[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.
