.
And I'll leave it for a week, ten days, til I remember it's there (I'm
pressing my space limit).

I've seen a scatter of mentions of line-breaks in the on-going talk, and
I l;ike that better than direct responses because it means the
s are
looking like tools.... You know, your *poetics* shouldn't be a hatful of
definitions, rules, traditions. It should, better, be tools useful when
you build, or play, a poem....

I'm writing this post, though, for a different reason. Stephen riffed on
a poem of Brad's. I thought, "Hey, that's kind of interesting." And I
waited to see what'd come of it. See if doing something like that might
spread out. Blowing a full riff, of course, is one thing, maybe just a
loosening up. What it might lead to, though, is sitting down with
somebody whose poem you're feedbacking (jeeze that's an ugly idea)
on, and, pulling up the keyboard, try playing the passage ...just a
little differently. Playin' with the passage and, in passing posts back
and forth, taking turns on the keys.

Winnie posted a poem. In the first two stanzas, she left out "the" a
couple times. She was obviously doing something, working for some feel
of what she was playing. Mugsy, on whom the effect didn't work, asked
about those "the"s. Winnie said she'd try putting them in and see how
she felt about it. Not how the two ways of playing felt. Just a
reaction. Anyway, nothing further developed. I played the passages. Both
ways. I launched with those "the"s in, and the fragmenting she wanted
hadn't taken, anyway, so, after going back, I stuck with "the"s in. Even
without 'em, she needed binding, and the rhythms (semantic, not just
sound) needed a "playing" (crazy, given where I'm using the example)
after "tongue" (there, that'll send everybody back hunting the poem).

What might Winnie have done, saying she'd try it? Play the passages
both ways in a post, do a little thinking together at the keyboard.
Mugsy might even have played the passages with those "the"s in.
Playing on the keyboard and not commenting from outside as audience
or critic (who's professional audience, I guess). Handing a passage
back and forth.

WELL, IT'S SCARY, I KNOW. So my point here is to remind that a riff,
such as Stephen did, such as the jazz guys do, IS A READING, NOT A
(RE)WRITING. The original poem just ain't touched unless whoever wrote
it takes some of these readings, playings, back into a new publishing of
the poem....

Here's Billy Evans talking about playing Tuxedo Junction one night.
Tuxedo Junction, later, was just like Tuxedo Junction before....

"One night we were playing 'Tuxedo Junction' and for some reason I got
inspired and put in a little blues thing. 'Tuxedo Junction' is in Bb,
and I put in a little Db, D, F thing in the right hand. It was such a
thrill. It sounded right and good, and it wasn't written, and I had done
it. The idea of doing something in music that somebody hadn't thought of
opened a whole new world to me."

Something else follows from the playing being a reading, from trying
out an idea instead of describing it or only suggesting a corner of it
or that it might be hovering.... Everybody involved gets used to being
"inside" poems. I've been saying, in millions of words of letter and in
articles, even in the poems, for almost half a century that a poet has
a fourth job. The first three are easy: entertain, inform and transform.
The last one sounds like it's about as far as you c'n go. It starts with
moving a reader. And to the extent that the elasticity isn't perfect, a
little of the shift remains, and maybe it c'n be cumulative. The fourth
job? Well, you take the poet in any reader with you through the making,
because it's all there the whole time. And if that poet following you
adds a little blues thing in the right hand?

Gene

Gene Fowler

acorioso@earthlink.net
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