[G. M. Palmer]

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

[Maryann Corbett]

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?

[G. M. Palmer]

Abso-friggin-lutely I want an argument!

I take no responsibilaty 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

[Chris Childers]

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'.)

[Janet Kenny]

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

[G. M. Palmer]

"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

[Janet Kenny]

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

[grasshopper]

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

[G. M. Palmer]

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

[Marcia Karp]

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

Details, please.

Marcia