酷我-北美枫

[anna]

I must admit that at the beginning, I strongly resisted Language Poetry. I have browsed through the discussion forum to seek for the same opinion and was glad to find some. Although I hoped to keep an open mind, somehow I still took the attitude with Language Poetry and its procedure. As a person who highly appreciates the natural writing process, I dislike machine-made poetry and auto-translating tools. I always feel they are like cheating, since everyone can feed in any borrowed content, and claim the result as his creation. After reading heated debates and the notes the language poets shared, I guess for me the best approach to understand it is to try my own hand at using Language Poetry rules and procedures. As this assignment suggested, I tried both options that the language poets mostly use. Here I would like to discuss some results from my experiment.

First I followed Option B, the Bernadette Mayer Experiment: Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing. I thought that this at least involves human interaction and selection (here I am, this means a lot). I chose my own poem as the source, then began to eliminate words according to the experiment: first all adjectives, then words starting with “s’, then words ending with “t”, and so on. I found myself struggling with decisions on which rule I wanted to apply. The truth was before I decided, I filtered through the poem in my head by applying each rule to get a quick result. If it seemed a nice outcome, I made my decision and continued. If not, I abandoned it and tried another possible word elimination. As you see, all these conscious movements during the procedure were huge hindrances to what the Language Poets promote, that is, the accidental beauty derived from letting go of the ego. So I recognized that I had failed in this approach and decided to try Option A: The Mesostomatic (based on John Cage's Mesostics) which I believe is more reliant on the automatic pre-designed machine (computer-generated)

For this experiment, since it is very easy to operate, I have tried many times with different texts (seeds), and spine words. I wanted to compare the outcomes using this similar procedure. I have chosen some texts from an online link, the poems we discussed on ModPo and my own poems. I found the most attractive to me were from my own poems. Well, one might think it was my huge ego again! And for the spine words I have used: my own name (sorry, still cannot let go), Emily Dickinson, John Cage and Al Filreis. I found no matter which spine words I used, the outcomes still reflect the original source although a little twisted, yet, still myself. What a relief! I found Emily Dickinson seemingly disapproves of what I did, since several of my poems that I used, in the outcome (as you can see below) her name was always chopped. only when I doubled the seed, did her full name appear. On the other hand, Al seemed no problem at all for this option, and the result quite fits with his thought.

In the end, I decided for now to hang on to my ego, I might try these experiments at another time. The conclusion of my limited experiments is that I won’t argue with the point that accidental beauty can be derived from letting go of the ego, but I would argue that it can be achieved by applying these experiments. From mighty and generous Nature, I often find accidental beauty where I forget my own self. One never needs a forced letting go. What a blessing!

Outcomes that I liked from Option A



<b>Reference: the source </b><br></p>

Reference: the source


Truth

It’s easy to hear what others proclaim,
skip what’s unsaid by an ignorant mind.
Storms always form after winds howl and blame.
Rains follow loud commands and all are blind.
What is left, afterwards? The dirty path
Full of disturbed scenes and ugly misdeeds.

At last, you gaze outside with fading wrath,
Hide your insane soul beneath sands and reeds.
From your secret paradox, evils may
Soon dress themselves up as pretending friends.
Magic plays in a stingy, greedy way;
You master it as your winning ascends.

Yet you can’t block lights from shining
That sing truth without confining.

from "Inhaling the Silence" (Mosaic Press 2013)</i><br></p></span><p></p><p>

</p></span><p></p><p></p>
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

I must admit that at the beginning, I strongly resisted Language Poetry. I have browsed through the discussion forum to seek for the same opinion and was glad to find some. Although I hoped to keep an open mind, somehow I still took the attitude with Language Poetry and its procedure. As a person who highly appreciates the natural writing process, I dislike machine-made poetry and auto-translating tools. I always feel they are like cheating, since everyone can feed in any borrowed content, and claim the result as his creation. After reading heated debates and the notes the language poets shared, I guess for me the best approach to understand it is to try my own hand at using Language Poetry rules and procedures. As this assignment suggested, I tried both options that the language poets mostly use. Here I would like to discuss some results from my experiment.

First I followed Option B, the Bernadette Mayer Experiment: Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing. I thought that this at least involves human interaction and selection (here I am, this means a lot). I chose my own poem as the source, then began to eliminate words according to the experiment: first all adjectives, then words starting with “s’, then words ending with “t”, and so on. I found myself struggling with decisions on which rule I wanted to apply. The truth was before I decided, I filtered through the poem in my head by applying each rule to get a quick result. If it seemed a nice outcome, I made my decision and continued. If not, I abandoned it and tried another possible word elimination. As you see, all these conscious movements during the procedure were huge hindrances to what the Language Poets promote, that is, the accidental beauty derived from letting go of the ego. So I recognized that I had failed in this approach and decided to try Option A: The Mesostomatic (based on John Cage's Mesostics) which I believe is more reliant on the automatic pre-designed machine (computer-generated)

For this experiment, since it is very easy to operate, I have tried many times with different texts (seeds), and spine words. I wanted to compare the outcomes using this similar procedure. I have chosen some texts from an online link, the poems we discussed on ModPo and my own poems. I found the most attractive to me were from my own poems. Well, one might think it was my huge ego again! And for the spine words I have used: my own name (sorry, still cannot let go), Emily Dickinson, John Cage and Al Filreis. I found no matter which spine words I used, the outcomes still reflect the original source although a little twisted, yet, still myself. What a relief! I found Emily Dickinson seemingly disapproves of what I did, since several of my poems that I used, in the outcome (as you can see below) her name was always chopped. only when I doubled the seed, did her full name appear. On the other hand, Al seemed no problem at all for this option, and the result quite fits with his thought.

In the end, I decided for now to hang on to my ego, I might try these experiments at another time. The conclusion of my limited experiments is that I won’t argue with the point that accidental beauty can be derived from letting go of the ego, but I would argue that it can be achieved by applying these experiments. From mighty and generous Nature, I often find accidental beauty where I forget my own self. One never needs a forced letting go. What a blessing!

Outcomes that I liked from Option A



<b>Reference: the source </b><br></p>

Reference: the source


Truth

It’s easy to hear what others proclaim,
skip what’s unsaid by an ignorant mind.
Storms always form after winds howl and blame.
Rains follow loud commands and all are blind.
What is left, afterwards? The dirty path
Full of disturbed scenes and ugly misdeeds.

At last, you gaze outside with fading wrath,
Hide your insane soul beneath sands and reeds.
From your secret paradox, evils may
Soon dress themselves up as pretending friends.
Magic plays in a stingy, greedy way;
You master it as your winning ascends.

Yet you can’t block lights from shining
That sing truth without confining.

from "Inhaling the Silence" (Mosaic Press 2013)</i><br></p></span><p></p><p>

</p></span><p></p><p></p>
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[anna]

Option A: The Mesostomatic (based on John Cage's Mesostics)

Visit the "Mesostomatic" here. First, choose a word or phrase to enter into the field marked "Make a mesostic using the spine." Then, insert into the "textual data" field either a URL (web address) for one of the poems we've read in ModPo or the URL of another poem that interests you. Alternately, you may enter the text of a poem in the box marked "Or paste text here." Finally, select any number of mesostics you want to produce, and then hit the button marked "mesostomize." Using the Mesostomatic, you will be "writing through" the poem you selected for your textual data field.

Then, in a short essay of approximately 500 words, describe, explain, closely read and/or "interpret" the results of your mesostic.

Please note: The "Mesostomatic" can be a little buggy. Try several times to make your mesostic. If the program doesn't work well for you, we urge you to try option B.

Option B: Bernadette Mayer Experiment

First, write in response to the following prompt from Bernadette Mayer's list of writing experiments. (Please note that we've slightly revised the wording from Mayer's list of experiments; you can find the complete list here.)

Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing: for example, eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own or another poem, for example a poem in our course; or take out all words beginning with 's' in one or several of Shakespeare's sonnets or any poem or poems from our course.

After you have completed your experiment, write a short essay of approximately 500 words that describes, explains, closely reads and/or "interprets" the results.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Option A: The Mesostomatic (based on John Cage's Mesostics)

Visit the "Mesostomatic" here. First, choose a word or phrase to enter into the field marked "Make a mesostic using the spine." Then, insert into the "textual data" field either a URL (web address) for one of the poems we've read in ModPo or the URL of another poem that interests you. Alternately, you may enter the text of a poem in the box marked "Or paste text here." Finally, select any number of mesostics you want to produce, and then hit the button marked "mesostomize." Using the Mesostomatic, you will be "writing through" the poem you selected for your textual data field.

Then, in a short essay of approximately 500 words, describe, explain, closely read and/or "interpret" the results of your mesostic.

Please note: The "Mesostomatic" can be a little buggy. Try several times to make your mesostic. If the program doesn't work well for you, we urge you to try option B.

Option B: Bernadette Mayer Experiment

First, write in response to the following prompt from Bernadette Mayer's list of writing experiments. (Please note that we've slightly revised the wording from Mayer's list of experiments; you can find the complete list here.)

Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing: for example, eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own or another poem, for example a poem in our course; or take out all words beginning with 's' in one or several of Shakespeare's sonnets or any poem or poems from our course.

After you have completed your experiment, write a short essay of approximately 500 words that describes, explains, closely reads and/or "interprets" the results.
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com