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.

One of those that aren’t well known is the early editor of the Millennial Star, Thomas Ward. As editor, his service to the Church was substantial and his poetry graced many of the issues he edited. He also served temporarily as President of the British Mission and was beloved by Mormons in Britain. But, unfortunately, his life story ended tragically.

Ward was educated and worked as a schoolteacher and was a Baptist preacher before joining the Church in 1840 and serving as a local leader. When Parley P. Pratt returned to the U.S. in October 1842, Ward served as his replacement for a year, until Reuben Hedlock came to take over the mission. After this, Ward served as a counselor in the mission presidency while continuing to edit the Star.

Ward served as editor of the Star from 1842, when he served as Mission President, until October 1846, when Orson Hyde arrived to take over the mission from Hedlock.

However, it is the circumstances behind this change that led to Ward’s tragedy. In 1842 Church leaders developed a plan to ease the cost of Mormon emigration from England, under which British Saints would  send manufactured goods to Nauvoo for sale. The Saints would eventually be paid in property in Nauvoo, and the proceeds from the sale of the goods would pay for immigrants to come to the U.S.

While this plan was never implemented, three years later it spawned in the mind of Hedlock what was called the “British and American Commercial Joint Stock Company,” an enterprise also meant to assist emigration. Accepted by Church members at a conference on April 8, 1845, it took until May 1846 to obtain British government approval. During the following months, the company was promoted in the Millennial Star, but when the Quorum of the Twelve in Council Bluffs learned of the company, however, they thought that Hedlock and Ward had exceeded their authority and disfellowshipped them, dispatching Parley P. Pratt, John Taylor and Orson Hyde to investigate. They found that many of the expenditures seemed excessive, and that Hedlock had received a loan of £504 for which he refused to provide an accounting. Stockholders received less than 14% of their money back.

While Ward was still loved by the British members he had tried to serve, his disfellowshipment and release from the Mission presidency must have been devastating. Just 5 months later, on March 5, 1847, Ward was dead. B. H. Roberts credits his death to “the errors he made,” but his obituary credited it to dropsy. But, despite his fall from grace, Ward was apparently faithful to the end.

His poetry portrays this faith. The following poem, The Present and the Future, published in the March 1842 issue of the Millennial Star, is a good example of Ward’s work. In a sense, it may also present a hope for Ward, that he too will ‘triumph in eternal day.’

The Present and the Future

I gaz’d upon a beauteous sky,

Emblazon’d by the setting sun;

But sullen clouds came floating by

Ere yet his downward course was run.

I thought that ev’ry changing scene

Might be for man’s instruction giv’n;

I thought of what lay yet unseen,

The pure, unfading light of heav’n.

.

I saw a lovely fair one, smile,

In youthful charms, with ev’ry grace;

Time roll’d along a little while,

The grave was then her dwelling place.

I thought of that triumphant hour,

When light shall pierce the cavern’d tomb;

And when the Saviour’s mighty pow’r

Shall guard his ransom’d people home.

.

I mark’d the man of faithful heart.

Who nobly for the truth had stood;

Receive from men a traitor’s part.

Nor died their malice with his blood.

1 thought of that decisive day,

When truth shall have her triumph too;

When God shall by his pow’r display

The secrets of the heart to view.

.

Yes, there’s a clear, unclouded sky.

A land where shadows never come;

Where joys seraphic never die;

It is the Saints abiding home;

A clime which death shall ne’er degrade,

Nor find corruption’s worm a way,

Where truth shall ever stand display’d,

And triumph in eternal day.

While acknowledging the view that these works are basically plagiarism, the article’s author, Kenneth Goldsmith argues (successfully, IMO) that our understanding of creativity as requiring wholly original works is flawed, and that even the organization of pre-existing material can be highly creative. Goldsmith, who teaches creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, bases his argument on a course he teaches called “Uncreative Writing,” in which students are penalized for showing any originality and creativity. Everything they produce must be plagiarized.

While his article does explore the issues around plagiarism, Goldsmith ignores plagiarism’s more formal and rigid sibling, copyright infringement. Unless the source works an “author” uses for these works are in the public domain, publishers and print-on-demand service providers will hesitate to accept these works when they know about them. While I find these ideas invigorating, I, too, hesitate at the copyright issues (I think the plagiarism is easy to resolve — simply disclose what you’ve done).

If nothing else, Goldsmith’s article gave me a lot more food for thought, and more ideas about possible mashups, patchwriting, sampling, etc. Given that more than 10,000 General Conference talks have been given since the 1850s, surely a patchwritten talk would be easy to come up with. I sometimes think that enough has been said in General Conference that a creative “author” could say almost anything he wanted!

Or what about poetry mashups? Already archives of poetry contain thousands of poems; how hard would it be to piece together something new from a bunch of similar poems?

Even scripture, I think, is a source candidate. Of course many chapters and verses of scripture already come from other scriptures. In particular Proverbs and the other books of wisdom literature have been pieced together from many sources. It might be simple to do the same with favorite Mormon scriptures, perhaps constructing a doctrinal argument by moving from verse to verse on a topic. Or, the words of a favorite scripture might, with a bit of work, be transformed into poetry, even if the original wasn’t poetry.

Goldsmith explains his plagiarism requirement for his “Uncreative Writing” course by saying “the suppression of self-expression is impossible.” And that seems right to me. But it also leaves me wondering why we don’t have more self-expression from Mormons. I suspect that we lack writing of this nature because of issues like plagiarism and what we believe to be the appropriate ways to use sources, we self-censor. Perhaps using techniques like these might help us overcome this self-censorship.

If that’s his question, I think it’s a good one.

Tyler quotes the following from Casualene’s editor’s policy (as published in 2009—perhaps she’s somewhere else in her thinking now):

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.

During my hot-dogging days as a novice poet, a contestant for poetry’s laurels, a poetry editor and a managing and then founding editor of a literary journal, I cherished similar ideas about my roles.  Nowadays, however, I hear disquieting undertones in the close parallels Casualene draws between judging whether or not a poem is publishable and the ranking of strength and intelligences.

For one thing, applying a strength-and-intelligence quality scale to poetry (or any language) runs risks of reducing it to another consumer product—a thing—whose quality is judged by how effectively (”strongly,” “intelligently”) it meets my consuming needs (“healing,” “nourishment,” “pleasure,” etc.). Some poetry is only or mostly a consumer product (“Ach der lieber! Sick you are? Hope you soon feel wunderbar!”), and some language does abide in the get-it-done, “thing to use,” tool or product marketplace of communication (“I’d like two, chocolate Oreo shakes, please,” “Somebody call 911!”).  But much of human expression is a relational act (i.e. an act of reaching for relation, of forging relation) in the unbounded exchange of connection.  Usefulness scales don’t work in this highly charged and often unmanageable flow of energetic “getting across to”—or if I do apply valuation scales there, they whittle relation down to the means by which I get what I want, and only that. I may be more or less well intentioned in using a poem’s language to get what I think I want and need.  But instead of being caught up in encounter with another and with the world as expressed in what might possibly be the writer’s very best language, instead I’m beating the poem into a tool or assortment of instruments to use to my liking or advantage. In the strength-and-intelligence scale of poetic quality, the strongest poetry becomes the “most effective thing I use” to get nourishment, healing, or whatever I crave.  Bad poetry is poetry that doesn’t do anything for me or doesn’t do what I insist it should.  It doesn’t support me.

For another thing, the strong-stronger-strongest valuation scale casually orders the strength or intelligence of poetry readers, too.  If I, as a reader, like and seek out “middlebrow” verse like that of Longfellow and Benet, but not Milton or Goethe, whom some might consider “highbrow,” then may I be presumed less strong or less intelligent?

Younger poet-and-editor me used to think so. It took my becoming the mother of a child whose brain a clever virus rendered “severely disabled” to shed excesses of luxury living from my beliefs about what made for strength and intelligence.  And speaking of discerning, I began also to discern shadows in my valuations of others’ words—specifically, my indulgence in valuation’s dark, down-scale side, devaluation.  Yes, I, too, admired poems on the basis of how well they supported my needs and positions—whether or not they provided me “a portion of their power and virtue,” gave me healing, nourishment, or pleasure, as Casualene’s essay says they ought to do. I ignored or cast them aside if they didn’t tickle my strength-and-intelligence fancy. And there also lurked in my thinking the jaundiced implication that what I valued as strong and intelligent was strong and intelligent by virtue of my thinking it so.  Education failed to take the edge off that particular old circular saw.

But since those early, high-minded days, and in the wake of my daughter’s birth and nearly two decades of caring for and seeking to get across to her, my editorial stance has shifted. Certainly I see the historical and cultural importance of the diversity of artistic language that literary journals provide for. And I get that a wide variety of lit journals come and go, and that while they’re around, I can choose as I see fit and avoid contact with verse that doesn’t do it for me.  And yes, I believe that some language is more fertile and recombinant than other language is. In fact, some poetry knocks me silly with desire: Oh oh oh, I want to have your poetical baby! But, nowadays, I accept a lot more responsibility for my depth of response to poetry of all rhetorical walks of life rather than place the whole burden for proof of fitness squarely on the work at hand as if I were a football coach assembling a winning team: “You, you and you—you’re strong and intelligent, you make the editorial cut.  The rest of you—consider taking vows of silence.”

In his book, Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature, John D. Niles quotes Walter Ong’s observation that calling people “illiterate” “… suggests that persons belonging to the class it designates are deviants, defined by something they lack” (Niles, 1999:23).  Ong and Niles’ interest in the use of the term “illiterate” relates to their studies of oral literature, where historical and modern populations not considered educated have developed sophisticated performance (oral) literature.  Of course, Casualene’s 2009 BYU Studies essay doesn’t call anybody illiterate.  But can we discern in a critical position that assesses poetry and its readers according to a value scale tied to “intelligence” and “strength” a similar, lower-down-on-the-yardstick marking out of writers and readers on the basis of what they’re thought to be lacking or unable to serve up? If so, this is, perhaps, an haute monde position, one that elevates itself at the expense of other meaningful narrative strains. In the past, as an editor, I was complicit in this stratification of language.  As a mother, I’ve faced off against strength and intelligence models applied against any idea of my daughter’s being a viable expression of human potential.  But wow!  How that severely developmentally delayed child, as the cognoscenti pronounced her, has rocked my world.

Nowadays, I consider language more than an instrument shaped for getting yummy ant-crunch out of a log, or a hem out of which I may absorb healing, or a commodity suited to sorting based upon its perceived value, usefulness, or ability (or inability) to meet my needs.  Language can be and do those things (or fail to do them), but it’s also up to so much more.  And no, I don’t think that language is inherently ineffectual.  And I no longer believe language a broken artifact of our fallen state.

In Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How Language Made Humans, Derek Bickerton reflects upon Darwin’s intuition about how people got smart.

Darwin knew a century and a half ago that the Encyclopaedia had it backward—that it wasn’t a “highly developed brain” that gave us language …  and abstract thought, but language that gave us abstract thought and a highly developed brain.  “If it be maintained that certain powers, such as self-consciousness, abstraction etc., are peculiar to man, it may well be that these are incidental results of other highly advanced intellectual faculties, and these again are mainly the result of the continued use of a highly developed language” (Bickerton, 2009:5).

Setting aside the valuation phrases in the last sentence (“Highly advanced,” “highly developed”—yeah, compared to what? At this stage, we may be two-left-footed novices in the unfolding dance of brain and words), I find Bickerton’s point that language gives rise to what we call intelligence compelling.  And I’m also thinking that being too choosy about which language rates as artistically strong or intelligent or nourishing could well create and perpetuate poverties of expression.  And yes, I’m beginning to think the word “intelligent” in such qualitative and/or quantitative statements problematic, believing language that gives rise to connection and relationship more creative at its soul and less self-congratulatory.

So circumscribing the scope of what’s artistically viable—designating exclusively what’s “strong” or “intelligent”—might therefore be pretty risky business and result in all kinds of unintentional effects, including the snubbing of undiscerned beauty, the nailing shut of doors opening upon the possible, or the dousing of never-before-seen creative fire.  Rhetorical diversity could turn out to be as important as bio-diversity; perhaps it is a form of bio-diversity.  Human language might just be taking the human brain with it as it trips along to its next best expression, and the transforming human brain in turn might be giving rise to new movements in language.  As I hazard to say in my essay “Embrace the Pure Life” (Parts one, two, three, and four), in a dance of symbiosis, human “intelligence”—however it expresses in the diversity of minds on this planet—in turn dips and spins language, creating newer and more intimate and daring steps.

So increasingly, I’m thinking that, rather than imposing my pet valuation scale on the developing and actually quite sensitive realm of human expression, as an editor (of an admittedly marginal publication venue), I ought to be at least as creative and attentive in my response to the language others bring to me as I try to be to the world when I write poetry about it, or even as engaged as I am in my care-giving to my special needs daughter.  Rather than deciding this poem or that one worthy of continued life through publication and these ones non-viable, I’ve found myself leaning more toward a questioning stance in my editing: “What is going on in this person’s language?  What does he/she mean when he/she uses this word this way?  What does this person’s way of wording him- or herself tell me about language’s nature in general?  Is there something I can do, as an editor, to help this poem speak?”  “Is there something I’m not seeing?”

Increasingly, editing, for me, has become an act of engagement and exchange rather than a culling of the herd to advance my latest idea of what defines its fittest—i.e., its most utile—members. I’m glad that the internet provides boundless space so that I can experiment with breadth of inclusiveness.  Arguably, print journals face greater restrictions.

But, hm, even were I editor of a print journal, nowadays, I’d shuffle to find a way to discern and then publish something of the spectrum of language rising in a culture striving for words to get itself across—its wild blue asters, its violets, even its yellow dandelions, as well as its black orchids, blue roses, and Pot of Gold lilies.  A spectrum, rather than the upper quarter or third of a scale.  I keep sayin’, language is trying to do stuff to and with us, folks. If we can resist the urge, let’s try not to be too hasty to fix in mind what we suppose to be its most valuable assets. We people—Mormons included—are just beginning to find our tongues. I’m very interested in hearing what questions roll off those tongues.  And if we could possibly scroll back on treating language as if words are only a set of instruments that we use to reach the loftiest heights of what we want or need, that might just open us up to greater depths of real connection. The wowza of losing myself in the not-me, be that not-me God, the extraordinary soul of a fellow human, another creature, or spiritual or natural environs—that moment of becoming and becoming bound up in “being with” that in acts of cosmic anarchy blows up dams containing my notions of what I think is or what I think I want and need—that power flashfloods and dissolves, in sudden and unlooked-for moments, the bounds of the heavens.  As perhaps the Tower of Babel story illustrates for us rather strikingly, those heavens are unreachable through even the most determined and elaborate tooling.

Our same, instrumentality-based relationship with the physical environment bought us a load of trouble. Why do we imagine that it’ll work any better in the equally sensitive realm of human expression?

Oh, and, if this is just another Zeppelin of pretension, roll out the dogfighters and shoot me down—please.
_____________________________________________________________________

Notes

1.    Derek Bickerton, Adam’s Tongue: How Humans Made Language, How
Language Made Humans (New York: Hill and Wang, 2009).
2.    John D. Niles, Homo Narrans: The Poetics and Anthropology of Oral Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

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.

The next four admits are:

• The novella The Mountain of the Lord by Dan Wells — an action-packed, western/horror/superpowers hybrid set in pioneer times. Some of you may already know quite a bit about this story from Dan’s blogging about it. Well we got to read it. And it’s in.
• The short story/historical Mormon mash-up “George Washington Hill and the Cybernetic Bear” by George Washington Hill and EC Buck — a fascinating retelling of an actual pioneer journal account with a Monsters & Mormons twist to it. And semi-inspired by Kent’s AMV post.
• The short story “Recompense of Sorrow” by Wilum Pugmire — we have graciously been granted permission to reprint this finely-crafted story that brings a bit of Joseph Smith’s more mystical side in to a classic tale of horror that is firmly situated in the Lovecraftian tradition that Wilum so successfully inhabits as a writer (see comment 11 at that link).
• Two poems by Will Bishop — a pair of poems that deploy the language and imagery of genre to explore aspects of modern Mormon life. You may recognize Will’s name from his participation in the FOB Bible.

Congratulations and many thanks to our next class of admits.

And to report: we are very much enjoying reading though the submissions. We’re not even close to being done with the admits yet. Sit tight everybody. Theric and I are working as fast as we can.

And I know I’ve said this before, but you all have so totally validated the concept and then some. It has been an intense few weeks (with more to go), but very, very gratifying.