Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters
6 January 2007: Today's entry is devoted to e.mails received from endwar, and my responses to them. First of, I have thank him for (perceptively) agreeing with me about Geof Huth's "See C":
I agree with you on this -- i think that poem bugged
me a bit too, when i saw it (or see-saw it, and went
back and forth trying to figure out what it was about
(as i strain to work in some sort of pun relating to
the pun that probably inspired the poem)(or maybe it's
a comic strip)). Anyway, i think that fact that's
wrong is jarring. It's something like getting the
facts wrong in a historical novel -- it makes the
rest of the story less plausible and you can't
continue suspending disbelief. It could be stupid
stuff like how my brother could identify the Nazi
colonel in a WWII movie that was wearing a corporal's
coat. Or an inspirational quote about baseball
attributed to Sir Walter Scott, who died years
before an ocean away from the birth of the game.
Anyway, in visual poetry, if not all poetry, it is
important that the symbols and the structure of the
symbols (aka the grammar) have to make a point rather
than be nonsense. Ironically, that's one reason why
i've written so little mathematical poetry -- i haven't
figured out how to make that kind of statement in a way
that means something satisfying to me.
endwar
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Nothing whatever if more important to me than someone's agreeing with me when I'm arguing with Mr. Huth. This may be the first time it's ever happened!
In a different e.mail, endwar wondered about my extreme liking for Kathy Ernst's "Tiny Boats." He added that I'd probably give the details in my essay (which I have). I told him only that "basically, the simile, 'I feel like a thousand tiny boats,' grabbed me. Maybe because I grew up in a place called 'Harbor View,' who knows." Just being prodded to defend my position made me think of two (to me, obvious) things I liked about the poem that I had not explicitly mentioned in my write-up about the poem, though: its personification of the boats, plus the multiplication of the feelings of the persona--she's not just a happy boat, but a thousand of them.
Then, he said some things about my definition of haiku as: "a maximally compressed poem containing two or more images whose juxtaposition propels an
aesthgagent into richly sensual reflections on archetypally final matters" that'll I'll answer in purple insertions in what he said:
Bob,
On your haiku definition -- you think a haiku must
have a season word, but don't include it in the
definition, then say that you expect that by
requiring two nature references the season will
be evident. That may happen most of the time,
but isn't guaranteed if your definition doesn't
include it. Then again, as someone who is always
defining and taxonomizing things, you are probably
aware of this anyway.
If I said I thought a haiku must have a season word,
I misstated my position. I just think season words are of
value and should be in haiku as much as possible. Two nature
references won't always make it happen, but often will.
I was trying to think of a haiku that meets your
definition without having a seasonal reference.
How about:
Fox eats bird
world turns
Bird eats fox
world turns
I think by my definition, this would barely be a
haiku. What makes it only barely one, in my view, is
that I don't find the images richly sensual. Or richly
sensual enough. If you named the birds involved, the
poem would become more sensual--and probably indicate
the season, or seasons. "world turns" is close to
asensual.
Well, maybe that won't work for you.
Anyway, Japanese haiku often don't follow the
rules -- besides what you say, they may stick
in extra syllables (ya) and in other cases just
ignore the syllable rules -- i read the Penguin
books edition of The Narrow Road to the Deep
North, by Basho, which is filled with footnotes
such as:
This haiku is in
the irregular form of
five-seven-seven
(well, not lineated like that in 5-7-5, but the
same words).
Interesting.
I don't know if you've left out anything -- i
haven't been thinking about how to define
haiku (or any poetry) nearly as much as you have.
You could have ended with the zen reference: "what,
at this moment, is missing?"
Actually, an endwarian zen reference (I was just writing
about your zen puzzle page). What is missing, of course,
is nothing. I think. How about, "What is missing besides
nothing?" Unless nothing is there. . . .
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Endwar had this further comment:
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Jan 3:
It looks like you got more done this year than
i did, so don't feel bad, and you have
another month to go!
Those search results (at the Academy of American
Poets that I mentioned--BG) for concrete poetry are
unbelievably pathetic. That's the kind of up-
to-date thinking that made academic poetry what
it was today.
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I know there are a number of comments my blog has gotten that I haven't gotten around to posting, but I wanted to make sure I posted this (anonymous) one, because it is so acutely perspicacious: "Response To Blog304 = anus is the key."
My correspondent quoted the following words of mine from Blog 304, which I'm sure clarifies what he said: "On 2 December 2005, I got an e.mail from someone asking if there were any personifications in the poem. I wouldn't say there were any important ones, but the speaker's state is given a singing voice, so has been personified, and 'heaven,' or the sky, is personifyingly said to be deaf, which implies it is a being who is capable of hearing but refusing to hear. On the other hand, 'heaven' is more likely a metonymy for the Christian God, a metonymy being an equaphor (figure of speech, in my poetics) in which something associated with another thing stands for that other thing. Frankly, I think Shakespeare used 'state' for his rhyme It seems a very clumsy metaphor to me (but its clumsiness is too off to the side and small to mar the poem much). 'Heaven' is too commonly used to mean 'God' for it to be poetically effective, or even noticed as poetically expressive."
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