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:
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
>
> 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
> 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
>
> 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
>
> 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.
>
Juice online
http://www.juice-press.com/poetry
posted by Stephen Morse at 4:45 PM
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