Poetry - an Exchange
Rosemary Drescher and Michael Szpakowski
Hi Michael,
That one movie of yours, found poem, in particular has set me off on a whole
new train of thought, starting with the rather desperate notion that the
kind of poetry I'm doing is obsolescent.
The way the film takes you through
those signs as if the camera is your pen and ink really gets to me, and then
I keep getting pulled up short by the suspicion that what appears to be
meaning is not meaning.
Is it a random pattern or is it a composition? It
works in such a different way from a printed poem.
A German Romanian writer
called Herta Mueller gave a reading in Tuebingen a couple of years ago that
impressed me in a similar way - she spends hours cutting out words and bits
of words or single letters out of magazines and newspapers and then 'writes'
poems by arranging and sticking them on paper.
They look like blackmailers'
letters and are about people surviving under Ceausescu's dictatorship.
I
suppose both yours and hers are forms of concrete poetry, but does that mean
they are not valid as 'voiced' poems?
Is our age so image dependent (and I
think it is, absolutely) that a voice alone reciting is bound not to excite
anyone?
Are people's imaginations ceasing to respond to words?
Am I on dead
end street?
My poetry is for speaking, it's too much about the language, and
language is irrepressible, so I do believe in it deep down.
Rosemary
Hi Rosemary,
" the rather
desperate notion that the
kind of poetry I'm doing is obsolescent."
Yes, desperate and utterly wrong in my view.
True, a
view that is expressed in some quarters but usually
only by the most fashion victimized of the digerati.
If I have a polemical aim in my teaching and any
critical stuff I write/post it's to establish the
absolute continuity of art from cave painting to the
computer - different social/ historical context,
different techniques true..but.. same impulses, roots
- hunger, sex, death, the natural world, work &c.
...because we're human.
"I keep getting pulled up short by the suspicion that
what appears to be
meaning is not meaning."
Two points.
"Found Poem" is just that in one sense - I
was photographing sequentially on my trip from my
Dad's to Leeds and then during my lunch break - but I
photographed twice as many signs as I actually used
and then I carefully sequenced them, I composed, if you
like, a poem ( for which I claim no particular merit)
which I wanted to have a slightly surreal flavour.
It won't be the start of a writing career for me ,
you'll be glad to hear.
The second point is a broader one.
If the digital has
anything unique and novel to offer in terms of writing
( and I except here the most important thing, which is
the sheer wonder of the net as a delivery mechanism) it
lies in the work that people like Alan Sondheim are
doing, using computer programmes as a kind of "demon"
or "familiar" where they randomize/cut up/rework ( in
Sondheim's case in what appears to me a very controlled and careful way) texts using
computer programmes.
There isn't anything new under the sun and I've
referred to this elsewhere as the "new automatic
writing" by analogy with the automatic writing of the
surrealists - except this time we're not drawing on an
internal resource, the subconscious, but an external
one, the programme, which in a sense acts as a kind of
external collective unconscious - and this brings me to
a final point - it acts as an external unconscious
because human beings are meaning making animals.
There's the famous story of the actress whose cat had
scratched her leg quite badly , which scratches were
very visible to the audience one night and left them
deeply puzzled as to what the plot implications were.
We all, from the toddler ( ie. when we enter language)
till we die, constantly construct meanings and
explanations for the world.
More importantly, we create meaning in a social
way - otherwise poetry, fiction, would be completely
solipsistic and incomprehensible.
Final final point - don't let the bastards get you down
- you owe it to yourself to write what you believe to
be truthful and right.
I'd like to start a movement called "the new
sincerity" and perhaps "the new austerity" too -
ultimately history will tell but I feel that craft at
the service of honesty are indispensable and will far
outlast the fashionable.
I recommend you to have a look at Alan Sondheim's work.
He has all the
virtues I value but is also using cutting edge
techniques, not because he's trendy or wants to be
liked, but because it fits his wonderful and singular
vision.
You can see his stuff at http://www.asondheim.org/
warmest wishes
michael
Hi Michael,
My fear about my poetry being obsolescent is more to do with the technique
than the impulse, that's true.
I agree that that is something that links us
to the cavemen which is why their paintings still touch us.
What I want to
say in poetry is truthful, it's not about fashion but about saying it in a
way that is relevant to people.
I've just been doing some surfing for poetry
online and came across a site that is similar to yours
( http://www.digitalfiction.co.uk/digitalfiction/forum.asp)
I'm sure that poetry can become more widely relevant again
in this context - perhaps even by allowing it to go back to being spoken, as
we did with close up to the ear of earth.
There's such a lot of 'small'
poetry of the sonnet type, and hardly anyone wants to read it.
I've had brief looks at Sondheim's work a few times, it needs time, there's
a lot of text to absorb.
Interestingly, the Guardian Saturday Review was
talking about severe honesty being rather avant-garde in contrast to the
postmodern/urban poetry so maybe there is already a movement in the
direction you describe.
It's something I feel I belong to.
But how honest or
sincere can your external collective unconscious be?
It wouldn't take much
to tip it over into a propaganda machine and give people all sorts of
manipulated implications for the plot.
The programme has to have the laws of
human love at its core as all art does in order to allow us to create
meaning in an inclusively social way.
All for now,
Rosemary