Could poetry replace television?

    Yes, I know;  you don't like contemporary poetry performances.  Hell, I'm not sure anyone does.  Give this one a try, though.  Trust me.  Hey, have I ever lied to you?

    And, yes, I suppose I could quibble about the initial pace and tone being elevated.  Better to start both lower and build up, right?  Well, this time I think the over-the-top histrionics are entirely appropriate. 

    I'd like to thank my elaborate network of spies for bringing this to my attention so quickly.

    One has to wonder:  if all poetry were as entertaining as this why would we need cable TV?

Steve Currie:  Worst Date




    The scene was the King's Head Pub at the regional slam semifinals on the evening of May 24th, 2013.  Our hero, Steve Currie, had gone first and was the victim of some serious score creep*.  He would need a nearly impossible score to make it into the top four and qualify for the final. 

    The rest, as you can see, is history.

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"Score creep" = Slams are scored by audience volunteers.  As the event proceeds the scores they give invariably rise, creating what is called "score creep".  To compensate for this, organizers reverse the order of appearances in the second half.  As Bob Dylan would say, "the first one now will later be last".  Such was the case for Steve, who capped the evening with this brilliancy to finish fourth overall.

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The Piñager Paradox

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #25

     We can never say "No" in response to the question "Are you awake?"

     In similar vein, the mere fact that we are reading instead of ever listening to something suggests that it is not poetry.  Text loses all the repetitions of sound that help verse fulfill its primary purpose:  to worm its way into our memory.  Reading poetry aloud privately doesn't do the job;  it's like trying to tickle ourselves.  Just as tails and gills become vistigial or disappear entirely over time, text-only editors will inevitably present prose as poetry, having eliminated the differences (e.g.  sound repetitions, rhythms, etc.) between the two.

     This is the second greatest challenge for poetry book and magazine publishers (after finding a way to compete with music).

Ye olde Churchkey

     The easiest get-around is to include [preferably audiovisual rather than sound recording] performances, typically via DVD or URL.  However, this causes many an editor to reconsider the whole endeavor, as the presentation makes evident that their "poetry" lacks performance or poetic value.  This is the dynamic nature of the Piñager Paradox, a dilemma that becomes more acute as competing poets develop their presentation skills.  Soon, any publication that does not include such videos will seem like a Black and White television or a non-zip beverage can.

     For what it may be worth, of an English teacher's many transgressions, none is more egregious than having students read Shakespearean plays without attending or, at least, viewing them.

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"Piñager" is pronounced "Peen" as in "Pinot noir" and "Yeager" as in Chuck.

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The Hype/Value Ratio

 Earl the Squirrel's Rule #35

    One of the most fundamental laws of marketing is the Hype/Value ratio:  the amount of [time, effort and] money needed to promote something compared to its market (as opposed to intrinsic) value.  For example, an unknown garage band will require significant bolstering, based on a speculative estimation of its commercial appeal.  By contrast, we need only announce that Justin Bieber--who embodies the difference between intrinsic and market value--has another album out and the cash starts rolling in. 

    The bad news is that poetry has no market and, therefore, no market value.  Not surprisingly, larger commercial publishers see no point in hyping it.  What promotional efforts there are amount to blurbing verse without much regard to its artistic merit.  Thus, poetry's effective Hype/Value Ratio is 0/0, a mathematically irrational endeavor.

    Here's a thought:  perhaps we shouldn't be promoting poetry.  Perhaps poetry should be doing the promoting.

"It Couldn't Be Done" - New Audi Commercial based on an Edgar Guest poem


"Oh, Pioneers" - Levi's Commercial based on a Walt Whitman poem


    Or perhaps we should let poetry do the talking:  dramatizing or telling stories, jokes, perspectives, whatever.

    It's not like anyone promotes prose in toto.  Or television in toto.  Or communication in toto.

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"I Study the Craft"

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #43

    What, exactly, does "I study the craft" mean?

    In my experience, it means one of three different things, depending on who is speaking.

    If English majors say they "study the craft" they mean they examine the products of that endeavor as opposed to those features specific to it.  They are superfans, Monday morning quarterbacks who might think they can coach an NFL team without knowing what a Bang 8 is.  Their favorite question is "what does this mean?"  Why?  Because if you remove the technical there isn't much left beyond the interpretive.  Their measure of a work's value is how much classroom discussion time can be wasted guessing at its references and influences.  Derivative hypertext trumps the modern masterpiece.

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #44

    Creative Writing majors will, not surprisingly, focus on the elements common to all writing:  grammar, eloquence, continuity, logic, effectiveness, storytelling, clarity, et cetera.  They study the subjects of the craft, rarely its objects.  Unfortunately, even when discussing poetry they do so without referring to the elements specific to that art form (e.g. sonics, meters/rhythms, forms, et cetera).  For example, they will pontificate for hours about metaphor without realizing that metaphor has no more to do with poetry than syllogisms or dictionary definitions.  They are simply a way of conceptualizing something.  Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" is chock full of them.  Does that make it poetry?

    Both groups are inspired by Convenient Poetics and dominated by Content Regents, the difference being that Literature scholars work in all dimensions, tracking influences through time.

    To my knowledge, the only people who study the elements of the craft are the onliners.  Among many other advantages, this allows them to engage in the serious technical criticism that defines them.  It allows them to detail the difference between free verse and prose [with or without linebreaks], between the poetic and the merely profound.  And, no, it isn't largely a matter of opinion.

     The catch is that, in venues ruled by ConPoets and Content Regents, neither quality nor qualities matter.  In such forums a subjective reality pervades where technique doesn't matter because it doesn't exist [in the minds of those present].

     More on this later.

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Cadas - Part IV

     Here are the two video renditions of the double sonnet:

"This Won't Make Sense" (unannotated)

This Won't Make Sense (Unannotated) from Earl Gray on Vimeo.


"This Won't Make Sense" (annotated)

This Won't Make Sense (annotated) from Earl Gray on Vimeo.


     Obviously, the video format can't hide as much as the text does, especially without the last couplet (as we saw in "Cadas - Part IIa").  This could be a rare inversion:  the poem may work better as text or audio-only first.  There is also the TMI issue:  how much information is too much?

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Cadas - Part III

Approaches, Structures and Forms

     A structure is the presence (as in meter) or absence (as in free verse) of a set number and/or position of items (e.g. lines, stanzas, feet, beats, alliterations, syllables, etc.) in a poem.  For example, iambic trimeter quatrains comprise a structure:  4-line stanzas, each line having three iambic feet. 

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #42

     If and when a structure is recognized it becomes a form, acquiring a common, often evolving, use along the way.  For example, limericks were originally employed for political commentary.  Today, they are associated with bawdiness:  "There once was a man from Nantucket..."  Villanelles went in the opposite direction, from being light verse to serving as urgent entreaties such as "Do not go gentle into that good night".  In short, a form is a structure that has "arrived".

     An approach is a treatment or refashioning of a structure/form.  These may involve rearranging or deleting linebreaks.  To wit, a curgina such as "Beans" presents verse with free verse linebreaks.  Corata, such as the iambic tetrameter "Shadows" or the double sonnet "This Won't Make Sense", is verse with the linebreaks, but not generally the stanza/paragraph breaks, removed.
   
     The most difficult approach is the reverser, such as Jon Reed's "Lost Generation", which makes sense when its words are read forwards then, backwards.

Cadas

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #25

     A cada involves [usually plain] language that contains strings of text which, only if viewed in isolation and in context, address an integral aspect of the theme.  As we'll see, that central theme or context can be evident or undisclosed--or both!  These "strings of text" can be lines (the "cada línea"), phrases (the "cada frase") or sentences (the "cada oración").

    Like Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro", "Paradise Has No Colonies" is iambic free verse.  Notice how each line, if viewed independently, addresses a different subtheme typically associated with prostitution:

    Rosie knows the night            - experience
    is a forgiving                   - redemption
    thing. She takes her daughter's  - incest
    corner, posing just a little     - artifice
    further from the street          - intimidation

    light. It's a school             - street-wise education
    night for Lynn; someone          - humanization in obscurity
    will have the children           - motherhood
    in bed by ten.                   - pedophilia

      "Paradise Has No Colonies" adopts the tone of most "direct" cadas we've seen, similar to the opening scenes of a dimestore horror novel:  prosey and prosaic, with a hint of foreboding.  The references are direct, if a little jumbled (e.g. "she takes her daughter's...thing" for incest).  By contrast, the "indirect" "This Won't Make Sense" is a bumpier ride, relying more on jump cuts, like Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues", and on allusions that don't become evident until after the final couplet.  

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        You bring us back to beaches, bonfires, flames that flutter like the wings of butterflies.  You tease a gap-toothed child.  A baseball game begins, the math of farm team hits and tries, of boys in shirts and shorts and gel-spiked hair.  They'll take the Number 7 subway train to watch some football, giants battling bears or other beasts.  One plays a video game.     

     The boss, in a hoop skirt and bobby socks, surveys the paintings of dancehalls and gifts.  The music rests.  The actors eat cupcakes.  The therapist observes.  Her reading glasses shift.  A Labrador detects a silent cue.  It barks.  It runs in rings and waits for you.  

     The sunlight fades your dress and curls, but you're not home until you hug your pup.  Drawing pink and purple lambs, a girl devours her chocolate peanut butter cup.  As tiny voices sing an old jazz tune caretakers pass along their business cards.  A spaniel jumps a soccer ball and, soon, an artist grabs her pencils and regards the scene:  the dog's ballet, the jazz, the sheep;  all fit here like a horse and cowboy boots.  Beyond the pool we watch an arrow's steep descent, to land so deep within our roots.  

     Such was the fall, before the winter took the green and gilded leaves of Sandy Hook.

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Conclusion:

Earl the Squirrel's Rule #12

     How does the cada fit in with Rule #12?  If they like the surface story readers might appreciate "Paradise Has No Colonies" without ever understanding the subtext.  Bearing in mind that the future (and past) of poetry is in audiovideo, a "This Won't Make Sense" slideshow presentation would make the contexts clear through pictures of the victims and the references evident through annotations onscreen.

     In conclusion, the cada, is anti-synergetic:  the whole is significantly less than the sum of its parts. 

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Cadas - Part IIb

     Here is "This Won't Make Sense" in full, complete with hyperlink photos and footnotes:

                                    http://www.firesides.ca/CadaIIb.html

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