I'd like to share an interesting email thread with publisher, poet Aditya Bahl that began as a mutual celebration of the poetic mastery of John Martone and now looks to branch off into interesting sidebars--paratexts, perhaps!-- on (among other things) non-referentiality, Barthes, scope and limits of Eastern writing. As this is an ongoing discussion I will add more text from time to time.
I'd love nothing more than for more interested onlookers to join in!
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On Tuesday, December 17, 2013 12:44:32 PM, aditya bahl <aditya25488@gmail.com> wrote:
Dear Conrad,
I am Aditya from India. I am a regular reader of The Compass Rose, Curtis F's blog. I happened to read yr comment which mentioned John Martone on his latest post (I' a big admirer of his work). I visited yr blog and found out John Martone's poems and yr writings about them. Everything is so finely tuned between the poems and yr writings.
I wanted to share a poem, I had written months back and which appeared in the latest issue of Otoliths, titled--for John Martone.
Looking fwd to reading more of yr poems and writings.
Regards,
Aditya Bahl
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On Wed, Dec 18, 2013 at 2:01 AM, conrad didiodato <cdidiodato@yahoo.ca> wrote:
Conrad,
Wittgenstein further argues that the "quasi-physical phenomenon" one observes is only the "grammatical movement" one makes.
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_____________________________Hello AdityaI'm glad to meet you and even more glad that you admire (as I have for years) the superb minimalist poetry of John Martone. You might like this post I wrote a year or so ago about Storage Case (Otoliths).Thank you for sharing "for John Martone": a fitting tribute to a contemporary master.Conrad
On Wednesday, December 18, 2013 11:37:33 AM, aditya bahl <aditya25488@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for replying, Conrad.
And thanks for the link to the post. I don't have the book, but I've seen a few pictures, here & there.
I shall definitely read the post and share my thoughts with you.
And my thoughts on John's minimal work, as well.
Just wanted to pass you the link of the third issue of Bones, of which I am one of the co-editors.
Its available as a pdf and a flipbook. It is an attempt at documenting/showcasing the directions contemporary haiku has been taking.
Do have a read, whenever you get time.
Aditya
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On Thu, Dec 19, 2013 at 2:00 AM, conrad didiodato <cdidiodato@yahoo.ca> wrote:
______________________________Thanks, Adityathere was a time when I tried my hand at Eastern writing: I don't have much talent there but have learned from my teachers (especially Karina Klesko) the virtues of conciseness. I write a tighter, more focused type of poetry--oftentimes very purposely engimatic.I will read Bones with interest and appreciation,Again, nice to have met you and please do keep in touch.Conrad
On Thursday, December 19, 2013 6:26:34 AM, aditya bahl wrote:
The Eastern writing has been packaged and been a "sold out" in the West, I think.
Everything is broken down into three lines to make a haiku of it.
"a neat little thing you do with your left hand and read on get-well-cards"
Although its the only excerpt of Barthes book I've read, The Neutral,
it is interesting to note how he posits haiku against the Western tyranny of "meaning", esp. since haiku is referential (as against the other "non-signified" kinds of writings which abounded in the 70s). Barthes's hopes for/from haiku have since then been outrun by time itself.
I like John Martone's work, one because he is aware that he is writing within language. He is aware of the shortcomings of language when it comes to it-- how to get past them/how to present them. How, for example, when he breaks lines, they stay broken,
birch roots
deeper than you
imagine
Some hot discussions have taken place on yr blog, regarding LANGUAGE poetry and the like. I am enjoying reading them.
Aditya
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Your mention of Barthes, Aditya, is appreciated (always a favourite author of mine). If you mean by "Barthes's hopes for/from haiku have since then been outrun by time itself" a sort of vindication of the uneasy alliance of non-referentiality to the poet's true text, the point's well taken. Or perhaps you're saying haiku has been left untouched by the 70s experimentalism? Then what's the right way of talking about haiku?You might find my Google hangout with John Bloomberg-Rissmann interesting: what are your thoughts? Is haiku subject to same non-signifying cycles as Western art/poetry? Is haiku the odd man out?Conrad
Conrad,
Excellent question, here.
A lot of questions, in fact and not just regarding haiku bt the referential nature of language itself. For example, how can anything be not referential? Let's take Clark Coolidge's work, to begin with. Is it "non-referential"?, as more commonly it is though of? Or even Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons which was or is read in terms of automatic writing and verbal cubism. Feminist readings of Tender Buttons, for ex., presume a "hidden feminist code" in the work, which once revealed would iron out the varied complications of Stein's grammatical topography.
[ I'm falling off to sleep right now (02:02 am) bt since one never knows when the internet comes and goes here, I'll quickly type down a few of my arguments, which are mostly paraphrases.. ]
It depends on how one "perceives" the "real" world and how one "represents" it. The perception of the reality and its linguistic manifestation..
Wittgenstein, for one, delivers the notion of "representation" from the constricted aesthetic principles of reproducing an "objective reality" as constituted by the material and palpable world. Wittgenstein defines the “image” of an object, in terms of "super-likeness". However, he argues that, because one often "imagines" that a person is in pain but is artfully concealing it or one can "imagine" that "the stone has consciousness", "image-mongery" or in other words, the importance attached to the factual nature of an objective description, is merely a farce. By defining, "imaginability" as "representability by a particular means of representation", Wittgenstein distinguishes the "visual room" from the "material room". The visual room is one's conception of the material room he/she inhabits. Unlike the latter, a visual room cannot have an owner. One's conception is bound to be different from another's conception of the same material room. Wittgenstein's propositions read like an unwitting analysis of the domestic space Stein represents in Tender Buttons. As Stein writes,
“The sight of a reason, the same sight slighter, the sight of a simpler negative answer, the same sore sounder, the intention to wishing, the same splendor, the same furniture.”
One could take W's proposition to its rightful culmination by arguing that there is no "material room". Its only a visual room one has (as you would agree, I believe).
I've always thought a lot of Nietzsche's assertion that The tree is not green. It is green and hence it is a tree. (a simplified version of N.'s argument). Similarly a stone is not hard. It is hard and hence it is a stone.
Derrida's theory provides an interesting counterpoint to the above quoted statement. According to him, the four legged creature in the real world (again, I've to resort to language, to point you towards the ""MATERIAL" dog) does not precede the word Dog. Because "it" became a dog only after the conception of the word "Dog." The word is the pre-requisite for the . . "thing" to be called a Dog. Otherwise its not a "Dog".
I'd like to end by quoting S.T. Coleridge frm one of his Letters to W. Godwin,
“in other words — Is thinking impossible without arbitrary signs? & — how far is the word ‘arbitrary’ a misnomer? Are not words &c parts & germinations of the Plant? And what is the Law of their Growth? — In something of this order I would endeavor to destroy the old antithesis of Words & Things, elevating, as it were, words into Things, & living Things too.”
I'd like to write more but I'd like to read yr response first.
I've been slowly reading the comments under the video (cannot play it at such slow speeds). Interesting discussions..
Its a pleasure conversing w you.
Aditya
PS-I've a blog on tumblr (although I don't regularly update), adityamohanbahl.tumblr.com
Have recently posted two erasures-- of Shakespeare's sonnet and R. Creeley's poem.
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Aditya,
may I have your permission to publish our discussion at my Word-Dreamer blog? I will answer your questions shortly and hopefully others will join in the discussion at my blog.
Conrad
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Today at 4:26 PM
That'd be great..
I would like to rephrase the previous email to make it more concise ?
I'll do that tomorrow..
Thanks, Aditya
I look forward to the rephrase.
I'd just like to say, in response to your original comments on the non-referentiality thesis vis–à–vis Coolidge, Wittgenstein, Stein, et al and, in particular, to your claim that "It depends on how one "perceives" the "real" world and how one "represents" it, that it does indeed depend on how one defines the "representability" of poetic things. Everything does seem to stem from that. I think in particular of the great pains the Object-Oriented Ontology of a Graham Harman, for example, (See his Towards Speculative Realism) has to go to dispense of traditional things ! I mention Harman (and company) because they don't seem to see how closely tied their revolutionary epistemology to good ol' Parmenidean (or certainly Heideggerian) metaphysics. These ol' guys are hard to get rid of! Poets who have taken up that rather fashionable critique of 'referentiality' will find themselves in the unenviable position of having to do philosophy before they write the first line.
But, setting that aside, I wonder if there's an ontological divide between East and West in poetics/poetry at all or if the differece is imminent to Eastern writing only. Clark Coolidge is not easily open to easy 'referential' work but not in the same way that Li Po isn't. Nietzsche, and then his true successor Derrida have turned literary criticism on its ear, certainly; Wittgenstein spawned a whole generation of 'language philosophers' that eventually found its way (or transmogrified through a series of interesting moves) into L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E, which also made sport of the any Coleridgian notion of "Words & Things". But have they really redefined poetry writing? I doubt it.
I guess I'm questioning whether the "deconstruction" of language thing--which has pretty much become old hat by now-- has obliterated the "transcendentals" of language altogether. I doubt it has but it's sure made a dent in the "representationalist" thesis, hasn't it? I maintain that a well-formed minimalist poem after Martone can even show, in its always exquisitely nuanced phrasing and synkrisis of page, text and illustration, just how limited any grand pronouncements on the death of the 'Signifier' can look. Take a poem from Martone's bheid and you'll see the irresolvable "Word &Thing" tension turned into the very profoundly untouchable nature of poetic truth itself: as in
absurd
as winter grapes
you eat them
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Had a quick read Conrad. Again, looking fwd to reading everything slowly.
I've been reading bheid too! I agree w yr fine reading of the poem you quote. It is a favorite of mine. Along w the two poems which follow the one quoted,
dreaming
nature
*
forgot
to put the pickaxe away
[[these are my opinions]] which are both terrific-- in the latter, the material pickaxe gave something to John write/think about.
But he isnt simply talking abt putting it away, as in hiding it away.. Or is the signifier "pickaxe" he is talking about.
In conjunction with the "nature" poem, the buddhist notion of "is the world made up of sense data?" also seems to be at work here..
also how the book opens up-
beyond
that tree line--
This one put me in my mind Curtis F's review of Mark Truscott's latest book.
Don't you think that there is that transcendental sense in bheid-- John doesnt take the perceptual and the linguistic for granted. But I haven't read the work completely, so I wouldn't go on now..
Look fwd to reading again/replying to yr comments as well as rephrasing the previous comment..
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2 comments:
A very interesting exchange of ideas focused in part on a really good poet, John Martone. Thanks for posting it, Conrad.
A fascinating exchange, Conrad. I've been pondering "whether the 'deconstruction' of language thing ... has obliterated the 'transcendentals' of language altogether." Not at all, though it hasdeceived more than few writers into thinking the transcendentals don't exist. This is a symptom. It's as if they were to look at Ghiberti's baptistry doors and focus on the fact that they're made of bronze instead of exploring how the materials embody the meaning. Certainly the poets who've followed these sad creatures down the rabbit hole of theory have set aside the strengths and purposes of language in order to play games, and as a result, there's as little at stake in their work as in a round of parcheesi. Poets like Martone are masters of seeing the whole in the part—where it really is! "A World in a grain of sand," indeed.
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