[jasonhuff]

greg, welcome and glad you could drop by.

i found the double exposure poems to be extremely interesting. i can only imagine how difficult they would be to write successfully. is this a form that you created? and if so, how did you come up with this? if not, then who first wrote in this form?

jason

[Greg Williamson]

Originally posted by jasonhuff:
greg, welcome and glad you could drop by.

i found the double exposure poems to be extremely interesting. i can only imagine how difficult they would be to write successfully. is this a form that you created? and if so, how did you come up with this? if not, then who first wrote in this form?

jason

Hi, Jason. Thank you for the warm welcome. This is the first time I've been in any kind of a forum like this, so please tell me if I've hit the wrong button, sent this to the wrong place, inadvertently launched a satellite, whatever.

It wouldn't surprise me if someone had done something similar to "Double Exposures," but I didn't know about it. I'd had the idea of interleaving two texts for a long time, but I hadn't found a situation that would justify it. Doing the first one, I figured they should be about snapshot size, and thus all the same size. They turned out to be really a lot of fun.

Greg

[Tim Murphy]

When Greg had done a short roll (12 Double Exposures), he sent them to Alan and me. We marveled at them but cautioned him to do no more, lest they aggravate a nature we had just figured out was totally schizoid. When he sent us the whole roll of 26, we realized we were wrong. If you've got it, flaunt it.

[jasonhuff]

i've recently started to try to learn this whole meter thing, with not quite as much luck as i had hoped for (ask alan, and he'll tell you how slow going it is for me). what i need is the magic word from you that makes it all make sense.

seriously though, how quick or long did it take for you to get it. how was the process for you? who inspired you to write in meter? and any advice for the novice?

jason

[Curtis Gale Weeks]

Greg,

I must admit, I've never read "Double Exposure," but the discussion here and reviews I've found on the Web certainly provoke my interest. Are any of the sample pages at Amazon.com excerpts of "Double Exposure?" (I've read one which seems to interlock in the fashion described by the reviews I've read; but, good/great metrical lines often "interlock.") Certainly, a treasure hunt at my local B & N will be more successful in turning up the method you've used...

It's a fascinating approach, from what I've read. (I've attempted something similar recently.) Form of whatever kind ought to match content--at least, this is the way I approach my own writing. Because you use varied forms, I wonder how you approach the selection of form for various endeavors. Your poem "Origami," for instance, seems to fold meter. Do you imagine the subject of the poem, consider its actual physical or its metaphysical shape, and shape the poem from the thing you have seen?--Certainly, "Double Exposure" would be a good example of this.

Also, I suppose: do you always approach your poetry in this manner--if you do this, that is--or do some poems shape themselves as you write? (I.e., do you discover better form which differs from your initial approach after/if the writing process begins to stall?)


--Thanks for taking the time to appear on Eratosphere, by the way!--

Curtis.

[Greg Williamson]

Originally posted by jasonhuff:
i've recently started to try to learn this whole meter thing, with not quite as much luck as i had hoped for (ask alan, and he'll tell you how slow going it is for me). what i need is the magic word from you that makes it all make sense.

seriously though, how quick or long did it take for you to get it. how was the process for you? who inspired you to write in meter? and any advice for the novice?

jason

Jason, Howard Nemerov said once, said probably a lot more than once, "There are only two things you need to know about poetry: It goes duh dum duh dum duh dum duh dum duh dum, and it shouldn't sound like that." (At least, I think he said "about poetry." Maybe he said "about meter." And of course, there are those who would reduce the proposition to only the second statement, merely that it shouldn't sound like that.) Either way, there's truth in his joking around. It's not too hard to get it to go duh dum duh dum, etc., but it has to sound, as a general rule, completely natural, not just in its diction and syntax but also such that its words fall naturally and easily into the rhythm, not banged in with a hammer and prybar.

Very likely you already know all that, beyond which I suppose it's just a matter of reading and practice. But I should add, there's more to poetry than the meter, more even to metrical poetry than the meter. To paraphrase John Hollander, you get no points for getting the meter right, but you do lose points for getting it wrong.

Greg

[Greg Williamson]

Originally posted by Curtis Gale Weeks:
Greg,

I must admit, I've never read "Double Exposure," but the discussion here and reviews I've found on the Web certainly provoke my interest. Are any of the sample pages at Amazon.com excerpts of "Double Exposure?" (I've read one which seems to interlock in the fashion described by the reviews I've read; but, good/great metrical lines often "interlock.") Certainly, a treasure hunt at my local B & N will be more successful in turning up the method you've used...

It's a fascinating approach, from what I've read. (I've attempted something similar recently.) Form of whatever kind ought to match content--at least, this is the way I approach my own writing. Because you use varied forms, I wonder how you approach the selection of form for various endeavors. Your poem "Origami," for instance, seems to fold meter. Do you imagine the subject of the poem, consider its actual physical or its metaphysical shape, and shape the poem from the thing you have seen?--Certainly, "Double Exposure" would be a good example of this.

Also, I suppose: do you always approach your poetry in this manner--if you do this, that is--or do some poems shape themselves as you write? (I.e., do you discover better form which differs from your initial approach after/if the writing process begins to stall?)


--Thanks for taking the time to appear on Eratosphere, by the way!--

Curtis.

Hi Curtis, thanks for the welcome. The questions that you ask I think about all the time, and I agree completely. Harold Bloom said of Tennyson what could be said of all good poets, "Style is a sensibility." Style and theme, form and content, are, or should be, flip sides of the same coin. For example, Yeats' "Adam's Curse," in heroic couplets, might make narrative sense if he wrote it in a William Carlos Williamsesque free verse, but it wouldn't make aesthetic sense. And Williams' "Pastoral," say, might make narrative sense in couplets, but it wouldn't make aesthetic sense, wouldn't make metaphoric sense. But it all depends on the song, and the singer. Sometimes you need the whole orchestra. Sometimes just the banjo will do.

So, yeah, I try to imagine what something should sound like, look like, be responsible to historically, all the things you mention. But in spite my attempts to anticipate these, much of the time, as your question implies, the poems have to figure out for themselves what they are, and some of them are dumber about that than others.

Greg

[Tim Murphy]

One of the Double Exposures is quoted in Sullivan's essay on Williamson over at Discerning Eye. Greg, how about posting another one here? The typography is damn difficult (impossible) to duplicate on these screens. And really, folks, all twenty six have to be read and contemplated as a single sequence of seventy eight poems. So buy the book, and have your hometown library get it too.

[Greg Williamson]

Originally posted by Tim Murphy:
One of the Double Exposures is quoted in Sullivan's essay on Williamson over at Discerning Eye. Greg, how about posting another one here? The typography is damn difficult (impossible) to duplicate on these screens. And really, folks, all twenty six have to be read and contemplated as a single sequence of seventy eight poems. So buy the book, and have your hometown library get it too.

You're right about the difficulty of reproducing one, Tim, and I'm reluctant to try. If you really think I should, I could give it a shot, but I fear between my ham-fisted typing and this here perputer screen I'd just end up with alphabet soup.

Greg

[jasonhuff]

well, i do know the whole theory behind meter and how it's supposed to work, it's the actual practice that i find tough. some words seemed to be stressed or unstressed simply because of where they fall. of course, my prof really doesn't do the whole secondary and tertiary stresses. he scans just stress unstress, so it's the way i try. i ask a lot of questions about how to scan lines. it's slowly starting to make sense. but then it's not so much knowing how it works, but understanding it when i see it.

here's a good example. i'm working on memorizing poems (it's so nice to be able to recite one from memory). i've started with my favorites, and right now i'm working on bishop's 'one art' but in the first line, i'm having trouble with the meter.
the art of losing isn't hard to master
seems to me it should be perfect iambic pentameter. but i wouldn't have thought that you would put any stress on is, except for the fact that it falls in a stress position. it's these things i'm having trouble getting. why do some words get promoted to stressed syllables because of where they fall and some get demoted because of where they fall.

the other thing i don't understand are acceptable substitutions. but i'll work on that after i get the strict meter down.

jason