Kesi

[No links. Find them yourself on ubu.com. The Ed.]        

Tzara, Tristan. Translated by Pierre Joris A Note On Negro Poetry, 1918.   When I read the poetic line “I abhor to enter a house where the balconies, “the ornaments”, are carefully stuck to the wall” at first I thought it was an odd play with words so I kept re-reading it to understand. The word abhor means to regard with disgust so the poet must despise the perfection of “ornaments” or artificial objects perfectly positioned on a wall. But then when I read the next line “Yet the sun, the stars continue to vibrate and hum freely in space, but I loathe to identify the explanatory hypotheses with the principle of life, activity, certainty.” When Tristan mentions the sun and the stars humming, I thought about how the stars and the sun are making natural music in transient spaces. I noticed after reading through the entire poem, the poet seems to loathe and despise many psychological ideas such as perfection of artifacts on a wall or principles of life and even mentions “unswerving firmness of sensibility.” I will be honest I did not truly understand the poetry to an extent, but I did enjoy the utilization of the adjectives used in place.

Foreman, Richard. MP3 loops from Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty.   After listening to all twenty three MP3 loops of Foreman’s Now That Communism Is Dead My Life Feels Empty, I got a psychological sense of chaotic rebellion through playing the looped tracks. Some loops sound like celebration while others sound like riots. These loops also demonstrate a narrative of a beginning, middle and end similar to concrete poetry. A simple word, like a musical melody demonstrates a beginning, middle, and an end. Each loop portrays a sense of off and on balance of emotions; similar to mixed feelings of the subject with Communism being dead, according to Richard Foreman. Loop twenty three was the longest loop of two minutes and thirty five seconds with a sense of concluding what the artist is proclaiming about how he personally feels about Communism. Personally my favorite loops were the ones that held constant and urgent repetitive sounds through the whole loop to symbolize an on going constant emotion which I personally found intriguing and similar to my own personal music collection.

McCaffery, Steve. Carnival The First Panel: 1968-1970, 1973.   I found this poetic piece interesting because a nostalgic feeling flew right through me. The reason being is because in the Poetics off the Page class, the class was involved in a very similar exercise of using our made up one word poem and manipulating it. One way being that we took letter stamps and stamped it numerous times on bristol paper to evoke vibrance and dynamic poetic sense with our words, especially the chaotic and surrealistic motions of the letter used to make our one word poems. This poetic piece Carnival The First Panel: 1968-1970 is just like what we demonstrated in class that day when we constructed our own concrete poems in a similar situation like this. McCaffery seemed to have done the same thing we did in class. I can see words like “please” and “change” and even the word “farm.” There is so much going on in this one artistic piece. It really gets your eyes moving through everything written to figure out what the artist is trying to tell the viewer. After looking over the piece just once more I got a sense of the poem being a warning sign in some way, mainly due to the fact of how it’s represented with the constant words being built on top of each other and different fonts and sizes dangling alongside the edge of the paper, maybe telling the viewer that the poet is “on the edge.”

Tzara, Tristan. Unpretentious Proclamation, April 8th 1919.   This poem is like an everyday life quote book that you can look at and really say to yourself over and over again. My interest in this poem grew just after reading the first line “Art is putting itself to sleep to bring about the birth of the new world “ART”- a parrot word- replaced by DADA, PLESIOSAURUS, or handkerchief.” The words “art is putting itself to sleep to bring out the birth of the new world art,” really speaks a great deal in present time in the art world today. How art is constantly evolving through new medium and new age modernity. Sometimes as artists we may need to step back and realize everything that has come to play in the art world and why it has brought so much meaning to us as artists. How Tzara wrote these poetic quotes in different font types and sizes echoes emotion with the quotes written. In this quote “Art is a PRETENSION heated at the TIMIDITY of the urinary basin, hysteria born in the studio.” That two line stanza has more than two fonts and multiple sizes to depict a great emotion in this one quote. It also tells the reader from the artist’s standpoint in how he feels about art to the open world.

Piper, Adrian. Untitled 1968.   This poem is a natural state of confusion and turmoil. Piper discusses shapes like squares and rectangles and tells the reader on how they should be read. When I took the time to read this overlapping untitled poem, I realized how much his writing is like a video game. When you hold a game controller in your hand, you are in control of the game. The video game manual tells you what the controls do, similar to the poet Adrian telling the reader on how to read his poem. But it is up to you to determine how you want to play the game and what controls you use to defeat a boss or game level. Pressing up down, left right constantly may help you but for how long will it help you is up the the gamer. This poem is just like a video game in the same sense. The poet may tell you to read this poem as a whole but it is your decision if how or what your reading is processing correctly in your mind so you understand the subject in front of you.

cummings, e.e. Let’s From Some Loud Unworld’s Most Rightful Wrong, Mp3.   Listening to E.E Cummings poetry as an audio track for the first time was pretty interesting. His voice was the poem in a sense to what he was saying in the poem. His words were strong, continual and flowed through each and every stanza he spoke. One stanza that stood out to me was “shrived of that nonexistence millions call life, you and I may reverently share the blessed eachness of all beautiful selves wholly which and innocently are.” He brings about the touch and life lessons of living life and how we are all beautiful people living in this world. He poem was so calm and soothing and distributed no confusion or depression. He talks about the innocence of how human life is so beautiful and that we as human beings are living in this beautiful world. We, the people, are in charge of keeping this world alive and safe, no one else keeps the world living other than us as humans. Overall we play a role and should not overlook our duties as a human species.

Jandi, Ernst. “What you can do without vowels” MP3.   This poem represents the modern form of beat boxing, techno, and dub-step music. Personally I enjoy listening to dubstep and beat box music because it has such a whimsical feeling and just makes you want to dance. This audio clip represents that well with music without vowels. This song make you want to get up and dance and better yet tapping your feet to the beat. The sounds that are made with the mouth and sounds made from any and all types of objects, can make music and in present day that is still in existence. I not only hear male voices in the audio clips but I also hear a female voice as well which may be a type of duet beat boxing poetry which I have never heard before until now. I find that concept intriguing due to the fact it is not necessarily done often in present time.

Lin, Tan. “The Edge of Summer Cleans Autumn.” When you are first introduced to the poem, the poem displays one word at a time and then in the end, shows all the poetic stanza’s simultaneously. As an artist I personally work with time and space concepts so in a sense my work is similarly linked in connection to this poem. With the first word starting with lazy and the last word of the poem ending with unclothed I felt like I was reading the poet’s diary. The words like divorced, careless, and repaired shows that the poet when through harsh times in his life it seems. This poem openly tells the viewer how he felt in his marriage and how he felt after his marriage. It goes back to the concrete poetry having a beginning, middle, and end in the same sense. This poem is very deep with all these words showing up one by one, to tell the reader how he felt right after that previous emotion was felt. Pessimism and low self esteem is derived from the artist in this poem and in the same sense you get a good idea into what the poet is feeling.

Zukofsky, Louis. “Julia’s Wild.”  An eerie feeling with the words “come, shadow come and take this shadow up” displayed a supernatural feeling in this poem. It could be due to the fact the words are all repetitive but each and every line has a different repetitive tone to it. When I was reading this poem, a quick horror movie with a dark black and greenish glow played in my mind. It sounds like this poem can be told in many voices like spirits and ghosts or something of that nature. I will have to guess that the woman speaking is Julia because of the title of the poem “Julia’s Wild.” It is a random guess but I can assume that the poem is her speaking these words over and over again so they echo in a person’s mind. Or maybe Julia is in fact a spirit or ghost who is talking to the poet Zukofsky. Maybe this poem is a nightmare he continually has had in his life and he named the nightmare Julia’s Wild. Anything is possible in this poem and that is what makes it interesting to discuss and really think about it.

Murase, Miyeko. “Tagasode (Whose Sleeves?)” Edo Period, 17th Century.  I found the description of the gilded paper artifact a thought-provoking narrative. The artifact is a six-fold screen with color on gilded paper which was created in the 17th century and is displayed in the 1971 exhibition of Japanese artwork at the Asia House in New York City. I personally want to go to New York City just to see this beautiful gilded paper artwork in person. Not only is the artwork aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but also the narrative behind the artwork. A beautiful woman’s prized possessions consist of gold-embellished clothes racks with a kimono and a Japanese musical instrument called a koto. These signifiers tell the viewer about this wealthy Japanese woman and how her beauty is her prized possession. Other colorful and beautiful fabrics are wrapped around the rack to show she has a countless source of taste for her gorgeous attire. They mention in the conclusion that Zen artists always express the true life and essence rather then fully displaying what is seen, like the woman who is not seen in the gilded paper print but as a viewer you get an idea that this rich clothing line belongs to a woman and that her presence is not needed to determine what the artwork truly represents.