Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Note on the end of a notebook

I thot my poetics were the most open, but I am beginning to suspect that in spite of my perceived openness it is actually quite difficult for me to "make poetic" of the grapheme. And by that, I mean I am finding it difficult to apply the context that is poem to any string of words.

Since "From Cause" + its variants I have written two "my days," a work where the grapheme is charged w/ poetic force via its proximity to Nate's/my sense of place. I have come to enjoy this type of (nonce) writing much, tho I still believe my day at the library to be the masterpiece.

I have also worked (sparingly) as of late on a series I am entitling "Candor Calendars," which are memory-based compositions. I actually produced one of these some time ago (Echo Lodge(d), April 2008, part 1 of "Suspended Ball") before Candor Calendar 1. Both were (are) composed as a collage of fragments of earlier works, the fragments put to the composition as memory's rhythms called them forth. One odd note I take on these pieces is the earlier, Echo Lodge(d) seems the much more "poetic" to me, tho the latter the more phanopoetic.

Other variations on the Candor Calendars include the "Mnemosyne Articles," which are detailed notes on everything I can remember from the course of a day, and their cousin, the dream journal. These works are attempts at compositional fodder as well as tools that might help one understand memory's tools + techniques, but in this regard, I will say the results have been limited; I am left, at present, with the concept of the magnet.

There is, I think, a tripartite relation (genesis?) btwn these works + my interest in the art medium used for a non-artistic purpose, such as Storm Large's "life story" monologue (tho of course she + her enthusiasts wld be very offended by the notion that it isn't art). What are some other examples of this?

Love?

Lascaux?

The theatrical idiom brings to mind the dream journal. In theory, the dream is an account(ing), perhaps in the "number-crunching" sense of the mind's varied occupations, an attempt of the mind to process, to understand its (pre)occupations. And yet we experience the dream as a (somehow distant) observer-participant, the caesura between dreamer-director + the dreamer as (s)he experiences.

Does the hinge/wedge between the "psycho-self-accounting" + the dream's theatrical tendency relate to our understanding of conceptual writing?

For instance, the notion that the dream is a chance-assembled account(ing) that the dreamer as observer-participant applies narrative cohesion to. Conceptual writing's de/recontextuali(reali)zations perhaps "force" narrative out of these juxtapositions in a like manner. Place & Fitterman note in "Notes on Conceptualisms" that "conceptual writing could be determined by the expectations of the readership/thinkership," + "that an 'open' conceptual writing may be somewhat closed." Is my "poetic" charging of the ego-voice-as-distinct-from-the-self + appropriated-texts-as-a-manifestation-of-the-ego closing off the possibility of a (traditional?) poetic?

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

SPARE ROOM READING

James Yeary & Jim McCrary
Thursday June 4th
Concordia Coffee House
7:30pm