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14 January 2005: I posted another comment at Ron Silliman's blog about pwoermds, yesterday, a rather unruly one. I was responding to "the Prez," who had written, "One question. If the 'pwoermds' which, as mentioned, come from a combining of poem
and words, how does it work successfully. For instance, these excerpts neither
communicate lucid semantic meaningh, and neither do they communicate poetic intention
or meaning. So how do we judge? And, most importantly, how does the creator (and I'm
speaking to Huth now) judge their work?
"It's all well and good to say this is new, it's the logical progression of post-avant poetry,
but what, if anything, does it want to say?"
The Prez had earlier called pwoermds boring, so I started my reply by insulting him about that. (It's all having the moon in Aries, folks--snapped at, I snap back.) I said, "Now I understand why pwoermds bore you, the Prez. But you should know that for
people who can read, a single word can have 'lucid semantic meaning,' even a word like
Ron's 'mmon.' That is, a misspelled word displayed as a poem (which, the Prez, is how
such words communicate 'poetic intention')--displayed as, to be precise, what I'd call an
'infraverbal poem' because what counts is what's going on in it below the level of words.
Ron's "mmon" seems to me easily recognized as a truncation of 'common.' It appeals
strong to me, conceptually, rather than imagistically. Just why, I'm not sure, but here are a
few beginnings of reasons. (These, let me say first, occur to me because I've been involved
with this kind of poetry for many years, as you apparently have not, the Prez, which may
be the reason you can't yet connect to it rather than an inability to read. But it may also
just be due to a quirk of mind I have and you don't.)
"First off, there's the joke of the word 'common' being made uncommon through spelling.
This leads to thoughts and feelings about the concept, commonness--about perhaps how
something common can wear into something unique, for example. Something in it about
language grabs me, too--like how superfluous 'co' is in this particular word. Also the
strangeness of the extra m, which unpronounceably indicates a second syllable, a sort of
mute syllable, which is a paradox since a syllable by definition is something pronounceable.
'Language is weird,' is the message this could be turned into intellectually, but you must
feel this strangeness for the poem to work for you. I do, you don't--or didn't.
"I don't think anyone is saying, 'this is new, it's the logical progression of post-avant
poetry.' It's now over thirty years old, and is no 'progression,' just a side-path some poets
have or will find worth pursuing and some non-poets have or will find worth
consideration. It means to say all the many things all poetry throughout history has."
"But somehow it strikes me as awfully elitist. I know this doesn't mean anything to those that are part of the poetics community. I also know that there is not just one community of readers. I will try to learn more about it. Thanks for your take.
"-The Prez (an old dog)"
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