"Jung's Kapital" | 3 [Ardeo pangram]
Amatory brevity could dapple early fronds? Grant
history its jaundice -- keep leaving many notes. Our prolegomenon
quietly references Schiller's torn, used version. Watch XYZ
Act before catastrophe detonates. (Entropy flattens glamour.)
Harlequin inklings just kept lifting mystic nostrils. Oracular personages
quit reading steamy tomes. Uncle Vanya wasn't XYZ
About basic democracy, every folklorist's got
his ideas. Jung's Kapital leaves many noodles. Our paradigm
questions reason's Stoic tarmac. Upshot veers wonderfully, XYZ
Alba becomes dreamy Electra (from Greece) --
Homer is just keeping legal memos (not our problem)
Quotidian reality still tries upstaging virtual wasabi, XYZ
Amicus briefs can depreciate expensive footwork. Great
heroes introspect juicily. Kelly language makes noise. Or perchance
quittance remains still tenaciously useful? Virgins want XYZ
Ardeo became conscious despite evening's foolish gambol.
Having interrupted -- just keep lilting, merry nightingale! Orioles prefer
quack remedios, summer talons. Umpteen voices warble "XYZ"
posted by david raphael israel at 7:53 PM
7 Comments:
I like this one.
You may have already done most of these, but have you checked out my pal William's "Table of Forms"? It's at http://www.spinelessbooks.org/table/index.html
He's a good person for formally-constrained literature in general, and a good guy.
thanks Andy --
am on a bit of a roll with these at the moment (with some sense of a poss. series in prog).
This in some respects resembles a process I did a couple months ago with another instance of "lattice" writing (will dig up and link; the phraseology of the "lattice" is my own devising; the alphabet divided into 3 lines, here, makes a simple lattice; I did a couple longer, more complex things earlier).
I'm sure it may prove interesting to find out about what others are doing (or have done) w/ formally-constrained writing; I've only vaguely run into a couple (esp. a bit of 2nd-hand description of Oulipo stuff, plus that Christian Bok tour-de-force that so impressed me a couple days ago). My main awareness of such is merely via my own (limited) dabblings. But it seems that reading some of Bok's thing kind of threw a fuse, flipped a wig, or I mean a switch -- or did some such exemplary helpfulness, sparking a feeling of possibility.
cheers,
d.i.
Further on this Andy --
it seems (back in February when I had a little spate of experiment along these lines), I only blogged one instance of what I dubbed "Xeric poetry"; but, there, I link to a discussion thread where there's a bit more of same. The poem on blog here is Maria's Laud -- 26 lines (4 words per line), composed per my there-invented alphabetic lattice or template.
Simple differences between that and this, involve the difference between shorter lines vs. longer lines, and how this new form here is more stanza-based. Underlying it (beyond the level of the constrained writing per se) is my experience with the English ghazal, which has its own different sort of constraints (a more classical sort), but also its own currents of rhetoric & idea that (a little bit) creep into some of this perhaps.
Pardon the verbose discuss of my own experiment -- a hazard of commentbox posting when in midst of something new.
No apologies necessary; I like the voyeuristic look into a project-in-process.
Interesting issue, the rhetorical "genetics" of a given set of formal constraints. I wonder how often that sort of thing is in the forefront of a "formal poet's" mind.
My favorite aspect of this form is really the blunt "XYZ"s.
I haven't had time to read over the series carefully yet, but look forward to doing so.
Thanks again; -- but you may have to expand on what you mean by << rhetorical "genetics" >>, as I'm not quite following your remark, but am interested to get the sense of it. At any rate, in these poems discussed (the current sequence, plus the Xeric poems), the lattice (perhaps this is the "genetics"?) is an overt and precise aspect of the constraint; I mean, essentially it is the constraint, pure & simple.
So in these poems, an awareness of it is necessarily rather strong! -- one can hardly avoid some attention to it. But of course, a point of the writing is, to soem degree, to transcend this abecedarian [literally speaking] formality, weaving things holding (or evoking or at least quick-sketching) some possible meaning per se. The form thus somewhat pulls against the poem. That is, the organizing principle (lattice) simply gives a roadway for utterance; and the interest then becomes how the cars vary (expressively) the trajectory.
A musical analogy for such writing would be the way raag or taal are employed in Indian classical music. Following that line of metaphor, I could say that poems 1-8 here are all alaps, whereas poem 9 corresponds to jodh (jor) -- a rhythmical concentration of the imporovisation. I was happy with that poem, and perhaps should try working further in that way. In poem 9 ("Quixote's reality"), the amorphous, free-for-all of construction is more disciplined and formalized. It thus becomes more lyric (song-ish), no doubt.
In poem 10, each stanza presents its own mini-jodh; -- each is a separate little rhythmical etude, that is.
By "genetics" I meant what you meant when you wrote "the English ghazal, which has its own different sort of constraints (a more classical sort), but also its own currents of rhetoric & idea that (a little bit) creep into some of this perhaps."
Not that this is a new idea ("I'm writing a sonnet, so it should probably have something to do with love"), but that it's renewed in an age that includes poets like yourself, working in traditional or new patterned forms where the base level isn't the idea that a given form always has a given subject matter. Since patterned form no longer automatically "inherits" subject matter from its forebears, it becomes interesting when it does. The form shows its history, and newly invented forms that have a connection with previously existent ones thus have a particularly interesting relation to history, and in fact give forms a new kind of history.
Does that make more sense?
Andy --
yes certainly it makes sense. (May remark more anon.)
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