Alex,
I don't know that I'm the best person on this list to respond to this,
but I do think it asks for a response, and I'm not sure anyone else
will, so I'll take a whack at it.
I see a lot of spirit in a lot of what I see, here. So, you and I must
have different notions of perceptible spirit.
There's a known problem in the search for extraterrestrial life that
basically boils down to: we are limited in our search by the limits of
our imagination of what constitutes life--and our imagination is in no
small part limited itself by the limits of what we can perceive.
We wouldn't know a 9th dimensional crystalline nano-second-long
civilization if it whacked us on the nose. Because we're looking, for
the most part, for carbon based life forms that are visible within our
pretty narrow range of perceptible reality. Heck, even the bugs in
science fiction movies are humanoid.
A lot of what happens here, on this list, are attempts to broaden the
imaginable. And humans are stubborn, so sometimes it's useful to apply
the spirit of the 12 pound maul instead of the spirit of the ball peen
hammer. I feel it's important work because, as Oliver Wendell Holmes
said, "Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its
original dimensions." The spirit present here is the spirit of
expansion. Expanding what poetry is, rather than limiting it to slight
variation on what has been.
The fact that much of it could have been made by something other than
a man, and yet the reader still pleads to belong to some form of human
connection is very much the point of some of it, I imagine. I am
reminded of the Rumi that Barks has translated:
Love Dogs
One night a man was crying,
"Allah, Allah!"
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing you express
is the return message.
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them."
Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks
The reader's attempt to connect *is* the return message.
And some of what you read here, on this list anyway, is certainly
machine-assisted and occasionally even completely machine generated
(after the setting of some initial state + algorithm). Because there's
a very real, vital, current, and necessary exploration of human
poetics going on through the process of making a serious run at
developing a machine poetics. Almost every form of art but nude
interpretational dance is employing some form of technology, the
differentiations are by degree. And all employed technologies affect,
necessarily, the work produced by their use.
As for only poets writing poems, I think that it's impossible for a
poem to be written by any entity other than a poet. In the context of
the rest of your comments, it reads more like what you intend to say
is that the only poems that should be written are the poems written by
poets who are writing to suit your sensibilities. I think you will
find very little of that on this list, since a process of challenging
sensibilities is what's being explored, directly and intentionally, by
many who post to this list.
I don't think the thousand-year-old tree is in any need of
RE-claiming. It's never been abandoned. It's been pruned, had initials
carved into it, been photographed, had seedlings cut from it, been
replanted, houses tree-forts, been gene-spliced, and is currently
bearing never-before-imagined, lush, wild and delicious fruit the
likes of which the world has never known. Some of it tastes awful and
bitter. Some of it is hallucinogenic. Some of it lights chocolate on
fire if you try to dip it. Some of it looks just like a Bartlett pear
but tastes like the number 5, some of it jiggles when you play Mahler,
some of it has a half-life that is too short to register on any
equipment made today, some of it blooms in the mind of those who eat
it only years after its been forgotten, some of it cries itself to
sleep for weeks if you look at it sideways. All of it says "I am
poetry" and forces you to agree or disagree, and in so doing impinges
itself upon any poetics that is open to developing.
Regards,
Dan
> There's no spirit in anything I see, here. It's so
> detached, one might say, that its minutia. It could
> have been made by something other than a man, and yet
> the reader still pleads to belong to some form of
> human connection. Seems disagreeable, something I
> gotta ask myself, and I don't have the answer, but
> seems to me only poets should write poems, reclaiming
> that thousand-year-old tree.
>
> AJ
>
>
>
> --- BjørnMagnhildøen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> G
>>
>>
>> T
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> why did Nansen cross Greenland?
>> he wanted to show it was possible
>>
>> why didn't he succeed?
>> because he wanted to show it was possible
>>
>> are the raindrops one thing or several?
>> are all numbers multiples?
>>
>> how will you proceed from now?
>> all the chairs ruin your back
>>
>>
>> P
>>
>>
>> where will you go?
>> i want to be a crow
>>
>> where will the crow go?
>> don't try to imagine
>>
>> what about imagination?
>> another romance
>>
>> what about love?
>> how did the chicken cross the road?
>> t Zk5
>> Zk5
>> M
>> M
>> k
>> u
>>
>> x U
>> S
>>
>> what about the road?
>> it continues in each step
>>
>> what steps can there be?
>> did you ask me a question?
>>
>> what will remain?
>> look, the door opened by itself
>>
>> wouldn't you say it was the wind?
>> so where does the wind remain?
>>
>> isn't the weather getting worse all over?
>> everything is getting worse all over
>>
>> lpXhoj
>> w e c
>> an r
>> 7 l
>> and
>> y
>>
>>
>> isn't that depressing?
>> not the least
>>
>> what would you call depressing?
>> imagination
>>
>> have you no pity for the world?
>> just imagine
>>
>> what's reality?
>> where are we now?
>>
>> don't you negate reality with all this?
>> where is reality when you sleep?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> W 1
>> PG+QV4P
>> PG+QV4P
>> 5aXQtJ7W1
>>
>> who is sleeping?
>> your unborn brother is sleeping
>>
>> isn't that imagination?
>> isn't that reality?
>>
>> then what is unreal?
>> you were talking about raindrops
>>
>> aren't you stuck here?
>> then why should you ask?
>>
>> T
>>
>>
>> i'm kicking you loose
>> aren't you stuck here?
>>
>> why did the chicken cross the road?
>> because it was stuck
>>
>> did the chicken have imagination?
>> try to imagine
>>
>> what about politics?
>> on which side of the road?
>>
>> what about the road?
>> already answered that
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> X
>> O
>> z d
>>
>> are you stuck here?
>> already answered that
>>
>> do you think i approve of this?
>> try to imagine
>>
>> what's the shortest way from a to b?
>> it's the same place
>>
>> then why did the chicken cross the road?
>> because it was stuck
>>
>> then why do you continue to answer?
>> because of my jovial nature
>>
>> what do you mean by jovial nature?
>>
>> Zv
>>
>>
>> AVxlsMw55
>> how do you think humans evolved?
>>
>> then how did humans evolve?
>> by their good nature
>>
>> isn't that another excursion?
>> try to imagine
>>
>> what do you mean by nature?
>> excursion
>>
>>
>> kI 3.
>> what do you mean by good?
>> little by little
>>
>> then what is evil?
>> too much by too much
>>
>> and what is jovial?
>> a little chicken
>>
>> don't we eat chickens?
>> out of our good nature
>>
>> how come?
>> how do you think it crossed the road?
>>
>> because it was stuck?
>> we eat what is stucked
>>
>> how come?
>> what else can you eat?
>>
>> does the answer eat the question?
>> on which side are you?
>>
>> what is the road?
>> have you already eaten?
>>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
