over 300 members on the list

I was thinking today about some MOAPG things. There are over 300 members of the list at this point in time. One of the mysteries of this sort of list is that there are hundreds of members, but only a handful of them actually participate. I guess many people are quietly reading the posts, and more than a few are simply deleting them as they come in. Maybe reading them once in a while in a whimsical sort of way.

I guess this because that's what I do with some of the lists that I belong to that I never contribute to. Occasionally something grabs my attention for a moment and I shoot off a comment. As those who know me might guess, it's usually a response to something that irritates me. I have to be careful though because I also have a tendency to get people stirred up to the point that they write backchannel emails to the group moderator and before I know it, I'm booted.

I teach communication skills, amongst other things, and one of the facts about people that I already knew was confirmed by "science" recently. People get mad when their basic beliefs are challenged; a fact confirmed by MRI scans that showed that the emotional parts of a human brain light up like a Christmas tree when a belief is challenged. So otherwise intelligent and rational people get angry.

It appears that people who write poetry are no exception to the phenomenon. In fact, because they have a better than average sensitivity to language, their trigger is much more easily tripped. Comments about their sense of poetry really set them off (just for the record, I'm human and get ticked off about all kinds of things). Hell, it may even be that creatives have lower insult thresholds than the general population.

I also teach English Comp courses, and almost none of the students get upset when I critique their essays, pointing out the organizational flaws, and the mechanical ones. But if they show me their poetry (which I try to avoid for obvious reasons), and I make similar comments about their craft, well, they get upset. That emotional flareup appears to be related to the perceived personal nature of poetry. Poetry, it is widely believed, is too personal to be commented upon in any way that is not complimentary because an attack on a poem is the equivalent of an attack on the person who wrote it.

I can't think of any other Art form where that is so. Something about the use of language to create Art makes the artist especially vulnerable to negative criticism. If I play music badly, which I often do, I don't like it when it's pointed out to me by others, but I certainly understand it, and the resultant emotion is more frustration than anger; frustration with the disparity between what I am trying to do and what I actually manage to do. Those anger spots don't seem to get triggered.

It may have something to with language; we all think we understand language well enough to communicate. But I'm guessing that it's more a matter of ignorance than anything else. Ignorance of what good poetry sounds like. We're exposed to music all the time, so we know what's possible, but poetry, well poetry is not something that people are exposed to much at all.
A little bit in school, the stray birthday card, church, or funeral maybe, but certainly not on TV, radio, or... anywhere much at all.

So we don't have any mental benchmarks for quality when it comes to poetry. If the only wine you ever tasted was something like Ripple or Boone Farm Apple wine, you probably don't have any idea what the possibilities of wine are. If the only poetry you've ever been exposed to is the stuff that's printed in some church bulletin, the Readers Digest, or a birthday card, well, you have no idea what poetry can be.

Most people don't like to think of themselves as ignorant. They lash out at those who make them realize that they are. I think there's a tendency to want to believe that we're all born perfect, and that what we know is the true essence of knowledge. I used to lash out at T.S.Eliot, William Faulkner, Ginsberg, and a host of others because they made me feel ignorant. If I couldn't understand it, then the problem obviously lay with them. So, I'm not immune to the emotion.

But the list of those who make me feel that way has grown much smaller...Hell, I even finally figured out what the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets are up to. I think they're giving up on poetry in a way, but that's a different essay.

I started this blog out thinking about all those people who join MOAPG and don't participate as if they were some mysterious phenomenon, but I think I get it now. Keep on reading when you can.

Best,
Stephen Morse

Beyond "To hell & Bach"...

Y'know, way back on 3/6 I grabbed my post, with others under it so reading from the bottom up makes sense, and as you see under the salutation ...I never di write the note. I have no idea what I was going to launch into there. BUT, the stacked posts are worth contemplating. So, I'll launch it...,

I was obviously going to go farther into arranging and arrangements (in the musical sense, not the collage sense) to oppose the notion of formatting, and to spread out from "placing" lines (made by line-breaks) as evolving from "stacking" (those) lines. But, the thought is gone the way of all ephemera...,

Gene

Beyond "To hell & Bach"...

Stephen

Message: 3 (Digest 2184)
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2006 12:20:15 -0800
From: "April Corioso" <acorioso@earthlink.net>
Subject: To hell and (J.S.) Bach


April's (ret. @ddress) res. shaman, Gene Fowler, writes...

Stephen,

Way down the page, is a thread, starting with your poem, Who the Hell is Li Po, about the Universe design, if there's one, and all that, and, then, Winnie's sincere bafflement, at least that's how I interpret her note, at the transcribed "arrangement" of the language's music (not some tune for it to be set to). And, then, your reply about reading the "arranged" poem. I know she replied later, expressing an opening to learning something new, to which I say bravo, but I'm cutting in at this point.... in a scatter of posts, you've interspersed a gathering picture of what this arranging is.... (Ordinary "learning something new" is not like, for instance, learning to speak and hear, watching the closest parent do it, way back beyond the reach of memory or, almost as physically active, learning to *see* as, say, Nicolaides tries to elicit it in his "The Natural Way to Draw" and the shamans as Lascaux employed it.... )

"...all used it to help make their work more understandable, *as a voice would.* I did a quick reformatting below (assuming your mailer will hold it) as an example of how I might do this with my voice. *A poem doesn't have to look like a poem, it needs to look like a poem sounds.*"

From your post to Corwin, when you then "arranged" is first poem posted, which, coupled to a comment about e.e. cummings, who he likes, tickled him just right - though I guess we've not seen, or I missed seeing, some arranged poems from him.

What I'm doing in this post, this morning, is just tying together your "[a poem] needs to look like a poem sounds" (above) to "it's a tool, like a tablature for a guitar" it tells the person looking at it what notes to play, and at what time" (below). and to go from the posts on jamming, playing the language as an instrument, to the idea of *arranging* to kill off that murderous (of music) notion of formatting, useful to layout artists setting up for printing the pages on which musical scores are written down. The way reading and writing is, and has been forever, taught shifts perception of arrangements to perception of formatting but, fortunately, doesn't silence the music. That's why Winnie likes the words presented in a straight (well, not quite straight, she wants "lines", not paragraphs, though she thought your poem might be split into two poems, forward way.... She wanted the formatting out of the way. The trick, of course, is to shift perception, lose the formatting, *read* the arrangement. It's quite a trick, picked up over time.

Whatever you use to export to the blog (and anybody who doesn't know about the blog ought to!), doesn't handle its html very well. Spaces used in "arranging'" (done, really, as improvising, lest you lose the jamming potential) are sent out as spaces, not as non-breaking spaces. A browser collapses any number of spaces into one space. Winnie's "formatting" is out of the way. I found this when I started pulling "singles" off the blog for putting in a "store" directory on the 2006 CD (on which the live blog will continue to be accessed). I fixed it easily for the stored singles by counting the spaces and plugging the number of nbsp.

What's the difference? Here's a chance to see-hear a poem both ways. In a recent blog entry, my poem "City Hunt" was part of one of my letters. I use my poems as "prefabricated, multi-dimensional, paragraphs".... that's how I've always said it. This morning I'd say, "prefabricated arranged (and played) paragraphs"....

I read the poem and, having played it so often over half a century, jamming with it in live readings through the sixties and seventies, that, like Winnie, I could pull the music out. In fact, I couldn't *not* pull the music out. So, I'm going to put it below. Read it, read it aloud, jam with it, but then, use this link and go see-hear, as what, for forty years, I've called a *listening* reader, the jazz version. Read it aloud, jam with *it*.

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

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.


*IF* you're still perceiving formatting and not arranging, and, of course, you'll perceive some arranging without ever having heard it put that way, you might prefer the blogged playing.... No sin in that. But as you play the arranged version, feel your movement into the "placed" rather than "stacked" lines - just as you'd think about images and such. Push the see-hearing.... Have fun with it. You've already mastered the instrument. Now, it's just the playing.

Gene


[I've added plain-text italics, *...*, in the thread below - g.f. ]

Message: 14 (Digest 2180)
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 2006 16:38:15 -0600
From: <smorse@sigafoos.net>
Subject: RE: stephen: Re: sub: Who the Hell's LiPo?

Hi Winnie,

As usual, thanks for the feedback. I don't think that there's anything all that subjective about "spacing/staggering" within lines. *It's a tool, like tablature for a guitar. It tells the person looking at it what notes to play, and at what time.* But, If you're not used to seeing it and you don't know how to read it, I suppose it just looks funny.



Best,

Stephen



_____

From: motherofallpoetrygroups@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:motherofallpoetrygroups@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of winnie
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2006 9:09 PM
To: motherofallpoetrygroups@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Mother of All Poetry Groups stephen: Re: sub: Who the Hell's LiPo?



hi stephen - overall, a great piece - great imagery, language, story. the tone shift in this piece, however, was a bump for me - starting
with "let's go splashing now..." perhaps there is another poem that starts here. i'd give that some thought.

also, *i found the formatting a bit distracting. i guess i'm not a fan of spacing/staggering within lines. i get more from reading words in
a more ordered, straighforward fashion.* (i know this issue is very subjective.)

see a few other comments below. hope something is helpful here.

winnie
---------
In motherofallpoetrygroups@yahoogroups.com, Stephen Morse
wrote:
>

> Who the Hell's Li Po?
>
>the  moon's not going anywhere
> it's stuck up there
>              a piece of
>                            rock and dust
> blown out of some sun
> landing
> in  the earth's sky
>
> be a hell of a mess if it finally fell
> splashing half the ocean
> up on  places like san   francisco
> some sort of      moonami
>
> washing over
> the fire nozzle of coit tower
> and the little cable cars
> reaching halfway to the stars
>
> it'd sink a damned ark (move this line up to end previous stanza?)
>
> the spaghetti factory
> coffee and confusion
> north beach
> the go go girls
> dancing in cages
> they'd all mingle
> with sea weed
> and moon salt
> down by the wharf
> where the tourists live
>
> by the light of the
> moon in the ocean (join these 2 lines with stanza below?)
>
> all the silvery cities would dissolve into
> pre-land muck moon swamps
> that whisper  vanished rumors
> of the lost and mythical
> human race
>
> but  it is  the
>            Pacific Ocean
> it could swing
> the other way
>
> It could chase the sun
> cuckolding us all
> for
> a heavy weight star (join these 4 lines with stanza above?)

>
>     the great
> deep waters could become
> the dead still waters
> of sea mosquitoes (join these 4 lines with stanza below?)
>
> one big salt swamp
> of slime and dead mussels
> no moon to drag the waters up
> slapping the  foam out of it on the rocks
> dropping food in the bivalve slits
> of the half drowned surf clans
>
> it just wouldn't be the same
> to watch the wind ripple up some frothy
> white caps on
> the biggest damned salt lakes
> since something drained utah (this piece ends for me here)
>
> let's go splashing now
> everybody's  learning how
> come on baby with me
> to uh,  to
> where the water
> meets the shore
>
> June
>         croon
>                 tune
>                         by the light of the stars
>                we smoke cigars
>                  play our guitars
>                     the months mean nothing
>               the rimes are lame
>                and the songs die
>
> but that moon's not going anywhere
> it doesn't belong
> you could call it intelligent stasis
> or equilibrium by design
>
> could be just where the rock landed
> to throw its weight around
> some sort of Disney Science thing
>
> like
>
> well like that big bang  that just blew up
> what wasn't there before.  Yeah
> that sure explains everything
>
> any monkey can start a fire
> with wood and a box of matches
> the old indian can bow the crotch
> of a piece of wood til it smokes
>
> but something from nothing?
> moonlight from an empty sky?
> fire in a vacuum?
>
> Hey, it ain't my fault, Li Po
> God did it.
>

Editor

Juice online

http://www.juice-press.com/poetry

Explanations have an odor

To explain or not...here's a bit of swirl from backchannel conversations...

From: John Bennett

To: John Bennett

Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 8:02 AM

Subject: RARE MOMENT! BENNETT MAKES STATEMENT BORDERING ON EXPLANATION ...

A good friend sincerely inquired if I was trying to put people off with the language in my Shards. The word used as an example was "Retard," which appears in the title of a recent Shard.

I wrote a brief response last night in a state of exhaustion, and looking it over this morning with a more or less clear head, it seems worth brushing up and sending out to my list in lieu of a Shard. Plus I ain't got no Shards handy. The cupboard is bare. The well dry.

Anyway, for what it's worth, what follows is a close to an explanation as you'll ever find me. Explanations have bad body odor. Don't ever get stuck sitting next to one on a bus ...

Subject: Re: SHARDS ABOUT JELLYFISH AND RETARDS

I guess by "put off" you mean "shock." Some people may well be shocked by some of my Shards, but my intention isn't to shock. I'm not sure what my "intention" is. "Intention" is as loaded a word as retard, faggot, nigger, kike, but in a different way.

There are so many words that have been groomed to make things look benign in order to disguise raging ugliness. In fact, this process renders these groomed words profane, although to call them profane gets you in about as much trouble as saying nigger.

People are programmed to become indignant about the use of certain words, regardless of context, words like nigger and faggot and retard. It's seriously politically incorrect to use them, and the term "politically correct" is a protective umbrella for all the pseudo-benign co-opted words, which are legion.

Do you see the one-two punch of it? Give people a pseudo-benign vocabulary with which to gloss over ugliness and brutality, and then give them another set of taboo words that triggers spontaneous righteous indignation in them whenever these words are spoken (or written). This combination of word manipulation is a strong form of thought control. It obscures reality. It causes people lose discernment and think in platitudes and generalities....

John,

Ye mean Lenny Bruce cried in vain...?

Skulkin' around with my Webster's New World in a plain brown paper bag, looking over my should...er - when I delve in hunting ...well, who knows, maybe.... Talking in SHARDS like everybody from Presidents and their holy Graham-cracker advisors to cute little middle school kids talk? Shocking, absolutely shocking.

Putting, or knocking, off readers, tripping them up as they jump from word to word hunting for the Awful ones...?

"Give people a pseudo-benign vocabulary with which to gloss over ugliness and brutality...", misses that this ain't what's being glossed over, mainly. It starts out as "sex and violence" and they throw in "name-calling" to make their morality sound like it's got some basis in humanity, and the folks bein' "nice" c'n focus on the name-calling. And violence is finally accepted, as in Mel Gibson's homo-erotic masochistic writhing to which church-goers take their kids (while the good reverends burn Harry Potter in southern U.S. and Australian streets, insuring, of course, that all kids in town will read it). Violence, then, okay. But, SEX ...well, there's Janet's wardrobe malfunction and Howard Stern's mentions of where waste products get wasted - leading to gov't-backed tithes....

All shocking. Very shocking. Bein' sensitive, I'm shocked.

Well, Johnno, I've got it all out of my system....

So, with fond regorges, ...eh, regards,

your loving, (or is

that f***ing)

friend and foe,

with lash-envious

thots,

Gino

__________________________

"Lenny Bruce cryin'

the bluest blue blues

I'm tellin' youse

always singin'

them bluest blue blues

"Lenny Bruce dyin'

the bluest blue blues

I'm tellin' youse

always flingin'

them bluest blue blues

..."

--Anon

-

Editor

Juice online

http://www.juice-press.com/poetry