Author Topic: nonsense, anyone? (Read 247 times)

illiterati · « **on:** April 16, 2012, 01:39 PM »

from David Melnick's PCOET (there's a whole book of this)

cafeRg · « **Reply #1 on:** April 16, 2012, 04:07 PM »

reminds me of ..concrete poetry

illiterati · « **Reply #2 on:** April 16, 2012, 04:10 PM »

you should post some concrete poems in this section, rg. i'm sure someone would be interested in giving it a shot (myself included).

Cheshire Cat · « **Reply #3 on:** April 16, 2012, 04:39 PM »

Well, I'm all for nonsense...so long as it has some sense to it!

It seems as though the poem gets lost in the form. Or...

there is no poem...just form. Or...

it's just letters clumped together. Where is the poem?

One could argue that a poem that is nonsense is not a poem.

I could figure out the first words...the issue, the idea, and then I got lost amid acorns and nuts and citrus fruit and acid reflux!

I liked the example you showed, though, it seemed to be heading in some direction. *scratches head*

illiterati · « **Reply #4 on:** April 16, 2012, 04:54 PM »

hmm... well, i think that's actually a pretty good reading of what's going on in the poem, cheshire. it's pure form.

it's not that i'd evangelize for this kind of (sometimes gimmicky) experimentalism as the end all be all of verse.

but certainly thinking poetically about questions of form - as this poem does - about the purely formally cues (and these are all non-linguistic cues, too - all elements of form that happen on a page) out of which poems arise, is one worthwhile verse practice?

Halo · « **Reply #5 on:** April 16, 2012, 09:21 PM »

Hi I, all this form seems to take the blood, sweat and guts and heart too, out of poetry.
Which is well and good if you want poetry as cold as surgical steel. My aussie two cents worth.

Halo

illiterati · « **Reply #6 on:** April 16, 2012, 11:42 PM »

sometimes the heart and blood and guts need surgical steel to cut them open and fiddle around in there.

illiterati · « **Reply #7 on:** April 16, 2012, 11:44 PM »

and just for the record, david melnick is unfortunately known almost solely for his gimmicky stuff, like this from pcoet or the equally nonsensical homophonic homer.

but the same attention to form produced eclogs, which to my mind is a work of incredible blood and guts and heart, no matter its formal difficulty:

http://english.utah.edu/eclipse/projects/ECLOGS/Eclogs.pdf

Halo · « **Reply #8 on:** April 17, 2012, 10:29 PM »

Each to his own, eh! And if poets can't keep freedom of speech in the literary sense, what good are we.

cafeRg · « **Reply #9 on:** April 17, 2012, 10:51 PM »

evolve you shun or
dee
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illiterati · « **Reply #10 on:** April 17, 2012, 11:09 PM »

experts err in cement station
too fine doubt howl anger wedge irks

jdstaley · « **Reply #11 on:** May 15, 2012, 09:37 AM »

grand and novel; doesn't mean a thing to me, tho.