Howdy y'all!
I posted this info in TAM but I realized that it might provoke conversation here.

I have an essay that defines a third form of literature (poetry and prose being the first two) that accounts for the combination of the visual and aural created by writing (and accelerated by graphic publishing and, now, electronic publishing).

It is located here:
http://halfdrunkmuse.com/current/reviews/g_m_palmer.php

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Michael

Revealing myself to be an awful curmudgeon (and risking the ire of fifty percent of the editors who've ever accepted my work) here I go.

Once I get past the nit of the misspelling of parthenogenEsis, I have a basic objection. Do we need a new name to encompass several forms of visual presentation that already have names? If I work from Michael's linked examples, what I think I see is a word puzzle (cummings), textual criticism (the Eliot links), cartoons, and the association of text and images to evoke an idea (the vilanelle piece).

Additionally, since I'd argue that textual criticism, however valuable to literary scholarship, is not art in its own right, I don't think it belongs in this grouping (I do think it's great and wonderful to be able to display this information in these ways.)

And although this may be way too picky for most people, it just feels funny to me to use a count noun, in its singular form (propago, propaginis, f. a slip) as if it were an abstract mass noun.

That's probably enough to start an argument. Michael, you'd rather have that than silence, wouldn't you? http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

Abso-friggin-lutely I want an argument! http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif

I take no responsibilaty http://www.ablemuse.com/erato/ubbhtml/smile.gif for spelling errors. Though I did contact the editor...

I also don't know why they included the Eliot hypertexts. These are anti-examples of propago.

My arguement is that word-puzzles, worded cartoons, and associations between text and image ARE a third form of literature. They are not purely words and they are not purely image. They exist in an inbetween state in dire need of definition.

For instance -- look at this http://www.ubu.com/contemp/basinski/b1.html
It's certainly not a poem and it is certainly not prose. It is also, however, not visual art, as it has a textual nature. It is, at present, undefinable -- therefore my term propago.

As for the etymology, I was leaning on the meaning of propago as "offspring." But I'd gladly take another 1-3 syllable word that starts with "p."

Cheers!
Michael

1. I think that is visual art.

2. I do not think it is very interesting visual art.

3. It's certainly not a poem.

Personally I can go on living my life in perfect tranquillity blithely unconcerned that such a thing as you just linked to does not have a genre name. If we don't have a name for it, maybe we won't have to be annoyed that it exists.

Chris

(For what it's worth, 'proles' has two syllables, means "offspring," and has the same form in the singular and plural. And it starts with a 'p.' Pronounced 'pro-less'.)

My reason for finding English Haiku boring is that they have missed the point of the visual and verbal being unified.

I am absolutely not interested in anything manufactured mechanically or electronically.

For me "human calligraphy" or intimacy is what makes any art worth while, whether a Stravinsky composition (I agree with him that good music also looks good) a poem, a painting or anything else.

As soon as the intimate control is lost so am I as an audience.

Janet

"I am absolutely not interested in anything manufactured mechanically or electronically."

It ultimately doesn't matter what you are or aren't interested in. What matters is that there are bodies and bodies of critics who earn PhDs discussing these things as *poetry*. l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e poets have made careers (though not readers) out of it. The thing exists. Inept critics have dubbed it poetry out of an incorrect notion that "everything is poetry." To counteract this, there needs to be a definition for what is happening.

Michael

Michael,
The wonderful thing about those people is that they are just ephemera. They vanish pooft into the ether and nobody remembers them at all.

If we fight them it gives them credibility.

We are in a new dark age. I guess we just have to sit this dance out.
Janet

I'm afraid when I'm expected to gaze reverentially at the latest artistic gimmick, the Miller's words come to mind:

'Thou woldest make me kisse thyn olde breech,
And swere it were a relyk of a seint,
Though it were with thy fundament depeint!
But, by the croys which that Seint Eleyne fond,
I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond
In stide of relikes or of seintuarie.
Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie;
They shul be shryned in an hogges toord!’

Regards, Maz

I would hardly call these folk ephemera and gimmicky. They pervade(pervert?) academia.
M

Details, please.

Marcia

Hey G.M.,

Well, one thing is I think you've picked an awful tough crowd here. A gang of unrepentant formalists are unlikely to give l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e its due.

Back in undergrad, I had the pleasure of working closely with Michael Joyce, who is generally considered one of the "fathers" of hypertext fiction (and a wonderful man, to boot), so I got a firsthand account, and some experience, with how much resistance work like what you're discussing can get.

But I think the real problem here is that examples you've chosen are so facile that they really don't do justice to the distinction you've made. "B" and "r-p-o-p-etc." are crappy. Why not John Hollander's "Swan and Shadow" if you really want to go in that direction? (Though I think "concrete poetry" already does a pretty good job of describing those poems).

Again, in my undergrad days I messed around with making hypertext poetry and a variety of other out-there ideas. I think some of my results were pretty positive -- startling, and perhaps even good. I'd love to show them to you, only they were made in programs that are no longer used in an operating system that's obsolete...which is undoubtedly the biggest issue. Until it's not prohibitively expensive and obnoxious to make and distribute these things, they're never going to have the chance of really becoming an "art." Ditto video games, which should have started getting interesting a long time ago, only nobody with the artistic chops to really do something creative has the skills necessary to make the actual video game.

It'll happen though.

Regards,
-Dan

Daniel and Marcia --

I'm not trying to give l=... poetry its due. I'm more trying to argue that we should stop calling it poetry. I sent a fairly large amount of links to the mag and they picked and chose. I think that most of the work on UBUweb (ubu.com) would be considered propago.

Now, I do think that work of that type (and what you describe) has some valuable qualities as a form of literature, I just don't think that it should be included as a form (or forms or branch or whatever) of poetry.

The way that it pervades Academia should be obvious to anyone whose taken a college course in poetry writing. Often people in these classes assume that anything creative is a "poem." This attitude is supported by many professors and critics -- like Derek Beauliu (http://www.ubu.com/papers/beaulieu_c...commentary.pdf).

My paper is designed to say "yes, that's interesting -- but don't call it poetry, as few to none of the ways of discussing poetry apply to your work."

Michael

Michael, I confess that I haven't combed through your article with care, but I'm not sure I would have gleaned from it the argument that these "third forms" should not be called poetry.

Now that I understand that goal, I'm looking at your statement that "associations between text and image are a third form of literature..." As stated, that would capture such things as illuminated manuscripts and really skillful modern calligraphy, designed to turn the text into art. Your villanelle page seemed to me more closely associated with those than with the bee/buzz design you mention above.
And the bee/buzz design reminded me of a lot of advertising design, also a means of associating text and visual art.

Now I don't recall that anybody has called those forms poetry. Maybe these definitions need tweaking?

Maryann

Once a little boy, son of friends, was jumping in an eccentric way.

Janet the stupid in a special grownup voice:
Are you dancing Ben?

Little boy:
No. I'm doing this.

From now on my posting of new topics on Eratosphere will be confined to TDE.
Mea culpa, canis.
Michael

Michael,
I think this would have been received more sympathetically in General Talk. Mastery is very special and I guess none of us felt that any mastery was involved in the topic. Experiment at best.
Why not ask for the thread to be transferred to General Talk?
Janet

I've just re-surfaced here (after a week from hell-- last week of classes, looming deadlines, all that)-- and I apologize for my silence. My instant reaction to this thread is that Janet is probably right, M.O.M. is not going to be your most rewarding forum for a topic like this one, Michael-- and perhaps it should be moved to General Talk. As a newbie here, I am not sure if doing this is a dramatic gesture or not-- I certainly don't intend it to be such. It just seems like a more appropriate venue.

My own personal and admittedly instinctive (rather than scholarly) take on these matters under discussion is that (a) "Language Poetry" is not poetry (okay, I'm ducking under the table!); (b) its influence on the academy is beginning to dwindle, and (c) a composition like Buzzing Bee is representative of a little sub-genre that I've always seen referred to as "concrete poetry." Hollander has a fantastic collection of these, called *Types of Shape* (Athenium, 1979) which you probably already know about. If not, I highly recommend it.

But all this is not getting this thread moved to where it belongs, right? I will try to do that tonight. If smoke starts billowing out the sides of your computer, it's because I did it wrong.

Marilyn