Drowning Stars

To: Gene Fowler
Sent: Saturday, February 18, 2006 7:42 PM
Subject: [Fwd: Sub: Shadow Kill]

Gene,
I forwarded this one to you because the digest doesn't handle html with images.

Best,
Stephen

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:
Sub: Shadow Kill
Date:
Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:35:17 -0600
From:
Stephen Morse
To:
motherofallpoetrygroups@yahoogroups.com


I tried out Skype today. Barbara Hilal downloaded Skype, and we had a little conversation and read a little poetry. It wasn't perfect. I had to crank the volume up and use my headphones to hear Barb. She said my voice was clear on her end. I suspect that the problem was just a simple setting at Barb's end. Some sort of volume output on her mike.

It was, however, good enough for me to hear her Southern accent as she talked and read her poetry. It certainly adds a dimension to hear the poet's voice.

One of the poems I read was , "Shadow Kill," and Barbara asked me if I would post it to MOAPG. It is take two of one that I posted before, called "Shadow Dancing." It's one I like to read at poetry readings. It reads well, and people seem to like it. So here it is:


Shadow Kill

it's a lot easier to talk about gutters than stars
gutters collect the runoff
the excess water that falls from the sky
carrying leaves, sticks, small dirts and
if there's enough of it around, blood

washed back to the
the ocean we came from.
the gutter's clogged
with excesses of our dead parts

But we can't drown stars.
their lights shine and as long as we can see them
the gutters will only collect the small parts.
of the glory of the explosions in the sky.
in the beginning there was light
the lights in the sky are stars

no gutter can hold the fury of the coming of the light
we burn and boil and rise in to the air
nothing can hold us in this universal bang

the stars would kill us if we got too close to them
the gutters are safer.
we can float there and drown the streets
with parts of once living things
killers, presidents, butterflies, and kings,
leaves, and waste...
Oily bones and vegetable power

darkness is a shadow under our feet.
we are creatures of the light
what storm can
wash a light
through the streets?



Stephen,

Uhhmmmmm. Something in your sending, no image. But the box is set, the unfound image in it and the poem runs around the area, and the Digest (plain text) sure won't do that. So, I'm glad to have special mailing....

So, this is two in a couple days. you're obviously "on a roll", in the gutter or off a star.... And I love those "multi-dimensional" titles (or sometimes, played phrases inside) you c'n read different ways. My "Shaman Drunk" was like that. Shaman gets drunk? Or a drunk feels like a shaman? Well, I waited thirty of forty years, with pop-up notes, to say a "shaman drunk" was something like a "whiskey drunk" or a "wine drunk" or some kinds of "drug drunk". So, "shadow kill", the shadows get killed, they kill, or the killing's done with Indonesian shadow puppets or....

The picture sounds intriguing, too:

;filename=CHEMICAL SCIENCE-stars-


"darkness is a shadow under our feet.
"we are creatures of the light
"what storm can
"wash a light
"through the streets?"

Amen, Brother light-bearer. You know, I always like to plug a poem in as a pre-fabricated, multidimensional paragraph or two or several in these letters. Closest I could get to star and gutter was heaven "shaped" as a woman and earth around its feet, with bio coming up out of it...,

ACTAEON

thru a grove
twisted trees unbend
below the horizon
step past one another
just at dusk

a cut
unpolished figure

green strands growing up
around the base

a woman's body radiant
in moonlight

her stare
the blue salt
of shaded marble

cool fingers grey
over blue distances
far sparkles of breasts

gnarled roots

night trees

coming out of the ground
to wrestle the alien

defiler of their lover
**********************************

I was leaning back, thinking about the notes on "Who the Hell is Li Po" (Well, Linda's and Winnie's, since I didn't see Mugsy's in my skim along looking).... Uhhhmmmm. We're not getting very far with "...doesn't have to look like a poem looks, it needs to look like a poem sounds. W flat out won't listen to it, won't read it as a score. Still talks about "formatting" (laying out, a template, yes, but not for a temple of sound.... That's okay. What hit me from both of them, though W had seen L's (or maybe I've even got peoples names wrong, this was all many hours ago and I'm old). Both, or at least two, said they sensed a shift (I think they said of tone, whatever that means) and that, maybe, you jammed two poems together (a medley?).

Hey soos, the thing's loaded with shifts.They don't hear 'em? And somebody said, when you mentioned Li Po in the last lines that at least it referred back to the title. What did they make of moonami? Given some 20th century English and "weather news", and a good jug of rice wine, Li Po would've loved that, hell, he died tumbling into one....

The gutter's easy to see, easy to read. The stars? Ahhhhhh, you've got to fill in what's invisible to see anything at all.... The stars are possibly made of music, anyway. Jazzy heavens. Oh, hell, here's a gutter and stars (and I'll call it good night)...,

CITY HUNT

Long, bleak
heartscapes where i run in my
vision, lost
as i wake into fog drenched
wallscapes, run
knotted into trudging
hours long walk, to walk
away the gathered
fires and howls -
through windows i see the holders
of civilization
arched back, thrusting
at Diona, bent over a board table, arms
swimming among fluttering
prospecti,
the holders of culture
zeroing in on each
other's reared buttocks
while Diona escapes -
and beside her i run, a few
thrusting holders even fanning wind
trying for my fleeing butt,
a few spearing at this
in me turning to leave
figure...

snarling, whining
that i'd move up to the high desert
get wind burnt, rip
off and wear the Indian's skin
or
drift back farther in coriolis
swirls
of time,
wear mammoth
hide, rip off
the raw boned Siberian's sighting,

but i turn
more deeply

the thing in me'd
go deeper,

farther back,

to be again
a molecular sentience in primal
soup, the first hot sea, and rebound

to fling itself outward

and know wholly

our galaxies

our constellar

cities.

But, "we can't drown stars", eh?

G'night,

Gene

Hyperspace is Hypersensitive

What follows is an exchange the Juice Squad was involved in. The group (e-groups) has since booted me from their group. Banned for life. Ah well, discourse is not too well tolerated some places. Academia is anemic to the point of being effete.

Best,
Stephen Morse
*******************
On Jan 12, 2006, at 8:14 PM, Jayne Fenton Keane wrote:

I'm almost done with my PhD which explores
time, space, poetry and performance. The idea of
dimensionality figures predominantly in the discussions. To accompany this I have been working on a DVD, an installation of a spatially scripted collection of poems and a radio play.

On January 14, 2006 1:33 AM, Stephen Morse responded:

Jayne,

Could you explain what you mean when you talk about dimensionality in terms of poetry and performance [performance of poetry?]? I don't recognize the vocabulary used; though perhaps, the phenomena might be a familiar one that I use other words to talk or think about. It sounds interesting.

Best,
Stephen Morse

Editor/Publisher
Juice Magazine Online
http://www.juice-press.com/poetry
http://juice-poetry.blogspot.com/

To Which, "Jayne Fenton Keane” Responded,January 13, 2006 4:59:55 PM CST:

Hi Stephen et al

No doubt the concepts are familiar ones but I will try and explain my take on them briefly. Performance of poetry, identity and subjectivity are the main orientations.After years of involvement in text, performance, flash and audio poetry, and considering them from the perspective of a phenomenological sense of embodiment, I found myself struggling with an appropriate way of discussing the poetics of the experience outside genre specific conventions.

While to get a fuller understanding you might need to read my thesis when its done, briefly I'm advocating that dimensionality in poetry be considered as part of its nature and that its structure emerges from its relationship with space, time and ecology through creative and discursive exchanges.

The sense of dimensionality that comes from thinking about relationships between the body, text, media, ecology, space, time and energy, is outside the literary definitions of poetic form but intrinsic to poetry as literary architecture. Poetry is an aesthetic sensibility, a language and a way of thinking/speaking, as much as it is a literary craft. I am interested in the way poetry supports a diversity of approaches to being in and engaging with culture. By thinking of poetry as a dimensional entity I open up possibilities for both writing and reading poetry that extend beyond the ramifications of its form as a particular kind of text.

In naming my project 'Three-Dimensional Poetic Natures' I have the scope to consider the relationships between different types of poetry; their natures, their spatial and genre/media-specific idioms and the way they embody space and text. The title is a catchall that enables me to continue to interrogate my own poetic practice and the idea of a poem. It is meant as a discursive gesture rather than a literal one, since a poem beyond the page manifests multiple dimensions or characteristics, as it connects back to a body in space and time. I hope it makes room for the co-inhabitants and co-creators of the space and time in and around the text - from an ecological point of view.

A poem is often much more than a scene or expression of language archived on a page. I am interested in accounting for the world from which the poem is emerging and which it occupies; essentially the poem's 'beingness', to borrow from Heidegger.

I would like to hear everyone's thoughts and points of view on dimensionality.

bw
jfk

Stephen Morse forward Janes’s response and sent this query out to Gene Fowler and Jared Smith Friday, January 13, 2006 3:27 PM:

I think I've wandered into Alice's wonderland. Do you understand what the hell she's talking about? I sure don't.

Best,
Stephen

Gene Fowler aka the husband of April Corioso [mailto:acorioso@earthlink.net] was the first to respond, Saying:

Stephen,

What's e-poets? The thing from/about Paul that you sent me this afternoon had this as an original header...


From: Stephen Morse
To: April Corioso ; D.Soares ; Judy Brekke ; Jared Smith
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2006 1:34 PM
Subject: Fwd: [e-poets]/re Olson, Williams etc.

...though I didn't think to put Judy, Mugsy and Jared in my answer, so I'll insert that here...
Stephen,

Uhhhmm. You know I just write my meanders under whatever provocation got me started. The kinds of things we've been talking about covers ...well, a lot of territory. I don't think I c'n sustain being mildly interesting for Paul, or showing off any reading I've actually done. Of course, you c'n send or quote anything to him or anybody else. Your "rings of talkers" don't need to overlap. You can prod one person with whatever another has said or written. You c'n Cc me when writing him, or anybody, and Cc him when writing me, us (Juice squad)....

He might want to tackle a bit of "composition by field" fiddling I did in "Felon's journal"

http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/FJCredo.htm

Credo's in Juice online 20005, but that's going to close up and I don't know if my note there includes the whole of the annotation in the 2002+ digital version of the book. While I never recommend getting drenched, I'd recommend trying the poem a few times before going to the annotation and maybe even on one of those readings (before the annotation), just go on through 305 Honda (on the next page). Then, come on back. 'Course, this is just something that's possible and not something I'd push particularly. I doubt anybody is going to learn anything from me that'd be helpful working on a degree. I say that after a half-century (almost) of experience....

Hey, if you want to pass along a tip, though it might not help with the degree, instead of quoting all the right people, and I think he's got about fifteen below, estimate on a really fast skim, tell him, when talking about a ...well, maybe he'd call it a concept, sketch the use in some lines (rough draft), or even give whole something he's writ. Ah, well, no. Don't pass along any sech idea, it just fits in with what we've said about shop talk. Hey soos! Quoting the right people, for every damn thought that comes into your head before it can get to your mouth. Probably as well not even to shove Credo at him. I play off composition by field, of course, as well as playing with it. But keep an eye on "Poet" coming up through all that field ...and going on into 305 Honda.

Hey, I've been having fun all day with the genhaiga! Now, that's notation.

April just came in from her first day back at work, Spring semester.

Heck you know how I am about anything I write. Instead of scratching your head over what, if anything, to relay, you c'n just cram my whole note here (even about the haiga and April coming in, and shoot it in a blockquote.... I don't think he c'n read any unfriendliness in it. I don't feel any.

Keep kicking projects out, Spring opens...,
...and, now, read this new one you sent below, asking me if I know what she's talking about. Interesting phrasing.

I think I've wandered into Alice's wonderland. Do you understand what the hell she's talking about? I sure don't.

Best,
Stephen

Nothing wrong with wonderlands. Now, a brief pause as I drop down and read....

Alice's wonderland

Yes, and no. I can read her because at times in San Quentin, I read very strange and convoluted tomes of all sorts. It's less Alice than Tinkerbelle or something, a dazzling display, but if you can't find the gravity-anchors, don't be hard on yourself. Or on her, because you did ask.... And don't ask her to relate what she says about any of this to her poetry. She's dancing among feelings here, I'd guess.

A dimension, for all the implied mysteriousness, is pretty much any variable whose potential values line up in a sequence to be mapped on a line. If you tumble into, say, an imagined realm, say through a looking glass or down a rabbit hole, you can talk about extra dimensions, maybe fractal partial dimensions, maybe brane theory's coiled dimensions wrapped around other stretched out dimensions. All fascinating models, but if you're going to get "extra variables" of detectable something in your poetry, you've got to have some way of sorting it into these dimensions. She mentions "identity", I think, as one of her main ones. She must mean something about "identity" showing up in the work, something that stays, for her, in multiple passages. And so for all her other "grasshopper" leaps. If it's a way for her to sense what she's doing ...I can't see it hurting anybody. We handle even the subtle things of our language in possibly detectable "own ways", the phonemic flows, the sensemic, the revelemic. So, if she's a sense of in what her identity lies I can't see harm in her trying to grasp it through models of dimensionality.

I don't find this sort of thing very useful, though, for what I guess is supposed to be "shop talk". It's a lot like John Barnes' type "definition"s of poetry, which are responded to themselves as bearing the qualities they describe. We saw in that case, with the "crimson hands" stanza that the habit of seeing surfaces (as he did in responding to the definition) that the work can be harmed. The images in the stanza didn't meld together. But I don't want to get off into this.

AS shop talk, I'd say here "is" terms aren't true or false. They're ways of saying nothing in particular. "Poetry is an aesthetic sensibility, a language and a way of thinking/speaking, as much as it is a literary craft." Maybe "poetics", rather than "poetry", the tools used could be described this way, poetry being, with luck, the result. I don't know. The main trouble is that it's a clutter of generalizations, and no care given to differentiating particles out and then relating them. Does she mean a particular "aesthetic" or is she contrasting with a "non-aesthetic" sensibility?

Heck, she's (intellectually) young.

Enough said. But, if she, or anybody else in the discussion, came from the work, his or her own, or something they're studying, and got somewhere in the neighborhood of describing a particular sort of sensibility they might have something to think about before they tried to plug in an "is".

I think these sorts of discussions (the ones from Paul and Jayne, not those I suggest) are very likely useful in getting degrees, teaching positions, and, who knows, if it leads to actual work, maybe National Book Awards. Keep in mind that I'm some kind of weird non-card-carrying anything. Not being drenched by anything, I've lots of reading to do to become consistently mildly interesting. It's too late. I'm old, I'm just conserving my legacy-work for individuals, mostly not born yet.

She tells you what you've got to do to understand her,

"While to get a fuller understanding you might need to read my thesis when its done...."

You'll just have to wait.

I don't think I've been much help. But, it's late and I've bounced out a lot of letters today.

I haven't been stuffing poems in at the end. This is from my first chapbook. I was playing off of, though not translating (I'm not competent to do so) Horace. I don't recall why.

FURNISHINGS

Delicate importations, love, disturb,
Arrangements woven among fragilities disrupt
Abandon cluttered shops where china dreams
provoke

Beyond a few heavy potteries need nothing.
Restless girl, listen: the loveliness you chase
Stays close to crude shapes, comes with drink
and steaming food.

Gene

Finally, Jared Smith gave this response: smithjrw@comcast.net
January 14, 2006 1:59:33 AM CST:

Biggest problem Jayne has is that she's thinking of poetry as scripted entertainment for others, rationally thought out in linear or multilinear fashion by a poet who is far above his/her audience in understanding. She hasn't learned yet that poetry happens in the mind, and at a level that can't be pre-scripted, She may in time. I don't trust anyone who starts off an explanation by saying "I'm finishing up my Ph.D." When you're playing with the big boys and girls, you're going to get hurt by doing that. Technique, not degree, indicates what one is capable of in the arts.

Jared