blog01798

Daily Notes on Poetry & Related Matters

April 24: More about Villa from New-Poetry followed by a comment of mine:

> Writing style > > Villa described his use of commas after > every word as similar to "Seurat's > architectonic and measured pointillism > where the points of color are > themselves the medium as well as the > technique of statement". This unusual > style forces the reader to pause after > every word, slowing the pace of the > poem resulting to what Villa calls "a > lineal pace of dignity and movement". > An example of Villa's "comma poems" can > be found in an excerpt of his work > #114: > > ł In, my, undream, of, death, > I, unspoke, the, Word. > Since, nobody, had, dared, > With, my, own, breath, > I, broke, the, cord! > ---------------------------

Interesting that he stopped there. He'd've been closer to Seurat if he'd put his commas between letters, with maybe two after each word. Cummings used commas much more effectively, it seems to me. I consider Cummings the inventor of punctuation poetry, by the way. Anyone know different? I don't count myself much of a literary historian so could very well be wrong on this.

As for “aesthruption” and “aesthcorrective,” I'm not ready to say much about it. Have to gather a few examples to illustrate it with first. I will say that "aestheruption" is somewhat like Mike Theune's "structure," except intended for use analyzing more than poems. But I think Mike's term covers more of a portion of a poem than mine. For me an aesthruption represents where in an artwork the work goes off the rails. The aesthcorrective indicates what in the work gets it back on the rails, or onto new rails. What, that is, that makes it again rational in some cognitive OR some emotional way. For example, take the simple metaphor, "my opponent is a brick wall against my argument," (actually a dead metaphor, but consider it a fresh one). An aesthruption occurs with "brick wall." That's because a person cannot literally be a brick wall. But a reader will see that a person can be to an argument like a brick wall is to a tennis ball thrown at it, helped by "against my argument" (acting as the work's aesthcorrective) and/or his experience with poetry which has taught him that cases like these may contain an ellipsis with "like" understood--and/or simply his mental flexibility.

An aesthruption will not necessarily be a "turn," as I understand the latter; it has to indicate where a jarringly unexpected turn is occurring.