I’m looking to replace my very favorite notebook, which is all filled up now. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to make these anymore.

I’m posting this in the hopes that someone can help to point me in the right direction. I contacted the manufacturer, whose website suggests that they no longer make these, but they never replied. I’ve done all this because I loved that notebook so much and I want another one.

It is a hardbound book, with a cloth covering of some sort. The spine is sewn such that the open book lays flat. The paper is smooth and thick and white; it is acid-free (I think) and does not bleed through when I use a pen. The paper is narrow ruled (1/4 in (6.35 mm) spacing between ruling lines), with no vertical margin line. It measures 8″ wide by 10.5″ high and 1″ thick.

This is my favorite notebook.

When opened, my favorite notebook lays flat.

I have filled my favorite notebook with words and drawings

It has a hardbound cover, with cloth on it

This summer, I hope to have published e-book versions of my novella. Today, I happened upon some good advice for anyone engaged in e-book publishing. I thought I would pass the advice along. It comes from Levi Asher, over at Literary Kicks.

It’s simple advice, really. I’ll paraphrase.

1. Make it look good. A lot of e-books look crappy.
2. “Formatting an e-book manuscript is a bitch.”
3. Make an e-book for kindle, then make versions for the other devices.
4. Be sure you can find an audience. This is easiest if you’ve written something you already know people will want.

I’m sure I can handle most of the points above, with the probable exception of number four.

Stephen Dedalus is my name,
Ireland is my nation.
Clongowes is my dwellingplace
And heaven my expectation.

He read the verses backwards but then they were not poetry.

Lately I’ve been readingA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It isn’t poetry, but on occasion, as in the quote above, it reads like poetry.

I’ve been wondering, too, about stream of consciousness writing. I’m sure that Joyce isn’t simply writing down whatever happens to come to the top of his head (that’s called automatic writing). I think that good stream of consciousness writing has to be crafted, so that it flows as easily as thoughts do, and in the way that certain thoughts do.

Other times, I think it can be a happy accident that the writing comes out like raw thoughts. I’ve had that experience before.

One of the tracks on Strange Punctuation has a sort of stream of consciousness feel to it. It’s a collage, actually, made out of parts of several other recordings. My friend Curt made the track out of the material that hadn’t yet made the cut. This resulted in one of the more interesting spoken word recordings; it has a dreamlike mood to it, I think.

I’m (slowly) writing the script for a stage play. During my first draft, I sampled the various software apps that are designed to help a writer to produce a stage play, screen play, comic book script, etc. I thought I would blog some of my thoughts, in case anybody else out there finds them interesting.

Here’s what I’m looking for

When I’m writing, I want a comfortable, intuitive interface. I don’t want to fuss around with a bunch of complicated interface controls. I don’t want to spend my time on the formatting of the script; that’s the software’s job. This is very important to me, because I want to be comfortable when I write. It’s worth noting too, that in an age when I can buy a beautifully designed and intuitive app for $1 on my phone, I’m really not impressed by a $30 program that looks like it was designed when I was in High School (i.e. Windows 95). Design is a small point in this case, I know, but it matters to me.

I also want to be sure that whatever I’m writing in this special software is “portable” so that I can export it to an industry standard file type, change the margins and typesetting, or edit the document in another software application altogether. More technically speaking, I need my software to import/export file formats like Final Draft, Microsoft Word, Movie Magic Screenwriter, PDF, TXT or RTF. Why? Because I’m just now drafting my script, and I’m unsure what I’ll need to do with it later. I want my options open.

Scripwriting Apps

I tried out a lot of different apps, with help from demo versions and from friends. Here is a list, in order of my preference.

Celtx

This one tops the list because it is basically free, and totally usable. Celtx is designed to help you write a variety of scripts, including two standard formats for stage plays. The basic package is free. Plugins to add extra features are reasonably priced. In addition to basic scriptwriting, Celtx also has features for storing notes, visualization, formatting templates… This thing does a lot for free. The interface is simple and easy to understand. What it won’t do is import/export to very many standard file types, at least not out of the box. They probably make you buy a plugin for that. I haven’t looked into it. They also have an iphone app, but I don’t want to write on my phone, thanks.

Scrivener

I had a lot of fun using this application. For Windows users like myself, though, it is still in Beta, so there are some glitches. In addition to “word processor” mode, Scrivener also has tools to help you organize your notes, scenes and even the other documents you might be using as source material, etc. I found those extra features to be very helpful with my first draft. The Mac version of this is $50, but the beta for windows is currently free. You will want to go through the tutorial on this one, to learn all the useful features, but then you can get right down to writing with a nice interface. Be warned though: once the beta expires, you’ll have to upgrade, so save your work often or be prepared to upgrade. The beta can export to most, but not all, of the usual file types.

MovieMagic Screenwriter

Despite the irrelevant name of this app, I liked it. The word processing features are easy to use. The support for file formats is good. MovieMagic Screenwriter handles notes and scenes fairly well. It also integrates with Dramatica, so you can start there to hash out a rough outline. I found that this app, of all of them, gave me the best ability to write dialog quickly, while preserving format. Unfortunately, it costs $245.95, but if you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars on scriptwriting software, I think this is the best investment.

Dramatica Pro

Dramatica Pro deserves mention on this list. It isn’t going to help you write dialog, etc. but it is a nice brainstorming tool. It’s user interface is in very bad need of a complete and total overhaul, but once you get the hang of it, it might be useful. The software walks you through a sort of plot philosophy that seems to be designed to help you write a Hollywood blockbuster, but I found it to provide useful prompts for thinking about character interactions and plot complexity. It ain’t cheap, though.

Adobe Story

This is more like a web app. It supports standard formats. Adobe Story is easy to use. It works online and offline. It’s definitely worth a try. It’s free, for now, I guess?

Final Draft

Final Draft is one of the “industry standard” scriptwriting apps. It’s also very expensive. For your money, you get a word processor with minimal features to make it unique for writing scripts. The features that are there are very powerful. For example, the large number of formatting templates, the character names database, and collaboration mode. You’ll be able to dive right in, here and get the work done. It’s also worth noting that this app’s native file type is a very popular one.

There are others…

These were listed on Wikipedia but I haven’t tried them out yet. Your results may vary, so I’ll simply list them here.

• FiveSprockets
• Montage software
• Movie Outline
• Page 2 stage
• Plot Builder
• Plotbot
• Scripped
• ScriptTeX
• WriteItNow
• MovieWriterPro

If anybody knows of any others, or has reviews to share, please do post them in the commetns. As you can tell by now, I’m a windows user, but I welcome my Mac friends to share any notes about the software they like to use.

I’m interested in adding audio equipment to my writing toolbox. So, I think I need some gear. I’m posting this to solicit any advice from musicians, technicians and writers: what works and what doesn’t? How can I do these things sufficiently well, on the smallest possible budget?

• I have a decent XLR microphone. I have a computer with a decent sound card. What is the best way to connect the two?
• I want to manipulate voices. Is that done with a vocoder? Do I need hardware or software for that?
• I want to be able to edit recordings. I’ve used Garage Band, and it’s nice, but I don’t have a mac. Is there something that is comparably user-friendly for the PC?
• With all of these things, I don’t want to get overwhelmed by tinkering with equipment. The point, for me, is to get down to creative work.

I’ve been working up to this for a while, now. When I interview people for articles, I always bring along my handheld MP3 audio recorder. I just love that thing. Sometimes, I also use it to record spoken word performances. The spoken word album, of course that required the use of some (more advanced) audio equipment. Recently, while working on the script for a play, some friends of mine used an iphone to record a cold reading of the script, which will allow me to “hear” the characters for the first time. Also for that play, I’ve been listening to a lot of strange music, to give myself a sense of setting.

About four years ago, I lived in a “live-in studio space” a warehouse loft in a Baltimore building they call The Copycat. I had so much space! I actually had several spaces while living there, but the last one was about 800 square feet and I devoted most of it to a writing studio. Now, I live in a very different space, and I am not so interested in the space itself as I am with tools that are available to me. In particular, I’m interested in adding audio tools to my writing toolbox. Even so, I think it will be fun to figure out how to set up a more audio-friendly writing space.

I got the idea for “writing with audio” during my visit to New York a couple weeks ago, I learned something interesting about The Wooster Group. I have a friend who works with them. They’re an experimental theater group who incorporates video into many aspects of their lives: they take direction in some sense from video of all kinds, they video blog during creative retreats, their vlog has all kinds of stuff in it, the performances are recorded by video and in some sense the performances are also a response to all this video. So, for these guys, video opens up a lot of creative possibilities. I think audio would be the thing for me to open up creative possibilities.

This is a recipe for a poem I wrote. Now you can write a similar poem. Enjoy!

1. Choose a word at random. (Maybe a noun?)
2. Using that word, generate a set of “is” statements. (For example, if your word was “boredom” then these would be phrases that begin “boredom is”.)
3. Copy the phrases and paste them into a word processor.
4. Do a find-and-replace to replace all instances of the randomly chosen word (“boredom” etc.) with a new, meaningful word of your choosing.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 above, selecting different words, until you have 100 lines or more pasted into your file.
6. Read all your new phrases.
7. Keep the ones you like.
8. Make up new phrases to replace the ones you don’t like.
9. Shuffle the lines. Or order them however you like.

WORMS

If you don’t know what WORMS is, you’re about to. WORMS is an interactive literatary magazine in 3D. WORMS is The Champagne of Beers of Literary Readings. Do I have to spell it out for you? Ok. It’s spelled W.O.R.M.S.

Anyway, the next installment of WORMS is next Wednesday. It will feature the words, faces and voices of Erin Gleeson, Jesse Heffler, Ashlie Kauffman, Robert Schreur.

That’s WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16 at The Bell Foundry (1539 N Calvert) in Baltimore. Admission is free, but you’ll want to have some $ on hand to buy independent publications, concessions and the like. Oh yeah. Wear a nice coat.

I’m working on a play. It is inspired by this kind of silly “space age pop”, so I’m collecting examples of it. If you have any of this kinda stuff, I’d love to see it.

I was also absent from Speak Your Piece last night, but I hear they made up a game. The exercise is to write a poem with the title “Death in Hampden” and the first line “I want to be impaled on a pink flamingo.” Here goes…

“I want to be impaled on a pink flamingo…”
Narrator: In a strange city, a grid of streets named for trees
without trees,
streets lined with cars, bars and wannabe rockstars,
A wildman dares to make a bold fashion statement:
“If I see one more bullshit tattoo, I swear to god I’ll kill you all!”
Narrator: this summer. The streets are lined with cars, bars and wannabe rockstars…
Pop legend “Plastic Centaur” stars in an epic film…
and the alleys run with beer and blood…
this summer…
Whoosh…
“Get away from that jukebox!”
sounds of explosions…
gratuitous breasts, beehive hairdos, more breasts, sex, inexplicable running…
this summer…
Death.. in Hampden…
Coming soon, to a theater near you

1. With a list, you can quickly fill up the page without having to actually write very much. It’s kind of like using a really big typeface to get out of writing a long book report.
2. Similarly, when a list is all you write, who needs to revise! Publishing a list is like publishing an outline. It’s so easy; anyone can be a writer now!
3. A series of lists invites the reader to scan the page, skipping around, picking and choosing, getting disoriented and finally arriving at an incomplete idea.
4. Lists often suggest a false priority of ideas. This is actually the most important point on my list, but I put it third because these are listed in the order that they came to mind.
5. Lists often suggest a priority of ideas when in fact there is none. In such cases, a paragraph would do nicely, if it weren’t for point 1 above.
6. Nested lists! Why bother to explain a complex relationship!
1. They’re also fun to read.
2. They make it so much easier to understand what’s going on.
7. Lists invite little design arguments over whether to use bullets, boxes, circles, numbers or, my personal favorite, hiragana characters. Should we indent the lists?
8. Lists of paragraphs are better than a regular old series of paragraphs, because with a list of paragraphs you get to have more fun with the design (see #7 above)
9. Finally, lists are easy to tack onto later, without worrying about anything looking like it is out of place.
10. A list just begs you to come up with ten items. It gets you cool points when you do it.

I was the featured poet for !SPEAK YOUR PIECE! on Wednesday, July 14, 2010. This weekly, featured poet and open mic poetry event takes place every Wednesday night at Singer’s bar & Restaurant in Mount Vernon, 227 West Chase Street. The event is always preceded by an open mic.

I read a selection of poems from my first spoken word album, Strange Punctuation. I also read a few pieces, some published and some from a manuscript I’ve been working on. The final piece was a work of performance art involving six telephones. I wrote about my plans for this piece, almost a year ago. Its title is “Yes, No, I don’t Understand” but the performance setup is something I like to call “A Piano Made of Telephones” I imagine that I can do several things with the old telephones.

poem: Answering Machine Message
Download audio file (04-Answering-Machine-Message.mp3)

prose: Augury
poem: This Poem Isn’t About Wine
poem: An Acquired Taste
poem: Eviction
poem: A Game of Musical Chairs
poem: Make Your Own Fun
poem: Clouds
prose: A Piano Made of Telephones

These are some notes I shared with a friend, a while ago, about some ideas that interest me lately. Feel free to make additions, corrections, etc.

I’ll call it altered text, although for the thing I have in mind there are actually many things, many names, from many times and places. My notion of “destroyed text” is somewhat unique, but not really. I’ll show you some examples of a family ideas I think the idea is descended from. I’ll try to give you explanations, citations and examples for each.

Conceptual Literature

This term basically describes everything else on the list. It’s the broad category for all sorts of “altered texts”. The term is often confused, or used interchangeably with “conceptual writing” which also happens to be the name that academics use for any sort of writing about ideas: criticism, science, philosophy, etc. That’s not what we’re talking about here. Here, we’re talking about writing that is like conceptual art. What is conceptual art? Conceptual art is any art where the idea of the art is more important than the object created. With conceptual literature, this notion has been simply applied to literature, just as it had been to painting, performance, etc.

Examples

The Ubuweb Anthology of Conceptual Writing
http://ubu.com/concept/

Sources

Paragraphs on Conceptual Writing

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/conceptual_paragraphs.html

july/august 2009 issue of Poetry Magazine

Visual Poetry

Also known as “concrete poetry”, these texts are altered in such a way that their typography has an effect on their meaning. In some cases, the typography is the meaning. Concrete poetry is often associated with poems whose text is shaped like their subject. For (a boring) example, a poem about a bottle of wine whose text is shaped like a bottle of wine. Visual poetry is a term used for more abstract uses of the idea. In general, the name of the game here is to consider the presentation of the words on the page in new ways. You won’t find very much conventional typography here, although I think that the best examples are informed by all those centuries of typographic discipline.

Examples

The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry
http://www.rediscov.com/sacknerarchives/browsecollections.aspxRefrences Willard Bohn: The Aesthetics of Visual Poetry, 1914-1928. University Of Chicago Press, 1993

Approaches to Teaching Concrete Poetry: An Annotated Bibliography

http://www.ubu.com/papers/swiss_bibliography.html

Concrete Poetry I (1965) Max Bense, Germany http://www.ubu.com/papers/bense01.html

Concrete Poetry II (1965) Max Bense, Germany http://www.ubu.com/papers/bense02.html

Dick Higgins: Synesthesia and Intersenses: Intermedia. 1965, Originally published in Something Else Newsletter 1, No. 1 (Something Else Press, 1966). Also published as a chapter in Dick Higgins, Horizons, the Poetics and Theory of the Intermedia (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984).

Litsa Spathi: Rail Track. 2008, Originally published by Fluxus Heidelberg Center, 2008

Asemic Writing

If you’ve ever tested a pen out to see whether it worked, and assuming it worked, you’ve created an asemic letter or two. Asemic writing is “writing” that looks like writing, but it isn’t writing. Handwriting can take on asemic qualities, during a bumpy ride, for example. Here, the lines are still very much a narration of the experience, in the sense that the lines that make up the letters are transcribing some of the movement that occured during their composition, but if the ride was too bumpy, then the only meaning that remains for the lines on the page is an asemic, wordless meaning.

Examples

http://issuu.com/dylan_k/docs/luigi.serafini.-.codex.seraphinianus

http://www.asemic.net/

http://thenewpostliterate.blogspot.com/

Refrences

Michael Jacobson, The Giant’s Fence. Barbarian Interior Books, 2006. ISBN 1-4116-6208-3

Michael Jacobson, Action Figures. Barbarian Interior Books, 2009.

Tim Gaze, Writing. xPress(ed), 2004. ISBN 951-9198-86-5

Tim Gaze, Noology. Arrum Press, 2008.

Rosaire Appel, Morpheme Pages. Press Rappel, 2008. ISBN 978-0-557-03591-5

Rosaire Appel, Wordless (Poems). Press Rappel, 2009. ISBN 978-1441482587

Carlos Martinez Luis, Nomadic and Archeological Scriptures. LUNA BISONTE PRODS, 2009. ISBN 978-1-892280-76-3

Flarf

Nada Gordon posted a particularly good definition of Flarf. I’ll track down the articles mentioned here, when I get the chance.

Flarf is an international avant-garde poetry movement of the late 20th century / early 21st century whose 30+ practitioners explore “the inappropriate” in all of its guises. Their method is to mine the Internet with odd search terms then distill the results into often hilarious and sometimes disturbing poems, plays, and other texts. Recently profiled on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, the flarf collective create hilarious, shocking, and sometimes downright offensive works. Heated discussions about flarf have been broadcast by the BBC and National Public Radio, and published in The Village Voice, The Nation, Poetry, Poets & Writers, and The Wall Street Journal. “Flarf is a hip, digital reaction to… boring, genteel poetry,” writes poet and critic Marjorie Perloff. Whatever flarf is––whatever you think flarf is––it is most definitely the 21st century’s first poetry movement.

Examples

“Issue 1″
http://arsonism.org/issue1/Issue-1_Fall-2008.pdf

my notes about this: http://nocategories.net/ephemera/algorhythmic-avant-garde/

References

july/august 2009 issue of Poetry Magazine. Notably, this guest editorial
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=237176

Ethnopoetics

Western traditions have made a science out of literature. It’s been quantified; qualified and dissected so much that, some say, there just isn’t any life left in it. Ethnopoetics offers some writers a way to think outside of that box. Writing haiku in English is one example of ethnopoetics. Here you write in the idiom of another culture, or language, to produce something that you may not have conceived of from the point of view of your own idiom, language or culture. The regionalism of Mark Twain’s era has some elements in common with ethnopoetics.

I don’t really know much about it, but these guys do:

http://www.ubu.com/ethno/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnopoetics#Ethnopoetics_as_an_aesthetic_movement

This is a Fluxus score. Fluxus is a type of performance art. A Fluxus score, like a musical score, is a sort of recipe for a performance. For more information, read The Fluxus Performance Workbook.

This performance requires several telephones, preferably telephones of as many different types as possible. Ideally, each should produce a unique sound through its microphone, which can either be original to the telephone or added. The phones should be amplified, for the benefit of the audience. A mixer or an effects petal may be used to augment the sound from each phone. It might be nice to paint the telephones black and white, to recall the color of keys on a piano. The telephones need not be connected to a telephone line, although other scores for this musical instrument may desire such a feature.

A Fluxus MAchine

A Piano Made of Telephones

[ 1 or 2 performers]

There are two scripts. The first script is composed of the sort of stuff that a telemarketer would say on the telephone, like “You’re eligible to be entered into our fifty thousand dollar sweepstakes” or “How would you like to buy a subscription to TV guide?”. The second is a series of responses, like “What’s the catch?” or “I can’t talk now, I’m busy” or “he isn’t here right now. Can I take a message?”

• Pick up a telephone. Read part of the first script.
• Hang up the telephone.
• Pick up a different telephone. Read part of the second script.
• Hang up the telephone, or put one down and pick up another while the first is on “hold”.
• Repeat as desired.

A Sample Script

[A slash or a break indicates a switch from one telephone to the next]

“Hey buddy: Whatcha doin’? Are you watching television?”

“I am. I am watching television! Oh my god! How did you know?” He is excited, and so am I.

“I’ll bet you would really like to know what’s on right TV now, wouldn’t you?”

“Good evening, may I speak with Benjamin please?”

“No you may certainly not speak with him. He’s dead.”

“Hello. Is Julie there?”

“If you call this number again, I’ll cut your balls off.”

“Hello. Good Evening. How are you? Fine, thanks. Yes, you have been selected / chosen / your name has been selected and entered / you are a finalist in our ALL CASH / our Fifty-Thousand Dollar drawing / sweepstakes / sweepstakes drawing.”

    ”Fifty thousand dollars! / What’s the catch? / I am so sorry I don’t speak the English. / What’s the catch? / Uh-huh I’m listening, go on. / What’s the catch?”

“Well, let me tell you about the fabulous / wonderful / cool / various prizes. Think of what you could be doing / you could do a lot of things with all that money / with fifty thousand dollars! I’m curious, I like to ask the people I call, what would you do with it?

“The first thing I would do is pay off my credit cards / I’m in debt so I’d fix that / Student loans, you know? / What’s the catch? / I would buy a house / car / vacation / new wardrobe. / What’s the catch? / I would move out of my mother’s / father’s / husband’s house / out of this fifthly city / the country / this town. / I would spend it all / save it / invest it / give it all to Jesus / never win anyway.”

“The money sure would help. My boy, he won’t help me. He cussed me and he left me. I told him, I brought him into this world, I said, but he won’t help me.
But you’re going to have to speak up a little, my ears ain’t so good no more. I’m sorry, I’ve lost my place. What, now? I’m afraid I have forgotten why I called. Did I call you?”

“Well ma’am I am with the board of utilities. I called to check if your telephone is working properly.”

“Oh well you’re a nice boy, thank you. Yes, it seems to be working real good, or else we wouldn’t be talking.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for your time.”

I’m about to release my first spoken word album! Its title is “Strange Punctuation”. All but one of the tracks are finished, and I’m working on a chapbook that will fit into the CD cases. It was an enjoyable challenge to create this album. Here are some notes about the process.

This spoken word album began as a manuscript of poems. After I had finished collecting all the poems together into one printed set, I had grown frustrated with the manuscript. Then, Curt Seiss at Magnanimous Records called and asked if I had any material for a recording. I brought my new manuscript to the recording studio, along with some very old notebooks.

In the first session, we recorded words only. Between readings, Curt left the microphone on, and captured a lot of random conversation. The original idea had been to dissect this conversation, for its miscellaneous syllables, and to use those syllables as though they were musical notes. This, of course, would have removed the sounds from the context of language. They wouldn’t be words anymore. We abandoned that idea.

In the subsequent sessions, we edited the original recordings by adding layers of other sounds to them. At first, this felt to me like “illustration”, although Curt encouraged me to think about sounds in an associative way, rather than to find literal sound effects to accompany the poem. I guess one exception to that rule was “Clouds”. With that piece, we added all the sounds of an open mic night at a bar. At the end, we added a heckler who laughs at me. It really does sound like this was a live recording!

Along the way. I discovered my favorite part of the entire process. Editing sound is very much like editing printed words. You can add, subtract, rearrange the sounds in very much the same way that you can do that with the characters on the page. With sound, though, there are some new ways to edit. You can revise the speed, pitch, volume, echo and decay of the sounds of the words themselves. It was this discovery that prompted me to title the album “Strange Punctuation”.

Now that most of the studio work is complete, the final piece of this project is coming together. I’m going to print a small chapbook to accompany the spoken word album. To illustrate the chapbook, I’m collaborating with a photographer – a lifelong acquaintance of mine, Molly Humphreys Aguilar. Again, the goal here is not to illustrate, but to associate. We had a brainstorming session last week at a coffee shop, and we discussed the thematic elements in the various pieces, and wondered what sort of imagery should accompany each one. Molly’s photo studio, Piccadilly Posh, specializes in natural light photography. Of course, most of her imagery comes from the outdoors. I can’t wait to see them.

I’ve included one of the tracks in this post. Take a listen, and please tell me what you think.

The Baker Artists Awards celebrate Baltimore’s artists on the Web with an ongoing exhibition of its diverse artistic practice, and the Mary Sawyer Baker Prize will establish Baltimore’s reputation as a creatively rich and vital place to live with a civic commitment to value its individual artists.

Please take a minute to visit my work on the Baker Artist Awards web site. As a Baltimore artist, I am eligible to win the significant Mary Sawyers Baker Prize or maybe bragging rights as Baltimore’s Choice. Either way, please follow the link and vote for me… and, if you live in Baltimore, you could also Nominate your own work! Now go sign-up and vote to help me get my work out there!

Visit my nomination at http://www.bakerartistawards.org/nomination/view/dylan-kinnett

Today I finished readingThe Basis of Criticism in the Arts by Stephen C. Pepper. I promised a friend that I would a quick overview of the four categories of art criticism that are described in the book.

Stephen C. Pepper’s “Theory of Empirical Criticism” goes something like this. Good criticism, even art criticism, is akin to good philosophy. It ought to be rational, and based on evidence. Data, such as empirical observations (i.e. “facts”) can be given as evidence. Feelings and impressions can be given as factual evidence, too. Evidence of feelings and impressions is called “danda” – an often overlooked type of evidence, in the sciences, but a very important one when it comes to art. Evidence of these facts is the only legitimate basis for criticism. (Skepticism is not as good as evidence. Dogma is not as good as evidence. Superstition is not to be confused with danda; it is not evidence. )

Pepper says there are four useful ways to organize evidence. With these things in mind, he proposes four distinct ways to approach art criticism.

Mechanistic Criticism

This is probably the most common, and perhaps the default type of art criticism. Here’s how it works. It should be self-evident that pleasure is good, pain is bad. Mechanistic criticism is a logical extension of that truth. If the art causes pleasure, then it is good art. If it does not cause pleasure, then it is bad art. (The “mechanistic” question here seems to be, “How does the art cause me to feel?” ) Since people have varying thresholds for pain and pleasure, it makes sense that they would have varying standards regarding the qualities of art. Sophisticated mechanistic criticism will delve into the reasons why a work of art can cause pleasure. The mechanics of pleasure can be at work wherever the senses can find it: sound, rhythm, sight, pattern, texture, etc.. Conversely, a sophisticated mechanistic criticism will criticize art in terms of its ability or failure to cause pleasure. If the art fails to cause pleasure, it can be compared to something that does cause pleasure, and lessons can be learned. Mechanistic criticism is often described with words like “hedonistic” or “epicurean”, although those words are unfortunately associated with gluttony. It isn’t really the goal of mechanistic criticism to advocate for gluttony, so much as mere pleasure.

Contextualistic Criticism

This is the type of criticism that would probably be most useful for performance art, theater, and the like. Here’s how it works. All things are subject to cause and effect. With art, the object of art is (usually) the effect. The act of creating the art is (usually) the cause. In any case there’s an event involved, whenever there is art (sometimes the art itself is the event). Contextualistic criticism is chiefly concerned with events, but not just the creation events.

All things are also experienced; they are sensed somehow. With art, the object of art is experienced. It is seen, or heard, or touched or even imagined. So, contextualistic criticism is an examination of those events, the creation and the experience of the art. If the work of art involves a good experience, then it is a good work of art. If it does not involve a good experience, then it is a bad work of art. The “good experience” here is not exactly like the pleasurable experience that mechanism emphasizes. The criterion in this case is the intensity, or the depth of the experience. For example, the horrific tale of Odysseus vs. the Cyclops may be frightening, and therefore off-putting from a mechanistic point of view, but wow what a rush! From a contextualistic point of view, that rush might qualify the story as “good”.

The “event” in question might also be a historical event. Contextualism considers these events as well. For this reason, most of the types of criticism I learned about in college fall under this category: psycho-analysis, historicism, Marxism, maybe even feminism – these are all concerned with factors at play upon the art event. They are all part of the context.

Organistic Criticism

Where contextualism stresses the qualities of the experience, or the event, organistic criticism stresses a unity of experience. The difference is subtle, and I’m not sure I fully understand it yet. In science, organistic thinking is any consideration for a part’s relationship to a whole: atoms and molecules, the classification of species, planets and galaxies, etc. In art, the organistic concern is the unity of things. Is the work of art a coherent whole? Do its parts combine into more than their sum? Are there no extraneous parts? Is the plot orderly? How are the parts connected? Aristotle is a perfect example of an organistic critic. About art and science and literature, he wrote about these things.

(I’d like to edit this post to contain examples of the other types of criticism, as well.)

Formistic Criticism

This one has a misleading name. They all have difficult names, but this one sounds like it should be the name of organistic criticism, which considers the form of things, but no. Formistic criticism is more like psychology, or sociology. (I know, there’s a debate over whether those two things are the same. I don’t want to go there.) Stephen C. Pepper, being an American Pragmatist, had to sneak this one in at the end of his book. I smell an agenda here, so I’m going to attempt to rephrase this category.

According to Pepper: the formistic aesthetic value is defined as conformity with the norm implicit in the art object itself. In addition, formism champions common sense as the ultimate authority on whether a work of art is good, or not.

There is an ancient theory of perception, older even than Aristotle, which states that only like perceives like … A man appreciates in that only a normal man, with a well integrated and relatively free emotional life, can perceive normality. … The norm is embodied there (in the work), and a normal man finds satisfaction because his impulses are in harmony with the impulses of the work, both being normal. … Formism in its stress on the perceptions and reactions of the normal man thus acts as a sort of governor over the whole aesthetic field. It holds art to the healthy golden mean, to what is sane and sound.

Nowadays, I’m not really sure how much we need to appeal to a “healthy golden mean” with our aesthetics. I wonder what that would do to the art market, if suddenly the demand were normalized in spite of all the variety in the product. I’m going to try to rephrase formistic criticism, as a different sort of approach to “the norm”.

If there has never been anything like it before, if it defies classification, a formistic critic will be dismayed. If there has, then the formistic critic will quickly set to work comparing the similarities, looking for the trends, the norms, the –isms and even the post-s. We have formistic criticism to thank for all the –isms in the art lexicon, I think. This is probably the second most common type of criticism, after mechanistic criticism.

How is this talk of –isms different from a contextualist discussion of events, moments, and contexts? I think the difference is that the contextualist would put the emphasis on the experience of the art, but a formistic approach is most concerned with the norms that it embodies.

There Are No Categories!

After that long discussion of –istic –isms, and right after I wash my mouth out, I’d like to question the author of this book on one more point. He says that these four categories are best left distinct from each other. He says, in the introduction, that they shouldn’t be used together. He also cautions against the influence of dogma over criticism, so I’m sure he won’t mind if I try an integrated approach. Why can’t I use them all? Why can’t I use elements from each, as needed? Wouldn’t that be a great way to avoid dogma anyway? Breaking all the criticism into categories is an interesting exercise, for explaining how the criticism works, but is it really useful as a way to conduct criticism? I guess I’ll find out.

Lately, I’ve been Learning to Write Art Criticism. Along the way, I’ve discovered some useful advice from a variety of critics at The Guardian, an English newspaper. Here’s a useful passage.

‘Don’t trust your prejudices but believe in your instincts’

Adrian Searle on art

The only rule: look, look again, and keep on looking. If you don’t like looking, don’t write about art.

There are lots of ways of writing. Read other critics, and not just the ones who write in newspapers. You can be as creative and as mischievous, as serious or as funny as the mood takes you or the situation demands. Think about the details and also about the bigger picture. Find out how artists think, what they say and how they make their work. Find out about materials. Read everything: it’ll all be useful.

Context matters a lot, and don’t forget you are part of that context, too. Don’t always trust the things written on the gallery wall or in an exhibition catalogue. Never write about what you haven’t seen.

Don’t trust your prejudices but believe in your instincts. Respect your readers, many of whom know more than you do. Also remember that they might not have seen the things you have chosen to write about, so tell them what things look and feel like and what they make you think. Tell them why some things matter, and others don’t. Ask yourself questions. Remember that we live in 2008, not 1688.

And by the way, you might not know what you think until you’ve written about it. Writing is a voyage of discovery. You will get lost and you will get things wrong. That can be worth reading, too. Be honest, even when you’re making things up. Don’t worry if what you are doing isn’t exactly criticism. Critics work with what other people do; but don’t be afraid and go your own way.

Got any more advice? Post it in the comments!

Ever since I met with Physicalism, I’ve been curious about what its like to be an art critic. Physicalism is somewhat antagonistic towards art criticism, for its tendency towards “bullshit”, but it can’t all be bullshit, can it? What if it is? Can it be fixed?

I decided to try being an art critic first hand. Of course, I’ve got no formal training in the field. I don’t have an art degree of any sort. Although my Dad’s an art professor, and I grew up surrounded by art, artists, and talk about art, that hardly qualifies me as a competent critic. I have studied philosophy though. There’s a lot of crossover, I’m discovering, between the field of philosophy and that of art theory. I have a writing degree, so I should be able to write about anything, even art, right?

I put together a sample of my writing and submitted it so that I could be considered for the 23rd Annual Critics’ Residency Program at the Maryland Art Place. I figured it was a long shot, but what the hell. It seems like an interesting program. Here’s how they describe it.

Taking place throughout the course of a year, the program will include studio visits and writers’ workshops led by critic Vincent Katz and will culminate with an exhibition, a catalogue containing critical essays and images of selected artwork, and a public forum.

I wasn’t quite sure what to submit for a writing sample. It’s not like I’m an established art critic or anything. I haven’t even freelanced an art review for the newspaper (although, that’s an ulterior motive of mine). I thought about, maybe, including the editorial from the first issue if Infinity’s Kitchen. Then, I thought against it. Still, it’s a good read, if you haven’t read it already. I finally settled on it. I gave them an excerpt from the undergraduate thesis I wrote. The second chapter of the thesis, titled Aesthetics in a Hypertext Age had a good bit of content that passes for art criticism in it.

Then, I dug through a bunch of notes I took during college philosophy classes. I was looking for something else I could cannibalize for the writing sample. I ended up stumbling on an interesting question: “How do we make meaning of things?” I applied the question to a new essay, which ended up being too long to include in the writing sample. That essay is called Meaning and Experience. (At least, that’s the first part. There’s more to say.)

I’m happy to say that I’ve been accepted to that writing program. It starts next Saturday. I’m very excited. Until then, I’m burying my nose in a book titled The Basis of Criticism in the Arts.

At year’s end, it’s customary to reflect on the year and ask, “so what?” Here are some highlights, from the blog and offline. Life offline has been work-intensive: I moved to a new apartment, settled into a new job as a web developer for a non-profit, and I finally began to learn my way around Baltimore. The blog has been quieter this year than it was last year, but there were a few interesting moments.

People seemed to enjoy reading my plan for circulating manuscripts and submissions in order to get published. I should admit, I haven’t shown much follow-through in that department, but the groundwork is there.

Another favorite entry this year was a sketch for an essay about spoken word, hip-hop, and the like. I broke that whole realm of things into three simple… um, categories. Maybe it’s the hypocrisy that drew a crowd? That essay never really went anywhere, or maybe I just cut to the chase, and this year I began creating spoken word recordings. The first was an audio spoken word recording. The second, later in the year, was a video spoken word performance produced on internet tv.

Somebody asked me at a Chrsitmas party the other day: “Weren’t you working on a book?” My answer was “It isn’t a book anymore.” With advice from an editor, I’ve decided to cut the poetry manuscript into individual poems (minus several, plus revisions). I’ll submit those individual poems to whichever publications seem to fit. I decided not to self-publish the book of poems.

Instead, I decided to put out a new zine. The first issue should be ready in a week or so.

Other, random thoughts about the year:

• I thought about Grad School. This year I should work on getting a decent portfolio.
• I didn’t think about literary hypertext. I would like to try making a new one, though.
• I thought about, but never wrote much about physicalism. I did write a little bit about imagery. The zine should show some follow-up to all of this, I hope.
• Speaking of zines, Punk Planet will be sadly missed.
• In the work world, the writing on the wall says I’m a programmer. It’s time to get out the spray paint and make some editorial corrections.

Like I said before, I’ll be performing on the Ed Schrader Show on September 13th, at the Metro Gallery in Baltimore.

The Lineup

The Ed Schrader show always features a variety of shenanigans and this show should be no exception.

Honnie Wells & The Hundred Quart will perform music that has been described as “making Tom Waits look like a sissy”, with a bluesy raspy sound.

The more obscure Teeth Mountain will also perform.

The manager of Baltimore infamous night spot, The Talking Head, will make an appearance, presumably to discuss the reopening of the aforementioned night spot.

Baltimore’s self-styled vigilante super-hero, Blue Leader is sure to bring some gut-busting laughs to the whole affair. Check out his “Do The Math Comics” for even more laughs.

I’ll be performing spoken word, as well.

Download audio file (thoughts-on-a-suitcase-1.mp3)

My first recording session was last Saturday, at Magnanimous Records. Normally, I suppose recording sessions are reserved for musicians and the like, but this was a spoken word recording. The goal is to eventually produce an album of some sort, but since it was the first time, we took it easy, and simply made recordings. Often, between takes, we digressed into conversation and jokes, and recorded some of that too.

Playing the recording back, I’m glad that there is some conversation on there. All too often, I think that writers read their work in a special voice, a voice they reserve for the solemn act of reading words on a page, and that voice is very unlike a normal voice. The recording shows me that I am guilty of that crime too. As a result, my favorite recording is actually a piece that I hate; I read the thing in an ordinary voice. What a difference that makes!

I’m excited about making this spoken word recording. Next time I read, I’ll know what I sound like, and I’m sure that helps.

In a 2005 book entitled “The Ball // 30 Times in 2 Days” author Steve Benson ran a writer’s marathon, so to speak. The result is a book you can download from UBUWEB.

Saturday and Sunday, April 23 and 24, 2005, every hour on the hour, when my wristwatch alarm sounded, I wrote five minutes in a brown book Lyn gave me several years ago, as well as I could. This is the transcript, completed two weeks later.

Each entry is short, less than a page, and the lines are short as well. This reminds me of some of Jack Kerouac’s poems, which took the shape of the pocket-sized notebook they were written in. This book is a lucid, enjoyable read, and the method employed to write it sounds like a lot of fun!

Lately I’ve been reading a blog about graduate school for writers. A recent post detailed a conversation like several that I have had, and a subject I often wonder about — why don’t writers get an education more like an artists’ education?

On several occasions, I’ve stumbled into an argument over whether or how writing is art. My art school friends, often on the other side of the argument, are focused on the creation of objects, more than on the creation itself. As a result, they argue that writing, although it is an artistic process “somehow”, it is not art because it does not create objects. Hogwash! After another beer, my artist friends can be convinced of the hogwash of their argument, and often they ask — so why is the school different?

It may just be that the education is different because of the “making stuff”. Writers don’t need all the gear, materials, and space in order to exercise their craft. There are other deep-seated reasons less clear to me. It simply isn’t the academic tradition to consider creative writing to be one of the fine arts. Why!?

Well, it seems like this is changing. There are a handful of graduate programs for writers, where the program is housed within an art department. I’ll have to do some homework to determine whether that actually means anything in terms of a different approach to writing, or anything like that.

A workshop for writing that is academic, but in the way that a workshop for the visual arts or the performing arts is academic… what would that be like, exactly? What’s the difference?

Like I said, it looks like I’ve got some homework to do.

I said a while ago that my book of poems was finished. I thought it was finished, but it isn’t. When I started working on this collection of poems, one year ago, my goal was to quickly throw together 50 poems and to get them out there as quickly as possible. Life got in the way. I got in the way, too. I got picky.

At least I can say I’ve made progress. I finally made it to the point where I had the courage to show these poems to other people. This being in the way of their own lives, naturally, it took everybody a good while to manage to read the poems and reply – and for that I am very grateful. I especially want to thank my former professor, and my uncle, for their constructive criticism. It was very helpful.

Now that “the votes are in” so to speak, I’ve noticed a trend in the comments I got back about my poems. I got more than a few responses to about as many poems that resembled this one. “Decent image, but not much else going on here.” I’m confused about what I should do, exactly, about this type of comment. Other type of comments usually prescribe a remedy. Comments like “this line sounds out of place here” or “I don’t understand what this image has to do with the ones that followed it” – those comments suggest to me that I might want to rephrase or reorganize a poem. On the other hand, there are comments that “this poem is just an image” – I don’t have a problem with that. A comment like that, to me, reads: “this poem is finished”

What I mean is this: I’ve been writing poems that are “just an image” on purpose. I wrote about the idea a while ago. I am interested in physicalism, and as a result, imagism. Both ideas share an emphasis on the imagery of a thing, and deemphasize what I call “the moral at the end of a story”.

It’s just an image? That’s okay, right?

I’m not sure I recognize my life anymore. Everything about it has changed, since August or so. That’s why I haven’t written online very much since then. Finally, I have a moment to reflect on it, and to let you know what has happened, if you’re interested.

What’s different: I’ve got a new job, so work is very unlike the freelancing life I had before; a new apartment, and without all the bohemian roommates, a different lifestyle; a new book, although it probably won’t be published as intended… the list goes on.

With all that going on, there hasn’t been much energy left for the writing life. I abandoned some work, like the “Outside Talker” project I was so excited about before all this began.

I stopped shopping for freelance writing projects, since I stopped working freelance altogether.

I never did get started on the play I’ve been wondering about for months now.

I did manage to complete a book of approx. 50 poems, with much encouragement from everyone but I discovered disparaging things about the publisher I had lined up for that book. I’m not sure what to do with the poems, now.

There are a couple ideas for short stories floating around in my head, maybe.

A friend strongly encourages me to record a variety of spoken word routines with him, and with practice, patience and time, maybe something will come of that.

In short, there’s too much going on. Its no wonder I couldn’t accomplish much.

Maybe the time away from it all has a hidden benefit: perspective. As much as I would like to jump into all of these things again, all at once, it would be more productive to accomplish them each on their own.

My big spring cleaning chore will be to decide: what should I write next?

If you have any comments: which would you like to read next? I’m all ears.

One of the most important business skills a writer needs is the ability to track the submission process. There’s a maxim out there, variously attributed, which says: “serious writers should keep their work in circulation until it either sells or the ink wears off”.

It can be tricky to keep that circulation going, especially if you’re trying to get a variety of things published. The publishers and media have different requirements about what to send, how to send it, when to send it, the length of the overall process, and so on. This can be confusing.

It is important to record the details of each submission. Surely, there must be a bulletproof system out there, time-tested by professional writers, right? I have set out to find that system, so that I can use it in my writing career. These are the results of that hunt.

What to track?

Here’s a quick list of the information you might want to record about your submissions. The list was adapted from a guide on the subject during a recent conversation on Literature and Latte (thanks Amber).

For each submission

• the name of your manuscript
• the type of submission: magazine article, short story, poem, etc.
• A copy of, or an electronic reference to, the manuscript itself (as submitted)
• the number of times the particular piece of writing has been submitted to any publication
• the date you sent the manuscript to the publication
• a copy of, or link to, the cover letter that accompanied the submission
• the title of the publication
• the date you received a response from the publication.
• the kind of response you received, which can be anything from form rejection to published.
• (copy / linked follow-up correspondence, if any.)
• Many publishers don’t allow simultaneous submissions, so, for each submission, record whether the manuscript is “active” or not.

For each publisher

• the title of the publication
• contact details @ the publication
• a copy of, or link to the publication’s submission guidelines

For the writer

• A reminder to meet any upcoming submission deadline
• A reminder to follow-up on the submission after the expected turn-around time has passed
• The ability to easily sort the submission tracking information.

This basic list can get complex very quickly if you’re tracking this information for one or more submissions to one or more publishers. It would help to have some sort of system, to organize all this information, either on paper or electronically.

Manuscript Submission Tracking Software

If you prefer to use paper documentation for your submission tracking, index cards or file folders will do nicely. You may prefer to use computer software, like a database or a spreadsheet, to make the information more dynamic. There are about 20 different software applications designed for writers who want to track their submissions. None of them do everything listed above, but many of them might be useful. Here are a few of the better ones out there.

Writer’s Market

Writer’s Market provides a secure online service for Submission Tracking. You can purchase this service by the month, to try it out. The Writer’s Market software is easy to use, and it is integrated with the Writer’s Market directory of publications, which is quite useful. On the other hand, you cannot store information about a publisher who is not listed in the directory. Writer’s Market intends to add this feature, someday. Meanwhile, you might run into some trouble if, like me, you publish in obscure or non-paying publications. One-year access to this service is free when you buy a copy of the Writer’s Market Book. With an annual subscription fee, you would think this service would offer at least as many features as its competitors, but it does two things well — it helps you track submissions to the publications listed in Writer’s Market . It also helps you keep a list of those publications for yourself.

Sonar

Sonar is a manuscript submission tracking program that does pretty much everything that the Writer’s Market service does, for free. Sonar isn’t integrated with a publisher’s database, so you’ll have to enter that information in yourself, but that won’t kill you. The author of this program says it was created in order to:

“show which market has each story, whether a story has been sold or rejected and which stories are gathering dust instead of earning their keep. If you decide to use it, you will be able to view a list of all your stories and then filter them in various ways (e.g. only show stories which are available to send out). You can add markets, stories and submissions and best of all it’s completely free!“

Sonar is software for windows.

Luminary Writer’s Database

The Writer’s Database is a web-based service for submission and publication tracking. It is free to use, and includes a function whereby users can share information about publishers, with listings and comments. This isn’t a very popular website, judging from the number of user-submitted publisher entries. A few “coming soon” announcements littered throughout the website indicate that good things might be in the works for The Writer’s Database, so you may want to keep an eye on this one.

The writer’s database gets honorable technical mention for the use of VCARDs and RSS feeds. Its free, too.

Slushomatic

The Slushomatic writing submission tool is compatible with windows and mac computers. Its author describes it well. “Slushomatic is a tool for writers to create and track their submissions to magazines. In addition to being a database for tracking stories/articles, publications and submissions, it will also format your document in the standard style required by editors (i.e; headers, line-spacing, font size, etc..), and auto-create cover letters based on the fields in your database.” Personally, I like to use a word processor for word processing, but it is nice to have a copy of the article stored inside the database. Its also nice to be able to create pdf files, but again, a modern word processor can do that.

Slushomatic is open-source software, so it has the potential to grow into an even more powerful writing submission tool.

InkLink

InkLink is one of the more popular software programs for Submission Tracking. It’s easy to see why. This thing is loaded with features. The interface is easy and simple, and so is the user’s manual. In addition to listing manuscripts and publishers, InkLink will help you catalog the resources you used in order to create a manuscript. These could be anything from text references to expenses.

The “reminder” feature is good, letting you know that its time for a submission’s second inquiry, etc., but it doesn’t send you an email, which would be ideal for me. (an ical might be nice, too).

Inklink will also help you create a writer’s resume, with the data you have entered. That could come in handy.

Inklink costs $90, which seems steep, at first, but it is a one-time fee, unlike Writers Market.

The Inklink website sure is difficult to look at, and their software isn’t going to win any graphic design awards, but inlink delivers where it counts. This is useful software, for windows users only.

I came across an interesting distinction between “writing” and “word processing”.

Writing is getting the words right. Word processing is… processing. It’s taking what you’ve written and doing stuff with it. Either bolding this or italicizing that or centering the headline or inserting a table or tweaking the margins or changing the font and sizes or adding color or… That’s word processing or page layout. … The keyboard and the return key is all you need. That’s writing. Once you’ve got the words right you can take that text and process it in a word processor or page layout program later. … When you’re about to write that’s all you should be ready to do: write. Leave the rest for another day. There are words to get right.

I like this distinction between writing and processing.

What about emphasis? Sure, the italics, or whatever, that display that emphasis are “processed”, but the emphasis itself is written. How can I indicate emphasis — how can I write emphasis, when someone else has determined for me, in advance, that emphasis must “come later”. It doesn’t come later. Later, I might forget. Emphasis is not processed. It is written.

On a similar note, I wonder: what about links? Are they written, or are they processed?

Recently, I was duped into believing that I could work for a revolutionary kind of journalism. I should have known better. The terms “revolutionary” and “journalism” are only sporadically related, at times like the French Revolution or the radical sixties, if they’re related at all.

My misadventure with the apparently fraudulent USA Voice is over for me now, and, reflecting back on it, I’ve given some thought to the allure, the idea that suckered me into almost falling for it. It’s a nice idea – democratic journalism. An incredible number of people out there seem to agree with me, and many of them were also tricked, because they, too, were excited about the idea.

So why not do it? Why not actually make the publication USA Voice claims to be? I’ve begun to seriously consider the idea. First, I decided address a call-to-arms to the people I’ve met because of the USA Voice debacle. Couldn’t we do this the right way; couldn’t we make an independent, democratic publication using internet technology? Of course we could! What are your thoughts on the subject?

Then, I decided to see if anybody else is doing this. "Anybody else", I mean, aside from the usual suspects, the major news outlets, the established internet publications, etc. I found one, very interesting project called The National Gazette. The project does seem to be slower in development than the initial plan indicated, but I think the final product will be interesting, worthwhile, and even legitimate! The Austin-American-Statesman newspaper reports:

TheNational Gazette is a new on-line newspaper slated for publication this summer.  Dan Croak, the publisher, states on the paper’s website that it aims to continue the tradition of the defunct paper of the same name started by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1791 to spark public debate.  According to Croak in the Prediction Markets Google Group the publication will include information market coverage.

“TheNational Gazette editorial board strongly believes that goal is best achieved using an ‘architecture of participation,’ the business model best exemplified by Wikipedia, eBay, and Amazon.com,” states the pre-registration e-mail (hyperlinks added).

Coupling modern communications technology with Jefferson’s and Madison’s desire to harness public opinion to influence policy should add an interesting flair to the current offering of user generated news and debate sites like digg, Newsvine, and Gather along with wikis and blogs.

For more information about and to pre-register for the National Gazette visit its website at www.nationalgazette.org.  To learn more about Croak visit his Blogger profile that lists the blogs he contributes to.  Previews of the site’s layout are posted at Jason Santa Maria’s blog post “ In Progress: Site Design” and Cameron Moll’s blog post “In Progress: Logo Design.”

I like that the National Gazette reflects an era when “Freedom of the Press” was popularized. I like its appeal to the people. For instance, on the Gazette’s photography page (hosted by flickr, no less) the Gazette has this to say:

Submit your photos to be published in the soon-to-be-launched National Gazette! We’re looking for talented, original photographs from the community. This follows exactly the philosophy behind the National Gazette, which encourages the best upcoming writers to submit their work to our weekly publication.

We place a high emphasis on design, which is why we hired two well-known graphic designers to build a beautiful, emotionally engaging web site that is easy on the eyes and tugs on the heart. You can let them inspire you at their sites as well: Jason Santa Maria and Cameron Moll.

We place a high emphasis on empathy, as well. Our content at the National Gazette seeks to understand what makes our fellow men and women tick, and we do our best to care for others.

We love playfulness and whimsical prints as well. A central aspect of our publication is its futures markets game, which allows our community to participate in a zero-sum game of predictions and probabilities, pitting everyone’s knowledge and opinions against one another in an attempt to aggregate the collective wisdom of the crowds into a prediction of the future.

Most of all, we love photos that show meaning about the world. Beauty is one thing. Purpose and transcedence are something else altogether.

I am confident that two respected professionals like the designers mentioned above would only be involved in a top-notch publication, and for that reason I’m willing to overlook the long absence of any public developments from this project (the last was 139 days ago). Honestly, I’m also tempted to beat them to the punch, though I think that would be a bit tricky.

I am excited about the prospect that there might be a National gazette, and newspapers like it. I wonder if anyone out there would be interested in starting one, or something like it, or even in partiipating in that one. What would such a publication be like?

USA Voice, a fledgling online news service, copied its front page news from CNN.com today.

See for yourself. Here is the lede and a few paragraphs from CNN’s recent article entitled, Three face terror charges after 1,000 cell phones seized

(CNN) — Three men authorities said were found with about 1,000 untraceable cell phones were arraigned Saturday on terror-related charges, and were believed to have been targeting a Michigan bridge, a prosecutor said.

“The targeted issue in this case was the Mackinac Bridge. That is what we have information on,” Tuscola County prosecutor Mark Reene said.

The bridge is 5 miles long and connects Michigan‘s upper and lower peninsulas.

Police in Caro, Michigan, said the men were arrested early Friday and were being held on charges of “providing material support for terrorism and obtaining information of a vulnerable target for the purposes of terrorism.”

And here is identical text from the USA Voice cover story entitled, “Terror Attack Thwarted”

Three men authorities said were found with about 1,000 untraceable cell phones were arraigned Saturday on terror-related charges, and were believed to have been targeting a Michigan bridge, a prosecutor said.

“The targeted issue in this case was the Mackinac Bridge. That is what we have information on,” Tuscola County prosecutor Mark Reene said.The bridge is 5 miles long and connects Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.Police in Caro, Michigan, said the men were arrested early Friday and were being held on charges of “providing material support for terrorism and obtaining information of a vulnerable target for the purposes of terrorism.”

The only differences between these passages are the location of paragraph breaks.

This is not the first time USA Voice has run afoul of its journalistic integrity. The Saint Petersburg Times recently reported suspicions that USA Voice is engaged in identy fraud activity, mentioning that all 1200 job ads for USA Voice have been removed from Yahoo’s job postings lists. I was also able to determine that At least one report has been filed against USA Voice with The Federal Trade Commission about these allegations.

John, at Joshuaink has a problem with his crisp, new Moleskine notebook. It is too nice to mark on! I’ve experreienced a similar problem with mine. I think the best way to get over it is to do something awful on the last page, and get it over with. That way, everything else will feel “worthy” of such a nice notebook.

Matthew Cheney, author of The Mumpsimus, poses some interesting questions about the part of a story called the exposition, or “infodump”.

I’ve been wondering about exposition recently, particularly exposition of the infodump variety, wherein an author needs to convey a lot of information and does so by coming out and stating it. Telling vs. showing. Choosing efficiency over subtlety.

Here are some ideas, questions, and assumptions about exposition…

Cheney asks for examples of infodump vs. exposition. I can think of one example that successfully combines the two: Shakespeare’s Ricard III Act I, Scene i.

I’ve written this entry to outline the ideas I have for a new writing studio. Along the way I found photos of famous writing studios, some feng shui tips for a workspace, and some ideas for how to organize a writing studio.

What is a writing studio anyway?

I looked at the workspaces used by other writers, to see if I could find any inspiration for what to do with my new space.

Mark Twain appeared to keep a messy desk. He also enjoyed having a billiards table nearby. He would drink and play pool with his friends, and probaby sneak by his desk from time to time to write down an amusing bit of ribald commentary.

Ray Bradbury also kept a messy workspace, filled with lots of things to stimulate the senses and to inspire the imagination.

Hemingway’s Studio, as it appeared after his death. The desk faces away from the window, presumably to avoid distraction.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s writing room

The space I have is more like The Beat Hotel than any of these places, and I didn’t find very many of these famous writing spaces to be that inspiring.

The 21st Century Home Office

This new space of mine is not just a writing and living space, but it will also be where I conduct my freelance business, so I decided to take a tip or two from the wealth of online materials about how to setup a “home office” “” not the most human approach, but useful nonetheless.

Layout the room

I don’t need any fancy room design software, or any life-size paper models of the furniture. I’m just going to sketch out a simple floor plan, with scaled down paper models of things. I can easily arrange and rearrange my two-dimensional paper dollhouse, until I’ve settled on a layout I like.

Commanding position

I’ve picked up quite a few of the feng shui notions that seem to be creeping into our culture. One that comes especially well recommended (by Steve) is the notion that a workspace should be in a “commanding position”

This is the position where you feel supported from behind (and optionally on the sides too) and open in the front. For example if your house has a mountain or hill behind it, then your home would be in the commanding position, much like a highly defensible castle. In workspace terms, the commanding position ideally means that you work facing the entrance to your work area and have a wall right behind you.

The commanding position creates a feeling of security. It makes it easier to relax when you work. When you are cornered and you face the entrance to your workspace, your focus is forward, and a forward focus contributes to high productivity. You never have to concern yourself with someone approaching you from behind. If part of your focus is on what’s happening behind you, you’ll be more distracted, and your productivity will suffer.

If you think of the layout of a top executive’s office, it’s almost invariably in the commanding position. The person sits facing the entrance to the room. You don’t walk into an executive’s office and see their back.

Creating Centers

The smart folks at Lifehacker suggest that a space can benefit from having “centers”, or areas where things are organized by task.

Organizing by task lets you group objects by the tasks you need to perform. Create “centers”: a personal hygiene center, a computer repair center, a lunch prep center, a gift-wrapping center, and so forth. “¦ Centers ensure that all the items you need to get a task done are always at-hand when you need them. It also keeps the question of “How will I use this?” foremost in your mind. If you own something but it’s not used to help you reach any particular goal, then maybe it’s time to find it another home.

Lifehacker also provided tips for a usable home:

Create space for incoming stuff
Put items you need to remember in your path
Stow away stuff you don’t use; put stuff you do within easy reach
Strategically place items to make tasks easy
Make task-based centers
Leave writing material everywhere
Set up an inbox
Tame stray wires with zip strips

Supplies

That ubiquitous book about keeping things organized entitled “Getting Things Done” suggests that I should have this list of things handy when organizing a workspace.

• Trays, for your Inbox
• Paper, to make your notes
• Pen/Pencil
• Post-Its
• Paper/Binder clips
• Stapler with staples
• Tape and rubber bands
• Automatic Labler
• File Folders
• Calendar
• Trash can

There’s progress to report about my ongoing writing project. I’m writing a spoken word routine about The Outside Talker who performs to announce the carnivals or freak shows, etc. I got stuck wondering about which image to choose. I imagine its as though I’m strolling through the midway, between the tents, beside the boxcars, with a camera. I can only take one photograph. I only desire a single image, before I can write. There are the snake charmers, sword swallowers, bearded ladies, siamese twins, etc. None of those would do, so I hit the books. (well, okay, I didn’t actually hit very many books, but I did quite a bit of reading online)

Eventually, I came upon the text of a book written in 1903, On the Road with a Circus by W. C. Thompson. The book enticingly introduces itself:

The faithful recording of daily life with one of the “big shows”, wandering with it under all vicissitudes, fortunate or adverse, is the errand on which this book is sent. [...] We will study the life, character, and habits of the motley throng of “show” people and learn of morals and manners, of hopes and fears, of trials and solicitudes…

There, in that book, the shutter in my imagination’s camera clicked. W.C. Thompson introduced me to “The Electric Lady”

The “electric lady” is one of the phenomena of our side-show, and a source of great wonder to the gullible visitor. She is saturated with the mysterious force. A continuous supply passes from her finger tips to whoever touches her flesh. Scoffers are confounded at the manifestation, and there is a general feeling among the side-show sightseer that she is a supernatural being. There is nothing indicating a violation of natural law in the lady’s appearance, and nobody appears to enjoy the curiosity she excites more than her own merry self. A strange feature of the exercise of the invisible agent is that it generates only for commercial purposes. For instance, the power leaves her when the performance closes for the night, and does not develop again until she is on exhibition the following day. Then, too, the current confines itself to a fixed spot. It passes away instantaneously if she moves from her chair.

It wouldn’t be proper showmanship to divulge here the secrets behind such an uncanny performance, but I do happen to have learned them. They are dangerous secrets.

I also found a few old show posters for these kinds of acts, although it seems most of these acts were done as mock electrocutions, playing upon the public’s awareness of the relatively new method of electrical execution.

Also, there are a few modern photographs out there of a performance like this.

With an idea firmly in mind, I’ve taken to my notebook.

The following excerpt is from the book I’ve been reading entitledOn the Road with a Circus(written in 1903 by W.C. Thompson). This section documents the “bally” I’ve been hoping to emulate with my ongoing writing / spoken-word project. In the authors words, It is interesting as a truthful reproduction of a style of unique oratory which prevails nowhere else.

The whole energies of a slender man with a trim figure are devoted to entertaining the side-show visitors. He talks almost unceasingly from morning until night in brief but lucid descriptions of the assembly of oddities. His addresses are delivered with great ostentation and search after effect. He is a man of easy wit and repartee, and of tact and practical intelligence; qualifications necessary to the successful conduct of his vocal calling. Each “freak,” barring the “wild man,” has for sale personal photographs, the receipts for which the management lays no claim to. This is an important part of their incomes, and the lecturer’s failure to call attention to the offering brings upon him reproach and censure. I attach one of his harangues, exactly as he delivered it one afternoon before an audience of grinning Connecticut countrymen. It is interesting as a truthful reproduction of a style of unique oratory which prevails nowhere else.

“Now in about five minutes we will start our regular show in here and have it all over forty-five minutes before the circus commences. (The band blows hard for five minutes.) Everybody pay your attention this way. We commence our show here first. I call your attention to Signor Arcaris and sister. They will entertain you with a wonderful performance known as the impalement act, better known as knife-throwing, without a doubt the best act of its kind in the world. (The act and music.) Now down this way next. I take great pleasure in introducing Princess Ani, the wonder worker and mind reader. We will have what is known as spirit calculations on the blackboard. We will have a number of gentlemen place some figures on the board. The minute you place a figure on the board she knows what figure you place there, although she is blindfolded. She can describe anything and tell you while blindfolded what you are thinking about.

“Now, ladies and gentlemen, I am going to tell you how this lady tells fortunes. She reads the lines of your hand. Every line denotes some peculiar trait in your character. Tells you what you ought to do for your own benefit; tells you what talent you possess; tells you when you are going to get married; tells you how many children you are going to have, if any. The line is there in your own hand, you can’t get away from it. Tells your lucky day, lucky number, family affairs, love affairs. Tells how long you ought to live by the life line of your hand! Now, it is all private. She don’t tell it out loud. First she explains about the large lines. She whispers so that no one can hear but yourself. And for the small lines you get what is known as the number. The rest your hand-reading calls for is all printed on this slip of paper. No two alike. Every one’s fortune is different. Just show her your left hand. The price fifteen cents all the way through. Walk right up and show her your left hand.

“Now to the stage. I call your attention to the smallest lady ever placed on exhibition, Miss Bertha Carnihan, twenty-nine years of age, stands thirty-nine inches in height and weighs thirty-eight pounds. The most perfectly formed little lady on exhibition. She is well educated; has been all over the world. Step up and have a talk with her. She will answer all questions in regard to herself. She also has her photographs for sale.

“Now direct your attention to the large stage in the centre. You will be entertained by Professor Lowry’s Nashville students. (When the negro concert is finished, the “big song book, words and music, fifty songs, five cents a copy,” are sold.) Now, fix your interest this way, please. I call your attention to Miss Millie Taylor, better known as the Queen of Long-haired Ladies. This lady has without a doubt the longest hair of any lady before the public. The length of the lady’s hair is seven feet four inches. Step up and examine it for yourselves. She also has her photos. Now we come to Miss Julien, the world’s greatest snake hypnotist. The lady will entertain you with her large den of living monster reptiles, introducing anacondas, boa constrictors, pythons and the turtle-head snake of Florida. (The performer coils snake after snake around her form.) The lady now has one hundred and sixty-eight pounds of snake around her body, neck and arms. You will find her entertaining to converse with. She will tell you all about snakes, etc. She also has her photographs for sale.
“Over this way next. I call your attention to the crowning feature of our side-show. The tallest man in human history, Hassan Ali, better known as the Egyptian giant. Born in Cairo, Egypt, twenty-six years of age, stands eight feet two inches in height and weighs three hundred and twelve pounds. To give you a better idea in regard to his height and reach we will allow the tallest man in the audience to stand on this high chair. The giant will stand on the ground. If the man reaches up and touches the photograph Hassan Ali holds up between his fingers, we will make him a present of a ticket, taking him all the way through the big show. There (pointing) is a tall man. Would you be kind enough to stand on this chair and reach with him. All right, you see (turning to the audience) he comes about six inches from it. This gives you an idea in regard to the size of the giant’s hand. Here is a good-sized water pail. See how far you can span it. Goes about half way. The giant spans it. His fingers go two inches over the rim. Now, he has no thick soles on his shoes, no high heels. There’s his foot, No. 18. He also has his photographs for sale.

“Now pay your attention over that way. That’s Neola, the electric lady. By shaking hands with her, you will receive a slight current of electricity, the same as you would from a battery. Don’t be backward, walk right up and shake hands with her. She won’t harm you. She also has photos.

“Now, the wild man! Down this way for the wild man! Now, stop that crowding there! Take your time, remember there are ladies and children in the crowd. (He pulls the curtain aside and pokes at the inmate with an iron bar.) There he is, with flat head and low forehead, showing he has very little brain. You notice the maniac look of the eyes, just the same as a beast. He has teeth just like a lion, arms four inches longer than our arms and walks on all fours. Captured in the everglades of Florida, a little over four and a half years ago. Handcuffed and shackled ever since he was caught. Now if you stop to think, you know there is a cause for a monstrosity of that kind. Just before he was born his mother was frightened by a beast. It left the mark on that freak of nature, just as you see for yourselves. Half Indian, half negro, don’t understand a word, don’t talk, growls like a beast, eats nothing but raw meat. (He draws the curtain.)

“Now pay your attention there. You will be entertained by musical Swarts. (A man gets melody from bells and various instruments.) Over this way next. The old-time funny Punch and Judy. (He enters a booth, gives the familiar show and reappears.) Now, I will show you how I change my voice. It is done with a reed, made of silver and silk. All you have to do is place it on your tongue and talk right. The sound of the words goes through the reed just like this. (He illustrates.) That’s the way to do it. There are full directions how to use it. Ten cents, three for a quarter. If they don’t blow as I represent, hand them back and I will give you back your money. (When the sales are finished he concludes in loud tones:) The big show commences in five minutes. All over in here.”

The lusty-lunged orators on the outside make a great clamor as the crowd passes out, and one of them shouts : “The gentlemanly lecturer will now pass around again, explaining the curiosities, monstrosities and freaks of nature. Come on! Come on!” The heartless band lures with brazen notes and the scene is repeated without variation.

From the New York Times Books Section’s article, Digital Publishing Is Scrambling the Industry’s Rules:

“an experiment of how books might be in the future.” That is one of the hottest debates in the book world right now, as publishers, editors and writers grapple with the Web’s ability to connect readers and writers more quickly and intimately, new technologies that make it easier to search books electronically and the advent of digital devices that promise to do for books what the iPod has done for music: making them easily downloadable and completely portable.

For a while now I’ve been wondering about a theme to use with a spoken word performance. A theme, a main idea, or a character.

I’ve been reluctant to simply read my poetry into a microphone. Even musical accompaniment wouldn’t cheer me up too much about the idea. I want to do something more like what I consider to be “real” spoken word performance, something thematic, something more like a performance than a rote reading.

William S. Burroughs’ spoken word recording entitled “Priest They Called Him” is one that comes to mind as a good example. In this one, the speaker is involved in the account given.

That got me to thinking about “roles” while I was searching for a main idea. I’m fond of David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust role, where he becomes this character and the character is somehow a part of the performance.

A good role should accompany a good theme, and I thought of one!

The Outside Talker

I’m fascinated with the image of The Outside Talker. “The Outside Talker” is an old carnival term for a person who attempts to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a carnival, circus, sideshow, or freak show by exhorting passing public, describing attractions of show and emphasizing beauty, variety, novelty, or some other feature believed to incite listeners to attend entertainment. The pejorative term for such a person is “Barker”

At any good carnival, circus, or freakshow, there’s always a person outside, talking, with things to say like this:

Well, step right up ladies and gentlemen, and feast your weary optics on this little prize to sympathize, empathize, and put the blue back in those bloodshot eyes.

I’m talking about the one, the only, Sheema the jungle girl. She shimmies, she shakes, like jelly on a plate, has four eyes, four ears, four nostrils. Crawls on her belly like a reptile, eats hay like a mule; was captured recently on the south sea island of Hallamallagoola.

Such an interesting sight to behold, so step right up ladies and gentlemen, but be careful not to step in that fresh pile of cow….shame, shame, on you boys for stickin’ your finger in that goat’s…..ask your mama for a quarter so you can come inside the tent and see the elephant

source: Side Show World

The word they have for this kind of shtick, this bullshit, is “bally” short for “ballyhoo”. I’m doing everything I can to get my hands on recordings, or scripts of as much of this bally as I possibly can. Of course, I could simply turn on the television and listen to the commercials … that’s the same shtick … but it lacks any of that fantastic imagery: bearded women, flea circuses, etc.

I’m not so sure that I’m as attached to the carnival imagery as I am to the idea of that character, that role “being on the outside, vividly and urgently describing what’s “alive”, “on the inside”. “Freak Show” imagery probably isn’t what I’ll focus on, but that adds a creative challenge. I like that such a performance, bally, if good, stands for itself, and illicits the images of whats inside, perhaps with more impact than the images of the things themselves, which are typically cheaper, and depend on the imagination for their effect.

Now, the only creative question left for me is – outside of where, and what’s inside?

I have been invited to attend the release party of this edition of The University of Baltimore‘s Literary Magazine, Welter (on Tuesday, May 16th) and to perform “Eviction.” My poem by that name was recently accepted for publication by the Magazine.

For the first time in what has become a few years, I’ve got a poem published. The acceptance letter marked the end of a happy work week, which also culminated in a visit by three of my friends from college. On the first day of their visit, I checked my email to find:

We are happy to inform you that your work, “Eviction” has been accepted by our editors.

Now, I wonder, do I leave that poem online @ nocategories.net, or do I take it down?

Well, it’s finished, or at least I’m done with it. Maybe my cut-up poetry wasn’t a success. I found myself “cheating” (not that it matters) by rearranging the randomness, picking deliberately, editing the results, etc. In the end, there were only three results I could call a finished poem, and they’re short.

The lackluster feeling I have about this “experiment”* is probably related to the feelings that led me to cut up those old poems in the first place. I took the relatively few salvageable lines from a sizeable pile of discarded poems, and, like cut fruit, the pieces themselves quickly turned brown and unappealing.

Anyway (without further ado, and without any further, hemming, hawing, excuses or other dalliance, I bring you), my cut-up poems:

• Cut up poem # 1
• Cut up poem # 2
• Cut up poem # 3

Cut-up is one of those avant-garde literary tricks that probably gets discussed more than it is done, read about more than it is read, etc. I imagine the initial inspiration for it was well intended. Someone looked at a collage and thought: why don’t I say that? Well, you can’t exactly say a collage. Or, you can, but it won’t make sense. A collage doesn’t need to make sense, or, it does but not in the same way. If the items in a collage look good together, as an arrangement, then the collage is aesthetically pleasing. I think it is difficult for words to be arranged rather than composed together, if they are to be pleasing anyway. Yeah, sure, words don’t have to be pleasing. Eat a fart! Go away.

I think it would help “ease the pleasing” so to speak if there were some relationship among the parts before they are randomly chosen. Perhaps each part pertains to a theme, like having a box of blue things to make a collage with. Maybe each snippet of text describes an emotion, like having a pile of objects with a certain texture. Then, just as I could sit down and make a collage that is blue and bumpy, I could make a cut up poem that achieves an effect, while retaining its spontaneity.

* I hate to use the word experiment with regard to anything creative. (Now that I’m not in school, I’ve had to watch my mouth in general.) My friend Lindsay certainly summed it up well, at a recent party. We were drawing on things with her favorite paint markers. Someone asked her, “Oh, are you experimenting with those markers?” and she retorted, “No, I’m drawing with them.”

After enough spare time spent sorting through old files and notebooks, I have produced a pile of unwanted writing: drafts, failed poems, etc. The pile is large enough that I would regret throwing it away. It is so much. It occurred to me that I could cut out anything remotely salvageable, and then make a collage out of the pieces. This should be fun, if not productive.

I have scanned the first result, but I will probably type the others.

the Lazurus’ Corporation‘s brief explanation of cut-up for the uninitiated

The Cut-Up technique is to writing what collage is to visual art. Its recent use was pioneered by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, and later David Bowie used it during the 1970s. The basic method is simple – write a piece of work, cut the paper up with scissors, and rearrange the pieces to form new phrases and new meanings.

“The best writing seems to be done almost by accident, but writers until the cut-up method was made explicit … had no way to produce the accident of spontaneity. You cannot will spontaneity. But you can introduce the spontaneous factor with a pair of scissors.”
William Burroughs, RE/SEARCH #4/5, 1982

Obviously, using this method can and will produce results which you’re not happy with, but the surprising thing is how many of the results are successful. Sometimes all that is needed is a quick read through of the results, adding punctuation and deleting the occasional word to produce the finished results. Purists might complain about editing the cut-up text, but this process is a tool which you can choose to use at any stage in the process of writing.

In a literature class, a particular writer might be examined in terms of “style” or “voice” — that particular way that a writer uses the language. In other circles, I see those aspects are included in something they’ll call “branding” — the set of associations concerning what to expect from a writer, including voice, but also genre. The discussion is interesting from a Marxist point of view, where economic forces are inseparable from the consideration of anything, but I think this cheapens it somewhat, to associate the personality of a human or an art form with marketing from a company or institution.

Take a look at this discussion of branding, among these people/writers/marketing units: Grumpy Old Bookman, Buzz, Balls & Hype, and longtime authority on marketing communications, HBS professor John Deighton.

I’ve finished a draft of my story. I call it “A House Without Walls“. It was submitted, in the typical last-minute way, for inclusion in the first annual Electronic Literature Collection, sponsored by The Electronic Literature Organization. If it is chosen, it will join other works in a volume that readers can download or borrow from a library. Cross your fingers for me?

If you read my last hypertext story, “To Win, Simply Play.”, you might recognize some of the same material, a small part of that older story. I hope my revision has improved the way the story flows.

Should I give you some long winded, writerly and obtuse introduction to it, its themes, and its reasons for being? Maybe, but only if you’re interested.

It is good to feel so finished with this story, after so long (even though I do have another version in mind, but that’s more of a technical representation than a rewriting).

I’ve spent the day rewriting my hypertext. Probably because of the amount of time I’ve already spent with it – it might also be that it has been a while and so I’m coming to the process with a fresh perspective and a renewed intentions – it seems easier this time around. I found a way to go about it. I thought I would post some notes about it, for others to see, and discuss.

From the beginning, I took down the things I wanted to say, from a previous draft, and wrote to fill in any gaps. When I felt I had expressed a complete idea, I stopped. I reread what I had written, looking for “words that yield“, or anything that suggests a next point in the story. I found a couple of options, marked them to become links, and returned to my previous draft. I found the parts of the text that suited me for the “next” idea. Right after the section I had just written, I took down the things I wanted to say, and wrote to fill in any gaps, and so on . . .

There’s nothing like adventure like a deadline, the delivery of that swift kick in the pants… sweet sweet motivation!

I’ve got just the deadline I need, too. Four days from now. At the end of January, submissions will close for The Electronic Literature Collection. What’s that, you ask?

an annual publication of current and older electronic literature in a form suitable for individual, public library, and classroom use. The publication will be made available both online, where it will be available for download for free, and as a packaged, cross-platform CD-ROM, in a case appropriate for library processing, marking, and distribution.

Its time to get around to it, and do something with the electronic novella I wrote. I’ll be much closer to my goals for it if I edit it, with an eye on the criteria for this colllection.

Literary quality will be the chief criterion for selection of works. Other aspects considered will include innovative use of electronic techniques, quality and navigability of interface, and adequate representation of the diverse forms of electronic literature in the collection as a whole.

Kyle Neath strikes again! He and James Robert Mortland have created what promises to be an invaluable resource for poets, Poetry With Meaning. Here, writers can post poetry online, and read others’ poems.

Poetry with meaning is here to help you share your poetry with the rest of the world. We are here to help you share your thoughts and emotions. Here at Poetry with meaning you’ll find tools to help you write, and articles on how to become a better poet — but most importantly, you’ll find a sense of community.

One of the more curious features of Poetry With Meaning is the rhyming tool. Type in a word, and it will find words that rhyme with it. Its free, and fun, although I do prefer the somewhat old-fashioned metaphor tool, the imagination.

Yesterday began a new website, Good Copywriting. Lanched by Kyle Neath, the intorduction proclaims:

Good Copywriting is a blog about just that: good copywriting. Too often our eyes and ears are plagued by uninspiring, lackluster copywriting. Here you’ll find tips about how to become a better copywriter, and examples of the good, the bad, and the ugly of copywriting.

Its about damn time for something like this! I hope it gets more regularly updated than the very similar Notable Words.

I think I’ve ranted before about the prohibitive cost of the most reputable literary journals out there. That’s why I was excited to learn about the literary journal subscription discounts offered by the Emerging Writers Network.

The offer is simple – pay for one less journal than you order. Subscribe to 3? Pay for 2. Subscribe to 4? Pay for 3. And so on, right on to those truly dedicated souls out there who subscribe to all 23, but only have to pay for 22 of them! In all cases, simply remove the price of the lowest priced journal and you have your total cost.Emerging Writers Network

The announcement of this offer also inclulded some worthwhile notes about the relationship between wrtiers and these publications.

Literary journals. They are frequently where authors of literary writing first publish. Think about it. You pick up a book by a first time author and read the notes beneath his or her photo. They frequently mention having published stories, poems or essays in two or three journals, the names of which you recognize. Recognize, but perhaps have not ever read, or even seen.

Why not? Why have you not read any issues of Kenyon Review or Ploughshares or any number of other literary journals? Maybe your local bookseller doesn’t stock some (or most) of the titles you read or hear of. Maybe you find the price (typical range from $7 to $15 for a single issue) a bit much considering you can find a book in the store for only a little more?Emerging Writers Network

Surfing the links to all these literary journals should prove fun for a while. This is a list of the Literary Journals that are participating:

• A Public Space
• Absinthe: New European Writing
• Agni
• Arts & Letters
• Cincinnati Review
• Colorado Review
• Georgia Review
• Harvard Review
• Hobart
• Idaho Review
• Kenyon Review
• LIT
• Michigan Quarterly Review
• Orchid
• Other Voices
• Ploughshares
• Prairie Schooner
• Rainbow Curve
• Rosebud
• Salt Flats Annual
• Small Spiral Notebook
• Storyquarterly
• The Journal
• The Laurel Review
• The Southern Review
• Iowa Review
• Land Grant College Review
• Barrelhouse Magazine

“No ideas but in things”

– William Carlos Williams

A recent letter from the physicalists asked me, “Do you think it’s time for a movement like physicalism in the world of words?” Physicalism, as defined by its proponents, has these five tenets:

• Question art dogma.
• Create visual ideas.
• Refuse to bullshit.
• Delight in creation.
• Emphasize beauty.

The Physicalist Manifesto is a work in progress, but their recent announcement defines the idea, and conversation with them described the details. I imagine their manifesto will read something like the following passage from their recent announcement.

We embrace visual ideas and invention and are fed up with the dense, inaccessible, angst-filled, deep, and ugly art the art education, art institutions and the art market promote. We do not think that one should need a degree in art, art history, or philosophy in order to be able to get or appreciate a work of art. Whether the meaning in a work of art is contained in visual or non-visual ideas, we think that the meaning should be accessible through the physical piece of art itself. We are fed up with looking at ugly- but supposedly very deep and insightful – crap. Out with angst, we say! Back to beauty!

As you can see, the idea they call physicalism developed about visual art. Their question is, does it apply to writing? I think it does.

Question art dogma

The first thing that they’ll teach you about writing is that “writing can’t be taught”. What they mean is that writing comes with practice, through reading and revision, so what they should probably say is “writing teaches itself”. If writing teaches itself, then there is little room for dogma.

The “dogma” that I feel is most in need of questioning is not the authoritarian kind, but rather the common assumptions that have built up around the art of literature. These include:

• A poem can mean anything the audience desires it to mean
• Literature is too obscure, old-fashioned, and esoteric to be relevant to our ordinary lives
• Literature is only writing; writing only occurs in books.
• There’s high-art literature, on one hand, and on the other hand we have other ways to tell stories such as television, movies, etc., and never the twain shall meet.

Refuse to Bullshit

“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”: Dwight D. Eisenhower

A lot of the “art of language” is bullshit, as we usually encounter it.

When it comes to new ideas, people struggle behind a jamboree of boring buzzwords, catch phrases, and slogans. None of this language means anything, apparently not even to those who abuse them at the cost of our ability to understand. The abusers are the journalists, the politicians, the scholars, the scientists, the government, the marketers. What is this nonsense! People are sick of default interfaces that don’t jibe.

People: you have a responsibility to yourselves, a right, not to tolerate a bunch of bullshit. People that don’t make sense don’t deserve attention, plain and simple. Either they’ve tried to communicate, and they have failed, or they’re hiding something. Don’t just assume you’re stupid. That’s how they plan to leave you behind. Demand sufficient explanation!

There is a pantheon of bullshit at play against the world of words. What’s a poor physicalist to do?

The stereotype of the writer is bullshit

This point was very well illustrated by a more recent manifesto, entitled “The Cappuccino Writer and the idiocy of contemporary writing“. The Manifesto is a list of grievances against the literary world, particularly against the cultural expectations our culture ahs developed about writing in general.

On inspection there would appear to be fewer problems with contemporary writing than with contemporary visual arts, but both have the problem of being spiritually bankrupt. (Except poetry, which on the whole has the problem of being utterly tedious).

Despite the benefit of centuries of literature the Modern writer still manages to sound less developed, less contemporary and less vital than his dead predecessors. He tries to sound big and brave when in truth he is scared of his own farts.

Post Modernism’s reflex recourse to a stance of invulnerability tourniquets emotion. If you don’t experience life more keenly after reading a piece of writing then that writing is a lamentable failure. If you feel your soul is depleted after reading a piece of writing then you can expect to see that writer on the South Bank Show.

Sometimes a savage truth in the writing leads the reader to feel numbed horror, this is the revealing of iron in the soul from the burning off of the encrustation of complacency. This is good writing. This does not appear on the South Bank Show.

Some notable points:

• There is popular writing known as the blockbuster or airport novel but this is considered trash by the critics. Then there is the writing by pseudo-intellectuals, which is very popular with the critics but considered even worse trash by us.
• The writer can only write what he knows about him/her self. To develop as a writer you must develop as a person.
• Writers who strive to maintain a fashionable stance will always be marred by all the limitations and stiltedness which that fashion is formed from. This applies equally to underground or cult fashion as it does to the middle of the road variety.
• In visual arts any new idea (fashion) is presumed to be original and thereby render all previous forms as defunct and old fashioned. In post modern writing the concrete poem and Finnegans Wake are not presumed to make all other forms of writing redundant so, thankfully the writer is forced to at least attempt to communicate in a semi- recognisable language.
• The probable reason that writers have to communicate in a more accessible manner is because, unlike the visual artist who only needs to pander to a self deceiving elite, the writer is reliant on the general public to buy his or her work. This is one of the most convincing proofs of democracy in action ever encountered.
• What makes great writing great?The first stage of meaning is known as understandability and the willingness of the writer to feel that the reader is not utterly beneath their contempt. The second stage of meaning is actually writing something that is worth understanding. Something is not worth understanding in writing if its not worth understanding in life. This is what makes great writing great.

“The Cappuccino Writer and the idiocy of contemporary writing” personifies these points in the person of “The Cappuccino Writer”, which makes it an enjoyable read.

Create Visual Ideas

I would revise the second point, not to discuss words, but to say “Create Imagery”

Ezra Pound, and the Imagists have already put this idea into practice. Their Imagism is very similar to the ideas of the physicalists. Imagism’s manifesto was an essay written by Exra Pound, entitled A Few Don’ts by an Imagiste. I’m tempted to quote the thing in its entirety here, to show the relevance of Physicalism in the world of Words, since Pound’s text is entirely relevant, but to be brief, I’ll use a summary of the same ideas instead. Frank Stuart Flint wrote what Imagism was about:

• Direct treatment of the “thing”, whether subjective or objective.
• To use absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation.
• As regarding rhythm: to compose in sequence of the musical phrase, not in sequence of the metronome.

This sounds like a recipe for Hemingway, doesn’t it? These Imagist ideas have become, by now, a large part of the doctrine that the physicalist would question, and question them they should. Imagism does not, or has not, made for language that is particularly beautiful in every sense of the word, and physicalists emphasize beauty, so they would question Imagist doctrine on those grounds.

How physicalists would differ from imagists remains to be seen. My guess would be that they would differ in terms of subject matter. Imagism doesn’t focus on the subject matter of the writing it suggests, where lyrical beauty is of the most importance.

Emphasize Beauty

The imagists emphasized directness, where they probably felt felt the Romantics had emphasized ornament. Both parties probably preferred to call their emphasis “beauty”. Were they wrong? No, but they did have other agendas.

Too much concern for concision and efficiency might leave your use of language barren, cold, mechanical. Too much concern for lyrical showmanship can obscure, or obliterate, the meaning of your words.

What about subject matter?

A summary of the greatest novels of the 20^th century could show that there has not been much emphasis on the beautiful, in recent literature, particularly where subject matter is concerned. It’s a hunch. I’d have to work pretty hard to defend it, so I’m not certain I should hold close to the idea.

The Surrealist Manifesto provides a critique of modern literature along these lines, that literature could do more to emphasize beauty. The author responds to a passage from Crime and Punnishment.

The small room into which the young man was shown was covered with yellow wallpaper: there were geraniums in the windows, which were covered with muslin curtains; the setting sun cast a harsh light over the entire setting. There was nothing special about the room. The furniture, of yellow wood, was all very old. A sofa with a tall back turned down, an oval table opposite the sofa, a dressing table and a mirror set against the pierglass, some chairs along the walls, two or three etchings of no value portraying some German girls with birds in their hands – such were the furnishings. (Dostoevski, Crime and Punishment)

I am in no mood to admit that the mind is interested in occupying itself with such matters, even fleetingly. It may be argued that this school-boy description has its place, and that at this juncture of the book the author has his reasons for burdening me. Nevertheless he is wasting his time, for I refuse to go into his room. Others’ laziness or fatigue does not interest me. I have too unstable a notion of the continuity of life to equate or compare my moments of depression or weakness with my best moments. When one ceases to feel, I am of the opinion one should keep quiet. And I would like it understood that I am not accusing or condemning lack of originality as such. I am only saying that I do not take particular note of the empty moments of my life, that it may be unworthy for any man to crystallize those which seem to him to be so. I shall, with your permission, ignore the description of that room, and many more like it.

Beauty is more than skin deep.

Arnold Weinstein is a Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. His recent essay, “A Novel Lesson: The Value of the Modernist Gambit” suggests that the modern novel could do more than to be lyrically beautiful, that it could have, and did have a more beautiful purpose.

Weinstein recalls the earliest novels

“from the most ambitious and self-regarding of the bunch – Cervante’s Don Quixote – on to the episodic confections such as Defoe’s Moll Flanders and the more tightly structured psychological investigations seen in Richardson’s Pamela and Clarissa or Prevost’s Manon Lescaut, the project at hand seems to be one of retrieval, of grasping the shape of an early life. How can we be surprised that so many of the early novels have personal names as titles?”

He goes on to define the ideal early novel. “The novel is a walking mirror”. Weinstein then argues that the “value of the modernist gambit” does not reside in its ability to act that way, to be a walking mirror that shows people a reflection of their humanity, something to identify with. He says that, by the modern era, with novels like Ulysses and with writers like Proust “the novel was in danger of losing its audience”

Weinstein queries the modern novels,

“Where, one wondered, was that bigger story, that panoramic yet anylitical portrait of society and self, that had heretofore been the great mission of the novel? One would have been forgiven for thinking that [the novel] was dead. Or hijacked by extremists who, whatever mission they may have had, had no love for the public, had no commitment to that old, unquestioned virtue of readability. No author bothered to announce such nefarious intentions, of course, but the result was there, and people voted with their feet and their purses: they found the modernist fare largely unreadable.”

Generally, Weinstein’s point is that the novel ought to have a beautiful purpose. His idea of that purpose is perhaps not the only ideal one, but it is an important consideration nonetheless.

Delight in Creation

Writing isn’t always regarded as a delightful endeavor. All that revision and solitude can be frustrating. High-minded literary ideals, writer’s block, deadlines “these are not delightful. Reading isn’t always regarded as a delightful endeavor, either. Poetry readings are more often described as “stimulating” or “intriguing” than as “delightful”, even if there are cookies.

If literature is to survive in an environment with more attractive cultural delights, it is going to have to stop being so damn stuffy. Remember those childhood bedtime stories? Weren’t they delightful?

This post continues from a previous post.

I’m taking notes along the way toward recording some spoken word, and so far my notes have brought me to take a good look at Hip-Hop, and its various lyrical subjects.

Hip-Hop has been described in terms of a rich history, including: jazz scat; blues lyrics; street jive; even the African Griots’ tradition of using lyrical rhymes to brag, or to put-down their enemies. Such oral traditions have survived into today’s hip-hop music, but there are others.

Hip-Hop’s origins include DJ’s, whose primary function was to play the beats to please the crowd. Second to that, they’d talk out loud. At first, a DJ might find a clever introduction, give an occasional shout-out, or act as a caller might at a square dance and offer the audience instructions for what to do with their bodies.

These things are all common oral traditions in today’s hip-hop:

• the introduction,
• call-and-response,
• the boast,
• the dance-call.
• There are probably others.

The Introduction

Eminem is notorious for introducing himself, although many rappers do it. Eminem has several introductions, for several moods and personae: Marshall Mathers, his real name; Slim Shady; Ken Kaniff, his screen name; and Eminem, presumably taken from his initials. The title of one of his introductions is, ironically “The Real Slim Shady”:

“May I have your attention please?
May I have your attention please?
Will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I repeat, will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
We’re gonna have a problem here..

Y’all act like you never seen a white person before
Jaws all on the floor like Pam, like Tommy just burst in the door
and started whoopin her ass worse than before
they first were divorce, throwin her over furniture (Ahh!)
It’s the return of the… “Ah, wait, no way, you’re kidding,
he didn’t just say what I think he did, did he?”…
…
I’m Slim Shady, yes I’m the real Shady
All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating
So won’t the real Slim Shady please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up?
I’m Slim Shady, yes I’m the real Shady
All you other Slim Shadys are just imitating
So won’t the real Slim Shady please stand up,
please stand up, please stand up?”

He introduces himself when he calls his act “the ‘Ah, wait, no way, you’re kidding,
he didn’t just say what I think he did, did he?’” That’s his whole shtick, well introduced. In Marshall Mathers, he puts the act aside for a moment and introduces himself this way:

“You see I’m, just Marshall Mathers (Marshall Mathers)
I’m just a regular guy,
I don’t know why all the fuss about me (fuss about me)
Nobody ever gave a fuck before,
all they did was doubt me (did was doubt me)
Now everybody wanna run they mouth
and try to take shots at me (take shots at me)”

You can see the parenthetical echoes in that last quote, which brings us to the subject of call-and-response, that oft-cited element of black music, where one voice responds to another. Notably, in hip-hop, this can occur when an entire group introduces themselves, or when a pair of voices share the lyrics as a duet.

Over the next few days, I’ll be writing about these.

I’m gearing up to make an audio recording of poems read aloud, and along the way I found some very interesting stuff.

When searching for recorded poetry on the internet, it is difficult to decide which keywords to search with. It seems that the recorded poems out there in the world get classified differently, and since I firmly believe that “There are no categories”, the creative challenge here is to find a way to take my favorite elements of each of these groups, and go my own way with them.

It seems, in general, that recorded poetry can take one of three forms: cultural, sub-cultural, or pop-cultural.

Recorded Poetry

I’ll call “recorded poetry” the works of the so-called “major poets”, for lack of a better term. These are works that are typically published in print first, and later read aloud by the authors, who typically have some amount of literary notoriety.

Poetry Archive is an excellent primary source for this material. Poetry Archive an internet collection of, in their words, “the voices of contemporary English-language poets and of poets from the past.” The archive allows its audience to encounter the contents in a variety of interesting ways: poems organized by poetic form, for example, or poems organized by theme, in addition to the traditional organization by title or by author. Unfortunately, there is no chronological arrangement, yet. The Poetry Archive project is still in its youth.

Amardeep Singh, Assistant Professor of English at Lehigh University recently blogged an introduction to the archive: ” If you’ve never heard Yeats or Tennyson reading in their own voices (on wax cylinder recordings), now you can for free.”

Andrew Motion, the Poet Lauriate of England, is involved with the Poetry Archive project, and has written about it in “Hearing the Masters’ Voices” for London’s Times.

I thought it was a pity that no one had thought to record poets in a systematic way, from the time that the technology first became available in the late 19th century.

That way, some of the lamentable gaps in our sound heritage would have been filled…. “The living part of a poem,” [Robert] Frost says, “is the intonation entangled somehow in the syntax, idiom and meaning of a sentence. It is only there for those who have heard it previously in conversation . . . It goes and the language becomes a dead language, the poetry dead poetry. With it go the accents, the stresses, the delays that are not the property of vowels and syllables but that are shifted at will with the sense. Vowels have length, there is no denying. But the accent of sense supercedes all other accent, overrides and sweeps it away.”

These convictions lie close to the heart of the Poetry Archive, which at the time of launching contains almost 100 voices: the great majority being new recordings that we have made ourselves, alongside a good many “historic” ones. (By “historic”, we mean recordings made before we began our project, ranging from the late 19th century to more recent times.) We intend to record many more contemporary poets and also to track down and add all the significant historic recordings we can find. If anyone has Hardy’s voice in their attic, please tell us.

Spoken Word

In an informative article that interviews major players in The Spoken Word Movement of the 1990′s, Mark Miazga takes a stab at the diffficult task of defining the spoken word movement.

It was a renewed fascination with the Beats in the 1990′s that was an important catalyst for an oral poetry movement that swept through the United States youth culture scene. … This has a number of similarities with the 1990′s oral poetry movement, … The term given to this visceral, in-your-face style of contemporary poetry of the nineties was spoken word. Up until then, the term only described non-music sections in music stores that contained non-music comedy, plays, or famous speeches. In fact, there have been a number of issues with the breadth of the term spoken word, which The New York Times has called “pointlessly stiff,” and the relationship of the term with poetry. For example, all poetry read aloud is spoken word, but not all spoken word is poetry. Sometimes, it is difficult to discern where spoken word ends and poetry begins. … This issue of defining and classifying spoken word, and how much of spoken word can actually be termed as poetry, is a problem even for the artists themselves. … that spoken word is, “a blanket term that cover(s) monologues, poems, stories, rap, etc. I like the term precisely because it is so ambiguous and broad.”

Maggie Estep is one of the important names to remember in the spoken word scene. Maggie has recorded two spoken word CDs, NO MORE MR. NICE GIRL (Nuyo Records 1994) and LOVE IS A DOG FROM HELL (Mercury Records 1997). She has given readings of her work at cafes, clubs, and colleges throughout the US and Europe and has also performed her work on The Charlie Rose Show, MTV, PBS, and most recently, HBO’s “Def Poetry Jam“. (There is an interesting interview with Maggie Estep published at Suicide Girls.)

Speaking of Def Poetry Jam, it seems to be the last basion of major media coverage for spoken word preformance, after the demise of MTV’s Poetry Unplugged in the late 90′s. NPR also created one of their patented miniseries on the subject, entitled “The United States of Poetry”

While it may not be media-friendly enough to remain in the rankings of pop culture, Spoken Word performances are still supported globally by audiences of the poetry slams, and in places like The Nuyorican Poets Cafe

One of the major fascets of spoken word poetry that’s touted around is the fact that it is decidedly not as literary as the published variety of poetry. Caryn James wrote a New York Times review of the aforementioned MTV Poetry Unplugged show. The review posits Spoken Word as a bridge over the gap between Rap and Poetry, (a relationship I’ve borrowed here) and says:

But most of this is disposable, evanescent poetry. The special is called “Spoken Word,” not “Written Word,” for a good reason. Most of the poems won’t endure for decades, and why should they? Their purpose is different. “Unplugged” assumes that rap is street poetry and that street poetry is a vocal, visceral expression of contemporary life.

“Spoken Word” is just one manifestation f the renewed interest in poetry. In John Singleton’s current film,Poetic Justice, Janet Jackson plays a young woman from South-Central Los Angeles whose poetry expresses her emotional isolation and heartsick response to the death of everyone she has loved. As Mr. Singleton has written in “Poetic Justice: Film Making South-Central Style,” a new book about the making of the film: “Most of the girls I knew growing up, their main creative outlet was writing poetry. Whether they were good at it or not.”

Justice is obviously supposed to be good at it. Her poetry was written by Maya Angelou, now known as the Inaugural Poet.”

So there you have it, Maya Angelou can write, has written, some of this stuff. Do you suppose it will stay “disposable” forever?

Hip-Hop

I’ve said this before, in my thesis:

The realm of aesthetics is one of the playing fields for the ongoing question of meaning in the modern world. For example, the new modern generation uses hip-hop as a form of discourse, often as an expression of anger. By comparison, The Iliad is a similar expression of anger. Both are long and lyrical. Both use death, violence and the possession of women as central themes. Now, bring both forms of discourse to your typical literary pundit and he or she will call one of them art, extolling its universal themes and virtues. The other item will be largely ignored, except perhaps to be passed onto a sociologist. The Iliad, being an immaculately crafted example of the oral tradition epic formula at its best, does deserve its reputation as a beautiful work of art. Any given hip-hop song might even deserve to be dismissed, on the grounds that it doesn’t say anything that every other song in the rather formulaic genre hasn’t already said. However, it should be noted that the genre is new, still formulaic, and while the formula may have some serious problems, there is an undeniable potential there for unrivaled lyrical beauty. Nevertheless, the genre gets largely ignored by the critical eye.

If I were to turn my critical eye toward Hip-Hop, to examine its literary merits, it might help with the task at hand, which is to look for anything helpful for my upcoming poetry recording, but I’m afraid the task would be a daunting one. I’m largely ignorant of the genre.

I found a clue to where those merits might lie in an essay entitled reverse-gentrification of the literary world, which is the preface of a book by Miles Marshall Lewis

Hiphop as a culture and art form graduated from subculture status during the early 1990s, significantly figuring in the lives of worldwide youth and ending its standing as an underground phenomenon. With its mainstream success came more radio-friendly beats and rhymes, and certain characteristics that appealed to its wider audience were forefronted: crass bling-bling materialism; violent rap rivalries that extended beyond records into real-life shootings, stabbings, and murders; the objectification and denigration of women in videos and song lyrics. Furthermore, most modern rap music aficionados had no appreciation for aerosol art, deejaying, or breaking–sidelined aspects of hiphop culture whose former prominence I remembered fondly from the seventies and early eighties. I began to embrace more of a post-hiphop aesthetic, as if a new youth subculture was right around the corner and hiphop was on its deathbed.

Conclusion

My intent was to discover the best elements from a selection of recorded poetry styles, but I’ve only begun to understand the styles themselves. The next step would logically be to find examples of each, and learn to tell what I like from what I don’t like. I welcome any comments that might help with this.