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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

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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.

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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.

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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.