Logophilia

Posted on November 17, 2012 by

‘The crown of literature is poetry. It is its end and aim. It is the sublimest activity of the human mind. It is the achievement of beauty and delicacy.’ ~W. Somerset Maugham

What powers does the poet wield to create this sublimity? To infuse poetry with nuanced meaning and gorgeous vistas? One of the fiercest must surely be language itself. Words, in all their grand, melodic, rending, shaping, and intensifying character entwining to form entire worlds on a page, allow poets to achieve feats of transportation and transformation.

Let’s take an expedition into the wilds of language. We’ll roam through the thickets of texture, the landscapes of sound, and oceans of meaning they embody. It may seem basic but the diction we employ as poets has enormous power. It reveals an aesthetic sensibility, can induce laughter, sharpen tone, create characterization, refine nuance, sing with rhyme, seduce with beauty, soothe with rhythm, introduce the reader to new ideas, help their visualization, entice with foreign words, or even merrily confound them with nonsense. Looking through the lens of virtuosic diction, neologisms, nonsense words, colloquialisms, foreign languages, and specialized diction I’ll illuminate some of the ways poets accomplish their artistic aims.

While what constitutes virtuosity in poetry is rightly contested, somewhat a matter of aesthetic taste, one sonnet widely recognized for its remarkable diction is Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias. In this poem that speaks of the ephemerality of political power he creates texture, irony, and a sense of the passage of time through imaginative and specific word choices.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

Diction may also be enhanced though the creation of new words. As many of you know, Shakespeare regularly coined neologisms. He lived through a golden era of culture when the English language was becoming more expressive and mutable. Some marvelous words we owe to Shakespeare’s writing include: auspicious, castigate, courtship, disheartened, fitful, gnarled, invulnerable, lonely, multitudinous, obscene, pious, radiance, and sanctimonious to credit just a few. His contribution to the English language could be favorably compared to Italian’s historic debt of gratitude to Dante Alighieri.

For fun with neologisms we can turn to comedian Rich Hall who calls them Sniglets, words that should exist but don’t. Cinemuck: The sticky substance on the floor of a movie theater. Lactomangulation: Manhandling the ‘open here’ spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the ‘illegal side’. Here are a couple of my own that I use at home now that I’ve adopted two puppies from a shelter. Dogzilla: When a normal, sweet puppy transmogrifies into a rampaging monster embarking on a reign of terror (really just a good bit of fun and mischief involving shoes). Scamperskritch: Various hops, contortions, turnabouts, and frantic scratching accomplished by a puppy when she learns why she shouldn’t stand on an ant hill.

Not all made up words make it into the lexicon, nor are they intended to and this is where nonsense words come into play. Dr. Seuss and Lewis Carroll were famous for making up words, marvelously strange ones at that. Some of the Dr’s: wocket, squitsch, midwinter jicker, zlock, jertain, whisper-ma-phone, diffendoofer, and bippo-no-bungus. Carroll’s Jabberwocky (appearing in Alice in Wonderland) contains some great phrases: slithy toves, gyre and gimble, vorpal blade, and snicker-snack. Reading Jabberwocky causes Alice to exclaim: “’It seems very pretty’ she said when she had finished it, ‘but it’s rather hard to understand!’ (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) ‘Sometimes it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are!’”

When unique words or changes in pronunciation make it into the collective conversation of a region they can be considered colloquialisms. While we frequently associate them with the pages of novels they do appear in poetry. Colloquialisms can strengthen characterization and are used to excellent effect in narrative or persona poems.

One poet that used the contrast of more formal language and colloquial speech well was Langston Hughes. His poem The Weary Blues weaves the two seamlessly as the singer intones:

‘Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’,
And put ma troubles on the shelf.’
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more -

One of my favorite parts of writing is creating a mini-lexicon for each poem. For me, specificity in language is a source of joy. A reader asked me after reading Hinba’s Imaginative Invention where I find my words to which I replied: ‘Sometimes I find them lonely and neglected in the far reaches of my inner landscape, sometimes they fly by in jet planes demanding attention, and other times I have to mount an expedition to the Himalayas but what a glorious adventure!’ In less poetic terms some tools I use include brainstorming, the Oxford English Dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary, foreign language dictionaries and phrase books, The Word Menu, a Reverse Dictionary, Thesaurus, Lexicons, conversations, search engines, and reading research articles, art books, poetry, and novels. Just as strangers are friends you haven’t met yet, new to you words may soon become favored artistic tools opening up new possibilities of expression.

To illustrate the use of foreign language and specialized terms within a discipline I’ll use one of my own pieces as an example. Rage to Master was written for Maria Anna Mozart, Wolfgang’s older sister. She was also a child prodigy and paraded through and admired throughout the high society and courts of 18th century Europe. She too dreamed of composing but was thwarted by her father’s refusal to teach her predicated on the prevailing thought that women were incapable of understanding the complexity of composition. Here I use Viennese German and Italian musical terms to craft diction, connecting the poem to the person it is intended to honor. These were her intimate languages.

The definitions of the Viennese German: si ohgfrettn (to struggle); freiheit (liberty); gusta (appetite for something); selbstverstümmelung (self-mutilation). The musical terminology: bravura (a musical passage requiring technical skill and masterful agility); maestoso (play in a majestic fashion); vivace (lively); accelerando (gradually accelerating tempo); con fuoco (with fire); ma non troppo (but not too much); sforzando (play a note with marked and sudden emphasis, then immediately soft); diminuendo (becoming softer); dolce (sweet, gentle); maestro (title of extreme respect given to a master musician).

Rage to Master

Virtuosic musical obsession
aesthetic grace, bravura elegance
harpsichord, voice, and violin
maestoso harmony of liberty

Fall from the vertiginous heights
composition immured within society’s
circumfluent atmosphere of misogyny

Sophistical arguments internalize, si ohgfrettn,
deference becomes a form of self-mutilation
impeding precocious melodies
denying life giving freiheit

Vivace swirls of cascading notes
accelerando of primary drives, gusta,
drowning in the noise of a distorted reflection

Convex mirrors cede self-possession
to the obliterating reign of man
inspired scores, con fuoco, reduce to ash

Abandoning creation ma non troppo
deaf to internal pleas, grief consumes
assents to spiritual suicide

Sforzando genius
selbstverstümmelung prodigy
diminuendo dolce maestro
pyrotechnics detonate internally

Sometimes a foreign language is useful in poetry because there is no English equivalent to the word. Some highlights include Layogenic (Tagalog): Remember in Clueless when Cher describes Amber as ‘a full on Monet…from far away, it’s OK, but up close it’s a big old mess’? That’s exactly what this word means. Rhwe (Tsonga): College kids, relax. There’s actually a word for ‘to sleep on the floor without a mat, while drunk and naked.’ Zeg (Georgian): It means ‘ the day after tomorrow’. Seriously, why don’t we have a word for that in English? Cafune (Brazilian Portuguese): Leave it to the Brazilians to come up with a word for ‘tenderly running your fingers through your lover’s hair’. Yuputka (Ulwa): A word made for walking in the woods at night. It’s the phantom sensation of something crawling on your skin. Gumusservi (Turkish): Meteorologists can be poets in Turkey with words like this at their disposal. It means moonlight shining on water.

All this to say I encourage you to be creative, curious, mindful, willing to use your tools, and courageous when writing or encountering poetry. There are about a quarter of a million distinct words in the English language, giving you lots of opportunities to learn and remember the observation of W.H. Auden:

‘A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.’

Notes: This post is a modified version of prompts I wrote for dVerse Poets Pub.

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Synaesthesia and Apophenia in Art and Poetics

Posted on August 3, 2011 by

Bear with me as I make a point through poetry. If you want to skip down to the nonfiction bit you’ll still get a lot from the post without the poem. However, I’m using poetic language to make a point only poetics can make.

Endophytic Incursions

Synchronicity ensconced reveals nugatory variables
apophenia of writer invariant: subversive hallucinatory crippled vessels
their mesostic corrugated tentacles of substantive poetic egests
may mask irreplaceable profundities

pinned in unpersecuted opposition they create borderline synaesthesia
presenting artists as warped furled fecund hosts
suffering endophytic incursions
jostled oubliettes of bulbous traipsing ladders connecting

twining implosions arch upon the oeuvre and ignite nesting charges
of gravitas and blather a mulled kinship born perniciously or merely neurologically
they may illuminate or obscure, form a gestalt or dissociate
matters of quiddity hoisted upon ontological backtracking
accelerating dilatory insights

atomic breakdowns, each quark mensurated
in reductionist monochromatic gatherings
stultify creative impulses
dense joyous words weighted with luscious delectable gustation
visual fields dripping with chords of music inviting
xenologic etiquette of intertwining nebulae
lilting effluvia

Here’s where I was going with this and remember that part of using experimental forms is not to laser meaning from my brain to yours. It is to guide the reader on a journey of exploration where the filters, experiences, and knowledge of the reader create a richer experience than I could ever provide alone. That said I was spiraling into the parallels between apophenia (seeing connections in places they don’t exist some argue this as pathology and others see it as other side of the coin bearing creativity) and synaesthesia (a multisensory experience, true synaesthetes experience color when they look at a word or smell vanilla when they hear a specific sound, things like that).

Artists have long imitated synaesthetes or been the genuine article. This can be viewed as pathology or advantageous to creating profound works of art. Kandinsky saw colors when he heard music. I, like Georgia O’Keefe, am not a synaesthete but am using it artistically as an intellectual idea. Many artists have tried to induce synaesthesia in their viewers or readers. I used the concept of writer invariant because I think of it as an artist’s fingerprint. Imagine the effects if the fingerprint is also colored or when viewed plays music, the gestalt would be marvelous.

I posit artists as ‘warped furled fecund hosts suffering endophytic incursions’ as a metaphor. The invasion of a person by foreign but largely benign organisms (really endophytes are found in plants) is akin to this extrasensory perception that can be neurological or induced by another. The maze of resulting synaptic connections provides a whole new way of seeing.

These afflictions or creative gifts can touch upon and unleash other ‘explosive’ charges within the life’s work of an artist. However, they can also be meaningless blather. Some synaesthetes can’t see outside their viewpoint to communicate this to others, severe cases of apophenia would lead to paranoia or utter confusion. I am both discussing and trying to walk this fine line in the poem. As I discuss in the end of verse three this type of multisensory experience through art can hasten slow to come insights, provide epiphanies.

In the final verse I revisit one of my favorite themes: the joy in the gestalt verses the dearth of reductionism. Ultimately it is the creative impulse, the willingness to engage the unknown that gives us the gifts of words capable of endowing gustatory sensations, visual input that sings with choruses. It is an exercise in xenology (the study of alien life) where galaxies collide, intermingle, and leave behind glorious emanations whether we can see them or not (effluvia is invisible) or mistake them for trash (the second meaning of effluvia). For me, the language of poetry allows the discernment and creating of these opportunities in a way that the logical, sequential march of everyday language does not. Poetics are fundamentally intertwined with apophenia and synaesthesia. Metaphors link seemingly unconnected things while visions, sounds, and smells are invoked through the process of reading.

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‘Pataphysics, Conceptual Art, Bounded Forms and Efficacy

Posted on July 12, 2011 by

In the Reciprocity of Vulnerability in Art I posited a somewhat Romantic view of the role of the artist, writer, photographer, actor, etc. From this perspective the artist is seen as an emotional being expressing themselves to a receptive audience. However, there are those who believe this view of the artist is long outdated and therefore call for new frameworks. Touted post-modern frameworks include the audience as creator or co-creators, the artist as a worker bee who merely compiles data for consumption, the artist as unnecessary (artificial intelligence creating art), or the artist as provocateur. To provide a counterpoint to the Romantic ideal I’d like to draw attention to some of the concerns of contemporary artists and the post-modern viewpoint.

Conceptual art in its myriad permutations has been with us for over a century. An early conceptual artist that confounded the art world was Marcel Duchamp. His ‘ready-mades’, often what he called found art, caused many viewers to question the role of the artist in the creation of work. His infamous “Fountain”, a urinal placed in the gallery space was refused entry into an open entry show! Duchamp was part of the Dadaists rooted in ‘Pataphysics, “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments.” This type of mental gymnastics, combined with a wry sense of humor, brings to mind the warning that post-modern art may be post-audience art. In bringing a urinal into the gallery space, something that he considered a neutral stimulus, he was neither attracted to nor repulsed by it, Duchamp challenged the idea of artist as creator (or simply thumbed his nose at the art world).

What makes a work of artistic expression significant? Does the artist need to throw their heart and soul into a piece? As argued in Against Expression do artists simply need to come up with a concept? Poets today, highlighted in Unoriginal Genius, are experimenting with unoriginal works, where the trick lies in the appropriation, distribution, editing, cutting, or selection process instead of the creation of original content. The argument runs along the lines of what is one to do when inundated and saturated by connective technology like the internet. In response many contemporary poets are creating collages, writing in binary code, cutting and pasting, or even simply compiling citations. Personally, I am resistant to these types of experimental poetry but understand that these poets are pushing fundamental boundaries, a practice vital to the invigoration of poetry as a whole.

The problem with conceptual art is it brings up a sticky topic we’d largely rather ignore, mainly what is art? In addition, what’s the role of the artist? And importantly, what makes art effective? The effectiveness issue I’ll be taking up in a later post. For now, here’s a personal take on experimental poetry.

As a nonrepresentational painter I’ve often wanted to see if nonrepresentational poetry is possible. Inspired by experimental poetry I viewed last week which was only mildly intellectually stimulating (the concepts were not phenomenally gripping and the execution of some of the work, which simply sampled other text or in the worst case scenario was written in binary code 1010 00001 100001 1101, etc. left me wanting something more luscious and accessible). In my painting pieces work because they don’t break all the rules at once. Also, while they may not represent things or people they are not meaningless blather either. They are an attempt to communicate through a new language, one with logic, rules, purpose, but unfamiliar and still ripe with exotic possibilities.

They are paintings which speak of things that overused concepts or simple relationships obfuscate and therefore require new forms. Beauty still shows up, the ecology of the work provides structure, and meaning paradoxically is still conveyed. In investigating nonrepresentational poetry I found I still wanted to retain elements of beauty, emphasize sounds, structure the relationship of words to one another while confusing a bit the concept of phrases, and give an overall impression of meaning that could be experienced but was too complex to summarize. One of the pieces I wrote:

Sand Swept Vaults Asunder

Vacuous metallic corpuscles of atrophied carnival houses with moth flitted undercarriages toppled by dew drops verdant encounters alight on ships autocratic thunder while jacks tear sewn clamped muscles tethered pulleys follow sand swept vaults asunder lightening dives aquatic glow leading horses until epiphanies along lichen paths to feathered bodices wrapped in crocus erudite ladling wisdom’s meandering caricatures stumble crested nations trailing caches and eel holes while snow leopards prowl vicarious passages literature kneels for car exhaust fouled tresses veil occidental communication trips ether grading terrible morasses counting infinite loops of harbors creating

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The Reciprocity of Vulnerability in Art

Posted on June 24, 2011 by

In an interview released on the Criterion Collection of The Double Life of Veronique the
Writer/Director Krzysztof Kieslowski states, “ an actor comes along, in this
case Irene, and gives everything they’ve got…The trouble is that an actor wants
to protect his own experiences, his own fears, his own pain, and his own joy.
People want to protect all of this. But what we’ve lived through, what we’ve
touched, what has hurt us, is the only material we can draw on.” He goes on to
say that without this very personal contribution by the actor the part will
never come alive, it will never be original. The inner self, through this
courageous revelation will expose the actor’s weakness. This is a terrifying
proposition for actors and for any artists. The vulnerability required to
create art is acute, intense, and requires brutal honesty:

Protostellar Phase

We were standing in the
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Here are painters who want to communicate
They show up on their canvases
Emotive, sensual, engaging,
Pouring over the edges with ideas

They are Hydrogen, capable
Of the complex chain of reactions
Required to fuel a galaxy
Rauschenberg, Mitchell, de Kooning
All Hydrogen molecules
Dancing, spinning, arguing
Contrasting the inert gasses across the hall
Nonreactive as Krypton,
From kryptos, “the hidden one”

It is actually a skill,
This art of invitation
Creating works capable of fusion
Viewer, artist, and painting,
Conspiring toward explosions
A dangerous, naked,
And frightening proposition
Can you blame the countless artists,
Hiding behind flat surfaces,
Incapable of combustion,
Unable to make the invitation?

This openness in art is what I think Sister Wendy Beckett is
responding to in her interview released with Pains of Glass. The interviewer
asks her what we can gain from developing an interest in art. She replies with
typical candor, “You can become more fully human.” This startles the
interviewer. “It’s frightening. Art is a frightening thing. If you really look
at art (pause) it will change you. Not into something you’re not but into
something you’re meant to be but never quite got to. We’ve all got capacities
within us that we haven’t used and often we don’t want to use them because the
more you are the more challenges life offers…It’s both difficult and
wonderful.”

I love this statement because she fundamentally grasps the
reciprocal nature of vulnerability in art. Great art is an invitation into an
intimacy between the viewer and the artist. Without engagement by either party
the transformative power of the exchange is lost. Alfred Adler, a neo-Freudian
psychologist, proposed that the main drive of our personality is to overcome
feelings of inferiority and weakness. Art directly challenges the part of
ourselves we most want to hide, our weaknesses. If you are brave, willing to
not only accept your weakness but embrace your potential, the “something you’re
meant to be”, then a whole world of possibilities opens to you through art.

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Therapeutic Value of Art

Posted on January 4, 2011 by

To address the therapeutic value of art let’s look at its manifestation in art therapy, the theories of Freud and Jung, the psychology of art, and come full circle back to art as a tool in creating empathy. Art therapy has been conducted with widely divergent populations. Therapeutic interventions have been clinically proven to reduce symptoms in cancer patients; transcend language barriers when working with the traumatic experiences and adjustment of recent immigrants; assist bereaved children in expressing complex emotions beyond their language capacity; help patients that have lost language (such as Alzheimer’s patients) continue to communicate; and combat marginalization and isolation in vulnerable populations. Moving beyond the scope of talk therapy, art therapy reaches clients with needs that don’t respond to traditional methods.

Going back to early psychological theories of art and artists Freud viewed art as the only healthy form of sublimation. He did, however, view artists as undeveloped personalities with narcissistic and infantile autoerotic traits. Painters were fixated and stuck in the anal phase of development smearing feces (paint) onto canvases. Jung, who pointed out Freud’s lack of cultural and philosophical expertise, believed that art elucidates insights into the human condition, through the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious, that many of us would only be vaguely aware of otherwise. He also believed that artists are neurotic steming from artists using their limited psychic energy on art instead of their lives. Largely the argument focused on how much the product, art, was a reflection of the psychology of the maker. Joseph Campbell, in a nuanced view, posited that artists have a profound role in mythology. For artists, like mystics, suffer real terrors as they encounter the unknown with no guarantee of returning unscathed.

As the psychology of art developed in response to the philosophy of aesthetics art was couched in terms of its part in the cultural continuum, its fundamental concern with perception, and as a meaningful activity that helps us come to terms with human creativity. Recently the psychology of art has focused on personality type and art, investigating the complex interaction between preferences, environment, behavior, and personal expression. Art helps us become aware of subjective reality, to see through the filter of another’s experience. If we create ourselves it may put us in contact with a deeper self, or help us tap into the collective unconscious. One way or another it seems that art’s therapeutic role largely hinges on empathy, for ourselves, and others.

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Ptah: Religious and Political Purpose

Posted on December 16, 2010 by

During Pharaonic history Ancient Egyptian art changed very little, its presentation closely tied to religious and political purposes. Statues could manifest deities, allowing the people to be joined by their Gods during vital ceremonies. Important statues resided all year in the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum of a temple, to be brought out once a year for petition from commoners. Representations of the dead functioned as portals, connecting points, between this world and the next. The deceased person was assured survival in the afterlife through these portrayals.

Homogeneity in artistic expression was a necessary function of religious ritual. The strength of the dynasties was intimately tied to strong cultural identity and the ability to intimidate the enemy through architectural achievement. A great example of an enemy being shown ‘the writing on the wall’ can be seen today in the temples at Abu Simbel. Created to honor the deified Ramses II, Ptah, Amun, and Ra-Horakhty and encompassing the temple of Nefertari, the monument commemorates the victory at the Battle of Kadesh and served to discourage Nubians from invading from the south.

 Under these conditions artists faithfully reproduced symmetrical templates for wall reliefs, statues, and objects d’art. As such, artists were highly practiced craftsmen and individual expression was not a priority. Art was an extension of theocracy. It was tightly woven into the fabric of everyday life, worship, political power, and cultural identity. Tombs overflowed with intricately carved furniture, canopic jars, murals depicting the book of the dead or other important aspects of a person’s life, jewelry, chariots, and other useful objects. Art functioned to record history, featured prominently in the political posturing of Pharaohs, and provided the bridge between the earthly existence of ancient Egyptians and their afterlife. The power to conquer, rule, petition the Gods, and become immortal was circumscribed by art.

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Aesthetics – Symbols, Meaning, and Signifiers

Posted on December 9, 2010 by

Aesthetics is the philosophical inquiry into the meaning of art. Like all great philosophical questions the answer is a never ending spiral that winds its way through human history. The arts can be seen in the context of: religious or spiritual ritual; personal expression; titillation; cultural cohesion; psychological healing; communication; use of creativity or outpouring of the imagination; entertainment; propaganda; a way to demarcate and reinforce class structure within societies; the exploration of ideas, feelings, media, formal elements; utilitarian purpose; a way to engage intuition; a simple instinct of human nature. Meaning, with its rich textural layers, inherent orientation towards subject and consumer, and chameleonic nature in relationship to history, cultures, and individual identity is an ideal vantage point for surveying the world of the arts.

Over the next few weeks or months I’d like to invite you to think about the myriad incarnations of the arts in your life and to ponder the purpose of these objects, sounds, movements, or symbols. Often the aesthetic argument becomes too closely tied to individual taste or concerned with valuation. A broad perspective that penetrates the motivation to create artworks also leads to an understanding of the spectrum of applied creativity that we are confronted with. I’ll pick a contextual locus each week and begin expanding upon each idea. Let’s see what happens as we follow our spiral into aesthetics.

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