Lesson Ten L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E

When I think of "a poem about nothing" my mind races to Seinfeld and then I think of my favorite episode and then the last thing I'm thinking about is poetry...case in point, this very post. I'm going to switch it up and write my poem first.

There it is.
Red apples make crunching sounds.
My favorite is the taller one with the feathers. While
running it devours.
And towers lean.
True enough, she is in rare form.

Wire lays beside the binder. The chatter is mindnumbing.
Is dust dusty? Probably so.
Where there are no lions
there lies the young.
Remarkably, lysol outlasts bacteria.

Infection is the leading lecture.
Whereas potency, has three minds of their own.
Black screens lay beside the wall,
next to the outlet.
Does not compute!
These pretzels are making me thirsty. A phrase isn't a phrase
until it's regurgitated
at a cocktail party
as a bizzare quip
from a socialite.
Organic popcorn,
lightly salted.
The sensation of an electric stapler is comforting.

------------OK



Of the two poems, Bob Perelman's China and Chronic Meaning, I would most closely compare my work of linguistic calamity to China. Chronic Meaning is only the first five words of longer sentences, some of which can be categorized as complete statements some of which cannot, whereas China seems to have complete phrases that are singluar, cohesive, and complete in their own right, yet are completely unattached to the statement that follows. I tried to write a poem that wasn't about anything, but believe I failed miserably. It was a lot more difficult than I thought. I just wrote a bunch of random sentences and hoped that I completed the assignment. It was difficult given the parameters that we couldn't make up words and that we had to stick to regular linguistic format because every American sentence that I know of has at least one subject and one predicate. It takes me back to China, the poem AND the country, and thinking "how can these phrases make sense together?" I don't think the poem is about anything, but it is also not about anything. I don't think that makes sense. The point is not about any one specific thing, but rather it is about a multitude of different things all at once. In Chronic Meaning, the phrases are taken from another work and shortened to the sameword length. Since those sentences are already written and shortened, Perelman is literally using a procedure in order to make the poem. The procedure itself lends to linguistic ambiguity in some cases. I don't really know if it is possible to write coherent sentences and not have them be about anything in particular. If read out of the blue I don't think either poem would make "sense" from start to finish, but in each work there are instances, especially throughout China, where they make sense.