2/26—I’m very fond of that number, 26. 2 + 6 = 8, my favorite basic number, tied in with Gemini and mercury. 26 letters in the alphabet. 26 weeks is half a year. I published 26 Books—26 chapbooks of 26 pages each by 26 OR (largely Portland) & WA writers; followed that up with the anthology Playing with a Full Deck, with 26 other regional writers. I live on 78^th street (26 x 3), and this county, Multnomah, has the code 26 cause that’s where it is in alphabetical order of Oregon counties.

Poetry.  Language knows. Poetry is the easiest art for anyone o do as it involves a medium we all have some familiarity with—language—and requires no special equipment. (Have been to a couple open mikes where the poet read from her/ his cell phone or computer. The former requires a little coordination to get the words scrolling at a compatible pace to their reading.) Can it be a poem and not be art. This whole evaluation thing—what is a good poem?

     I made it through an MFA in poetry, so I know the workshop standards—compression, precision, clarity. touches of difference/invention. Mostly these relate to getting language to do what you want, to express what you have to say. In the popular areas of confessional, journalistic, and those based  on experiencing another piece of art, poems are trying to re-create or communicate an experience.

     Had a great mind-opening from my high school friend (& now prof at MIT) Bill Uricchio that when I say the word “tree,” the picture, the meaning in your mind is unique to you. So there’s no way I can paint a precise picture. One can hope the reader’s experience will be as parallel to what the poet is trying to express as their minds can allow. But how close can you get without pushing it, or even diminishing the potential experience.

     Being the most participatable of arts has also made poetry the most conservative, the least innovative, the most linear. Think of the changes that have happened over a century ago in music and painting. Can there be a poem that works in the way a Jackson Pollock painting does? Painters don’t have to be figurative, and our minds are ready to make associations with all kinds of shapes & colors.

     While a lot of work has been done in modern times to explore non-syntactic, non-word aspects of language--including concrete poetry, visual poetry, sound poetry—I’m committed to staying with some semblance of word-ness (though am free to mash together, alter and invent) and syntax (though often ‘sprung’ or hybrid or.)  Language poetry (“we’re all language poets cause we all use language” some silly said once to me). Getting it’s name from the magazine L=A=N= . . .E, it aimed to break language down to its component parts and see how they worked together, tying in with Derrida’s deconstructionism and Wittgenstein’s philosophy. While claiming a rebel stance against the confessionalism and lyricism haunting much of academe, some of the key language poets came form the Iowa writers workshop and other top programs. In a decade or so the deconstructionists and language poets had major footholds in the top schools.

     My playing with puns, switching a letter or two in a word and some of the syntactical stuff are areas where I’m working with the parts of words. This also applies to how a word looks, and to its visual placement (though I’m a lot more left margin than I was in my youth)—the physical context of the poem, which has to be considered as well the sound/music of the poem, the non-verbal parts.

     When asked to describe my work in 3 or 4 words I said beat language visionary. Language as just discussed, beat cause my first non-school poetry exposures were to the beats (including Ferlinghetti, Patchen & Yevtushenko, as well as Jack, Allen & Greg), I am native to the urban grit and the proclamatory lines; and visionary cause that’s the magic, the imagination, making it up, mixing it vigorously

     Still the question of what makes a good poem. More in the next post.