What;'s your beef with adverbs, Janet?

It is interesting to read the section from Burroway's "Writing Fiction" entitled "Prose Rhthym." Perhaps the most interesting quality of this portion of the text is the author's apparent ambivalence towards rhythm in prose writing.

Burroway states, in reference to prose writing, that "on the whole the rhythm is all right if it isn't clearly wrong." She states that rhythm can be wrong if the "cadence contradicts the meaning" - she provides an example of a piece where the rhythm doesn't work, a piece depicting a lazy day on a river. The selection contains several short sentences, which feel rather abrupt. She goes on to rearrange the piece, using longer sentences to extend the cadence and give the work a more leisurely rhythm (which works better with the content of the selection), but then goes on to add that there is "nothing very striking about the rhythm of this version." My problem with her "if it's not broke, don't fix it" attitude is that, for many people, rhythm is something that is not inherent. Like many other elements of writing, it is an aspect which must be practiced. Burroway comments at the beginnging of this section that novelists and short-story writers do not need to concern themselves with the relationship between sense and sound in the same way that poets do. While, I would agree that rhythm is one of the most primary elements in poetry, I would argue that its importance in effective prose writing is not something that should be disregarded. Certainly, the idea that rhythm is something that only poets need to concern themselves with seems highly problematic. There are several prose writers I can think of who would appear to be extremely concerned with rhythm. Their awareness of rhythm informs their literary works in very noticeable and striking ways and is a large component of their personal style of writing.

on ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS A MERCEDES-BENZ

I've often enjoyed the brevity that Natalie Goldman exercises in the book "Writing Down the Bones." This shouldn't be taken the wrong way. What I mean to express is that her chapters are short and, most often, to the point. This is a quality I find admirable. There is nothing there that doesn't need to be there. Never is this more true than in the chapter entitled "One Plus One Equals a Mercedes-Benz."

Registering at less than a page, this chapter deals with the idea of melting into one's surroundings and opening up oneself to any and all prospects. The author implores the reader to "turn off your logical brain that says 1 + 1 = 2. Open up your mind to the possibility that 1 + 1 can equal 48, a Mercedes-Benz, an apple pie, a blue horse." As in previous chapters, she encourages us not to tell our stories with facts, but with details and figurative language. She asks us to allow that which we observe to consume us in a sense ("burn all of yourself with it"), to consider how it feels to describe oneself not as an outside force acting upon an object, but as the object itself. To become the thing about which you're writing. She states that we have only a short time to experience such "ecstasy" before our egos will send us crashing back to Earth again, leaving only the writing itself with "the great vision." The purpose being that we return - again and again - to these writings to remind ourselves of the nature of the human condition and the necessity for compassion and kindness in the world we share.

What this reading series has to do with a building for bathing

Stephanie Rowden is a professor from the University of Michigan School of Art & Design who works primarily with sound installations and recordings. Her contribution to the Bathhouse Reading Series event this past Tuesday was in the form of a lecture which included a presentation of selections from her body of work.

Early in her lecture, she implored the audience to go on a "sound walk" with her, whereby she guided the audience through different audio landscapes such as a meadow and a 24-hour diner using field recordings that she triggered with a laptop computer. She stated that sound is a "nimble medium," one which is capable of "transporting" a listener by invoking images that "stick to the brain."

Before her presentation began, a group of her students (and one ex-student) performed Is That Wool Hat My Hat? by Jackson Mac Low. This is an interesting poem consisting of various intonations and permutations of the five different words which are found in the title of the piece. Experiencing the poem being performed live reminded me of seeing David Ives' play Phillip Glass Buys a Loaf of Bread. One of the most obvious similarities between the two (and, I suspect, the reason why it came to mind) is the use of rhythm in both pieces. The deliberate and regulated repetition of words and sounds is at the heart of both compositions. Interestingly enough, rhythm is something that I don't recall ever being specifically mentioned during Stephanie Rowden's presentation. Her work is rooted in field recordings and, in several of her examples that we witnessed, the manipulation and installation of said recordings. At one point during the question-and-answer portion of the event, she referenced the fact that she does not, in fact, consider herself a "performer" per sae.

It was an interesting juxtaposition to Stephen Benson, whose work is heavily informed by improvisational performance and composition. Benson is a poet from New Jersey, who moved to San Francisco in 1976 and is credited with being instrumental in the then-burgeoning language poetry movement. His presented a live performance at the Bathhouse event, which consisted of the author somewhat randomly choosing selections from his work and presenting them as a larger unified piece.

The set for his presentation consisted of a couch at stage left and a desk and chair at upper stage right. The only other props were a mobile white board, some dry erase markers, several pieces of paper, a plastic bag of books (most of which were his own), and a bottle of water. With these devices in tow, the author proceded to walk, crawl, and run about the stage, grabbing scraps of paper from the desk, reading them or discarding them for later, then moving to the couch or the floor to read from other pieces of paper or books or, at times, material from both almost simultaneously.

It was difficult, at times, to tell if his movements had been blocked ahead of time and likewise, if he was actually reading from the books and the pieces of paper or if he was reciting his work. Afterwards, during the question-and-answer period, he addressed those questions by stating that he had, indeed, been reading from the texts and implying that his movements were not blocked ahead of time.

Stephen Benson stated that frequently during his performances there are times when he feels like he is connecting with his audience and times where he feels their attention waning. I certainly observed this to some degree during his performance both from my own perspective and by observing the reactions of other spectators. Interestingly, the lines that oftentimes garnered the biggest response were (intentionally or coincidentally) self-referential. For instance, much of the crowd reacted quite verbally (in the form of laughter) when he read a line of text that questioned why the reading series is entitled "Bathhouse." During his performance, there were some serious problems with the engineering of the audio system. At one point, two of the event's organizers left the main seating area and were standing behind a wall which seperates the entrance to the room from the seating area. They were discussing the situation concerning the audio system loudly enough that at least a portion of the audience could hear them speaking. This situation happened to coincide with a line that the author was reading which referenced two people talking in the next room. A student from the audience brought this occurrance up during the question-and-answer session and asked if the line had been an intentional response to the situation that was unfolding at the time. The author hadn't realized that the situation was even occurring - he had no idea that there was a problem with the sound or that there were two people talking in the next room when he delivered the line (much less that it was a moment that resonated with at least one, if not more, spectators).

An interesting aspect of this event was how different both the content and the form of each of the presentations were. While Stephanie Rowden's video & slide presentationd dealt primarily with capturing and manipulating sounds and the relation of sound to memory and the human experience, Stephen Benson's very physical performance was more of an exploration of the process by which language occurs and exists. Both dealt with an aspect of sound and communication, but in very different and fascinating ways.

Leftovers

The following are some poems that I composed during this semester. It seemed appropriate to include them in this blog if only for the sake of having a place to put them (as they are currently on random pieces of paper floating through various notebooks). All but one were written while I was working on assignments for class and one was actually written "erroneously" in reference to an assignment.


LOOSE ATOMS

So, the guy who found the suit
The guy is yeast
it turns out he's a botanist
"I care about supplemental forms,
I'm a scientist."
As a child
He was chased around
the train yard
by hobos.


DISPLACEMENT

When a human being consumes anjing it is said to have a warming effect on the body similar to that one may experience after consuming alcoholic beverages. Ingesting dog flesh also reportedly decreases the occurrence of premature ejaculation in males who may be prone to such behavior. Muslims have strict guidelines relating to certain aspects of their diet - that is to say that while some food has been deemed acceptable by Allah for human consumption (i.e. those that are halal), other foods are prohibited. Dog meat, along with pork, alcohol, and fish without fins or scales, is considered to be among the latter.

Thomas Edison sought to answer great questions by making a practice of falling asleep in a chair while holding a rock in his hand. Beneath his hand (and the rock contained therein) was a metal bucket. As he drifted asleep and the muscles in his hand relaxed, he would release the rock and it would fall into the bucket (causing the sound one would expect a rock falling into a metal bucket to make), thereby waking him in the process. This was how he sought to retain consciousness while sleeping. Such a procedure may be responsible for the invention of useful items ranging from the kinetoscope to the incandescent light bulb.


THE INVENTION OF THE DEATH RAY

The same guy we found failing with legs

in the park one

Sunday morning was the one on the

plastic seat with the jacket that

meowed.

There was no real problem;

the driver kept his leather

on the wheel

and what I assume were his nostrils

on an amorous breeze

that blew feline intonations, and headphones,

heavy sighs,

and advertisements

out the tops

of windows.

I was thinking about what,

a Styrofoam cup that was attached

to a clear lid

breaking beneath the weight

of my left

foot.

Who knows? A mitten, a newspaper,

the smell

of

wet shoelaces and partially-smoked

cigarettes.

What else, how to find it,

something I was looking

for that morning.

Perhaps it was a brown lighter.

I was shattered, I keep doing that

all the time. Switching between one thing

and

another, always wanting everything to

work out.

So his envelope, his folder, it

meowed again and everyone in the back heard

it and wanted to know

what was going

on

even though they all knew

what was going

on.

And the driver, in his infinite

wisdom and patience,

kept his gloves on the

wheel and his eyes in

outer space.

on MYSTERY STORIES

I'm a big fan of mystery. I don't need to know all of the inside angles all the time. I like to explore, to guess, to figure things out and accept that there are some questions I'll never know the answer to. In this sense, I prefer to remain in the dark as to an author's intentions behind a piece of writing when I'm looking at it for the first time. That is to say, I prefer to view it with a blank slate to see how, unaided, the text resonates with me.

As I was reading through the first fiction packet in anticipation of this week's class, there were several pieces that I enjoyed. Jamaica Kincaid and Sherman Alexie's pieces were both exceptional, and James Tate's "The List of Famous Hats" was a lot of fun, but one piece that really struck me was Sharon Krinsky's "Mystery Stories". The thing I enjoy about this selection is that it elicits a sense of wonder, wherein one recognizes that, as the reader, we will only ever be able to see a portion of the total picture; in this sense, then, it is our duty to finish the narrative ourselves.

At times, this selection reads like a recollection of dreams. I believe this effect is achieved, in part, from the omission of certain details, and, in another part, due to the fact that it is written in the present tense. In the section entitled "The Japanese Man", the author references both dreaming and waking life:

"I dream that I am this Japanese man. I wake up crying in the dream but not in real life."

Because the author draws this distinction between dreaming and waking life, we must assume, then, that these stories are not summations of dreams, but some other type of stories. Yet, there is something in the writing itself that makes these stories feel too ethereal to have taken place in our world. Perhaps it is the omission of certain details that I alluded to earlier; indeed, there is something in her writing that allows even the most commonplace of occurrences to take on an otherworldly feel. Take, for example, the section entitled "The Record Store":

"A rock 'n' roller all dressed in black comes up behind me while I
am flipping through the albums in a record store. He kisses the top of
my head. Later, he comes to visit a waiter at the restaurant where
I am the manager or hostess."

There are many questions that are posed by this section: Why does the unnamed 'rock 'n' roller' kiss the top of her head? Do they know each other? And why does she state that she is the manager or the hostess of the restaurant? Why doesn't she know which one she is? Is she both? What is the rock 'n' roller's relationship with the waiter? There are many items left unanswered. And that, in my humble opinion, is the beauty in this piece. It brings to mind a quote by the inimitable Pablo Picasso:
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
What would our lives be without questions to stoke our curiosities?

on SYNTAX

The chapter in "Writing Down the Bones" entitled Syntax is a very interesting one, in which the author implores the reader to take a selection from their most boring pieces of writing and rearrange the words without concern for syntax or order. Afterward, the reader/writer is encouraged to add random punctuation marks to the piece, then to read the selection adding intonation and inflection.

Goldman states that "we think in sentences, and they way we think is the way we see." She opines that if one can "crack" what we have learned to be the traditional sentence structure, we can, likewise, crack our perception of the world around us and examine it in fresh new ways. One of the most interesting examples of creating a work that is outside of our normal ideas of syntax were a group of poems that the author included from an anthology of poetry written at a residence for mentally retarded women. I thoroughly enjoyed many of the pieces included in this chapter; some (most notably "Give Me a White" by Marion Pinski) reminded me of the work of Gertrude Stein. Goldman states that one reason she finds the women's poetry remarkable (or "fresh") is due to the nature of surprise that is evident in their work. I didn't necessarily find that same sense of surprise in these pieces. There is a considerable amount of attention to detail, and the common imagery of cabbage (which is found in both "The Stone and I" by Beverly Opse and "Everybody" by Shirley Nielson) is something I find interesting, but what really grabs me is the fact that, despite the unconventional syntax (or lack thereof), one is still able to glean meaning from these poems. That is, there are easily recognizable images, conflicts, and themes within them. Such ideas are so universal that they exist outside of the laws and principles of grammar. I like to imagine that they are too large, too obvious to humans, to be able to be contained, or imprisoned, in something that we've created.