Friday, February 3, 2012

“Every coffee grind is you./ Which are endless” —considering the visual/ personal aesthetic charge


Of vision+ poetry: I’ve been considering vision and what it does to poetry. I’ve been considering the vision of poetry, and the relationship of vision in terms of what I think it’s ‘supposed’ (more on that later) to do with the poetic verse/ word/ etc.


I, like many, have been guilty of judging the visual aesthetic of a poem (a completely subjective experience that has the marvelous ability to both articulate its direction and/ or be of something completely different, something of which I will explain further) before it is even read. It can bear on a poem, and, depending on the particular poem, can equate itself to the weight of the actual words that inhabit said space. However, it must be said that without the word, vision cannot exist; therefore, what is considered Word must allow for a visual space in which to move/ live. It must also be said that without an aesthetic charge regarding words/ space/ movement/ etc, the vision cannot operate. What, then, is the determinate aesthetic, the precision of visions v. word v. the individual?


Considering Erozcelik’s
Rose Strikes and Coffee Grounds, which begins in a sort of beautiful voodoo that sets the first half of the book in columns, the poems are a mythic construction of fortunes& images that allows the reader to disintegrate into either column. I find myself too conventional here, I read them as the numbers designate, as the pages designate; on the second read, I can allow an ambiguous approach (though I do wonder if this is in part due to the fact that I have already enjoyed the poems based on the structural intent of the author, and now am rather toying [for lack of better word] with my own visual poetic architecture), and while I enjoy the syncopation dual-column reading permits, I feel more at ease with the containment of a single page in this particular medium.


I admire the motion of the columns as well, their stoic nature coupled with the images that keep repeating themselves (rainbow/ bow, fish, fortune, coffee grinds, flying, saucer, etc) seem to push the reader into a more careful consideration of said images. When repetition is found in columns (themselves an echo), it is obvious that this superimposition is not an accident. The shifting of images+ vision means I, as a reader, have a lot of meanings to manage; I find the motion is in the lines, and in their consideration to be as such.


Rose Strikes takes a different stance, arranging itself into a more contemporary figure at first, and then visually unraveling itself as the pages go on. Of course, one notices the roses (—how can you not?) and their continual re-/deconstruction. They are figures of being that I believe hold both an individual value and a worldly currency. A favorite, an example, “Threesomes”:

the moon rises
moonrose

i i love you
swoonrose

where where were you
windrose

Of course, they are of threes, set in a collection of three stanzas, each building upon itself and their corresponding rose. (Sound must have a little cameo, here, as I find it impossible to speak/ think of vision without its often-interconnected counterpart:) The build-up of repetitions (1, 2, 3; the “were” so close in sound to “where” it slyly makes me categorize it with the other “where”; also, the fact that these repetitions are an act of building are only a clever illusion, as they all contain the same amount of syllables) only to be met with a single identifying rose is both poignant and telling of the trajectory of this particular chapter. It is a continual shift of long v. short, set v. open, wordy v. blank, etc., that allows for a slow overkill of roses. That is to say, the vision granted to the reader is the compelling oscillation, the movement between the pages. Of course, this vision is highly individualized, a version of what I think the poem/ word/ image/ format/ etc is ‘supposed’ to do for me, and what it does on a personal scale v. what it actually does on a more generalized interpretive podium; I am fairly certain my classmates will have a different vision/ version. That’s the intrigue, the endless shifts and possibilities.


It is not just about the overall vision of a poem, but the visions the poem provides to the reader; an interesting thought, considering the images are ultimately solidified by the reader, from their own experience and imagination manipulation (made possible by personal associations and image/ word-clouds). Therefore, it becomes something volatile in its intrinsic dismissal of containment. A sort of synesthesia, if you will: the “charged” vision/ sound/ mind connection is dependent upon many personal outlets. How curious, then, we are to ask so much of an audience, as a poet, as a writer… to place our visions onto another’s visual influence vis-à-vis their sensory experience and personal knowledge. We must be nuts.


This seems a fitting segway into the preface of Antonin Artaud’s “The Theater and Its Double,” in which the space/ theater is recognized as an integrated sensory movement:

The theater, which is in
no thing, but makes use of everything —gestures, sounds, words, screams, darkness— rediscovers itself at precisely the moment where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations. (12)

Here, the physical definition of theater is used, where pantomimes and gestures abound— but what of the written art? What gestures are used when there are no corporeal instruments? I feel we must rely on the language “to express its manifestations,” then, and the page as the theater in which it operates. (Of course, the language at hand, the attempts of overarching expressions, will manifest itself inevitably in varying contexts, based on the reader.) The operational space, in the written context, is its own theater in which we must consider its medium carefully; there are no performers to direct our attention to the layout, the negative space, the background, the foreground, etc.


In the search of expressing what exactly vision in space can do, I am reminded of this digital age in which we can manipulate our words onto more than just pages. Firstly, I am reminded of Andy Campbell’s "Spawn"


It is a poem framed only by the limits of my computer, and only concerned with what is in and around what appears to be a single-jar world. This poem comes to life thanks to Flash and personal interaction, but it also resonates into my particular aesthetic: may be because I’ve spent too much time thinking about/ being fascinated and horrified by bugs, and those impossibly indiscriminate dots remind me of such; perhaps because the wicked thought of entrapment juxtaposed with those wistful descriptions move me so; however, all things considered, these are my understandings: I get to choose what I think is lovely and interesting based on my own interpretive model.


Secondly, I have considered Jason Nelson’s “Birds Still Warm from Flying,” in which You are the operator, and can create whichever version/ vision best suits you: 


Here the cube is rotated+ words are manipulated by the [/my /your] trackpad’s direction and the [/my /your] mind to move it. I can create different poetic possibilities and outcomes (though the lines are considerately numbered, I take comfort knowing I do not have to abide, and find it easier to break the rules on a screen that welcomes the unmethodical). Admittedly, I feel god-ish in this space, and this pleases me.



What do you all think of vision? What does vision do for you as a reader? As a poet? (I didn’t even touch on translation: how does the word choice of a translator affect the poetry at hand? —are they chosen out of simplicity, economy, a personal charge/ vision toward a particular word, etc? Does this even matter?) What, in vision, matters to you?

12 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Thank you Megan! I'm struck by so many of your thoughts on the Erozcelik and I especially love the way you relate his vision to Artaud's text. I'll start with the Artaud, actually. You say, "I feel we must rely on the language “to express [the mind's] manifestations,” then, and the page as the theater in which it operates. I think it's really productive to think of Erozcelik's page as a theater in which his mind's manifestations--the language of his vision--plays out. However, I have the sense that, even though we can enter into the theater of Erozcelik's text, we can only glimpse the tip of the iceberg of his particular vision as it expresses itself in language. (And I feel, too, that his vision strains against everything concrete and objective, even language itself. You mentioned the oscillation and sense of motion that his text gives you, and I definitely feel the same, and this gives me the feeling of a world in constant metamorphosis, a world in which the impossible is possible.

    When I think about "vision" (especially with regards to Erozcelik and Artaud) I primarily think of some kind of mystical / ineffable experience, a glimpse of the "Real beyond the real," or an insight into something beyond the strictures of the objective world. In the "theater" of Erozcelik's text, mountains fly, birds inhabit the speaker's heart, coffee grinds speak the future, women pour out moonlight, etc. I read these all as something more than merely poetic figures: they point toward an openness, a limitless possibility that mystics often perceive beyond the surface of the ordinary world. I keep returning, naturally, to the rose as well. Of course, it's a Sufi symbol of divine / transcendent love, but it becomes WAY more than a symbol in the text. In "Rosestrikes" the lover and the beloved (and their actions, and their bodies, etc.) morph into and out of various "rose-existences," dipping into and out of love, and eventually returning their roses to one another when they lose each other. I feel like the rose embodies (not necessarily represents) the ineffable nature of transcendent union, just as the entirety of Erozcelik's text points in language to experiences that are essentially incommunicable. Nevertheless, reading Erozcelik changes something in me. Reading it feels like magic.

    This makes me think of Artaud's ideal of art as magic. Civilization orders the world with its objectivity and is ultimately repressive, but Artaud's ideal of art is something that breaks through form to touch and renew the life-force itself, and so has the ability to make humans "master[s] of what does not yet exist" (13). I think Artaud would have loved Erozcelik--his text breaks language, and the world, open and not only generates what "does not yet exist," but allows the reader to feel a sense of participation in--and mastery of--that generation of endless possibility. I feel renewed in some giddy way after reading both the the Erozcelik and the Artaud--if only because I feel a renewed sense of art's limitless possibility.

    PS--A question that popped up for me as I was writing this: what's the difference between vision and imagination? I definitely think they're different, but can we even attempt to theorize this difference? It's just intriguing to think about.

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  3. i like this idea of thinking of the page as a theater. that being the case, everything which occurs on the page/stage is all that we 'see' (although we never see anything but page and letters in poetry, whatever we see is a mental projection created by language, so seeing is really envisioning or imagining or something like that). in terms of erozcelik, his coffee grinds uses vision less in the visual sense (although he does directly address the grinds themselves; he'll talk about how they are at the bottom of the cup all masses together or they're like falling out of the cup (??) and stuff, oh and sometimes he like has weird little back and forth interactions with whoever he is doing the reading for, i found those moment particularly odd/weird/interesting, esp. the one one on page 16 where the person asks for more and he's like shocked/insulted and tells her not to ask for more. anyway, what i was going to say with this aside is that much of his imagery is abstract since these are fortunes; the visual nature is him looking at the coffee grinds i guess) and more of a vision as in prediction. (i keep thinking of the show charmed and how one of the characters has 'premonitions' which are like she just sees future stuff in her brain, that's the sort of vision erozcelik has, except his isn't as exciting). his visions are based on a visual stimulus which he must read/interpret. so vision/reading are linked, which brings us back to where we started: page as stage, reading as seeing.

    i don't know what to make of rosestrikes. i like it better than coffee grinds if i'm honest. i like how the rose permeates/destroys/infests the text. i keep thinking of what it would be like without the rose, if the rose weren't there and it were just the text as is, and it just seems strange, the poems feel emptier (literally and figuratively) and more boring. the rose both permeates/infests but also acts as a rod down the center holding the poems together. in terms of vision, rosestrikes/moody love are not nearly as prophetic but seems more of a tender exploration of love. i like the title 'moody love' by the way. seems like a love poem to art itself somehow, all of the language is 'lofty' and 'poetic' and the image of a rose is itself a classically 'poetic' image.

    oh, by the way, what's with him only doing coffee readings for women? what an ass. he probably does it just to pick up chicks, like it's some little pickup line thing for him. 'hey baby ever have your coffee grinds read?' or something. the milady section is interesting since apparently it was written in english by the author. i like how he says coffee fortunes aren't to be written since once they're written you become an oracle, so he went ahead and wrote them, which i guess means he thinks he is some sort of oracle. so now he's like this oracular pick-up artist.

    oh and to respond to thade: for me, vision is a seeing of a truth, whether it's physical vision or prophetic vision(which isn't real, so i guess just physical vision is the closest thing we can get to truth even though optics don't always work), somehow these things are Truth. imagination is fantasy, half-truth at best. at least that's how i conceptualize them right now.

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  4. I'm actually the opposite of Drew, in that I liked the Coffee Grinds section better than Rosestrikes. Rosestrikes is more poetic, looks more like what we think of when we think about poetry. But the images in Coffee Grinds were somehow more striking and stirring to me. (Also, he mentions dolphins multiple times, which is really my sweet spot. If someone saw dolphins in a fortune telling of my life, I would assume it meant my lifelong dream of being a dolphin trainer is eventually coming true). I think what I found interesting about Coffee Grinds lies in how strange it looks to my Midwestern poetic eye. I'm not used to reading about visions in the literal sense in this way, as the fortune-telling industry in South Bend, Indiana, isn't exactly going gangbusters.

    What is interesting to me is that these Coffee Grind "poems" manage to be creating visions while simultaneously commenting on the fact that they're visions. There's this layering going on here between the poet as creator of this vision, the speaker who's doing the grind readings, the listening of the grind readings, the reader who's reading the poem, the visions that are being told to us, the visions the narrative construct itself provides (I as the reader imagining the fortune-teller sitting at a table and reading these coffee grinds to some poor, bewildered woman), the difference in different reader's internal imagery of the visions, etc. There's a hell of a lot going on here.

    I connect this back to the Artaud piece, particularly towards the end where he writes, "For the theater as for culture, it remains a question of naming and directing shadows: and the theater, not confined to a fixed language and form, not only destorys false shadows but prepares the way for a new generation of shadows, around which assembles the true spectacle of life." This, to me, is exactly what is going on in Coffee Grinds. Erozcelik, like the coffee grind fortune reader, is directing shadows that are becoming "the true spectacle of life." Yes, these shadows are strange little visions that might not make tactile sense, but they are visions that are using imagery as a way to get at larger truth in the life of the person whose fortune is being read. And, in the same stroke, getting at some larger truth that Erozcelik is attempting to see in the world of the readers. Therer's a constant doubling of vision in both its literal sense(as in sight) and its figurative sense (as in vision with a capital V). I don't know. I just thought these were cool little collections of some really bizarre and startling images.


    P.S. Drew, Way to shout out to Charmed, and then claim its visions are more exciting than Erozcelik's. Equal opportunity culturist, this guy.

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  5. BTW, what does it say about vision as Megan defines it that all of our comments so far have followed a four-paragraph pattern, in which the last paragraph is a kind of side note to the other three paragraphs? Hmm...

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  6. The recreation of vision, of sound, of touch, of the remaining senses, is in itself a shadow. I’ve been thinking lately that poetry attempts to build recollection, build the sensory from within a page and the language applied to a page, even if that page is electronic, or if that page is a stage. I wonder if some ways we are all conjurers of the coffee grinds. As I waded through the coffee grind divinations, I had this intense feeling of being mired in the senses. These sensory impulses accumulated into a dense fear. I almost felt trapped or grounded into the physical plain. I wondered about how Erozcelik’s tellings or readings were mystical, because I felt so tethered, like the coffee grinds and the soul were still being held back by the cup.

    The great block of soul has split. (Even if it is in like other fortunes,
    soul is soul, and block of soul, block of soul.)

    You may interpret that splitting away as the relieving of some unease. But
    be careful. A split away piece of soul. Because the rest is still in the cup. (25)

    The cup reminds me of Artaud. Where he said culture was both “constraint” and “protest”. So as I understand it, theater, or any art, is in a constant battle with the cultural constraints and the sensory constraints of a medium. It is at the same time conforming to form and resisting form. For me the coffee grinds were the constraints of culture, even the mystical must be constrained by our vision, our vocabularies, and so on. But maybe it was also the protest. By placing the world of magic into something concrete, readable and ultimately assessable, does Erozcelik contradict our imagination of mystical?

    The roses were such a different experience for me. They were liberation. They were the parts of the soul that split away with the abundance of white, the short lines, the clarity and sparseness of image. But the splitting away seemed to only be possible if the split itself is thrown against the coffee grinds. The roses are part of the grinds; in some way their twins, but the roses themselves, are also another and another thing entirely. I felt in Rosestrikes Erozcelik smashed the page open, the boundaries of divination open. The roses were free from there own foretelling.

    Passing myself
    I pass out.

    The moon rises.
    The rose has left with you. (57)

    I’m not sure how much sense any of this makes, but I am fascinated with the idea that what is grounded and what is liberated are connected. That art and culture are in constant protest and from that protest there are these fragments that free themselves and transcend to a different stage, but are still tied to the stage of its creation. So poems can never free themselves from the tools of a poem. It is both conformity and revolution at the onset.

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  7. Beth it seems you and I are on similar wave lengths. Must be from the coffee grinds...

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  8. Megan, wow you are a poetic-critic genius! You really are challenging my brain with this one. I will try my best to respond.

    *

    “I feel like the rose embodies (not necessarily represents) the ineffable nature of transcendent union, just as the entirety of Erozcelik's text points in language to experiences that are essentially incommunicable.”—Thade

    *

    “i don't know what to make of rosestrikes. i like it better than coffee grinds if i'm honest. i like how the rose permeates/destroys/infests the text. i keep thinking of what it would be like without the rose, if the rose weren't there and it were just the text as is, and it just seems strange, the poems feel emptier (literally and figuratively) and more boring.”-- Drew
    *

    I too, if I am honest, like rosestrikes much better.

    To communicate the “ineffable nature of transcendent union.” Yes! that and much more but how far can we push the limits of language? The rose disembodies itself, it becomes almost liquid like and permeates the text—enters it, and strikes it really does strike, not in an outward way but more of like in a grenade going off from the inside, from within the text-visions; But back to this idea of expressing the ineffable nature of transcendent union.

    What I particularly love about Erozcelik and sufi poetry in general is that it commits a crime/desecration of sorts by conjuring up this idea of an almost sensual-like intimacy with the divine. Let me try to elaborate: In some religions praising or chanting the name of God invokes a special—going back to last week’s blog/conversation—more primal language: think Buddhist or Hindu chants such as OM. In the Jewish tradition the name of God is too holy to be uttered by the human tongue. In Koran and also in the Hindu Ramayana God’s name is also never uttered instead the God/self is referred by many other names which enumerate his many attributes. (I believe in the Ramayana Vishnu is referred to as the one with A Thousand Names. In other words nothing is more pure/purifying than the name of god—which is ultimately outside our language.

    I believe rosestrikes is set against this backdrop and conjures a language/vision that pushes us as close as we can to the name of god. let me see if i can elaborate once more:

    the poet or oracle conjures up a language which relies heavely on vision to conjure up a magical/spiritual trip that is outside—to bring that French Artaud guy in the conversation--our convictions of culture, civilization etc.

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    1. I could be wrong about my references to religion as I am writing recalling the texts I've read regarding those religions

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  9. Thanks Megan for the great start!
    I think motion is at the center of all the poems, like the swirl of the coffegrind, blooming of roses, swimming petals, insects in the vein. Even the last part ‘rosebud’ where there are frost and tongue biting, a sense of paralysis and silence, it is the movements that bring the paralysis into being (rosebud, the site of potentiality yet to be released, if it will ever be; it may be crushed or get frostbitten before it blooms, but that is not our concern in the present. We read the present. ); and the section ends with “release”, taking another breath. Finally.
    The movement causes all kinds of swirls, the swirls of temporality/anachronism, inversion of reader and being-read, and inconsistent you and I that constantly slips.
    Anachronism:
    Once the movement stops, the coffeegrind too settled that it crumbles, the reading belongs to the past, thus anachronism of fortunetelling occurs: the reading should be located in the present, the coffeegrind is on the saucer in the present, yet the lack of motion makes the reading belong to the past. It crumbles. However this anachronism doesn’t simply put the reading unavailable or invalid; the fact that the coffeegrind was left alone for too long, the process of “settling” becomes a signifier that means something in the fortunetelling cycle.
    I think about the anti-particles that supposedly can travel back the time, and that movement creates the symmetry of particle that travels forward-time. How anachronism, thwarted movements is what makes the movement to be available to begin with.
    I think of the images of the particles whose Chemical binding is constantly disrupted, eroding, oxidizing, etc etc. The movement, the unsettling is the swirl we live in. Everything that is seemingly settled is still in the swirls of reactions. Our skincells are constantly dying and peeling. Our definition of words are constantly changing.
    swirl in a coffeecup.
    storm in a teacup.

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  10. Inversion of reader & being read:
    In our house lilies, roses, manolias, jasmines are blooming. While you are reading fortune while I am watching, while I am reading fortunes, while you are watching.
    The surrounding is constantly changing and I almost have a vision of montage of some sort that twitches so that the reader and read-ee are switching the seat.
    I as a reader is involved in your fate. You as a read-ee is involved in my/your fate. You as a reader is involved in my fate. I as a read-ee is involved in my/your fate. “Here, I’ve turned up your cup”…”And this, in the tongue of our coffee grinds”(5). We, and Us becomes the sense of moving container, like coffeecup.

    Thade asks what the difference between vision and imagination is.
    In these poems, there isn’t distinction as long as there are constant movements.
    In the “real world” where we (should) believe in liberal humanism, individualism, object permanence, imagination already has to bear the disdain that results from the binary of reality vs. imagination/artifice. Yet vision, fever—if I may think like Artaud—is where the vision arises, erasing the distinction above.
    I get up from my nightmare to check and I believe in what happened in my dream actually happend for a while. It frames my movement, my expectation for the day, the reality. The theatre is where vision, fever and even something that maybe called imagination with a note of disdain come alive. Artifice that is a medium that transmutes the unknown voices.
    The constant movements join the sound and vision. Like the part Megan quotes.
    The moon rises/moonrose
    i i love you/swoonrose
    where where were you/windrose

    the movement of rise is conjoined with the rose as flower but also the past tense of “rise”, rose.
    The echo(or stuttering?)—“i i”,”where where” in the text makes such anachronistic echo of sound(sound rose) and vision(image of rose) work.
    Stuttering is anachronistic as well, a lot of time, at least for me, as a speaker of English as second language.
    I think of a word but my mouth cannot follow up, and interruption of other words in Korean or in English corrupts the singular movement of mouth, creating stutter.
    Then, is translation a swirl? A movement in this poem?
    (I want to develop this point more I post, and I suspect I cannot finish writing about translation before 5 so I’ll post this part first.)

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  11. Reading causes the ripple, gaze causes the ripple. Photon changes the state of quantums altering what is there with the gaze. Passing out is a great dramatic gesture but also the moment where vision and reality, our boundary of rationality is dissolved, with our eyes fluttering, the state of seizure, the swirl of what we see and hallucination.
    I think this thinking can be applied to the translation. The original poetry is supposed to be the reality, the translation is shadow, re-representation (as psychoanalytic scholars would say the dream is an attempt at reorganizing information that you learned in reality), hallucination.
    I try to imagine the translation process of this poem which I cannot “see” in the sense of eyesight.
    But I try to envision it. I think of my process of translating Korean poem.
    There are moments of odd clarity when translate, like the part “that’s the way cookie crumbles” has strange solidity (13).
    Sometimes English word that I use fascilitate what the Korean poet was trying to do in my vision better. Sometimes English cannot say it at all. I need to envision the movement at those moment. Hallucinate. The dance between Reality and hallucination.
    All the writings I’ve been reading swirls in the process, like somebody pulled the French press handle up.
    I see Aira Cesar’s strawberry icecream while reading the “passing out” in the rosebud section.
    What is language? What is fate?
    If fortune telling is swirling telling of fate that also swirls, temporality, physicality, subjectivity all mixed up; translation can also be a swirling telling of the swirl of words, various lexicon, cultural context, and noncontext, nonwords? Rose is red, rise is rose… Is the fate telling/poetry itself?
    Not to dwell on the subject matter for shallow connection but I also was reminded of palm reading I had in voodoo house in New Orleans. The man with the protruding veins on his bald head, weirdly round, he did not “read” my palm: he was looking away the wholetime, just feeling the pulse rather than my palm.
    what is reading? Feeling the pulse/swirl? What is seeing? What is theater?
    “The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything —gestures, sounds, words, screams, darkness— rediscovers itself at precisely the moment where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.” (12)
    The fortune reading occurs in theater, the dark space with drapery..
    “Did you enjoy skydiving? You will.” He said. I never skydived before.
    Is the theater then enables the true vision/seeing/swirling? With the chance of failure, discomposing order like casting of the die, stage prop failure?

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