VRZHU bullets of pure love

Here's an article by one of our roving VRB reporters.  From the South Jersey Desk a report on the state of ultramodern poetry:

A Vrzhu Research Bureau Report - Techno-Lyrical Backlash

(filed 30 Mar 08)

Mount Holly, New Jersey - Here in Burlington County the techno-lyrical poetry season has just come to a close. Orphic Fusion, that exuberant annual showcase that brings cutting-edge poets to the county seat of Mount Holly to muse on the state of contemporary poetonomy and show off their latest tricks, ended a month ago. Lingua Avantguardia,  its less well-known Medford Lakes counterpart, wrapped up on March 14. The program for each was pretty much what I've come to expect. In Mount Holly, Ian Delancy cooked up a fine sestina using irrational numbers as end words, and scribbled lines in white ink across white paper and called it "In Memory of My Ironic Winter." In Medford Lakes, Martin Robinson talked about something called "synergistic de-elaboration."

And so, I’m asking: Is everybody tired of this stuff by now, or what?

Nearly two years ago, Adrian Ferrino started a revolution with his journal Rien et/o Nada? that thoroughly transformed modern poetry here, not only propelling Burlington county poets to the pinnacle of southern New Jersey literary acclaim (displacing Gloucester county in the process), but spreading a manifesto of high-impact, scientifically informed Sur-Objectivism around the 7 counties of south Jersey. Villanelles "spherified" with hydrocolloids until they looked like the gelatinous eyes of giant squid, haiku frozen with liquid nitrogen until they form ingot-shaped "stanzas," Petrarchan  sonnets on shredded magnetic tape and spun into a beehive “hairdos,” and everything from binary pantoums to sprung rhythm acrostics exploded into free floating phonemes—it's all part of a poetry style that places a premium on material innovation. At its best, this version of "molecular poetonomy" stokes the emotions and shocks the senses. 

But, from the beginning, some critics have scorned a mode of writing that relies, in their opinion, too heavily on technology (as if typewriters, computers, and even pens, aren’t machines) and often chooses “foam” over substance. In a recent e-mail, Harold Stefanos, an expert on innovative poetry in the southeastern part of the Garden State, wrote, "I am getting a little weary of Burlington-driven techno-composition. Many of these 'experiments' would be better off if they didn't show up anywhere but at AWP conferences, preferably at about 2 AM. Really, they should have a stall at Pennsauken Mart, if it were still around." His words sum up recent critical attacks: It’s all getting your eye poked out until someone starts having fun. I'd like some real poems now, may I please?

So, is it over? It is true that Adrian and his fellow poets are no longer as avant-garde as they once were. In food, you know your haute cuisine is no longer haute when you see it on the Applebee’s menu. In poetry, there are different indignities, from indifference to (shudder!) acceptance.

The rest of the poetry universe has officially caught up to the Burlington revolutionaries: Ian’s journal has been replaced by a blog, and is no longer the source of the new new new thing. But poetry movements often survive in the valley of their PR long after the American Poetry Review has lost interest. The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E craze passed years ago, but interest in the structures and codes of language, the application of process, and the recognition that language is political have become staples of our poetry praxis; new formalism is tragically  unhip, but I still find quatorzains and end rhymes in poetry journals. And though often used as a derogatory term, the confessional poets of the 50’s and 60’s altered the landscape of American poetry and broadened the horizon for poems to traffick in intimate and unflattering information, poems about illness, sexuality and depression.

All these  movements eventually show some signs of stagnation—clichéd tropes,  academic analysis, overexposure, and critics standing by to gleefully rejoice in the demise in whatever movement is in their sights.

But the poems themselves never really go away. The techniques are still there, in every de-stabilized persona that daubs a fragmented lyric, in every line made colorful by hard surrealism. We may laugh at the excesses of poetry manifestos, but we read them all the time.

The same is true of Burlingtonistas. It’s not the emblematic forms they use (or, as they say, “foams”) but their vigorous, often insouciant, search for the new. In an art where individual products take a hundred years or more to prove their staying power, every movement of the last 50 years is still very young indeed.

In the meantime, Ian is has been working on using nanosyllables to achieve more precise line measurement and, in collaboration with his father’s waste disposal business, Adrian is developing a poetry medium made from compressed inorganics. Adrian says: "Hey, there are guys who say, 'it’s over, let's put it behind us,' but that's just marketing BS. I can tell you from my own experience that there is more research going on, more energy, than ever before. At least on the weekends."

And there it is.  Poetry keeps changing even as it remains the same.  Some techniques will perhaps, mercifully, not withstand the test of time. And Ian has the third degree burns to prove it.  But others, whether it’s the ghazal or the new sentence, will seep into the poetry vernacular, enhancing the range of possibilities poets have at their disposal. It’s all part of the crazy candy-colored carousel that is Poetry.

Poem Infestation - a Vrzhu Reprint

We here in the research arm of Vrzhu Press are working [tirelessly] to improve the lot of poets, and consumers of poetry alike.

However.  Bethatasitmay. We also recognize that sometimes poetic efforts, effluvia and extravasations are not wanted or desired.

As such, one of the R&D efforts here in the warrens and catacombs of the VRB is to assist those for whom poetry is not an occasion, but a nuisance.  Here is a short summary of our initial research and a peek at one of our many products in continuous development.

Poem Infestation

Poems are among the most difficult household pests to control. Except for submission periods when they may migrate from place to place,  poems spend their entire life inside buildings. Usually they are found in libraries, bathrooms and bedrooms. They can be carried into homes in shopping bags, backpacks, furniture and pet foods.

Poems are one of the most disagreeable literary genres that may invade homes. While it is not true that an unkept home will cause a poem infestation, there is indeed a strong correlation between sanitation and poems once an infestation gets started.  The presence of poems often causes serious mental anguish for some homeowners. Poems often associate themselves with teenagers and are known to be involved in the spread of negative emotions which cause mild depression, self-absorption, herbal tea drinking, and more serious melodramatic behavior. Some people appear to be allergic to poems.

The exact origin of our domestic poems is disputed, but many are European, South American and Eastern in origin and now are widely distributed throughout the country. In most areas, homeowners are commonly bothered by five different categories of poems: confessional, experimental, accessible, surreal (which has a subcategory, deepimage), and nature poems, which are more at home outdoors but can also get into the house.

Species

The American poem may grow from one to several hundred pages. It can be identified by its normal markings: ragged, sloppy right margins and, frequently, a body segmented into “stanzas.”  There is not much reliable information about any one poem’s lifespan, which nonetheless seems to be highly variable: from a few minutes to many years or stretching cycles of years.

Oriental poems, or haiku, are uniform and small in appearance, no more than seventeen syllables long when full-grown and are easily recognized by their short lines, though mutations are possible. The haiku seems to be equally at home inside human habitation and outdoors, where they can be found near ponds or blossoms or other similar areas.

The European poem is larger, usually darker, but vary greatly in appearance and pronunciation. The European poem is quite active and can easily migrate throughout communities thus becoming a major pest, however, it seems to only truly thrive in the presence of American poems, a symbiotic relationship our poentomologists have termed “translation.”  Even so, a troublesome infestation can develop rapidly after the chance introduction of just a few individual poems. It is an unsettled question whether the South American poem, whose habits and behavior are almost identical to the European, is a subspecies, or is an entirely different species.

Another poem sometimes found invading the home is the Woodsy poem. This species lives outdoors and is not as fast nor as wary as its house-dwelling relatives. They may wander into buildings in wooded areas, or may be brought into the house under false pretenses. The males of this species (garysnyderus) are long-lived and have a rough appearance. The females (maryoliveria) are much more reclusive but probably more widespread.

Integrated Poem Management

It is easier (and less costly) to prevent poems from entering a structure than it is to get rid of them.  They can be discouraged from invading buildings by sealing cracks and crevices in foundations and outside walls. Careful inspection of all anthologies and omnibus selections is essential, as poems have been known to hide within large tracts of prose.

Carefully inspect all incoming books, magazines, and junk mail for the presence of poems or references to them.

Control

Unfortunately no method for controlling poems has proven universally successful. We here in the Vrzhu Research Bureau are working on a safe, convenient method of eliminating poem infestations when they occur.

Vrzhu claims no expertise in reviewing or criticism—we lack the necessary competence and nerve to accomplish anything in this area, and we are awed by a critic’s ability to discern, distinguish and apply hermeneutical apparatus in the destructing of creative works.

Bethathowsoever, once in a great while, a work (other than ones we have published, which are brilliant and unsurpassed) crosses our mahogany desktop here in the Research Bureau that we find so radical and original and groundbreaking that we are compelled to comment, if only to bring it to the attention of our vasty multitude of readers (104 hits in the last seven days alone!).

A work recently set before us can, I believe, accept the mantle of epic without so much as a blush, and meets our criteria for comment, being unique from several perspectives:

1. That it is a breakthrough work in a little known or appreciated genre.

2. That it combines visual artistry with post-lyrical writing such that both are so closely bound that neither could exist without the other—only together do they constitute meaning. This is so unprecedented a feat that comparisons with other, faux-similar, works—the collaborations of Susan Bee and Charles Berenstain, or the environments and compilations of Arakawa and Gins—are feeble at best.

3. That the work itself represents the next step beyond collaboration. The book was created by a collective—no individual or group of individuals takes credit as the author(s). It harks back in this sense to the medieval guilds whose productions were both anonymous and exquisite (note: There are some possible clues folded into the text itself that may identify members of the collective, at least visually. However, these are so integral to the work as to be opaque to any possible definite identification or biographo-interpretation).

If anything, the apparent methodology reminds us of nothing so much as some of the cinematic collectives of the 20th century: Chris Marker and Société pour la Lancement des Oeuvres (SLON), the films of Vertov and company, or the various technician/artists who produced Citizen Kane under an elaborately fictional persona they created known as Orson Mercutio Welles. However the work before us even more fundamentally erases the distinction between the individual and the group, the group and its productions. One could designate the whole enterprise (the book with its visual/written axes, and the “creators” of the book) as “Static Cinema,” to semi-coin a term.

[Editorial correction: It has been brought to our attention that we misspelled one of the individuals in this post. The corrected phrase should read “..the collaborations of Susan Bee and Charles Bernstein.” Mr. Bernstein is in no way related to the avant garde experimentalists Stan and Jan Berenstain. Vrzhu regrets the error.]

Enough preamble. It would be impossible to do justice to the whole work, its gestalt, without many hours, nay, months, of deliberation, research and analysis. Instead here is a tentative commentary about some of the sections in this sui generis miesterstuck.

There are threaded and woven themes and leitmotivs throughout the work. These predominate one section and show up sporadically (though not, it seems, randomly) in other movements within the work. The book as a whole opens with a long, finely wrought and subtle section on themes of containment and enclosure. Other themes tentatively identified are closure, imperatives, the seal, and there are indirect references to articulation, the concept of “safeness.”

But the opening section established a rigorously controlled poetic, wherein small and continual variations accumulate. The written to visual ratio fluctuates through the work but here in the beginning, text most strongly asserts it hegemony. The written portion seems to based on an Olsonian “open field” of projected verse, but mutated into a matricial truth-function that constrains the page and the expressible materiality within the page’s “horizon.” This “grid” contains the text even as it releases it to the reader/viewer as participant, and becomes a subspecies of its genetic ur-lyric: intrajected verse. Could the matrices that enclose and free the text be here at the inception because of the etymology of matrix as “brood animal, womb (‘All that openeth the matrix is mine’ - Exodus xxxiv.19)?”











This transitions into a epithelium on the instrumentality of aporia, here signified under the rubric “that which seals.” Note the “impulse” sealer—which undoubtedly functions as both Lacanian superego (the psychical agency constructed around residual fantasies of the Oedipal father’s access to the sovereign jouissance of the mother's body denied to the child) and instinct-jailing civilization (where the subject {text} must bear up vis-à-vis the condition of being a castrated animal forced to pursue its desire on 'the inverted ladder of the signifier', within the phallic order of its society’s big Other) which, ironically, requires “less pressure to activate.”










After the monochromatic permutations of the long opening section (akin to perhaps an overture?) the next sections build to an exhuberant climax (“Je suis un petit mort.”) that is part Jenny Holzer, part Kafka, part heterotopic JoJo the dog-faced boy.















Another section which struck us was one that alludes to the unique human “being-at-hand” here shown as articulation, but, significantly, covert articulation concretized by the glovedness of our interpenentration with the thing-world.


















One final preliminary prolegomena: imbedded in and as part of the visual text are “people.” Could these function as both markers and as hints to the multidentities of the author(s)? Perhap only in a combinatorial construct where Art is also Artist, the self-created creator who becomes her own creature (created) collapsing that which knows (sapiens) into that which guards (canis).












Vzhu salutes the Uline collective for this tantalizing and depthless work of art.

FREE FOR (NOT QUITE SO MANY) ALL

Readers in the DC area probably already know that the Shakespeare Theater Company is moving its Free For All—Washington’s free summer Shakespeare play—indoors starting this year.

It was news to me, though I had noticed that the Free For All hadn’t taken place this year at its usual time in late May and Early June or at its usual place—the Carter Barron Amphitheater in Rock Creek Park

The press release on the STC’s website says that “The move will increase the metro-accessibility of the event, prevent weather-related cancellations, and allow the Shakespeare Theatre Company to maintain the artistic integrity of Free For All productions thanks to the state-of-the-art capabilities of Sidney Harman Hall. By changing venues, the Company also will be able to host a variety of additional family-friendly events to coincide with Free For All performances.”

I’ve been at one of the Carter Barron productions that was called on account of rain. Late May/early June seems to be WAshigton’s rainy season. And missing the whole play was disappointing. I don’t know how many actual performances were cancelled over the life of the Free For All, which started in 1991, but I’m sure it’s frustrating for actors, directors and audience.

As for the other reasons given for the move, they’re not especially convincing. Carter Barron is completely Metro accessible by several bus routes. You can get there from pretty much anywhere. We often car pooled to get there.

I wouldn’t know, but I’ll take it on faith that staying at the Carter Barron would not “maintain the artistic integrity and would fall short of the state of the art capabilities of the Sidney Harmon Hall.” But, as an audience member who enjoyed every one of the STC’s productions at the Carter Barron, I’d say what was lost in integrity and state of the art was made up for by the specialness of the occasion: Shakespeare outdoors, just as when the plays were first staged in Elizabethan London. Also the relaxed atmosphere, the picnics beforehand, and the feel of Washington coming together for the play were all integral to how much fun and how entertaining and entrancing the event was. I certainly didn’t feel any lack of artistic integrity or miss any state of the art stagecraft. But the holiday aura of the outside event—everybody friendly and excited and happy—was different and better than any stagecraft I’ve seen indoors. Will this feeling when the Free For All moves downtown and inside still be there?

Also, fewer people will be able to attend the actual play. “A variety of additional family-friendly events to coincide with Free For All performances,” as the press release states, does not substitute for actually seeing and hearing a Shakespeare play. In fact it sent a chill down my spine. The best family friendly event possible won’t replace going with the whole family and a slew of friends to see a Shakespeare play outside. Games, demonstrations, and whatever are no substitute.

So how many people will actually get to see this year’s Free For All play, the Taming of the Shrew? According to the press release, “more than 17,000 patrons will have a chance to see this free production of Shakespeare.” If this number is right, they either must be doing a matinee here and there or squeezing in another 225 seats per show (the Sidney Harmon has 775 seats, and the Free For All runs for 17 days (7 longer than at Carter Barron), so that adds up to only 13,175 seats). Still, 17,000 sounds like a lot, right? And the FFA is running for seven days longer.

Unfortunately this is only slightly more than a third to slightly less than a half of the number of people who were able to get to the Free For All at the Carter Barron. The Carter Barron seats 3,750. So that’s 37,500 who get see a Shakespeare play as opposed to between 13,175 and 17,000. And that’s too bad. The Carter Barron always looked packed to me.

Maybe this is an unfair comparison, but New York City’s Shakespeare in the Park plays to 100,000 each year. Yes, yes, New York City is huge, and has resources that Washington doesn’t (I guess). Shakespeare in the Park, at a 100,000 per year, reaches 1.2% of its population. Doesn’t sound like much? The new indoor Free for All will reach only .25% (that’s POINT two five per cent) of the Washington area. That sounds like a lot less.

I don’t want to dis the STC. It’s great to have it and other Shakespeare Theater groups, such as the excellent productions at the Folger Theater, here in the DC. So chalk this up to DC tradition of doing things that don’t seem to serve the community (mutilating trees unnecessarily) particularly well. Usually these things take place in spite of community opposition (not burying the lines along 12 Street in Brookland, or neglecting and then—surprise!—closing schools). But I’m sure there is some group that benefits (PEPCO, Penn Quarter businesses, all powerful developers, and so on.

Hope for a Cure Vocal-based Morphometry Reveals Excess Poetic Matter Concentration in Patients with Graphic Poetical Dysplasia

Many patients with graphic poetical dysplasia (GPD) continue to write poems after treatment. The usual explanation for the poor outcome is the presence of residual poetical fluids missed by the pre-suction imaging investigation and therefore not leeched during treatment. We apply a vocal-based morphometry (VBM) analysis to the metaphoric resonance imaging (MRI) scans from patients with GPD and aurally detected GPD to investigate whether (a) VBM is able to detect ego-matter concentration (EMC) abnormalities in patients with GPD, and (b) whether the extent of EMC abnormalities in these patients can be renormalized using aural and critical self-feedback procedures.

Abnormal areas detected by VBM can possibly correspond to mild malformations of poetical development. GPD is a developmental malformation of the right margin cortex that is now recognized as one of the leading causes of drug-resistant poetomania. Noninvasive methods show the presence of lyric cortical thickening, alterations in the pentametric and ABAB patterning, blurring between metaphor- and simile -matter transition, and elongation of the subcortical ego image tapering towards often interminable recitational ventricles.

Carefully designed protocols can detect subtle reality lesions that will not be identified by routine evaluation. Although the diagnosis of GPD has improved, the reasons that many patients do not become poetry-free after poetic fluid reduction are still largely unknown. One possible explanation it that reality lesions in these patients are just the "tip of the iceberg" of a more pervasive dysplastic egomorphing.

Vocal-based morphometry (VBM) is a technique that uses automatic reclassification of poetry “output” with an aurally normalized feedback to reify the dormant critical response function of the patients.

Vocal-based morphometry Although we received an overwhelming numbers of samples (“review copies”) for use in normative structuring, we decided to use our own template to overcome (a) differences in form and school, (b) inhomogeneities in open field scansion, and (c) differences in the demographics of our population (slamist, flarfetics, snarkitudinism, emo, beatic, fugue-state quietude, post-avantilepsy). Poetic images and the template were convolved with an isotropic gluckian kernel (IGK) of 8 mm and were used for optimizing the nonlineation normalization of raw padding-stripped images. Finally, the images were convolved with an IGK of 10 mm to minimize ginsbergal interindividual exapansibility. This smoothing renders poetic-matter concentration normally distributed, enabling us to apply standard attention-span parametric mapping techniques.

We also were concerned that the differences in GPD between patients could be an effect of the younger age of some patients, even though all patients fell within two degrees of the mean age of attainment (MFA, and BA). To address this issue, we randomly selected three normal writers (essayist, short storyist, journalist), and the images from each one of these were compared with the mean imagism of the patients by using the standard analysis of covariance with age as nuisance factor.

RESULTS

VBM was able to detect a distinct poetic overproduction in each patient. 91% of the patients showed excess of publication and lack of empathy for reading attendees. In 82% of the patients this matched the area of significant EMC excess. In 64% of the patients, EMC excess extended beyond the area of poetic production faculties into post-reading behavior and casual anti-empathic ego-centering.

Among the patients who showed areas of increased EMC, the cluster size of the EMC excess in the region corresponding to ability ranged from 40 to 1,046 units of professional recognition.

DiSCUSSION

Clearly VBM is a crucial and effective tool in detecting GPD. However, the feedback part of the system showed varying degrees of effectiveness. How much of this is due to the restructuring of the poetic matter content, and how much to the impermeability of the poetic ego cannot be determined without a further refinement of our present techniques.

Until then such egomorphic poetry excesses are liable to be pervasive in the poetry world. But with vigilant diagnosis and aggressive treatment this scourge may one day be no more of a threat than small pox or overacting.

A Classic Vrzhu Reprint

Finally, feel safe thanks to Vrzhu Reliable Poetry Protection!

NEWS ITEM

Poetry is naturally acidic, because carbon dioxide emitted by the poet combines with water molecules to form carbonic acid. Acidic poesis occurs when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere react during a poetry reading to form sulfuric acid (H2SO4) and nitric acid (HNO), which falls on the audience as invisible dust. Most poetry readings are known to have a pH of 5.0 or lower.

In past decades, to reduce poetry pollution in areas near universities, English departments built poetic sneeze guards and venting ducts to disperse the poetic particulate high up into the air, away from listeners. However, new EPA regulations have now made this method infeasible.

During the 1980s, the American Poetry Society conducted a major ten-year scientific study of acidic poetry and poetry precipitates. This study, the National Acidic Poetry Assessment Program or NAPAP, found that the effects of acidic poetry were greater than feared. The study found that acidic poetry had affected about 10 percent of Eastern poetry readers and audiences and that it had contributed to the decline in reading poetry by reducing tolerance to anastrophe, rhyme and synecdoche. The study also found that acidic poesis contributed to corrosion in prose writing in affected areas and that poetic particles had contributed to reduced readability and intelligibility in the Northeast and parts of the West. The panel found that the readers and listeners most severely affected were those who lacked a natural buffering capacity.

The particulate matter associated with acid poesis has been shown to have adverse health effects, especially among those who are susceptible to mental disorders, or are highly suggestible. There is also some concern that acidic poesis could contribute to leaching of common sense and humility from the literate populace.

HOW YOU CAN BE PROTECTED

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A Vrzhu Classic Reprint

There has been and continues to be much tumult in the small nation-state of poetry (which continues under its traditional form of government: Constituional Anarchy) about the decline in reading, the decline in reading poetry, the decline in reading my poetry, and so forth.

Many of the dukes, barons and prince regents have published thoughtful opinions about reaching the lost audience of poetry. Firebrands have roused the poetic community, and of course contrarians have exhalted in the alleged shrinking number of poetry readers, perhaps looking forward to the day when poetry will be read by no one, and hence be more deeply appreciated by everyone.

Large and distinguished organizations have conducted sociological surveys to unearth the statistics and conclusions behind the dire phenomenon of poetry reading atrophy. While Vrzhu admires and applauds these efforts, we feel that there is a need that only real science can meet in our ongoing efforts to have poetry not just survive, but endure. All previous studies and efforts in this area lacked one important, in fact, essential, element: rigor.

One investigator blames Academia, another obscurity, a third high-falutin'ness. Poetry should descend from its high horse, or smarten up instead of dumb down, or get out into the real world of real men doing real things, or....needless to say, mere anecdotal evidence abounds in such efforts. There are basic disagreements on whether the poetic footprint is shrinking or expanding. A reasonably thoughtful person is [honor] bound to be confused by the contradictory conclusions of our principal investigators.

All this is prelude to a modest example of Vrzhu's efforts to leave the world of opinion, and secure itself to a foundation of fact. We apologize in advance for the somewhat technical nature of this and previous papers, but, as they say, when you break eggs, you might as well make an omelet.

***

Y Linked Severe Poetic Disability, Dysmorphic Trichoectomy, and Cathode-Induced Pseudo-Ophthalmoplegia in Kindred is Localised To Xq24-Q27

Department of Human Poetics and Developmental Lyricism, Office of Metaphoric Medicine, Vrzhu Research Bureau

To date over 150 Y linked poetic disability (YLPD) conditions have been documented by the Bureau. Here, we describe a family with YLPD, comprising 4 affected males. The clinical features common to the 4 males included profound poetic disability (100%), taciturnism and spousal deafness despite apparently normal hearing (100%), grand mal petulance (87.5%), and Male Pattern Blindness (68.8%). Of the four affected males examined, all had mild to severe dysmorphic trichoectomies (“mullets”) and three were noted to have cathode-induced pseudo-ophthalmoplegia.

In 1972 Lehrke hypothesized that Y linked genes would account for this male expressive deafness in poetically disabled populations. This predated by five years Sutherland's description of the socio-culture medium required to diagnose Fragile Ego Syndrome (FRAEA) chromosomally, an event which highlighted the significance of Y linked poetic disability (YLPD) and kindled the search for YLPD genes.

In the current study, the subjects consist of 4 affected males. The four living affected males were examined clinically.

AFFECTED MALES

Patient V.3 was 44 years of age when examined. Patient had developed grand mal petulance (“Nadine, where’s the remote! I left it right here! Gahldammit!”) which was partially controlled by a course of morning stimulants, and evening depressants. He spoke clumsily about anything outside of a few narrow subject areas (sports, work, etc.), rarely spoke for more than 10.7 seconds despite topics considered controversial or complicated and never gained choleric continence or the ability to care for himself for more than a two days (evidenced by empty containers of prepared foods strewn from the front door to the patient’s barcalounger, which, incidentally, he misidentified as a throne). The desire to walk was absent by 8 p.m. and his connotative sensitivity had been considered to have slowly atrophied with age. Craniofacial features included a long, narrow face, a prominent, straight nose, a square, prognathic jaw, large ears, close set eyes, and bushy eyebrows. He exhibited tuberous endomorphy (so called couch potato morphism). The right hand had a pronounced click addiction.

Patient V.4 The half brother of patient V.3, he was 35 years of age when examined. Exhibited remarkably similar behavior to his half brother (patient V.3), recognitive delay (“Huh? What’d you say?”), grand mal petulance and expressive poverty. He never spoke emotively, was often late coming home, often very clumsily giving patently manufactured explanations. He was profoundly prosaic and literal. Craniofacial features included a long, thin, expressionless face, large ears, a prominent, straight nose, square jaw, bushy eyebrows. Decreased muscle tone of all four limbs was noted. He had severe thumb toggle syndrome (Halo’s Disease) in both hands. A characteristic finding was an inability of the eyes (lateral recti muscles) to look away from the television when engaged.

Patient IV.5 He was the oldest, living, affected male (57 years). He self-medicated with various concentrations of ethanol (C2H6O) until supersaturated. A history was obtained of staggering, broad based gait after 8 p.m. and by 11:30 p.m. an inability to walk unsupported. There has always been a question regarding his analogizing recognition ability and poetically he is presently considered to be completely regressed. He was profoundly poetically disabled, had clear literalizing tendencies, was vocabularically emaciated (an average of no more than 2 synonyms, well below the 3rd percentile). Noted were large ears with flattened upper pinnae, and prominent, straight nose.

Patient V.11 He is the youngest, living, affected male, aged 19 years. He must be spoon fed anything other than elementary metaphors, and has never spoken lyrically unassisted.

Discussion

A male preponderance in poetically disabled populations has long been recognized and it is now accepted that this is at least in part a consequence of YLPD genes. Less widely known is that if the contribution of YLPD genes is analyzed with respect to the level of poetic disability, this contribution is greatest in the mild to moderate poetic disability range (PQ 36-70), as compared to the severe and profound range (PQ 0-35).

Indeed the relatively late recognition of the contribution of YLPD genes to the prevalence of poetic disability could in part be attributed to surveys initially being confined to academic institutions whose occupants are more severely encumbered with theoriticism, rather than community based studies in which mild/moderate poetically disabled subjects would be ascertained.

The clinical picture presented by the affected males in this family was one of apparent normality at birth. Thereafter, poetic developmental delay was recognized, followed by the onset of Male Pattern Blindness appearing between pubescence and chronological maturity (“Ma, where’s my sneakers!”). Poesodevelopment proceeded very slowly initially with only some patients eventually attaining the ability to identify a simile unaided by the age of 13 years. Lyrical receptablity, rhythm appreciation, and the ability to understand metaphorization for themselves in the most basic manner was never attained. A poetic developmental plateau was reached in the second half of the second decade and thereafter a slow regression was observed.

A Vrzhu Classic Reprint

A Note on Poetic Thought Disorder

Poetic Thought Disorder has traditionally been applied to a variety of ill-defined speech acts, poems, and poetic forms which are assumed — and it is an assumption — to be secondary to a more fundamental disturbance of versifying or writing poems. These practices were first noted by Hecker in 1871 but they were studied and described in much more detail by Bleuler who regarded them as a direct consequence of ‘metaphors and poetic associationalism’ which he thought was fundamental to poetry. Thus the long-lived assumption that Poetic Thought Disorder was of cardinal importance, aetiologically and diagnostically, being exhibited by all poets and by no one else. However, no one has ever succeeded in producing a satisfactory definition of the term poetry, or in identifying any fundamental psychological or linguistic term capable of accounting for the various observable qualities of a poem. Worse still, few of the qualities have proved to be specific to a poem, and none to be manifested by more than a proportion of poems in what in other respects are typical examples of the genre. Indeed, large studies of the symptomatology of poems show them to be rare in comparison to delusions (“this is a great poem”) and hallucinations (other poets envy me”).

Classification of Poetic Thought Disorder (PTD)

The following definitions are taken from authoritative texts, and are widely accepted.

Derailment

Derailment occurs when a train jumps off the track. Andreasen (1979) defines derailment as “A poem in which the ideas slip off the track onto another one which is clearly but obliquely related, or onto one which is completely unrelated”.

Each is truly a unique piece,
you said, or, perhaps, each
is a truly unique piece.
I sniff the difference.
It’s like dust in an old house,
or the water thereof.
Then you come to an exciting part.
The bandit affianced
to the blind man’s daughter. The mangel-wurzels
that come out of every door, salute the traveller
and are gone. Or the more melting pace of strolling players,
each with a collapsed sweetie on his arm, each
tidy as one’s idea of everything under the sun is tidy.
And the wolverines
return, with their coach, and night,
the black bat night, is blacker than any bat
-John Ashbery, The Burden of the Park

Derailment is one of a number of types of PTD. However, it is a basic type and at least some of the other types of PTD appear to be elaborations of derailment.

Tangentiality

This term can be applied when a question is asked in a poem and the poet gives an answer which has “slipped off the track” and is either obliquely or even unrelated to the question.

An example of tangentiality:

It doesn't seem as though we could die up here, does it?
The Acropolis is so old that death on it seems superfluous.
So we can afford to take some chances—
Leap off the wall! Bash statues with our heads!
-Kenneth Koch, On the Acropolis

At first glance it might appear the writer is making a mountain out of a mole hill, as this is the sort of response we all might make, sliding off the question and communicating other important information. However, this answer came early in poem. In this setting, such a response suggests, but does not prove, PTD. As mentioned, isolated examples of derailment occur in the writing of normal individuals as well as poets.

Flight of ideas (includes clanging (rhyming, alliteration, etc.))

The central feature of flight of ideas in a poem is rapid, continuous verbalisations which are associated with constant shifting from one idea to another.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
-John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

Wing et al (1974) describe three types of flight of ideas: 1) where there is rhyming or clanging, eg, “pards, retards” above, 2) where there is an association by meaning, including opposites, eg, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”, and 3) where there is distraction, eg, “O for a beaker full of the warm South,/Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,/ With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,/And purple-stained mouth.”

Alliteration:

CLOUD-PUFFBALL, torn tufts, tossed pillows ' flaunt forth, then chevy on an air- built thoroughfare: heaven-roysterers, in gay-gangs ' they throng; they glitter in marches.

Down roughcast, down dazzling whitewash, ' wherever an elm arches, Shivelights and shadowtackle in long ' lashes lace, lance, and pair.

-Gerard Manley Hopkins, That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

Under the heading of clanging, Andreasen (1979) has drawn attention to punning, as well as alliteration. Not surprisingly, with high mood elevation the punning of flight of ideas can be frequent, amusing and apparently clever.

Punning:

The wasp and all his numerous family
I look upon as a major calamity.
He throws open his nest with prodigality,
But I distrust his waspitality.
-Ogden Nash, The Wasp

Andreasen (1979) states “flight of ideas is a derailment that occurs rapidly in the context of pressured speech”. (“Objectivity and again objectivity, and no expression, no hind-side-beforenesss, no Tennysonianness of speech - nothing, nothing, that you couldn't in some circumstance, in the stress of some emotion, actually say.” –Ezra Pound, known to have suffered from PTD (emphasis added)).

Perseveration and Echolalia

Perseveration is the repetitive expression of a particular word, phrase, or concept during the course of speech.

have they crushed an aluminum can.
have they crushed an aluminum can.
have they crushed an aluminum can.
have they crushed an aluminum can.

have they bent an aluminum can.
have they bent an aluminum can.
have they bent an aluminum can.
have they bent an aluminum can.

-Robert Grenier, Sentences.

Echolalia is the repeating of words or phrases in the poem:

Then tell me, what is that supreme delight? Echo: Light
-George Herbert (1593-1633), Heaven

This by no means exhausts the typical manifestations of PTD in a poem. We have yet to cover Poverty of thought, Poverty of content, Illogicality, Incoherence , Blocking (Thought blockage), and Neologism. There is much of interest here (eg , a remarkable feature of neologisms is that the poet usually seems unaware that they lack meaning to the listener), however, these topics will be covered in a later installment, where we hope also to elucidate neopoesis, exceptionalism, revisionology, Williamloganism and Billycollinsism.

Movie of the Week

 

Quick Gun Murugan

Late 1800s. A peaceful town of South Indian vegetarians is over-run by a gang of meat-eating bandits led by the infamous Rice-Plate-Reddy. Soon after, the seemingly invincible hero and vegetarian Quick Gun Murugan arrives and flushes out the bad guys with showdowns at the  Well-Known Lodge and the Institute of Coconut Tree Climbing . Everything seems to have  worked out in his favor when he is killed by Reddy. However, the gods love Quick Gun and he is re-incarnated into the 21st Century. It turns out that Reddy has also been re-born--he is now a  corrupt capitalist forcing out the vegetarian dosa industry in favor of his McDosa meat dishes. Ultimately, the cowboy hero comes to the rescue in a dramatic showdown, complete with several re-births. 

SOME NOTES

Notes On Some Haikus About Cicadas for the Beginning of Summer

 

(I am indebted to R.H. Blyth’s 4 volume collection of haiku and commentary for providing these haiku and for the direction in how to approach them. The haiku in these notes are based on Blyth’s translations, although I’ve mostly jiggered them to suit my taste.)

 

"The fish trap exists because of the fish; once you've gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit; once you've gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning; once you've gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words so I can have a word with him?"

                                                Chapter 26 of The Zhuangzi: External Things

 

Cicadas are a traditional subject for Japanese haiku. They herald summer, and are representative of many of haiku’s larger concerns.  Haiku are lovely but I often find it is not easy to see where their depth lies.  Part of this is because they avoid many of the tools and scaffolding of western poetry: metaphors, rhythm, even, in a way, the “poetical” and the verbal itself.  So these notes are an attempt to sound the depths of some haiku with cicadas in them. The plumb line of these soundings is myself.

 

Bashō writes:  no birds           the only water far away          a cicada’s voice

 

When everything is quiet, no birds, no sound of flowing water, nothing is moving, then the sound of cicadas does not feel like it is breaking the silence but somehow deepening it. It is as if I wake up for just a moment to what silence is, it abidingness, how it dwells as part of the world.

 

There’s a quote from the Tsaikentan, or the Book of Tending the Roots of Wisdom, a book which compounds Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. It mirrors this:

 

“When all things are hushed, the suddenness of a single bird’s call arouses a deep sense of stillness. When all the flowers have departed, a solitary bloom is seen, and we feel the infinity of life.”

 

Thoreau describes a moment like this and says that a single sound after complete quiet makes him aware of a “deeper and more conscious” silence.

 

"At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl; but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious…" -Henry D. Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers

 

Five years before Thoreau, Alexander Kinglake wrote about this in his travel book Eothen as he moves through an ancient Serbian forest:

 

“One strived, with a listening ear, to catch some tidings of that Forest world within—some stirring of beasts, some night bird’s scream; but all was quite hushed, except for the voice of the cicadas that peopled every bough, and filled the depths of the forest through and through with one same hum everlasting—more stilling than very silence.”

 

Larry Levis describes this same phenomenon as it occurs in ripples on water instead of sounds waves, which are ripples in the air, at the beginning of the poem Elegy with the Sprawl of a Wave Inside It:

 

Two black swans paddling the brown canals of Sheffield Park

 

Are still together. The chains of their days, the bright ripples

Linked by sunlight in their passing wake,

 

Leave them unchanged:

 

Still so aloof & out of reach they shy away from the outstretched

Hands of tourists,

 

And weave a stillness onto the water as they pass.

The motion of their wake is a stillness.

 

 

Bashō writes:              silence             the cicada’s voice         pervading the rocks

 

Thoreau’s “deeper and more conscious” is an odd choice of words. It might be something like this—that silence is itself a kind of life, or an awareness of life, or a kind of mindfulness (John Cage says that “silence is not acoustic”), so that a cicada’s call—so loud and insistent that it seems to penetrate even the rocks—describes not only the peculiar droning, drilling sound the insect makes but also how that deeper, more living silence can enter and enliven even my own stony and guarded consciousness.

 

What I glimpse here is not the busyness of life, not its multifarious, noisy multiplicity, but how it is also infinite.                       

 

Onitsura writes: 

 

flowing water    a cicada’s cry from the bamboos          the

Temple

at Soko-kuji

 

Cicadas are not every day occurrences. They are so out of the ordinary, out of the regular day-to-day ordering of my life. They give me a chance to pay attention, and to pay closer attention than I’m usually able to.  So it might be that disparate things like the sound of water, bamboo, and a temple in a forest can be brought together in a new relation, or that the Temple could be seen as part of the natural world instead of having that world merely surround it, that the water and bamboo could be part of who I am, or be integral to my consciousness.

 

The world, a place I am always in, so large and always at arm’s length, might be able to become my intimate, and that intimacy would not be a place I am in, but a place I am of.

 

Bashō writes: nothing                        in the cicada’s voice                of how soon it will die.

 

When I hear cicadas singing they seem intently alive and present, all of what they are is in their song, no hidden motives, agendas, no second thoughts, no distractions. They seem imbedded in the here and now, their song inseparable from their being alive. Of course I know just how ephemeral their lives are, so their sound is completely different and contains for me an intent the cicadas themselves don’t intend.

 

But it is just this difference that awakens me.  There is no clue to be found in the cicada’s song itself of how fleeting that life will be.  The transitory exists not in the cicada or its song but in me.  Cicadas sing unaffected by their purpose or the larger world around them. A cicada’s call is pure song.

 

Haikus themselves might have some this same quality.  When I read one I may be lost in it for just a moment, because there is in it life, its own and mine.  One of Keats’ final poems also has this peculiar quality of being alive on the page:

 

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—

I hold it towards you.

 

Keats’s poem is a living hand—the very living hand the poem mentions—he holds it out to the reader, to me, a poem as living being. The poem grasps me, and when I read it aloud red life flows through its lines. This is part of the strangeness of poetry, to read a poem is to enact the same breathing, shaping of the mouth, movement into the air as the original poet, no matter how long gone.  To hear cicadas thrumming I could be hearing the previous generation singing 17 years ago, or the generation before that, or before that, 34, 51, 68, 170 years ago.

 

Bashō writes:              a cicada’s shell:            it sang itself                utterly away.

 

The reason cicadas are so loud is that their bodies are mostly hollow, like a drum or a bell—and they have a drum-like apparatus inside them that generates their call. Cicadas resonate.

 

I could say that being mostly empty, a cicada’s body is mostly its song, just as its adult life is mostly song, or listening to song.

 

When I speak, a column of air in me vibrates, so a part of me is my words, and I have something in common with the cicadas.  A cicada departs into its song, and leaves it emptied body as a shell behind it.  So both the cicada’s call and my words are for each of us part of our being, a part of the world.

 

Shiki writes:  the cicada          only seen when it stops crying           and flies

 

Clumsy, slow flyers, cicadas are easy to spot as they stagger through the air.  But when they are singing, hidden in the tops of trees, they sound completely confident. They almost have two existences, their awkward flight and, separate from this, their sound. In this Heisenberg principle of cicadas—you can either see it or hear it but not both at the same time—there is something moving, a poignancy I can’t pinpoint. Maybe it is the incompleteness of my knowing the world, or any other person, or even poem.  There is always something that eludes me in any encounter.

 

It does seem to be the case that even at my best moments, when I’m really paying attention, really in tune, getting it, my “take” on the world is still partial, and my being here is itself perspectival and limited. I can never not have a point of view, there’s another level to reach for, a better and more intense focus to attain. Maybe what I find sad about cicada’s duality is my own duality, which is the same as the world’s duality, at once obstacle and home.

 

I learn to pay attention, a little at a time, and I hope that each time I do a little better.  Every poem, western or eastern is surrounded by silence.  In western poetry the right margin is, besides indicating meter and rhyme, a reminder of the silence that enters as if from the right hand side of the page.  In honor of this, I will say that these haiku celebrating the attention paid to a summer insect are notes sent to me from the Archives of Silence.

 

Finally I can read these haiku not as words, but as a way of paying attention, to the world and myself, a place where the mundane and divine are not separate, but one, and wherein I will let my thoughts travel through them silently:

 

Issa writes:

 

a cicada’s cry               it is precisely               a red paper windmill

 

Ya-yu writes, at the end of summer:

 

autumn cicadas           may one           live on—