This past September, in response to Ken’s post about mashing up Mormon literature and the purposes behind the repurposing of language and literature, in general, Ardis asked a question that turned my wheels a-spinnin’. Asked she, “[W]hat’s the point of being deliberately, unrelentingly unoriginal” by taking others’ work, repurposing it, and sending it out into the world? “Why is suppressing the urge toward originality,” as she assumes mash-up arists do, “more conducive to self-expression than the effort to, you know, actually be self-expressive?”

Seuss-style, I respond to Ardis’ question with three things (I was going to add my comment to the post itself, but my response grew beyond comment-length; hence, this):

Thing One: I don’t think it’s productive to argue that all mash-ups or remixes suppress the urge toward originality and self-expression. I’m thinking here of seven instances—four specific and three more general, though even as I think I stir up more instances—in which artists/creators have, to various degrees, remixed different aspects of culture or other preexisting materials in order to create something new:

a. God, who didn’t create anything ex nihilo, but who remixed extant materials in order to build universes, galaxies, worlds, us. And who’s going to call God unoriginal?

b. Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (among other works) in which he’s “borrowed” compositional elements, plot lines, bits of dialogue, costumes, etc., from a range of films to “piece” together his own story. Here’s a video that details some of these “borrowings.” (Caution: contains some graphic scenes).

Everything Is A Remix: KILL BILL from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

c. Greg Michael Gillis (aka Girl Talk), a musician who specializes in mashups and digital sampling. Here’s a video that illustrates his creative process, wherein he “borrows” a small bit of music (in this case a second or so of an Elvis Costello song) and manipulates it in various ways in order to construct a new, shall we call it, original song:

Girl Talk Creates a Mashup from OpenSourceCinema on YouTube.

Girl Talk has a huge following and is the subject of a really interesting documentary called RiP: A Remix Manifesto. For anyone interested, the film’s available in parts on YouTube and in full on Hulu. It’s a really interesting exploration of the issues surrounding mashups, including copyright laws and creativity. I especially like its opening line: “Today we’re going to create a mashup, a fun and adventurous way to create something fresh out of something stale.”

d. Mister Tim, who in his live-looping act not only mashes himself up against himself, but who also “covers” and mashes up songs from other arists as well in order to entertain audiences. I’ve embedded an example below. Mister Tim has appeared on AMV before, courtesy of mash-up lover Laura.

Mister Tim Live-Looping SWEET DREAMS (medley): 2009 Las Vegas A Cappella Summit from MisterTimVids on YouTube.

e. Found poems, which “take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems.” This poetic form became prominent in the twentieth-century, in the shadow of Pop Art (think Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp) (ref).

In 1995, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard published a collection of found poems called Mornings Like This. In the Author’s Note, she suggests, as I have here, that found poems are “the literary equivalents of Warhol’s Campbell’s soup cans and Duchamp’s bicycle,” then she offers up something about what a poet does when s/he remixes existing texts into poetry: “By entering a found text as a poem, the poet doubles its context. The original meaning remains intact, but now it swings between two poles,” between it’s non-remixed function and it’s remixed function, wherein “[t]he poet adds,” she continues, “or at any rate increases, the element of delight. This is an urban, youthful, ironic, cruising kind of poetry. It serves up whole texts [to readers], or uninterrupted fragments of texts,” in the form and language of poetry (ix). So found poetry is ironic poetry, poetry conceived of and meant to critique, even overturn, the ironies of an ironic age. Dillard’s conclusion to her Note is telling in this regard, “This [book] is [the result of] editing at its extreme: writing without composing. Half the poems seek to serve poetry’s oldest and most sincere aims”—to create an aesthetic experience of human life and to give readers pleasure in language being perhaps two of them—”with one of its newest and most ironic methods, to dig deep with a shallow tool. The other half” of the poems, she says, “are just jokes” (x).

One of Dillard’s poems, “The Sign of Your Father,” seems apropos to our current context: discussing the artistic uses, reuses, and recycling of religious texts; the religious uses of art and culture. Here’s the poem (the epigraph cites its original context):

(From Mornings Like This, p. 8-9.)

In her Author’s Note, Dillard comments briefly on one function of this remixed text (the religious nature and implications of which she seems especially critical):

The New Testament Apocrypha is a loose collection of written legends and, chiefly, torn and damaged fragments. Scholar-editors print such texts carefully to show—using ellipses and question marks—where fragments break off and which translations are guesses. An edition of the New Testament Apocrypha yields a poem ["The Sign of Your Father"] about the baffling quality of Christ’s utterances and the absurdly fragmentary nature of spiritual knowledge. Like many of these poems, it looks surprisingly sober on the page. (x)

f. The oral-formulaic composition of epic poetry, wherein (the theory goes) poets like Homer and contemporary Serbo-Croatian poets drew/draw from a stockpile of formulas (including phrases and symbols) as aids to help them compose (”mash-up”) poems “on-the-fly,” in the act of performance. This theory was first posited and explored in depth by Albert Lord in his book Singer of Tales (from which I’ve only read a page or two). It continues to be explored and developed by oral performance scholars, including John Miles Foley, who offers an excellent introduction to the topic in his book How To Read an Oral Poem.

g. Language itself, which thrives because humans continually mash-up “stale” letters and words in different combinations in order to create “fresh” and mind-expanding combinations.

Which leads me, somewhat indirectly, to

Thing Two: Everything is a remix. Languages, cultures, literatures (including scripture, as Ken suggests), music, films. Nothing can be created ex nihilo. No act of self-expression ever arises independently of other expressive acts and materials. The link in my first statement leads to an excellent series of videos produced and distributed by filmmaker Kirby Ferguson and titled, of course, “Everything is a Remix.” These videos explore the idea of mash-ups and remix culture in ways that question a) our general take on creativity as making something wholly original and b) a lot of the premises of copyright laws, which leads me, again, to

Thing Three: In light of the explosion of creativity, knowledge-sharing, and user-generated content made possible in the digital age, I wonder how we might reconsider our deep-seated and fundamental reliance on copyright and intellectual property laws as means to control access to and distribution of information. I’m not saying everything needs to be distributed free-of-charge or that creators should surrender all rights to their creations. Lawrence Lessig, a lawyer, professor, political activist, and authority on issues of copyright, speaks convincingly to the idea that many of our laws may just be choking creativity. Many others (including Lessig and, to make the connection to some aspect of Mormon culture, BYU professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology David Wiley) are building a Creative Commons and working to instill open values and to implement the open sharing of knowledge in culture and education, among other things.

With our current, perhaps overly-strict conception of intellectual property and the policing strategies that accompany this strictness—especially in academia, though academia’s concerns over plagiarism often make their way into the broader culture—the knee jerk reaction many people have to issues of plagiarism might just create more problems than it pretends to solve. I think, for instance, of one of my wife’s former professors who wanted her students to cite every claim they make in their papers—every claim. She wanted to know where all of their ideas originated. Not only does this approach to writing and scholarship create a very prohibitive reading experience—who wants to read something with a citation, or often, multiple citations, after every sentence?—it’s unrealistic, especially since (per Thing Two) every idea is derivative and who keeps track of the source behind every idea they’ve ever had? Wiley shares a similar experience in this video on open education and the future (at about the 11 minute mark). Again, I’m not arguing that we allow students, scholars, writers, artists, etc., to draw wholesale from others’ work without giving credit where credit should be given. But I am suggesting that it’s probably time to think about and approach our discussions regarding plagiarism differently, including by exploring the places where the assumptions of a wholly print culture stand in opposition to the radical openness made possible by the digital age. This openness mirrors in some fundamental ways the openness of primarily oral cultures (as suggested in 1f) where language and its public performance are viewed as aggregative and communal because they build quite explicitly and openly upon what’s come before. And, shocker: performers in these cultures don’t cite their predecessors’ work.

As regards the mashing of Mormon literature, I think Gideon Burton has done something interesting and important with his Open Source Sonnets project, which he’s published under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. What that means is simply that others are free to copy, adapt, distribute, transmit, and make commercial use of Gideon’s work, as long as they give proper attribution. Many of his sonnets are imitations (of Shakespeare, Milton, traditional carols, hymns, etc.) and several remix elements of scripture, generally, and Mormon culture, specifically. These include, to name only several, “Shakespeares of Our Own”, “Seeking the Good”, “Thy Mind, Oh Man”, “We Will Cross the River” (which was further remixed by Kathy Cowley), “The Shining One”, “Kingdoms Many”, “The Lord’s Prayer”, “His Yoke is Easy”, and “Unto the Least”. I think the openness with which Gideon has offered these poems and the remix-methods by which he composed them and with which others have responded creates a precedent that other Mormon writers might follow, in one way or another. It further presents an interesting test case of what Ken points to in terms of the possibilities of Mormon literary mash-ups and Mormon remix culture in general. But I’m not prepared to fully explore that case today. However, it’s in the works.

So let’s ruminate away for a minute on the creative possibilities of repurposed culture. And if you have additional examples of mashed-up artistry, share away…

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“Situating Sonosophy: De/constructing Alex Caldiero’s ‘Poetarium.’”

Contemporary Utah poet Alex Caldiero‘s performative mode of poetry and poetics, which he calls sonosophy, critiques conventional notions of epistemology, ethnography, language, pedagogy, performance, and poetry. It does so by maintaining what Caldiero calls a twin presence between holiness and farce, the magical and the mundane, the performance of the jester and the acts of the priest. Through this dynamic presence Caldiero aims to pivot the poet and his audience between sideshow and temple, clearing space in which to enact and to catechize the rites of language. In this space, performer and spectator at once share and disrupt simple open speech as sacrament, a subversive process that stresses the materiality of language and its origin in the physical and social relations among human bodies and communities. Caldiero consciously situates himself in this precarious position between reverence and irreverence. From this position he seeks to forge a relationship between the ridiculous and the sacred in his performances and in the minds and lives of his audience.

In this paper I will construct and briefly discuss the relational network of cultures and performance traditions in which Caldiero’s sonosophy is embedded. This network consists both of influences claimed by Caldiero and arenas within which he performs to audiences; these include, among other things: the tradition of the Sicilian storyteller (called the cuntastorie), the performance of religious rituals (specifically the Catholic liturgy and LDS temple rituals), Beat poetics (after the manner of Allen Ginsberg), and avant-garde performance movements (especially Dada). I will focus specifically on how this network is cued in Caldiero‘s 2010 “Poetarium” performance at the Utah Arts Festival* (the intro is embedded below) and on exploring where Caldiero fits within contemporary performance poetry more nationally. By so situating Caldiero, I intend to interpret his performative poetics as a site from which to interrogate the interrelated processes of poetry making, poetry performance, and performance ethnography and how these processes function in human terms. In so doing, I suggest that, through its whole-bodied performance of words, sounds, gestures, and images, this poetics has the potential to communicate profoundly and to influence spectators in ways not possible through less dynamic discursive structures.

Here’s the intro:

—————

*One set of this performance is available in five parts on YouTube.

Cross-posted here.

I’ve just finished reading “Would that All God’s Children Were Poets” by Casualene Meyer (follow the link and scroll down to p. 173), poetry editor for BYU Studies. In this short article she reflects on her responsibility for choosing what poems to publish in the journal and which poems to award prizes in the journal’s annual poetry contest. She touches on what I think are some powerful ideas about the relationship between poetry (and the human aesthetic experience in general), religion, and service to others. I won’t explore these thoughts today, but I’ve invited them into my ruminations about poetry and my writing of poetry, my own editorial responsibilities, and the virtue of words (also here), so I may return to them more in depth later.

For now, however, as a means to open a conversation, here’s Casualene:

As poetry editor, I would do well to assume that all poetry I receive is a valiant effort in verse, so how, given so much desire on the part of the poets, could I choose a “winner,” especially if poetry is a matter of the heart and of preference, and it would be quite heartless and preferential to say some poems are worthy and others are not? The reality is that sincerity of heart does not equal quality of art, and sometimes bad poetry happens to good people. [Note: I love that line!]

If one draws a parallel between poems and “spirits,” a verse from the Book of Abraham helps illustrate in some degree why all poetry exists in a hierarchy, and that some can and even should be deemed noble and great, or prize-worthy: “And the Lord said unto me: These two facts do exist, that there are two spirits, one being more intelligent than the other; there shall be another more intelligent than they; I am the Lord thy God, I am more intelligent than they all” (Abraham 3:19). The task, then, of the poetry editor for BYU Studies is to try to discern among all the poems received which are the stronger, and even the strongest, and recommend them for prizes and publication. All poetry is not created equal, so it is not just a matter of granting open admission to a poetry pantheon for any verse that exists; some poetry should be not only appreciated but actually admired, and like the criterion that “he that is greatest among you shall be your servant” (Matthew 23:11), the best poetry serves readers with the greatest substance and purity. Good poems may touch us, and earnest readers, like the woman who touched the border of Christ’s garment, instinctively seek them out and touch them. In turn, the good poems give us a portion of their power and virtue, leaving us healed.

Eternal intelligence and the workings of language. Editorial practice as discernment. Poetry (and language) as service. Poetry (and language) as possessors and expressions of power and virtue with the potential to heal.

Thoughts?

But I’m getting ahead of myself—I’ll save my review of Karen’s work for a day in the not-so-distant future. Today it’s time for a little Q & A with Karen, Pushcart-nominated poet, journal editor extraordinaire, and virtual friend. She has been the featured poet in The New Formalist and Unfettered Verse: A Journal of Poetry, has made frequent appearances at Wilderness Interface Zone, and has two collections of poetry that occasion this interview: Dove on a Church Bench, which was released in April by Punkin Books, and Lavender Song, which will be released later this month by Fortunate Childe Press.

What follows is the result of a back-and-forth Karen and I shared via email over the past month or so. I want to thank her especially for humoring my string of follow-up questions!

———-

First of all, why did you choose to write poetry?

Fifteen years ago I was trying to think of a unique gift for my brother’s birthday. I decided to write a poem about our childhood experiences on the family boat, and described a trip to Catalina. He seemed quite amused with the sentiment, and kept it in his son’s room for several years. After that I began writing a few poems here and there—frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn’t until I became seriously interested in poetry, five years ago, that I discovered how inconsistent my meter was and the overwhelming fact that all my poems up to that point were, well, awful.

Had you written poetry before this?

No. I didn’t read it either.

What prompted you to deepen your interest in poetry and how did you pursue this interest? In other words, how did you begin to develop your craft?

My husband read a poem of mine for a church event and it was well-received. Up until that point I had about ten poems under my belt. So I placed a long love poem, complete with archaic language, disastrous meter and poor rhymes on a poetry board (the nastiest one around, I’m told), and anxiously waited for my critique. They took my 20 verse poem apart line-by-line, using terms that I couldn’t even understand. I almost had a heart attack. After about six months of brooding, I decided to study poetry seriously—for me that meant jumping back to the poetry boards and letting them critique more of my work. It’s a painful process, but I have learned quite a bit in four years. I spend almost forty hours a week involved in poetry-related projects, aside from my full-time job in the “real world.”

When did you begin calling yourself a poet?

After two years of writing, I finally got up the courage to send out some poetry for consideration. I mailed poems out to five journals—it was about a month’s wait and all the notices came back to me in the same week. Three-out-of-five magazines accepted my work. I was so excited—I think at that point I believed I had potential, but didn’t actually call myself a poet until I had my first chapbook published a year later.

What gave you the courage to start submitting poems?

I had a friend who started submitting her poems to magazines, and she encouraged me to do the same. I followed her lead. We have a similar style, so many of the journals that accepted her poetry were open to publishing my work.

Who/what are your major poetic influences?

I still read some traditional poetry—including Poe and Tennyson. But I try to read as much contemporary poetry as I have time for. Some of my favorites are Jane Kenyon, Gjertrud Schnackenberg, Dana Gioia, Denise Levertov, Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop, Kimberly Johnson, and William Carlos Williams. My house is filled with poetry books; I have a big problem parting with them.

Of these poets, who has had the greatest, most lasting impact on your writing? Also, what draws you to a poet’s work? For instance, I know you recently discovered Kim Johnson (who is one of my lasting poet crushes). What was it that first struck you about Kim’s poetry?

I was completely captivated by Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” when I first read it and I still love to use that rhyme scheme (ABBA) whenever I can, so that made an impact. Jane Kenyon is another that I enjoy reading; her work is heartfelt and honest. Kim Johnson: I was impressed by that fact that her poetry is quite sophisticated and yet spiritually inclined. One of my favorites is “Ode on my Belly Button.” I think seeing Kim’s poetry become so universally accepted has been a great inspiration to me. [As for greatest poetic influences,] I don’t think I can point to anyone in particular, but perhaps each one of these poets has influenced me in some way.

It seems to me you’re a fairly prolific writer, with poems published all over and a number of chapbooks and collections to your name. Will you walk me through your writing process—from a poem’s conception to its publication?

Often the first line comes into my head from nowhere and I build on it. Those poems are effortless and need very little editing when they are finished. I consider them a gift. But that is not the norm for me, unfortunately. Most of the time I have to shut myself into a room and start reading or writing, hoping I can come up with a few ideas. I have always had problems with concentration and I need complete solitude and silence when I write. That limits me to evenings and weekends. Sometimes little interactions with people during the day that make an impact on me turn into wonderful poems. My family’s quirks make great subjects for light verse—the cats included.

After I write a poem I post it on an online workshop or a poetry site and let them critique it. I’m famous for missing little things, so I appreciate comments and observations from other poets. When I feel the poem is right, then it’s submitted to a journal. After I have 25 or more published poems I will send them to be considered for a small chapbook. If I have 60 or more, I will make a larger manuscript and mail it off and hope someone will accept it for a book.

You mention your need for solitude—which is something to which I think many writers can relate—yet, so many of your poems seem to be about connecting with others. How does your need for solitude relate to and even inform your drive to connect, to build relationships?

I think I am a rather complex person. I come from a family that is uncomfortable with “feelings” and I tend to be emotionally reserved (maybe that’s why I married a Brit), yet many of my poems are about relationships and the complexities that evolve from them. I’m the same with nature: I write about lovely scenes, yet I cringe at the thought of walking down a dusty path for the sake of being outdoors. I have developed a healthy balance with solitude. Now that my children are gone and the house is quiet, my husband and I have our little hobbies to keep us content. I have plenty of writing time these days.

You also mention that you’re a member of an online writing group. How have your interactions with this group shaped your approach to writing and revision? And because I’m curious: how do you judge a poem’s level of completion?

Yes, I believe poetry boards can be very helpful, but one needs the right temperament and personality to hang in there and not be discouraged by aggressive critiques. The friends I know that have grown the most over the years have stayed actively involved with some type of workshop. Some of the best critiques are given by poets that don’t write in styles that I appreciate. It’s hit-and-miss as far as applying what has been said. At some point I have to draw the line, stop revising, and learn when the poem is going the wrong direction. Putting it aside for a few weeks helps.

What do you consider your major responsibility as a poet?

I have personal guidelines that I follow regarding content. For the most part, I tend to write mainstream poetry. I was converted into the LDS church 17 years ago. Prior to that, I had been raised a Seventh Day Adventist, then joined the Baptist church, and later the Unitarian Church. My favorite types of poems to write are formal verse in a lyrical style. However, I try to keep up with my free verse, and although I like considering myself a formalist poet, the truth is, I’m quite versatile.

If you don’t mind sharing: what are some of the guidelines you’ve set for yourself regarding content?

I don’t use swear words and try to stay away from creating images that are not in compliance with our church standards.

As you write, do you feel some degree of obligation to poetic forms? To language? To an audience?

I’m torn between formal and free verse. I learned form first, which may have been the harder path, but now my free verse has a lyrical element that I appreciate. I started the magazine [Victorian Violet Press] to give formal work a place to land; I want to further good formal poetry. I hope my audience likes what I like, so I don’t incorporate work that is too far outside my own personal taste. I try not to lose my own “voice” when I write, regardless of it being a tender poem or a satirical poem.

Speaking of your desire to “further formal poetry,” you have a collection of formal verse coming out this month titled Lavender Song. Tell me a little about this collection—for instance, how you feel about it, how it came into being, where you feel it fits within your body of work and within the field of contemporary American poetry.

I’m still finding my way with formal verse, trying to establish my voice. I swing between “everyday talk” and a lyrical voice, depending on my mood and where I want to submit the work. Lavender Song is a set of 45 poems, and half of them have come out of Dove on a Church Bench, which is a mixture of free verse and formal poems. Fortunate Childe Publications, a small publisher known for creating beautiful books, will be publishing it later this month. I think this is my best formalist work to date. So I am very happy having it all put together in one collection.

What do you consider your major responsibility as the editor of a poetry journal?

When I first started the magazine, my goal was to blend free verse poetry with formal poetry with the hopes of creating a wider readership. I formed two sections, one for each. As the magazine evolved and I discovered the commonalities in the poetry I chose to publish, as well as the diverse set of people that I accepted it from, I decided it would be nice to seek out some mainstream LDS writers to include. We are told that music reaches everyone through the Spirit, and I believe that all art has the ability to transcend across differences. The magazine’s goal is to publish any artist (vocalist, painter, photographer, musician) who has a spiritual element to their work.

What kind of readership did you envision for Victorian Violet? How has that vision evolved? You point to the diverse group of people from whom you accepted poems—has this diversity informed your vision for the journal and your relationship to poetry in general?

Getting to know some of the poets on a casual basis who contribute to the magazine has helped me become aware of their various backgrounds and religions. It is interesting to me that I choose poems that reflect hope. Some of the writers are atheists, Jewish, Catholic, LDS—whatever they are, they seem to appreciate life and their poetry has a common element that I feel is uplifting in some way. My vision for the journal is to help writers, vocalists, photographers and musicians in their efforts to further their craft, while creating a wider readership for the magazine.

How (if at all) does your connection to Mormonism inform your reasons for writing poetry? And how (if at all) does this connection inform what you write about and the language and imagery with which you write about it?

A large portion of my work includes images of nature, trees, flowers, birds. Ironically, I am not a nature person. I was raised in Orange County, California. We drove everywhere, and my idea of fun was a day at the shopping center. I can’t tell an oak from a walnut tree. My husband’s family lives in England and after years of traveling over there, and being forced to walk through the countryside at a snail’s pace, I have actually started to enjoy walking. Many of my nature poems include scenes from the British countryside. I don’t think my religion influences my reasons for writing, but I do justify all my hours at the computer by telling myself I am developing my talent.

Could you elaborate on how your use of natural imagery is informed by your connection to Mormonism?

There definitely is a spiritual aspect to my poetry, and I think it comes, in part, from an appreciation for the beauty in the world around me. When I joined the LDS church I began to explore the concept of all things being created spiritually before they were formed physically. There is a familiar aspect to nature that I recognize and connect with in some innate way, even though I don’t have much knowledge of it. When I write formal poetry I become more descriptive and detailed about that imagery. Writing about beauty becomes an affirmation to me of the existence of a Heavenly Father, one who has given us this world for our enjoyment, with its neverending variety of colors and textures—a world that has often been a catalyst of inspiration for artists throughout the ages.

In the title poem of your latest collection, Dove on a Church Bench, you focus on what I read as a very “familiar” Mormon ritual—the passing and receiving of the sacrament—and you mention another—the formal blessing of little children. Since you’ve in part re-created the “sacramental hour” in your poem and placed that poem as the centerpiece of your collection, do you think these rituals, which are intended to bind us to God and to our kin, relate to the making and the sharing of poetry? If so, how?

I sometimes let my religion spill into my verse, but when I do, I prefer to use metaphors and symbols as backdrop for a story or to enhance the mood—it’s never intended to be “in-your-face didactic poetry.” I enjoy the architecture of cathedrals and stained glass scenes above the pulpit. In “La Sierra 1946 [1942]” I found myself dwelling on the fact that my mother was praying in the little chapel every day, and there she developed the spiritual strength she needed as a young woman. When I wrote “Dove on a Church Bench” I focused on the differences between outsiders and members—and how an unkempt child was perhaps the real dove in Heavenly Father’s eyes. I like rituals; they are comforting and remind us of the past without turning a poem into something too sentimental.

Do you see a connection between poetry and ritual, especially in formal verse where the language is more ritualized than in, say, free verse?

I have always had difficulty with following directions, and I hate being told what to do, so it is really odd that I would gravitate toward writing in form—with all its many rules and restrictions. As far as rituals go, well, I’m strange. I find I don’t do my chores or anything the same way, or on a regular basis. (Then again, I like all the people and things around me to remain constant.) I also enjoy poems that have repeating lines. I find comfort in detailed work, putting together intricate poems and reading them. I worked for about 18 months to try and write free verse. I had some good success with most of it, but I didn’t feel that my work stood out much in the big scheme of things. I made a conscious decision about 9 months ago to get back into writing formal verse, and I am quite content to be on that path.

Here are the courses I’m most anticipating, though I likely won’t be able to engorge myself on them all:

*Friday, March 25: 9:00–9:50 AM: MSH: Jonathon Penny, United Emirates University, “Godsbody—Image, Icon, and Word Made Flesh Made Word (in Rudy Wiebe’s A Discovery of Strangers and Paintings by Kirk Richards and Brian Kershisnik).”

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Kirk’s work. I also appreciate Kershisnik’s. And I like Jonathon Penny’s stuff. too. He’s just emerging on the poetic scene and he’s a striking poet and scholar with a keen wit. I first came across Jonathon when I lurked on the LDS-HERM(eneutics) listserv for a short time last year (you can join the group here if it pleases you). And I’m deeply interested in LDS conceptions of embodiment (see this, for starters). So I think this session would start me off right.

*Friday, March 25: 11:00–11:50 PM: MSH: Blake Ostler, “An Embodied God before/after/with the Universe.”

Enough said.

*Friday, March 25: 2:15–3:45 PM: MSH: Wyatt Brockbank, Brigham Young University, “Only through the Body Do We Know, Experience, Live: Philosophers, Poets, and Prophets on the Importance of the Body.”

And again.

*Saturday, March 26: 9:00–9:50 AM: AML: Tyler Chadwick “21st Century Lyric Mormonisms.”

Oh, wait: that’s me! Here’s a taste of what I’m planning:

In the more than two-decades since Harvest: Contemporary Mormon Poems was published, many poets who maintain a variety of connections with Mormonism have established themselves within the field of contemporary American poetry. Indeed, since the turn of the millennium (from 2000 to the present), many have published in national venues and received national recognition and support for their work. Many others have risen to prominence within the Mormon literary community, publishing high-quality poems in Mormon-centered periodicals. Several of the poets from these two categories frequently publish work in both arenas. Still other poets with ties to Mormonism have used social media to potentially share their work with a broader audience than would be possible through publication solely in national or Mormon periodicals.

While each of these poets speaks with a distinctive voice and from a wide array of experiences, identities, and agendas, one thing that draws them together is a shared understanding of the language of Mormon experience. Although each understands this language to a different degree; although some speak it more openly and with greater accuracy than others; and although they claim various degrees of closeness to and activity within the LDS Church, their work can be profitably gathered and read–individually and collectively–as lyric manifestations of the contemporary Mormon cultural and religious experience. I’ve taken to calling these manifestations “21st century lyric Mormonisms.”

My intention here is three-fold: 1) to bring attention to the many Mormon-affiliated poets who are making names for themselves both within and beyond the growing number of Mormon periodicals and publishing houses (something I started here and will continue for years to come), 2) to examine the best of what these poets have published within the past decade, and in so doing 3) to discuss the varieties of the contemporary Mormon lyric voice and what such varieties may suggest about the current state and the potential of Mormon poetry.

Take my completely unbiased and un-self-aggrandizing word for it: you won’t want to miss this session! (But if you do, I may forgive you. Sometime. Maybe.)

*Saturday, March 26: 11:00–11:50 AM: MSH: Kirk Richards, “Embodiment and Duality: An Artist’s Perspective on the Physical and the Spiritual in Imagery.”

Um, yeah. I’ve been itching for years to see Kirk’s work in person. That is all.

*Saturday, March 26: 12:00–1:50 PM: AML Awards & Luncheon and Presidential Address.

Sure hope it’s good grub. Oh, and I’m interested in the awards and what the prez has to say, too.

*Saturday, March 26: 2:00–3:30 PM: AML: Gideon Burton, “Eugene England Online: Liberating Mormon Biography in the Digital Age.”

Eugene, Gideon, and new media. Sounds simply apocalyptic. Suh-weet.

*Saturday, March 26: 3:45–5:15 PM: AML: Gerrit van Dyk, “‘Miltons of Our Own’: Form and Convention in the Mormon Epic Poem”

OR

*MSH: David Heap, “Embodiment and Sexual Addiction: The Search for Intimacy in a World of Disconnection”

OR

*MSH: Todd Mack, Stanford University, “The Physical Engagements of the Literary Scholar”

OR

*MSH: David Isaksen, Brigham Young University, “The Body and the Poetic Universe”

OR

*MSH: Kirk Caudle, Marylhurst University, “The Discovery of Embodied Knowledge through the Discovery of the Authentic Self: A Guide for Revealing Ultimate Truth”

So. Many. Potentially. Awesome. Choices.

* * * *

So after looking over the offerings, what’s whet your appetite?

And, by the way, who’s going?

——————

The past half-year I’ve been consumed with dissertation preparations: narrowing down a topic, questioning that topic, narrowing it again, compiling a bibliography around which my comprehensive exams will be built, drafting a dissertation proposal, revising that proposal, and revising again, then again. And I’ve only really just begun. Now that my proposal has been approved by the graduate director in Idaho State’s Department of English and Philosophy, I have to tackle the real work. This includes 1) gutting the works on my exam lists so I can be ready for my comprehensive exams, which are tentatively scheduled for mid-may/early-June, and 2) beginning to draft my dissertation, which I’ve committed* to finish by the end of spring semester 2012.

But I digress.

This post is really meant to pass along that approved version of my dissertation proposal, which dissertation is titled (at this point)—drum roll, please—“Performative Poesis and the (Un)Making of the World: Alex Caldiero’s Sonosophy as Ethnography.”

Contrary to what I’ve written in the past about this all-consuming writing project (see here and here), I’ve moved away from a sole focus on Mormon poetry, though Mormonism as part of Caldiero’s cultural/performance heritage is at the heart of my interest in his work. As such, it will be a sustained presence in my dissertation. This change to writing about Caldiero was spurred on by, among other things, 1) recent efforts to archive, share, and discuss Caldiero’s work—including Torben Bernhard and Travis Low’s documentary The Sonosopher: Alex Caldiero in Life . . . in Sound (now available for pre-order from Ken Sanders Rare Books), Scott Abbott’s continued engagement with Caldiero, and the publication of Caldiero’s latest collection of poems, Poetry is Wanted Here—and 2) by my fascination with Caldiero in performance. I’ve yet to see him perform live (one of the drawbacks of living in Idaho), but from what I hear and what I can sense of him in these online recordings, he asserts a powerful presence on the stage and has much to say about the making and maintaining of poetry, culture, language, and humanity. So I’m investing my scholarship in him and his performative poetics for at least the next seventeen or so months.

For anyone interested in reading my complete proposal (all 47 pages of it, including works cited and exam lists), here’s a full-text copy. And for those who’d appreciate the Reader’s Digest version, here’s a summary my advisor wrote when she wanted to help me be sure I was getting my point across (and I think her summary is spot on):

Alex Caldiero, a contemporary performance poet who lives in Utah, calls his poetics sonosophy, which literally means sound-wisdom. Sonosophy is a useful idea not just for understanding Caldiero but also for helping us understand other performance poets and performance itself. We can use performance theory to analyze Caldiero and sonosophy. This requires an ethnographic method (which is not what literary scholars usually do): transcribing the poetry to reveal how sound and movement are meaningful in the poetry, as well as the words, and analyzing meaning through relating the poetry to its performance arenas, to the contexts that Caldiero claims as influences, and to other applicable contexts such as the late 20th century performance art movement. This analysis reveals the expressive power of performance poetics. Ultimately, the analysis further reveals sonosophy as an auto-ethnographic practice through which Caldiero meaningfully questions his own culture and its assumptions.

Any feedback you’re willing to offer is welcome.

——————

*To the only person that really matters: my wife.

Wading through Segullah’s archives some time ago, I found a poem that really caught me off guard: “Spindrift” by Marie Brian. The thing that struck me first about “Spindrift” is its (Emily) Dickinsonian style: seemingly random, mid-sentence capitalizations, the hyphens, the brevity. The tone, however, is considerably more hopeful, more reverent as the poet’s mind reaches through the sea spray, contemplating redemption, contemplating God.

The opening image, punctuated as it is by alliteration, is especially striking, setting the stage for the rest of the poem:

Harpooning—the Undoubtable
Shot from your sea-swept eyes,
Frothing mouths—
Bobbing, billowing
On the world’s flood tide (lines 1-5).

I take this Undoubtable stare of the sea to be the gaze of God shooting, harpoon-like, from the windswept waves. This “spindrift” (6) cuts to the marrow with its chilling mist, its clarifying ambiguity. Divine paradox this, that the “good news” (6) often comes to us most clearly, often catches us with its barb, in the moments when we’re wading (faithfully, perhaps) into the darkness of the unknown. I think of Lehi wandering through the mist of darkness before an angel parted the black veil and led him to the Tree of Life. I think of Boyd K. Packer’s commentary on “the leap of faith”: “the moment when you have gone to the edge of the light and stepped into the darkness to discover that the way is lighted ahead for just a footstep or two.” I think of the piercing insights that sometimes come through the disorder of sleep.

While these piercings may at times wound us, they also, I think, mark us (as we come unto Christ) as the fruits of His wounded body, leaving their imprint on the soul, a place where the “tissue thickens, binds / Fast-barnacled hooks / Of scarring Divine” (18-20) that tells us we’re God’s, that labels us heirs of His Being, of His Place. Maybe such Divine scars are part of what it means to have His image engraved upon our countenances.

Just maybe.

In addition to “Spindrift,” Brian has at least two other poems online: “Pangaea Lost” and “Orisons.”

Happy reading.

Note: I thought a post to honor Linda Sillitoe and her encounter with Mormon letters would provide a suitable launching point for the series. She passed away April 7, 2010. Exponent II has published a tribute for Sillitoe in their latest issue.

One of the most striking poems I’ve read recently is Linda Sillitoe’s unrhymed sonnet “Encounter” (link to PDF from Dialogue 35.1 [2002]), which takes as its lyric province the intergenerational relationship between people, places, and possessions. The poet, born of goodly parents (at least it seems so from the pleasant cache of memories stirred in this sensory experience), begins by formally and lyrically binding this relational triad and expanding and deepening the connections between them from there.

The poem’s form serves as both a binding agent and a vessel for these connections and the poet’s experience of them by providing a matrix around which she could embroider and in which she could offer her words, ideas, and emotions and thus keep them from spinning into chaos and sentimentality. It’s a mark of her poetic achievement and the poem’s success that she refrains from an exhibition of unearned emotion (exhibitionism and unearned emotion being marks of sentimentality), something immature poets often slip into when writing in forms and when writing about personal relationships.

And while the purist might complain that from a strictly technical and historical standpoint this isn’t an out-and-out sonnet, I would argue that it is a sonnet in a modern, more subtle variation of the form. I say this for two reasons: one, it’s divided into an octet that sets up a question—”Has she kept everything?”—and a sestet that begins to answer that question, though the answer, in true (post)modern form and in a way reflecting the complexity of human relationships, just breeds more questions. And two, as any traditional sonnet has and as any sonnet, I think, must, in the words of poets Mark Strand and Eavan Boland, it “suggest[s] narrative progress through its sequence structure, while, in single units, it is capable of the essential lyric qualities of being musical, brief, and memorable” (The Making of a Poem 58; Amazon ).

Notice in particular the alliteration at work as binding agent in the first five lines (as through the entire poem): the /n/’s, the sister sounds /b/ and /p/, /d/ and /t/, the /s/’s, the /g/’s, all grouped variously throughout, then combined in the last clause of line five: “I glanced behind me.” I read this mixture as the lyric medicine the poet finds in this cabinet of wonders (even though she claims she was just “searching for a comb”): as she turns toward her past, toward (I presume) her father’s presence in the room, in her life, she finds a “genie”-like granting of the wish that smolders beneath the surface of the poem—that she could remember her father, “[t]wo years” gone, but always a defining presence in her being and in her connection to her mother and to the past, and thus to her present and future.

This desire surfaces—and ripples through subsequent readings of the poem—in the last three lines, the denouement in which the poet wonders about her mother and, beyond that, about the fusion of time and person, place, thing, and sense as this union moves to draw lucid experience, even ecstasy (as suggested by the narcotic-effect the sudden encounter has on the poet: “The room wavered like my knees”), from memory’s cistern and to immerse us in melancholy wonder over the duration, strength, and will of human connection.

Such is an appropriate sentiment to keep in mind, I think, as we strive to “summon” presence and experience from kith and kin past to help and heal us in our present and our future relationships with person, place, and thing.

Since April 2009, as part of my (meager) commitment to raise the profile of Mormon poetry, I’ve been investing off and on in what I’ve called my Mormon Poetry Project, offering short readings of poems by Mormon poets on my personal blog. My ground rules: 1) the poets should be Latter-day Saints (of whatever stripe) and 2) the poems should be accessible online to provide my (meager) audience the chance to read for themselves and talk back with my interpretations, to the end—says the idealist in me—of sparking greater awareness of, interest in, and conversations about poetry by poets who are also Mormon.

Because I think these poets deserve exposure and because the traffic at my blog is a trickle—okay, maybe a slow drip—I’m giving those readings a new beginning (and in most cases, expansion and revisions) here at AMV under the series title “Mormon Poetry Now!” I’ll also be posting additional readings of poems (not included in the original list) and poetry reviews as I see fit. This introductory post will also serve as the new home of the Poets Roll: the list of poets, poems, and reviews I’ve posted so far.

Before I dive in, though, a note about the title: Twenty-five years ago, Dennis Clark, then poetry editor for Sunstone, began a four-part series for the magazine called “Mormon Poetry Now!” In his column published in four installments between June 1985 and August 1989 (1985, 1986, 1987, 1989), he set out, according to his purpose stated in the series opener, to survey “the state of the art of Mormon poetry,” to examine “the best of what Mormon poets [were] trying to publish” at the time. I’ve deliberately tied myself to these efforts to highlight the new Mormon poetry by stealing Clark’s title for my own and by following his example of close reading (though his readings are likely far more astute than mine promise to be). My hope is that migrating this ongoing project to AMV’s more fertile blogging grounds will reveal something of the varieties of Mormon poetic experience and open the way for our continued harvest of the field.

* * * *

Mormon Poets Roll

Marie Brian: “Spindrift”

Linda Sillitoe: “Encounter”

The contrast between these two paintings and the Edenic mythos their marriage evoked struck me as a tension that might work well in a poem. So I set out to lyrically critique the one in terms of the other (I’ll let you decide which one is which) and to extrapolate connections between images that are removed from one another by over five centuries.

As always, comments are welcome.

* * * *

No Botticelli, This—

No ginger virgin, hands modest to sex and breast,
flesh fallow, fecund as sky gone to seed in the sea:
her father’s cerulean stones sickled into primordium,
become pit to her emanant pith. No escort ashore
on the zephyr’s hymned gestures toward Paradise,
wafted with rose hips come like souls wanting skin.
No velvet robes ready to sop up her mythology, to
keep her from burning her first day at the beach.

Just this Eve and her Adam, curling down currents
of dawn like leaves slipped from the knowledge tree,
flesh converging to vessel the easterly sighed down-
canyon when God realized they’d grown restless
waiting for his newly charged cherubim to doze,
drop their swords, spill the tokens and signs
of his mystery as they dreamed. So the pair
streaked through asphodel fields instead, emerged
from under cover fig leaves into the blush of blossom
against bodies gnawing, gnawing at the edges of sky.

* * * *

[Added 8/12/2010]: If you’d like the full aural experience of the poem, click here for an audio version that you can read along to.