Elsewhere… January 20, 2012

“…if we didn’t have that means of communication, in fact, we’d still be living in caves, but still, a lot of people are just surprised to think that language could have any function other than being about something. But sometimes—well, like me; when I was a boy, I began to think that there was something missing there. You could read Scientific American and it would explain String Theory but it was talking about it. And what poetry is engaged in, the kind of language it’s engaged in, is not the language of aboutness, it’s engaged in the language of isness. You’re not trying to point to something out there, and talk about it, you’re trying to actually put it right on the reader’s fingertips. The prose in a biology textbook is trying to tell you about the frog; the poem is trying to turn you into a frog. It’s trying to do the very difficult thing of trying to give you a sense of frogness. When you’re using referential prose, the ontological—excuse me for using that word, but the ontological experience and meaning of the thing is always dead to you if you’re just talking about it. There’s a big difference between telling somebody how much their investment has made over the year and putting them in the seat of a new Ferrari and letting them touch the leather and smell the new car and put it in first and feel that rush of power as they go out of the parking lot. I’m sorry, I don’t usually talk about Ferraris because I couldn’t afford one myself. [Fox laughs] I was talking with a friend the other day who owns one. But referential prose, expository prose, which dominates our minds, not only dominates our minds but actually brainwashes us into believing that’s all language can ever do. It can only point to things; they’re dead to you but you know about them. So poetry actually has to compete with that and it’s very hard to do because people whose minds are trained to process expository prose then are stymied when they come to a poem. And it’s not that the poem doesn’t want you to learn something but it wants you to learn it by seeing it and smelling it and tasting it and knowing the weight of the thing or whatever the ontological physical reality of the thing happens to be. So that’s a huge difference. And I think the word ontology is important there because it’s a radically different mode of being. Poetry’s job is to produce in the reader an order of being utterly different from the order of being that he is possessed by with ordinary explanatory prose. It’s a huge difference and it’s an important difference too because if you try to write a poem and you write it entirely in explanatory referential language, you’re going to get an absolutely dead poem.”

– from A Conversation with B.H. Fairchild – RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century » RATTLE: Poetry for the 21st Century

“I have been a Buddhist long before I started writing poems and I think as far as perception is concerned, Buddhism has had a major impact. My meditation practice made observing objects “as they are” a lot easier and this has helped in the avoiding the younger writer’s tendency towards canned or cliched phrases like “rolling hills”, “deep blue eyes”, or “shattered heart”, for example. Practicing Zen made it natural for me to question whether those hills are really “rolling”, or that perhaps those blue eyes are not very deep at all, maybe they’re hollow or crystalline, perhaps they resemble a mine shaft studded with jewels, a sea of lilacs? What I am saying is that there’s a danger in falling into these easy and common descriptions and by stripping the object of its very name, we can begin to see it in a more clear and unique way. When we remove an object or idea from the relative nature of language, we can see how stunning it really is all by itself, naked and fully present; we can see, at last, that an elephant is big only when it’s next to something small.”

– Ocean Vuong | Ocean Vuong: The TNB Self-Interview | The Nervous Breakdown

“Essentially I believe that everybody’s life involves this sort of dualism. Rationality and poetry are just as much part of our daily lives as liquid crystal watches and sunsets.”

– Andrea Galvani

dunnefrankowski:

Since the start of the year, I’ve been really taken by the idea of having something green on my worktable. It goes without saying that I spend a lot of time there, but when you’re focused on the screen (as my work calls me to be) it’s easy to lose touch with the space itself, to allow it to fall from view. Nothing wrong with that, as such— it’s a function of focus. But it’d be good to see some mark of time passing other than the accumulation of dust I counter with the occasional wipe down of surfaces. Something like the lighting system above: serves concrete purpose (lighting), but also marks the passing of time. To be able to say In the time I’ve been here, something has grown, something has come into being— could serve as a powerful reminder of actuality, the passage of time, and presence. A complement or even antithesis to the memento mori skull on the desk of old; rather than a reminder of inevitable death, a reminder that you have lived.

I’m also currently looking into window farms and table gardens. I’d love to track a lighting/hydroponic system like this down…

From 12 January to 1 March the UltraLounge on the Lower Ground floor of Selfridges London will be transformed into a library and become the epicentre of the Words Words Words theme. The library will provide a unique interactive space to become fully immersed in the topic, from specially curated ranges of inspirational books to fascinating classes and lectures from The Idler Academy and It’s Nice That.

[Schedule includes a couple of Faber poetry readings and lots of storytelling from Rachel Rose Reid.]

Via Words Words Words takes over Selfridges | Selfridges.com)

“I believe that the most complex and profound truths are usually arrived at when we allow our imaginations to interact with factual truths. I also believe that facts can lie. So—many of my poems are fictional at least in part. Poetry is not autobiography, not journalism, not textbook history. I understand poetry as an imaginative art, and at this point in my life, I value the power of the imagination as much—or more—than I value any set of facts.”

– How a Poem Happens: Corrinne Clegg Hales

Jacaszek – Dare Gale (by Ghostly International)

“I keep a hotel room. I have everything taken off the walls, and I bring in yellow pads, a Roget’s Thesaurus, a dictionary, a bible, a deck of cards, crossword puzzles and a bottle of sherry (red wine). When I approach the door, it is with utter apprehension and anticipation. It is frightening. It is what I am. I sit at a little table and play solitaire. My grandmother used to say when I was young, ‘You know that’s not even on my littlest mind.’ And so I determined that the human being has a big mind and a little mind. The cards occupy my little mind so I can get to the big mind and hear the language.”

–

Writers’ Routines: Maya Angelou

Two things here.

a) For a while, I developed a (bad?) habit of munching while working. Almost incessantly. Mostly healthy stuff (though I’m pretty sure I could have a reasonably decent conversation with Bill Herbert about decadent delicacies and bad eating habits we might have in common…), but munchies all the same. I wonder if this wasy my way of engaging my “little mind” so the big mind could carry on with more important things?

b) Writers’ Routines is excellent. I’d considered doing something like it myself a while back, and still might, though of course I’d have to invest some effort in differentiation— if something’s already being done, what could I add to the enterprise? Whether or not I find a satisfactory answer to the question, Writers’ Routines is worth a read. Go see.