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  #21  
Unread 04-23-2012, 10:36 AM
Nicholas F. Nicholas F. is offline
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I haven't read Eunoia yet, but it seems like the stand-out example of that sort of formalism. What I have little time for is the Goldsmith shtick (Day, for example). I can't blame Bok for writing constraint-based poetry (as most of us here do).

Nick
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  #22  
Unread 04-23-2012, 10:48 AM
Jesse Anger Jesse Anger is offline
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Annoya is brilliant, but no less annoying for it. The constraints he places on his writing are rigid, but to what end, the form does not support the content, it doesn't do anything, except make it a schtick. We all have our own stances and biases, to me, Bok does not write poems, these are exercises, word games, linguistic tricks and sometimes senseless prattling.

He is a wonderful public speaker though, beware.

Last edited by Jesse Anger; 04-23-2012 at 11:51 AM.
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  #23  
Unread 04-23-2012, 11:24 AM
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W.F. Lantry W.F. Lantry is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by G. M. Palmer View Post
Perhaps it's just confirmation bias...
Ha! Confirmation bias. Nice one! Remember "Don't flip the bozo bit?" Hard to believe that was almost twenty years ago. Although I suppose the concept is even older than that: coders are fond of pointing out that Lao Tzu said something very similar...

On a completely separate subject, participants in this thread should be aware that sometimes the subject of the thread drops in, reads, and comments, as I've learned to my red-faced embarrassment in the past...

Best,

Bill
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  #24  
Unread 04-23-2012, 11:47 AM
Jesse Anger Jesse Anger is offline
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It might just be a robot pretending to be him if he were to drop by!
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  #25  
Unread 04-23-2012, 12:31 PM
Orwn Acra Orwn Acra is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by G. M. Palmer View Post
Is nothing not done by Joyce or Stein. The problem with the avant-garde (unlike, say, a sonnet) is that once it's been done then it's instantly boring; everything is derivative. A sonnet you can come back to and make it your own--you can make it new.
But neither Stein nor Joyce wrote lipograms. Anyway, Eunoia is much more comprehensible than Finnegans Wake and Stein's skittering syntactical experiments. I'm not even sure why you're lumping them together.

There are plenty of undiscovered, novel ways to use lipograms. Compare Perec's A Void to Eunoia -- totally different in tone, style, and scope. Telling me that it can't be done just shows your lack of imagination.
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  #26  
Unread 04-23-2012, 12:47 PM
G. M. Palmer G. M. Palmer is offline
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Oh, a lipogram--is that what it was supposed to be an example of? Pardon me for not picking up on a formal constraint that doesn't actually add to meaning.

I just thought it was bullshit boring writing. Jazz-writing under the best possible doubt-shadow. I lumped it in with Joyce and Stein because it appears to be the same sort of wordplay. Indeed, I'm not seeing evidence to the contrary.

I actually read through Eunoia several years ago for my MFA--and apparently promptly forgot about it until google today brought me here. And then I remembered.

So I should also lump it in with Gadsby, I suppose. Boring and tired. I suppose it's "Canada's bestselling poetry book ever" though that may just be due to the famed Canadian politeness.
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  #27  
Unread 04-23-2012, 01:09 PM
Dmitri Semenov Dmitri Semenov is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Uche Ogbuji View Post
...Computers are nowhere near the slightest glimmer of a prospect of replacing the humanities. Not. Even. Close. Mind you, MacCarthy, Turing, and even taking a step back to von Neumann, all these esteemed and brilliant individuals thought that it was just a matter of a few more MIPS and a bit more core storage here and there before computers would be taking over human creative tasks. They lived to admit just how wrong they were.
Dear Uche Ogbuji,

There is still hope --- humans can dumb themselves down to the level of contemporary to them computers. I see it all around.

Dmitri.
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  #28  
Unread 04-23-2012, 02:08 PM
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R. Nemo Hill R. Nemo Hill is offline
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Why is the argument being cast constantly in terms of replacing one with the other. The two can't exist at the same time?

Nemo
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  #29  
Unread 04-23-2012, 04:47 PM
Uche Ogbuji Uche Ogbuji is offline
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Originally Posted by W.F. Lantry View Post
Uche,

I respect your position. Who can forget the euphoria, and subsequent disappointment, over advances in AI? In spite of those setbacks, I still have an optimistic view. I guess we'll find out. By the way, did you catch the Tupac concert the other night.
Well played with the Tupac bit, Bill. Well played.

The vehemence of my argument is largely that I've spent so much time keeping my left and right hemispheres honest when contemplating such matters that it overloads my corpus callossum to see them too lightly conjoined. We'll see one day the extent to which mechanics subverts our system of aesthetic judgments, but for now I think we can treat such judgments entirely on their traditional merits.
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  #30  
Unread 04-23-2012, 05:42 PM
G. M. Palmer G. M. Palmer is offline
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Nemo,

If pobiz weren't a patronage game there wouldn't even be a discussion.

Unfortunately, it is. I suppose you ought to ask the question of Silliman, too, what with his positing most of what goes on here as "the school of quietude."

I, for one, generally feel icky after getting into these discussions--mostly because I really wish I could feel "oh well, what they do doesn't affect me or poetry in general" and leave it at that. I would like to believe that.
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