(12) extra-lexical components in poem are meaningful rather than contribute to meaning... even to disavow meaning is a form of meaning-making
(18) "As/ McCaffery puts it, 'such features of general/ economic operation do not destroy the order of/ meaning, but complicate & unsettle its/ constitution and operation'. They destroy, that/ is, not meaning but various utilitarian &/ essentialist ideas about meaning. To this point/ it must be added that to speak of the nonutilizable/ strata of a poem or a verbal exchange is as/ problematic as to speak of nonsemantic elements-- for what is designated as nonutilizable/ & extralexical is both useful & desirable/ while not being utilitarian & prescribable... That is, the meaning is not absent or/ deferred but self-embodied as the poem/ in a way that is not transferable to another code/ or rhetoric."
This reminds me of Bataille's idea of sacrifice v. the inutile, the economy of use... also, thinking about visual and page aesthetics and form as sites of meaning, not in the "sound pulling sense" nonsense way, but as just-as-important components in the poem (so not lesser or 'extra' even if they are 'extralexical'.)
Bernstein is pretty careful in this article to examine texts where he locates 'absorption' but doesn't give a prescription for how to achieve absorption-- his examples are deictic, not didactic-- though there is a tension between transparency and opacity... and self-consciousness.
DOWN WITH IRONY
is poetry possible without artifice?
(29) Absorption v. Impermeability
Absorption: engrossing, engulfing/ completely, engaging, arresting attention, reverie,/ attention intensification, rhapsodic, spellbinding,/ mesmerizing, hypnotic, total, riveting,/ enthralling: belief, conviction, silence.
Impermeability: artifice, boredom,/ exaggeration, attention scattering, distraction,/ digression, interruptive, transgressive,/ undecorous, anticonventional, unintegrated, fractured,/ fragmented, fanciful, ornately stylized, rococo,/ baroque, structural, mannered, fanciful, ironic,/ iconic, schtick, camp, diffuse, decorative,/ repellent, inchoate, programmatic, didactic,/ theatrical, background muzak, amusing: skepticism,/ doubt, noise, resistance.
What must occur for absorption? According to Ford Maddox Ford, we must respect the 4th wall-- no self-consciousness. The reader must be entranced, suspend disbelief, "get caught up." Similarly, I think, 19th century lyric poetry shared this goal: the overheardness/eavesdropping effect creates absorption (hopefully).
So is absorption really just about creating suspense? Thinking now of Kenneth Burke's definition of good literature-- one that sets up expectations/desires and fills them. Which still feels too reductive, but maybe the genius of the definition lies in its simplicity. (I can't help jumping ahead in my notes to Bernstein's examination of Brecht's idea of absorption-- getting the audience to participate on a critical level as maximum engagement... I wonder if Burke's model allows for a reordering of our desires? As in, perhaps in watching Brecht's play (or reading it, or whatever) we want a certain thing to happen, but another thing happens (perhaps its antithesis, perhaps something we hadn't dreamed) and we feel that our expectations were set up and unfufilled. Until we consider what did happen and why it happened-- then we see what Brecht intended, a bit at least, and our desires change/and are fulfilled, perhaps. (Is this how epiphany happens?) Anyway, is a certain level of familiarity required for this to work (I'm using 'familiarity' to cover a # of things here-- training, exposure, schooling, participation in communities, etc.) Moving on.
(38) causal unity employed often to create absorbing poems but tricky and often phony
(47) charm v. song melos, according to Andrew Welsh:
song melos-- externally imposed meter
charm melos-- internally derived from sound & rhythm patterns
related somehow to Jerry Rothenberg-- and continuing,
charm melos depends on/ 'artificial,' jaggedly rhythmic/ prosodic elements to create a centripetal/ (or vortical)/ energy in the poem that is/ able to capture & hold the attention (not/ just conscious attention, but the imagination/ or/ psyche...)
(48) Back to McCaffrey: "'Semiotically viewed, the shaman drum/ is a profound contradiction; it is both itself &/ the very means of transcending that self.'"-- same as rock& roll, where the disbelieving hear noise and the initiate is totally engrossed
(50-1) beyonsense (in chant etc.) could be language to unite all people? (reminds me of Spicer's "infinitely small vocabulary") not to know the meaning but to intuit it (from sound mostly? and the experiencing of it?)
(65) "unreadable text is the outer limit for poetry" antiabsorptive ≠ nonentertaining. in fact, whereas Barthes describes the pleasures of the text, (an erotics of absorption)
(72) Bataille finds disgust & nausea necessary, as transgressions of inhibitions, to achieve pleasure (specifically erotic, but applies here too). Bernstein: "Transgression, in his account, may be the paradigm/ case of using antiabsorptive (socially disruptive,/ anticonventional) techniques for absorptive/ (erotic) ends."
Bataille: "Eroticism always entails a breaking down of the established patterns... But in eroticism... our discontinuous mode of existence is not condemned [but] jolted... What we desire is to bring into a world founded on continuity all the continuity such a world can sustain... Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism-- to the blending and fusing of separate objects." (What was your first textual experience?)
This brings us to the "mark":
(86) "... writing re-/ verses the dynamic Merleau-Ponty out-/ lines for the visible & the invisible:/ for it is the invisible of writing/ that is imagined to be absorbed/ while the visible of writing usually goes unheard/ or is silenced."
Language is oftentimes a necessary means of communication-- but in writing it disappears
Bernstein concludes:
(88-9)
"Absorption & its many con-/ verses, re-/ verses, is at heart a measure/ of the relationship between/ a reader &/ a work: any attempt to isolate/ this dynamic in terms exclusively of/ reading/ or composition/ will fail on this account./ As writers--/ & everyone inscribes/ in the sense/ I mean here--/ we can/ try to intensify/ our relationships by considering/ how they work: are we putting/ each other to sleep/ or waking each other up;/ & what do we wake to?/ Does our writing stun/ or sting? Do we cling to/ what we've grasped/ too well, or find tunes/ in each new/ departure."
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