This isn’t what I’m really like

I saw a blue bird next to the tracks.
It flew up around the plates and I don’t think it saw me.
It found its way, somehow, through every dead branch’s spindle–
brown and gray, more like the fog around it
than any living tree. Haunted–

the papers and cans and me,
I’m not the bird. The garbage, swampy, puddled ground and gravel mountains.
Piles of human skin– an attractive green raincoat for a body.
That’ll just be trash, too.
American flags in the cemetery– they’re getting the idea.
I don’t know what I’m about. No one looks at me
and I only see the raincoat

If you leave me alone for long enough I start writing in my notebook

And then when I come on here there’s no choice but to call it blargh-ing. I can’t tell you how excited I am for the Agamben, et al book Democracy in What State?. I think that there were parts written in French and new bits added in English (trans by William McCuaig). I rifled through CUP’s computer and printed it out weeks ago. I want that hard copy so I can write forever about it. Also waiting for Marxism and Form to come in the mail to I can start reading that.

I’m turning 21 tomorrow.

and then spring break next week. I sincerely promise to read and do real work on here, less blarg-ing. And less poetry–it’s getting to me.

Re-introducing myself to 2009

For about a week, I’ve been researching different poetic works, commentaries, and genres on the web. I’ve concentrated a large amount of my focus on ‘blog poetry,’ because I think there are a lot of important components of poetry written, shared, and critiqued through the same interface. I’ve also spent a lot of time looking at new media poetry (I tend to be drawn to audio-visual illuminations rather than graphic installations, but I try to be fair).

More than just accepting or mimicking these new ways of poetry, or asking, “is new media production a poem?” I’m concerned with the relationship to two-dimensional poetry (poetry attained through the idea of a ‘page’ interface) and that of new media poetry that represents itself as more of a ‘screen.’ 

However, as in cinema, I hypothesize that there are moments in new media poetry that demand the presence of the page.

In preparation for this exploration, I am seeking out strong examples of two-dimensional poetry and new media productions (from blogs, online ‘zines, art hosts, etc) and ask the following questions:

1. In what ways does two-dimensional poetry utilize the space of the page, either in ‘traditional’ lay-outs or more experimental spacing?

2. How does new media poetry restructure itself without the most commonly understood boundaries of poetry (line, meter, punctuation, the codexical nature of the two-dimensional poem) in a more continuous and media-aided format?

3. How might the different genres of poetry translate in to one another? How might a two-dimensional poem with dramatic spacing translate into the space of a ‘film’? Is the page, even in part, an essential peice of the 21st century poetic puzzle?

 

Keeping my eyes open but not unfiltered.

It’s Grammy (READ: Insecurity for All Artists) Season…

…and, like all things, it is directly related to art in media. In the last decade, music listening has erupted exponentially due to the wide-spread availability of music files on the Internet. I will spare you, dear reader, from listing all of the devices one can listen to music, I’m sure you’re already aware. It has become quite a circus, and not always for the better… but sometimes, I am sad for the media left behind.

Or maybe I’m just depressed because I’m afraid *my* medium has been left behind…

Music, as a genre, is the perfect 21st century art: there is plenty of growing room for production, tv-integration, layered usage (in slides, videos, background noise, etc.); I wish I could say the same for poetry.

Poetry, whose (conventional) form demands the reader’s full attention of their eye, internal “ear,” and deliberate focus. Miss one line in poetry and miss the entire lyrical flow.I’m not suggesting that lyrics aren’t absolutely necessary in music, but there exists a certain level of continuity within the musical structure of a song that allows a listener to tune in and out while absorbing the “over-all” effect.

Now, I love a good audio file as much as the next college student. But come on, where is the love for poets?

Not poets-as-musicians, but poets… are our days really numbered? Have we really been cut off from the outside world, limited to quarterly magazines? Will our readers really dwindle down to other, competing writers in a less than electrifying lay-out?

Crying out in media shift oblivion: “please, please MEDIA GODS,” I received an answer.

Flash poetry. Quite literally, flashing the words of a poem on a (computer) screen. UH-GREAT!

So I toyed with one or two of my pre-existing poems… Turns out, it’s really, really not that easy.

First, there was my initial panic at not being able to easily line up and dissect the visual aesthetic of a poem. Where were the breaks? Was it visually slim, or stout? What was the rhyme pattern?

And then came the second wave of hatred to all things flash: my loss of multiple interpretation, of how to extend or contract visual slide-show elements, add or detract color, group or cut off words, in order to convey my original meaning.

It is definitely a work-in-progress; but it got me thinking. There must be advantages of working in print and in “modified” print. I just have to get comfortable enough in 2009 to fully explore them.

Maybe I’ll even add a backing track?