ModPo 2013 #61 Initiative and Imagination Required: On Mac Low's Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair"

Sorry, couldn't help it. There is a feather likeness in this chair.

The link to Jackson Mac Low's poem, "Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of The Justice Chair" is here.

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This was another happy (as in happenstance) coincidence! Reading about Mac Low's highly structured process was very interesting. It's amazing how a program like Diastex5 and some "unintentional" tweaking of Mac Low and the source text by Stein could produce lines like:

Summer light bears a likeness to justice.
Then the light is supposing attention.
That section has a resemblance to light.
Is it a likeness of the justice chair?

I mean, that's just brilliant! And that comment by Mac Low in the video discussion. "Did I?" he asks. It's actually the right question because ultimately what he's saying is the poem is not really his: it's his and Stein's and Diastex5's and yours (meaning the reader's).

What was the experience like: not reading for meaning? Sound is beautiful as it is...but one can't escape from meaning. It is the character of language. So, I agree that while the results are unintentional they are imbued with meaning. However, the meaning is not arrived at pre-packaged. It requires initiative and imagination from the reader.

The line that joins a feather to likeness to justice to chair is not a straight line. This new string coming from the strange original string of Stein shifts our focus. It is an immersion in language, calling for associations that can only stem from the imagination. Creativity, here, is not the author's creativity anymore but the shared creativity of source text, manipulator of text and reader of text. There is no story to be told except the story that emerges from all sides.

Here's to the shining quality of you and I detained on this page! 

ModPo 2013 #28 Long Live the King: On Stein's "If I Told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso"

Gertrude Stein

IF I TOLD HIM:
A COMPLETED PORTRAIT OF PICASSO

If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.
Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it.
If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him.
Now.
Not now.
And now.
Now.
Exactly as as kings.
Feeling full for it.
Exactitude as kings.
So to beseech you as full as for it.
Exactly or as kings.
Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also.
Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly in resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because.
Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all.
Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.
I judge judge.
As a resemblance to him.
Who comes first. Napoleon the first.
Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet.
Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.
Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first.
Presently.
Exactly do they do.
First exactly.
Exactly do they do too.
First exactly.
And first exactly.
Exactly do they do.
And first exactly and exactly.
And do they do.
At first exactly and First exactly and do they do.
The first exactly.
And do they do.
The first exactly.
At first exactly.
First as exactly.
At first as exactly.
Presently.
As presently.
As as presently.
He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he.
Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.
As presently.
As exactitude.
As trains.
Has trains.
Has trains.
As trains.
As trains.
Presently.
Proportions.
Presently.
As proportions as presently.
Father and farther.
Was the king or room.
Farther and whether.
Was there was there was there what was there was there what was there was there there was there.
Whether and in there.
As even say so.
One.
I land.Two.
I land.
Three.
The land.
Three.
The land.
Three.
The land.
Two.
I land.
Two.
I land.
One.
I land.
Two.
I land.
As a so.
They cannot.
A note.
They cannot.
A float.
They cannot.
They dote.
They cannot.
They as denote.
Miracles play.
Play fairly.
Play fairly well.
A well.
As well.
As or as presently.
Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.
------------------------------------------

This was an amazing piece of work! I especially liked the dance interpretation of the poem. It makes it come out funnier (truer to the tone, I think). Stein was a truly amazing woman, especially when she audaciously tries to out-Picasso Picasso himself!

I like the repetition of the words and how it makes me think about the political implications of the words: Napoleon, Napoleon the first, he, he, he, exactitude, exactly, resemblance, king, queen. And then that final punch: "History teaches." I immediately finish the sentence with "History teaches us nothing." I first heard that in Sting's song entitled "History Will Teach Us Nothing" (see how popular culture finished that sentence for me!) long before I researched the term and found out that it is a quote by Hegel, an eighteenth century philosopher. Immediately left alone with just my own thoughts after reading the poem, I also thought of Coldplay's Viva La Vida, also on kings, power and the constant imbalance of power.

The endless references that flow from Stein's poem was a revelation to me. It held a mirror up to me. Once I got past the absurdity of the repetitions and the seemingly nonsensical order of words...I am confronted with my own thoughts of art, of power, of kings and their fragile hold on power. What are all these recitations for? We recite the names, we recite the movements. But to what purpose? Are we not cruel to those who were once celebrated? Do we not lift up from obscurity some works and put them on pedestals? Who decided that? Aren't those decisions easy to overturn depending on who is in power?

I loved how Stein equated poetry to the power of the Cubist movement in painting. Words are powerful. Words are as powerful as images. Both are part of our human language. Both are signifiers and the signified. If one really dwells in each repetition, one will see the multiple facets of a single word. Words arranged in defamiliarized syntactical order are as powerful as the subversion of the traditional realist image in the world of painting. I also liked how, in the video discussion, there was the question of whether poetry was a more powerful medium than painting. A false binary, I suppose. When we highlight the foreground, we forget that there is a background. When we highlight the background, we forget that there is a foreground. That is the multiplicity and wholeness of language. When we say "Long live the king!" we also mean to say "The old king is dead." And then there is the endless cycle of kings.

Wow.

ModPo 2013 #27 Accidents, Massacres, Ruins: On Stein's "Let Us Describe." and Narrative

Maguindanao massacre. From desura.com. 

Gertrude Stein. From A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson.

LET US DESCRIBE.

     Let us describe how they went. It was a very windy night and the road although in excellent condition and extremely well graded has many turnings and although the curves are not sharp the rise is considerable. It was a very windy night and some of the larger vehicles found it more prudent not to venture. In consequence some of those who had planned to go were unable to do so. Many others did go and there was a sacrifice, of what shall we, a sheep, a hen, a cock, a village, a ruin, and all that and then that having been blessed let us bless it.

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I did not get this poem at first. It was only after the ModPo video discussion that I truly appreciated the poem. This is an illustration of Stein's statement on narrative. Narrative is a fiction. In life, we can be circling endlessly over a ruin. 

When I think about this in context of the Maguindanao massacre that happended in November of 2009, I get chills. There was a convoy. Some did not continue with the convoy, delayed by something trivial, perhaps a piece of equipment that got left behind. Some people became part of the convoy also by accident, trying to take a shortcut. The difference, of course, was this was a massacre, not a mere accident. I find that I cannot make sense of it. If I were to write about it I would linger in the convoy, in the dread, in the flimsy hope that women and children would not be harmed. It seemed like a certainty. But it was not. At some point, the people in the convoy must have looked around, registering some kind of disorientation and terror. There are no words for those moments. It was a sacrifice. It was a ruin. At that point, there would be no beginning, middle or end. I can only think, "then having been blessed let us bless it." There certainly was no thought of blessing for all those in that scene of horror. The blessing was afterwards, in the grief, among those who were trying to make sense of it. 

Narrative is a structure we cling to so that we can make sense of things. "Once upon a time..." Isn't that the classic introduction to our way of hearing stories? Stein challenges this notion especially in context of life itself. Life is messy and full of contradictions. It is not really a straight line with all loose ends tied in the end. I don't think Stein meant to advocate chaos. I think she only meant to have readers recognize that narrative is a fiction. We can appreciate it but it isn't necessarily the only way to communicate what happened. The Maguindanao massacre has been written about so many times: in news reports, in commentaries. But I circle around it, not finding any sense, grieving still. One can make a beginning, a middle and an end for it. But that is the thing: we find ways to fence it in. As human beings, we find ways to make sense of things. We create stories. But we must remember that these are stories. We tell them to ourselves to comfort ourselves. We must remember who is telling the story, who the story is about and how it is wrapped in structure. 

ModPo 2013 #26: Bread and Artifacts: On Stein's Statements on Narrative, Nouns, Repeating and Composition

Stein on narrative.
Stein on nouns.
Stein on repeating.

Stein on composition:

From "Composition as Explanation"

I found it very enjoyable to read Stein's statements on components of language stated above, particularly on composition. Her statement of composition was a poem in itself. I see her mind working to push against the boundaries of language. Language is the frame, for sure, but I see her effort at working with the raw materials and creating something new out of what is "given."

I'm sharing a couple of poems below about bread. I didn't realize that I wrote about bread twice already. It has to do with nouns and repetitions and I see how Stein's statements are things that I've turned over in my head.

Bread

My son asks me if we can visit a bakery
so we can see how bread is made.
"There are other kinds of bread, Mama, right?"
I assure him that there are. There are deliciously
heavy breads like brioche, baked with lots of
eggs and butter. There are grainy breads and
there are breads that are flat for a lack of yeast.
And I remember dismantling the word "bread."
I was on the way to an aunt's home, not much
older than my own son. I took apart the word,
saying it over and over again, marveling at how
it only stood for the thing that I ate, that left
crumbs on the plate. How could this be separate
and yet one with the thing of sustenance?
And who chose that it start with a "b" and end
with a "d?" And why does the "r" sound and feel
like the texture of the bread? At some point I felt
I did not understand the word.
And then time intervened.

So, today, for a few moments, I glimpsed
once again, how the words are the promises and
the things themselves, how the words are the story,
and the remembrance, and the life itself.

(August 2, 2013)

Signifying Bread

My puzzles are different:
consisting of images
and words.

Words have always
puzzled me:
the frame of anything real,
symbols one after the
other,
signifying bread.

The way I say bread,
the way I remember a poem
that talks about a woman
dismantling bread
in her hands,
the expelling of breath
when one says the word
bread.

The bread of life,
the secret life of
bread,
the meaning of bread
or its meaningless-
ness.

The taste of bread
which is very different
for each person
in this world,
the different kinds
of bread

and how bread is not
what rice is
to me.

I remember how I
broke down the word,
how it became alien
to me.

I must have been seven,
on the way to someone's house.
As we turned the corner,
I realized how bread
was a word
and not the bread
itself
but how the bread
itself would not
exist
without the word.

And the word
was made
flesh
and the flesh
was signified
by bread.

(Jan. 5, 2010)

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Stein has helped me see these puzzles in context of her search for something new within the conventions that she was born into. We were born into words, into narrative, into language. It is one thing to learn and enjoy from the rich history of language (the adolescence that she spoke of in her statement on narrative) and it is another to mature and to question the assumptions that are made about language. It is another thing to "reverse engineer" from an understanding of conventions: nouns, narrative, repeating (to expose and defamiliarize) and composition.

To end, I want to go back to composition. Composition is the writer's mark and the artifact that the reader interacts with. Composition is audacity. It is the living and the life, of the time within, the time of the composition, the time when the composition was composed. I like this way of seeing language as the materials for art.

ModPo 2013 #25: Astonishing Wounds: On Steins' "Water Raining." and "Malachite."

Gertrude Stein. From Tender Buttons.

Meadow in Giverny by Monet from wikipaintings.org.

WATER RAINING. 

Water astonishing and difficult altogether makes a meadow and a stroke. 

Image of malachite from skywalker.cochise.edu.

MALACHITE.
The sudden spoon is the same in no size. The sudden spoon is the wound in the decision.

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"Water Raining" was more enjoyable for me. "Astonishing" associated with water was really powerful. I liked the video discussion which brought about the association of the poem with painting, impressionist painting in particular. Language is astonishing, beautiful and can be, at the same time, difficult. It composes both the meadow and the strokes, each element of the meadow. The word "stroke" here could mean both the brush stroke and the stroke of a pen. I love how that all go together in just one line. "Water raining" implies that water is not static, water is in motion in the poem and each drop composes the stream that arises from the raining. In an impressionist painting, the painter leaves the brush stroke recognizable (ordinary, a dot or a smudge) but when taken in context of the whole, the painting astonishes. Very similar to what Stein has done: leaving the ordinary word, "water" on the page, making the reader see it in astonishment as something new due to the associations she imbues it with. 

Malachite was a little bit more difficult. After seeing pictures of how malachite actually looks, it's not difficult to associate it with the rounded spoon. In the video discussion, it helped that "sudden" was associated with a certain kind of seeing. When you see something suddenly, it is just an impression, it can become unfamiliar. The spoon, here, is ordinary but sudden, and therefore seen in a new light. I would never have associated "the wound" and the "decision" to choices one makes in language...rendering something as particular is creating a wound in the general, the universal. So, I'm glad I that I got that benefit from the video discussion. 

Taken together, I see Tender Buttons as astonishing wounds. It takes ordinary objects and puts them together in unfamiliar, astonishing ways. And each defamiliariziation is a wound to me, as a reader. Not necessarily in a bad light. It forces me away from what I am used to doing. It forces me to confront language, to find references and associations that challenge me (and alienates me, sometimes). These "wounds" need to be tended to so that I, as a reader, can find think poem whole again. 

Was it worth the effort? These were only two lines but it took tremendous effort. I am, of course, the richer. I take back with me water, astonishment, meadows broken down into strokes and reassembled as a meadow, green stone in the shape of stacked spoons and the wound between the two. I collaborative discussion really helps in taking up Stein's poems because they are rooted in breaking down language. Language is a communal property, it takes many points of view and many associations to really thresh out all the nuances. What would be interesting is to take multicultural perspectives as well. How would these poems stand in Africa, Asia where water and spoons have different contexts? That would be exciting. 

ModPo 2013 #24 The Color of Hurt: On Stein's "A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass"

Image from www.lostateminor.com.

Gertrude Stein from Tender Buttons

A CARAFE, THAT IS A BLIND GLASS.

A kind in glass and a cousin, a spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing. All this and not ordinary, not unordered in not resembling. The difference is spreading.

--------------------------

I liked this poem. While in the essay by Perloff she mentions that the carafe is blind because of its contents (perhaps sherry or wine, making the glass opaque), I saw something different. For me the carafe is blind in the sense that a horse has blinders. A carafe is single-minded. It is meant for pouring its content into a glass. It was made for decanting. 

"Hurt color" intrigued me. How could a color be hurt? In Perloff's essay she refers to the color of hurt, the color of blood: red. I think that makes sense. For me the "arrangement in a system of pointing" is referring to its blindness, its single purpose, a pointing towards pouring. In the "ordinary" carafe, the speaker sees the "not ordinary" and there are two negatives to throw off the reader to reflect on the more direct "order in differing."There is an order to differing. And here, I get a clue that the carafe has indeed performed outside of its blindness: the difference is spreading... like wine or sherry spilled on a white mantle, the carafe has not poured, it has spread its content. 

In a sense this is a meta-poem because it talks about form, function, content---the same structures of language. In Filipino, translation is called pagsasalin (in English, this word is pouring or the act of pouring). It refers to the liquid state of language. It doesn't matter what holds it up, the content will still be the same. In Stein's poem the form is rigid, it is single-minded especially when the form serves a certain purpose. However, the content can be set free. It need not stay within its rigid form. And, at the end of the poem, this freedom of content is spreading (like a virus) and going beyond its form. It is a commentary on language. Form serves a purpose but form can also restrict. So, don't adapt to the form. Spread out. Very modernist indeed. 

I like the quote from Wittgenstein in Perloff's essay: "that a poem, even though it is composed in the language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving information."I like the idea of language as game. There are different rules, depending on the game you are playing. The game of poetry is probably one of the most freeing kinds of language games. It is constantly being defined and redefined. And yet, over the centuries, it is a cipher for the kinds of thinking being done in its time. It is story when it needs to be story. It is rebellion when it needs to be rebellion. 

Inspired by this poem, I created something new below, the color of hurt:

First World Stain

"The difference is/ spreading" - Gertrude Stein, "A Carafe, That is a Blind Glass"

Pass me the carafe. The blind, hurt carafe.

Walang carafe dito. Tubig lang. Water.

Tubig lang sa bote. 

White wine bottle, Paul Masson, label peeled off

long ago. No spirits here. Only water, pure unbruised

water with lip waiting to serve. No, di water is from

di gripo. Better drink di coke. Coke is okay

than di water. Buksan mo. Bilisan mo. Maraming nakapila.

The arrangement of the order. I am nosebleed of the 

English. Does not resemble. And now the coke is

spreading. Punasan. Bilis. 

Hmmm. I don't know how I would translate this. For tonight, I won't even try. 

ModPo 2013 #23 Familiarity and Alienation: On Stein's "A Long Dress"

Dress pattern image from www.prudentbaby.com.

Gertrude Stein's "A Long Dress" from Tender Buttons

A LONG DRESS.

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current.

What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it. 

-----------------------------------
I was given fair warning in the introduction to week 4 (Chapter 2.3). Gertrude Stein is difficult. Yes, she is.

I see that there is a first literal reading: the making of a dress, the industry of making a dress, the constraints of making a dress. Around the industry of making a dress is this thing called fashion that has something to do with what is current, with colors that are meant for certain seasons and collections or lines designed for what is fashionable. The line that "distinguishes" it (presumably the long dress) could mean the fashion line (or the collection) or perhaps it's the line in the pattern of the dress.

Then, there is a second layer of meaning, a "reference," that calls on the meta-poetic or consciousness of the poem as the process of writing poetry or making meaning itself. The "line" in the poem now refers to the long line of tradition. "Current" now has something to do with what is modern, what is "new" versus what is traditional or from the "long line" of tradition. Now the manufacture of dress now refers to the manufacture of literature, of poetry, to the manufacture of meaning. If I didn't watch the video discussion, I wouldn't have made the connection at all. Maybe a hint to all this would have been the repetition of "lines" at the end of the poem, "A line distinguishes it. A/ line just distinguishes it."

There are other unexplained lines in the poem that are intruiging/ confusing like the absence of question marks, the reference to the wind which I don't associate with the a long dress. There is the reference to a dark place that is not a dark place. How is this related to the long dress? And why should a white and a red be a black? How is a yellow and green a blue? How is pink scarlet? And how does this "bow" have every color? Is she saying that a history, a tradition makes it possible for "dark places" to disappear? Are the first set of colors referring to skin color? What about the second set of colors? Everyone knows that yellow and blue make green so why is she inverting it? And what about pink being scarlet? Is pink referring to nakedness and scarlet referring to the scarlet letter? Bow definitely refers to rainbow. But at this point, what does it have to do with anything? Is it the bow at the waist? The ultimate constraint? I really have no idea.

I wanted to enjoy the poem, I really did. But the thing is...it's too wide open. Maybe that was her point? She used familiar words and familiar constructions but did it in such a way that the reader would not really recognize them after all? What is the difference between art and random words strung together? I know that the construction of the poem was effortful. But what if the result is too alienating? Dickinson's poems, while adhering to creating puzzles out of language, were familiar enough to start with so that I could be engaged as a reader. For example, gathering Paradise in one's narrow hands is not direct nor prosaic but, at the same time, it is pointing to something familiar enough so that the reader has a clue. Maybe there might be multiple interpretations but we are given Paradise contrasted with narrow hands and there is something that can definitely be made out of that.

So, for now, I'll not make any conclusions yet. I'll just keep going through Stein for the week and see what happens.

Note: I am currently taking a course on Coursera.org called Modern and Contemporary American Poetry taught by Al Filreis of the University of Pennsylvania. I will be posting my thoughts on the course discussions here.