VRZHU bullets of pure love

Erik Satie on Critics

You can't spell satire without satie.

From Vanity Fair, September 1921

A Hymn in Praise of the Critics

Those Whistling Bell-Buoys who indicate the reefs on the shores of the Human Spirit

Erik Satie

Ladies, young ladies, gentlemen

It is not chance that has led me to choose this subject.

It is grateful recognition,…for I am almost as ready to offer recognition as to be recognized.

* * *

Last year I gave a long lecture on:

Intelligence and Musical Qualities Among Animals.

Today I will speak to you about:

Intelligence and Musical Qualities Among Critics.

...approximately the same theme—with, naturally, a few modifications.

* * *

The world does not know the Critics well enough;—it is ignorant of what they have done, of what they may yet do.

They are not the only Creators of Criticism—that master of the Arts—but they are the freest thinkers in our modern society of social freethinkers, if I may so express myself.

It was a critic who posed for Rodin’s Thinker

Rodin has a weakness for the critics—a great weakness—

Their advice was dear to him—very dear—too dear, most expensive, in fact—

There are three kinds of critics:—those who have importance;—those who have less importance;—and those who have no importance at all—

The last two kinds do not exist:—all critics have IMPORTANCE.

* * *

The Critic, physically, has a serious aspect: he is a sort of mental and physical double bass ‘cello.

He is a center in himself—a center of gravity—

If he laughs, he does so only on one side of his face—either the right side, or the wrong side—

Always very amiable with the Ladies, he calmly keeps gentlemen at a distance—

* * *

Mediocrity or incapacity are not encountered among Critics—A mediocre or incapable Critic would be the laughingstock of his comrades; it would be impossible for him to exercise his profession—his mission, I mean; he would be obliged to leave his country—All doors would be closed to him.—His life would be a long martyrdom.

The Artist is only a dreamer,—after all.—The Critic has the consciousness of Reality—and of his own importance.

An Artist can be imitated;—the Critic is inimitable—and priceless—

How could one imitate a Critic?—I ask myself that.—Well, at any rate, the interest in so doing would be rather thin—very thin: We have the original—HE IS SUFFICIENT.

Whoever said that Criticism is easy, did not say anything worth saying.

It is really a shameful thing to have said.

The man who wrote down such a sentiment should be pursued—for at least a mile—or two.—Possibly, however he regrets his remark.

It is possible; it is likely—IT IS CERTAIN!

* * *
The mind of the Critic is a store—a department store.

One finds in it a little of everything—science;—bedding;—the arts;—traveling rugs;—writing paper;—foreign and domestic;—history;—smokers’ outfits;—languages;—umbrellas;—belle-lettres;—woolen goods;—sporting apparel;—humor;—eyeglasses;—perfumery;—etc.

The Critic knows everything,—sees everything,—tells everything,—hears everything,—touches everything,—investigates everything,—eats everything,—confuses everything.

What a man!!

* * *

The Critic is also a lookout,—a bell-buoy,—as it were—

He indicates the reefs which border the shores of the Human Spirit;—near these shores—the Critic—watched with superb clairvoyance—

From a distance he looks a little like a log—a sympathetic and intelligent log, of course.

* * *

How does reach that high position—the situation of bell-buoy or floating log?

* * *

By his merit—his personal merit—

* * *

We have now reached a delicate joint—

It is the Editor of a paper, a review, or any other periodical—who discovers the Critic.

He discovers him after severe examination—

This examination is very long and very painful—as well for the Critic as for the Editor—

One asks questions;—the other is on his guard.—It is an agonizing conflict,—full of surprises—all sorts of strategies are employed by both parties.—Finally the Editor is vanquished. The Editor is absorbed by the Critic—

It is extremely rare that the Editor recovers—

* * *

The true critical sense lies not in criticizing oneself but in criticizing others;—and the beam in one’s own eye does not in the least prevent of clear view of the straw in one’s neighbor’s eye—in such a case, the beam becomes a telescope which enlarges the aforesaid straw in an amazing manner—

* * *

We cannot too profoundly admire the first Critic who ever appeared in the world—

* * *

The brutal denizens of the Dawn of History must have received him with blows and insults, not realizing he was a Precursor, a man worthy of the utmost reverence—

In his way, he was a hero.

The second, third and fourth Critics were probably no better received;—but they helped create a precedent:—

Then the Critics began propagating themselves.

Later on,—these Benefactors of Humanity learned how to organize themselves;—they founded Critical Unions in all the great capitals.—

Critics thus became personages—which proves that Virtue is always rewarded—

* * *

Let us thank the Critics for the sacrifices they make daily for our good.—Let us ask a kind Providence to protect them against sickness;—to spare them all worries;—to give them large quantities of children of all kinds—who will continue their noble breed.

Poetophorus

Still catching up here at Vrzhu. Mr. Carmine Starnino has an interesting essay here. It remarkably even-handed, and has a Montaigne-like amble to it. Two statements bear on some of the Vrzhu Research Bureau's ongoing projects.

"...reestablishing the public’s trust in poetry would be like reestablishing the public’s trust in Latin."

"If grown-ups don’t read poetry, it’s not because they have a bone to pick with poets. The truth is even more intolerable: they prefer not to...They’re just not that into us."

True enough, especially since the first echoes Ed Dorn's brilliant insight that poetry is an archaic technology, like gas lamps. Quaint, but not to be used in any practical sense.

And Americans enjoy appearing, above almost all else, practical.

HOWEVER, the limit of this is that the poet will write only for herself, or for others who are so like herself as to make the difference negligible (e.g., other poets). This is a problem that can be described as a feedback loop limited to only positive information. This tends to increase the entropy of the system (the sum of all poems set down) and eventually complete stasis--the heat death of a poetry system.

What's needed is what any healthy feedback loop has: negative feedback. NF helps maintain the stability of the poetry system, just a positive feedback give the system access to new point of equilibrium.

We here at the VRB have been working for many, many years on a way to augment any poetry system, either individual or collective, and enhance the poetic output, allowing for the autoexcitation that promotes poetogenesis (or poetopoesis), the development of books and poetic concentrations at various cultural nodes (the avant guardians, formalismatics, Fluff, etc.).

The foundational mechanism is to create a negatively charged surface for the poem to encounter, thus separating out the positive and negative fields in any poem.  This allows the producer of the poem to distinguish those elements that can be canceled out, leaving a refined poetic residue that can be used to generate more poems. 

Below are some of the earliests prototypes of the Poetophorus, as we call it.  The second to the last illustration is a VRB specialist testing an actual poem for coherence.  The most recent Beta model of the Poetophorus is at the bottom.

A NEW BEGINNING.....

COMING SOON......

 

NEWS ON THE MARCH!!!

NEWS

For those of you who live in the immediate area of Washington, D.C. (motto: Visit Washington! It’s a *Capitol* offense!), Kay Ryan will be kicking off her second term as Poet Laureate with a reading at the Library of Congress on October 21, 2009.

I encourage you to attend this reading if you have a chance, whether you are a writer or not, and, if you are a writer, whether you find Ryan’s poems congenial or not.

As it happens, the online journal, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, has just put up an issue on the U. S. Poets Laureate, aka The Consultant in Poetry aka Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry, that last being the current official title, courtesy of, no doubt, The Department of Redundancy Department.

The issue is guest-edited by Vrzhu Press’ own unindicted co-conspirator, Dan Vera. Nice Work, Dan. And a tip o' th' hat to editor-in-chief Kim Roberts, a noted Vrzhu Press author.

MORE NEWS

Upcoming (imminent!) Vrzhu author Carol Guess, who we are just crazy about, is a featured writer over at the Genpop Books, where you can read four of her wonderful prose poems, a form of which she is a master.

Also don’t forget Carol’s book, Timberbox Lawn, is available from Rose Metal Press, one of the hottest new presses around (along with, e.g., Big Game Books, and No Tell Books).

TRANSLATION

Here, from that aforementioned issue of BPQ, is nice tidbit on translation from Grace Cavalieri and Joseph Brodsky:

Cavalieri: How much are we missing? We see and hear English translations of your poems and some are called brilliant in any language.

Brodsky: You can’t say you are missing much. You can’t say you are missing the prosody of another language. You can’t miss the acoustics of another language. The original is rooted in the euphony of the Russian language. That of course you can’t have and you’re not missing it. You can’t miss something that you don’t know.

Cavalieri: We can get a good lyrical poem anyway that is matchless.

Brodsky: That’s what it is if it works in English. You have to be a judge of solely how it is in English.

Cavalieri: We shouldn’t feel we’re getting only ninety percent of something which is absolute.

Brodsky: You get a poem in English, good or bad. You can’t fantasize about what it’d be like in the original.

That seems like one of the more reasonable remarks about the fraught issue of translating poetry.

Also I suggest giving serious consideration to Brodsky's advice to write your Nobel Prize acceptance speech NOW, "just in case."

Rain

See more funny videos and Music Videos at Today's Big Thing.

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.

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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The seams are welded ultrasonically -- no stitching is used in our ponchos – providing maximum protection from poetic seepage.  Elastic hems provide our patent pending “extra snug fit.” There are also reinforced side grommets to be used for added protection and support. Our ponchos naturally resist rot and mildew. A storage bag is included for safe keeping when not in use.

AND INTRODUCING . . .

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Try it and you'll say: Thank you Vrzhu Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Vrzhu Research Bureau, part of the family of Vrzhu Comglomerates and Vrzhu Press, a name you can

Back in a minute

Late twentieth century medicine still accepts as its ultimate aim the ideal set for it by such figures as Pavlov, Dastre,  and Metchnikoff in the first years of the [20th] century: the perpetual maintenance of the human organism as a maximally efficient machine, and the indefinite postponement of the ‘accident’ of death.  Given this aim, it is clear that ‘the medical ideal, ever more closely approximated, must be bodily immortality.’ Such an ideal is not normally expressed in explicit terms, however. Rather than calling for the prevention of all deaths, one speaks, for example, of seeking to achieve ‘further reductions in premature deaths’; but this more cautious formulation only thinly disguises the demand for immortality, since ‘it often seems doubtful from our words and deeds that we ever regard any particular death as other than premature, a failure of today’s medicine, hopefully avoidable by tomorrow’s.

The twentieth-century medical opposition between life and death, then, is one that reduces death once again to a kind of nullity, but not the nullity resulting from privation of something positive. Death is now a nullity not because of the loss of something internal to life, but because it is the failure of something external to life, the perpetual maintenance service of modern medicine. The consequences of this outlook can be seen in medical judgements about death and dying, for in practice ‘[d]ying is defined…in terms of the actions—or failed actions—of the physicians. In keeping with the predominant technical bias of biomedicine, “dying” becomes a cultural metaphor which symbolizes treatment failure. Already, at the beginning of the century, Dastre has argued that when a physician ‘declares that any particular person is dead, it is less a judgement of fact that he utters than a prognostication’ that nothing he could do would restore the dying person to life. Observations of medical residents in a contemporary hospital have shown a similar attitude…

In earlier times, anxiety over the diagnosis of death was motivated by the fear of premature burial. In an age of organ transplants, concern was to become focused instead on the fear of premature dismemberment. To introduce cessation of brain functions as the criterion of death, in place of the traditional reliance upon the cessation of heart and lung functions, conjured up visions of the comatose but still breathing, albeit mechanically supported, patients being vivisected by overzealous surgeons in their haste to obtain transplantable spare parts.  That the patient could be regarded by opponentsof the brain death criterion as ‘alive’ despite being totally dependent upon artificial support systems for heart, lung, and other vital functions, did not merely reflect lingering nostalgia for the traditional heart-lung definition of death. It also reflected, more importantly, widespread acceptance of the living human body’s dependence upon medical technology as a perfectly natural and indeed intrinsic feature of ‘life’ itself.

As the definition of the brain-death criterion makes clear, in contemporary medicine dying and death are neither a part of life as in the nineteenth century nor the absence of life as in earlier ages. Today, a comatose patient today whose whole loss of  spontaneous brain functions is irreversible by existing resuscitation techniques is ‘dead’. Another comatose patient tomorrow, in exactly the same physiological state as the first was today, is ‘not dead’ if in the meantime a new resuscitation technique has been introduced that can be used to reverse the coma, the criterion of death is technological rather than biological.

For modern medicine, then, life is not the opposite of death as the active is the opposite of the inert, for the same level of organic activity/inactivity can count as death at one time and life at another, according to the state of medical technology. Nor is life the opposite of death as the natural is the opposite of the artificial, for the greater capacity medicine has to intervene technologically in the production and maintenance of life, the less sense it makes to characterize life or death as natural. In the twentieth century, both life and death fall under the aegis of a perpetual maintenance programme; their relationship must now be understood as the opposition between self-declared successes and ‘accidental’ failures of a single technological project.

-Ideas of Life and Death by W. R. Albury, From the Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine by William F. Bynum, Roy Porter

Tuesdayness

What are poems? [Part one]

"Because we have by today so deeply interiorized writing, made it so much a part of ourselves, as Plato's age had not yet made it fully a part of itself, we find it difficult to consider writing to be a technology as we commonly assume printing and the computer to be. Yet writing (and especially alphabetic writing) is a technology, calling for the use of tools and other equipment: styli or brushes or pens, carefully prepared surfaces such as paper, animal skins, strips of wood, as well as inks or paints, and much more. … Writing is in a way the most drastic of the three technologies. It initiated what print and computers only continue, the reduction of dynamic sound to quiescent space, the separation of the word from the living present, where alone spoken words can exist."

   —Walter Ong

*    *    *    *    *

Fait Divers de la Poemes Amercaine et Brittanique

 Bombardier beetles of the genus Brachinus are unique in mixing chemicals to make an explosion. The ingredients are made and held in separate glands. When required, they are squirted into a chamber near the rear end of the beetle, where they explode, forcing noxious (caustic and boiling-hot) liquid out through a nozzle directed at the enemy.

The archer fish comes to the surface of the water and spits a mouthful at a perched insect, knocking it down into the water, where it eats it. The archer fish's spit is guided, with devastating accuracy, by binocularly focused eyes.

Spitting spiders [family Scytodidae] lack the fleetness of a wolf spider or the net of a web spider. A spitting spider chucks a venomous glue some distance towards its prey, pinning it to the ground until the spider arrives and bites it to death.

The bolas spider [Mastophora] uses a missile to capture prey. The spider synthesizes and exudes the fake sexual scent of a female moth, which attracts male moths. The missile is a blob of silk. The blob is attached to a thread of silk, which the spider whirls around like a lasso or bola, then hurls at its prey, which it then reels in.

The diving bell spider [Argyroneta aquatica] lives and hunts entirely under water.  Like dolphins, dugongs, turtles, freshwater snails and other land animals that have returned to water, the diving bell spider still needs to breathe air. To accomplish this it constructs own diving bell. It spins a bell of silk attached to an underwater plant. The spider goes to the surface to collect air, which it carries in the same way as some water bugs, in a layer trapped by body hairs. But unlike the bugs, which just carry the air like a scuba cylinder wherever they go, the spider takes it to its diving bell, where it unloads it to replenish the supply. The spider sits in the diving bell watching for prey, and it stores and eats prey there, once caught.

Extra credit for identifying the poets alluded to above!

*    *    *    *

What are poems? [Part two]

"Even more confusion of terminology could be avoided by realizing that making ever more precise or restrictive definitions does not generate greater precision in the understanding of any animal.  Animals are dynamic. Each animal’s choices fit in somewhere in a long continuum of almost anything that can be measured or imagined. Different terms may apply in any one animal in varying degree, depending on circumstances, but ultimately the species, and often the individual, fashion their own solutions to fit the situation or the occasion. We gain understanding not so much by lumping and defining, but by differentiating the specifics form the generalized features. The latter have a tendency to become enshrined as rules or laws that are ultimately statistically derived descriptive artifacts. But animals don’t follow rules or easily allow us to pigeonhole them into convenient intellectual boxes. A “rule” is nothing more than a consistency of response that we have deduced animals exhibit because it serves their interests. Rules are the sum of decisions made by individuals. They are a result. The chaos, and the art, of nature remains." -Bernd Heinrich

For "animal," read "poem." For "nature," read "the poet."