Saturday, November 21, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
Reckoning
For those waiting on correspondence etc., just bear with me. I have precisely three weeks to finish the PhD. Everything is behind. Time itself is altered. Peace to all while I set sail into the hurricane.
Monday, July 20, 2009
NEW! Ryan MacDonald In The Continental Review
Delighted to be featuring these two stunningly beautiful pieces from Ryan MacDonald, commissioned by The Continental Review editor Jordan Stempleman.
Come into the eye of the storm . . .
Come into the eye of the storm . . .
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Journey Towards The North
Extraordinary times. I've just this week been appointed on a one-year contract to the comparative literature department at the University of Lille 3. I'm going to live in Lille. I will be leaving Paris. More on all of it when this work is over, and when I start to realize what it all means.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Will I Be Sued?
Why does everyone threaten to sue people in the poetics community today? We'll see if I get sued for my piece beneath. I thought the satirical nature of the thing was utterly obvious.
Anyway of course Billy Collins didn't say that his own poetry is awful. Considering that I link to the original article, where you can read what Billy actually said in full, I thought it was clear.
Ah, I too remember free speech.
Feel free to comment though if you feel I should be sued.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Former laureate says country needs some better poets than him
(Below is an entirely satirical I mean duh unedited transcript of a recent Billy Collins interview, which recently arrived at The Newer Metaphysicals' Paris bureau. We are unsure what happened during the copy-editing phase of the final version, which for interest may be viewed here, replete with its many typos).
LONE WOLF, Okla. — Billy Collins unwound the tangled wool from his half-knit Christmas stocking, unhitching it from the rusty gramophone in his library. He placed the gramophone next to a spiral notebook, then slowly wrapped the stocking around his head.
“I only have about 1 song on this thing,” he said, gesticulating towards the gramophone. "And I have to change the, what do you call it, memory-plate.” The lack of music isn’t that big of an issue though, Collins noted. "I just use it to tune out the noise", he said. Noise created by humans, that is, and what Collins simply refers to as "The Voices."
Billy Collins doesn't like "The Voices". For the next 30 minutes or so, the former laureate rocked back and forth, speaking of "Them", and droning on and on about the stark beauty of Oklahoma.
Yes, Billy Collins speaks poorly.
But he writes even worse.
“I was listening to Lady Gaga coming out here,” he said. “I’ve even learned a couple of her songs, but I would never play them in front of anyone. I hate people. They make noise. Also, nobody can really play Lady Gaga. She is too unique. I think trying to play that is a form of trespassing. BANG.”
And while trying to play Lady Gaga might seem like a violation, for Collins, writing poetry which evokes pantless one-pieces, rain, snow and household items, is his life’s work.
Chosen as a member of the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, Collins has spent the past week boring to tears a select group of high school students with what the latter called his "old man stories". Last Friday, Collins spoke to the entire petrified group during a poetry reading at the Kerr Performing Arts Center, where his hour-long performance was greeted with continuous booing. Over three quarters of the crowd walked out, leaving only the comatose and the dead to be later awoken by the remaining security personnel.
“Coming here has been fascinating,” he said. “It’s sort of an ‘end-of-the-line’ experience for me. In that, I think this is the ‘end-of-the-line’ for my poetry."
Still, while Billy Collins found Quartz Mountain particularly suited to his often hilariously bad one-dimensional sentimental linear narrative poems, he’s less excited by the poetry the rest of the country has produced.
“One of the reasons people don’t read as much poetry anymore is the fault of the poets,” he said. “It’s not the public’s fault, except that they're usually much too noisy (I like taking naps). What I'm saying though is that there’s an awful lot of bad poetry out there. I’d say about 87 percent of the poetry in America isn’t worth reading, and mine is certainly at the forefront among them.”
It’s the other 13 percent, Collins said, that he would love one day to be a part of. “I suppose my poetry is so dreadful because I think poetry needs to be transparent. Of course I have no idea what 'transparent' in this context means, or in fact could ever mean. It just makes no sense. It's a meaningless term. Sometimes I just feel so inadequate. I'm sorry is it mealtime yet?”
Collins then speculated that perhaps his poems were so awful because he believes that poems should always say something about the state of the poet and his environment.
For Collins, that philosophy bubbled to the surface when he was asked, as poet laureate, to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the terrorists’ attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“I’ve only been asked to write two poems in my life,” he said. “At first I didn’t want to. But, later, as I thought about it, it disturbed me that I didn’t feel I was up to the challenge. And I was right: I wasn't. I suppose I just panicked. Did you see that crap I turned out? I feel ashamed."
Collins did change his mind though. He said he took advantage of two literary devices — the form of a eulogy and the alphabet — to build his work. “I needed the eulogy and the alphabet, I needed those as a frame for the poem. But, as I said, it was just . . . awful.”
Later, Collins read his work to a joint session of Congress. “I remember the tears running down Senator Patrick Moynihan’s face. It was that bad. I never knew poetry could be so dreadful it would make politicians weep. It was an interesting way to see the country’s politicians.”
It was in moments like those, Collins said, that he understood the absolute lack of any power in his poems.
But even with his bizarre descent, Collins continues to write. "I just can't help it. 87 percent of the country's poets suck, and I suck more than all of them. But for me, the future is basically the next poem. It’s always been that way. It’s always been one poem at a time", he observed, gazing out with melancholy at the Oklahoma landscape.
"And they just keep on getting worse.”
LONE WOLF, Okla. — Billy Collins unwound the tangled wool from his half-knit Christmas stocking, unhitching it from the rusty gramophone in his library. He placed the gramophone next to a spiral notebook, then slowly wrapped the stocking around his head.
“I only have about 1 song on this thing,” he said, gesticulating towards the gramophone. "And I have to change the, what do you call it, memory-plate.” The lack of music isn’t that big of an issue though, Collins noted. "I just use it to tune out the noise", he said. Noise created by humans, that is, and what Collins simply refers to as "The Voices."
Billy Collins doesn't like "The Voices". For the next 30 minutes or so, the former laureate rocked back and forth, speaking of "Them", and droning on and on about the stark beauty of Oklahoma.
Yes, Billy Collins speaks poorly.
But he writes even worse.
“I was listening to Lady Gaga coming out here,” he said. “I’ve even learned a couple of her songs, but I would never play them in front of anyone. I hate people. They make noise. Also, nobody can really play Lady Gaga. She is too unique. I think trying to play that is a form of trespassing. BANG.”
And while trying to play Lady Gaga might seem like a violation, for Collins, writing poetry which evokes pantless one-pieces, rain, snow and household items, is his life’s work.
Chosen as a member of the faculty of the Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, Collins has spent the past week boring to tears a select group of high school students with what the latter called his "old man stories". Last Friday, Collins spoke to the entire petrified group during a poetry reading at the Kerr Performing Arts Center, where his hour-long performance was greeted with continuous booing. Over three quarters of the crowd walked out, leaving only the comatose and the dead to be later awoken by the remaining security personnel.
“Coming here has been fascinating,” he said. “It’s sort of an ‘end-of-the-line’ experience for me. In that, I think this is the ‘end-of-the-line’ for my poetry."
Still, while Billy Collins found Quartz Mountain particularly suited to his often hilariously bad one-dimensional sentimental linear narrative poems, he’s less excited by the poetry the rest of the country has produced.
“One of the reasons people don’t read as much poetry anymore is the fault of the poets,” he said. “It’s not the public’s fault, except that they're usually much too noisy (I like taking naps). What I'm saying though is that there’s an awful lot of bad poetry out there. I’d say about 87 percent of the poetry in America isn’t worth reading, and mine is certainly at the forefront among them.”
It’s the other 13 percent, Collins said, that he would love one day to be a part of. “I suppose my poetry is so dreadful because I think poetry needs to be transparent. Of course I have no idea what 'transparent' in this context means, or in fact could ever mean. It just makes no sense. It's a meaningless term. Sometimes I just feel so inadequate. I'm sorry is it mealtime yet?”
Collins then speculated that perhaps his poems were so awful because he believes that poems should always say something about the state of the poet and his environment.
For Collins, that philosophy bubbled to the surface when he was asked, as poet laureate, to write a poem commemorating the first anniversary of the terrorists’ attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
“I’ve only been asked to write two poems in my life,” he said. “At first I didn’t want to. But, later, as I thought about it, it disturbed me that I didn’t feel I was up to the challenge. And I was right: I wasn't. I suppose I just panicked. Did you see that crap I turned out? I feel ashamed."
Collins did change his mind though. He said he took advantage of two literary devices — the form of a eulogy and the alphabet — to build his work. “I needed the eulogy and the alphabet, I needed those as a frame for the poem. But, as I said, it was just . . . awful.”
Later, Collins read his work to a joint session of Congress. “I remember the tears running down Senator Patrick Moynihan’s face. It was that bad. I never knew poetry could be so dreadful it would make politicians weep. It was an interesting way to see the country’s politicians.”
It was in moments like those, Collins said, that he understood the absolute lack of any power in his poems.
But even with his bizarre descent, Collins continues to write. "I just can't help it. 87 percent of the country's poets suck, and I suck more than all of them. But for me, the future is basically the next poem. It’s always been that way. It’s always been one poem at a time", he observed, gazing out with melancholy at the Oklahoma landscape.
"And they just keep on getting worse.”
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
BORN
25 poems, pink pages, bound with pink thread, $5USD
the volta
verses * at its pitch
like your nose needs its fatalistic
noose ! hanging
past
lovers by the leavings
they have * left . . . it is as if in
protrusions some potency hid its pur
-loined pouts stolen * by shadows
in a triangular artistry
where the breath
fogs life *
anew
by mere geo-
metric * mimetic terms . . .
and all this is past some shivering :
it lies in the point * of waiting
still and still destructive
above the thing
to kiss
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The New Thing: Towards A Cryptopoetics
Contemporary poetics is apparently in the throes of The New Thing. Thank fuck for that, because it's been like 4 hours since The Newer Pleonasm, a movement I so totally loved.
Luckily though, The Newer Metaphysicals has obtained some rare images for its readers of other recently discovered poetic group-anomalies :
Beautiful . . .
So beautiful . . .
Anyway, the next time you catch a new poetic movement from the depths of some imaginary historiographical Niflheim, could you please just do the decent thing :
Throw the fucker back.
Luckily though, The Newer Metaphysicals has obtained some rare images for its readers of other recently discovered poetic group-anomalies :
The Newer Pleonasm
Post-Periphrastics
Neoteric Redundancy
Beautiful . . .
So beautiful . . .
Anyway, the next time you catch a new poetic movement from the depths of some imaginary historiographical Niflheim, could you please just do the decent thing :
Throw the fucker back.
How Many Poets Are There?
Over the last 12 years, I've been mapping a number of inductive statistical models which chart the growth of the world Poet-Population across a variety of contrasting demographics. This brief summary of my analysis is dedicated to Seth Abramson and Ron Silliman . . .
Research Outline
The term "Poet-Population" (PP) commonly refers to the total number of living poets on Earth at a given time. As of May 31, 2009, the Earth's Poet-Population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 6,792,467,727. The world Poet-Population has been growing continuously since the first circulation of Petrarch's Canzoniere in the 1330s. There were short-term falls however at other times due to lack of inspiration, for example in the mid 18th century. The fastest rates of world Poet-Population growth (above 1.8%) were seen briefly during the 1950s (see Projectivism) then for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s. This can be seen on the following graph :
According to Poet-Population projections, the Poet-Population will continue to grow until around 2050. The 2008 rate of growth has almost halved since its peak of 2.2% per year, which was reached in 1963. World Poet-Births have levelled off at about 137-million-per-year, since their peak at 163-million in the late 1990s, and are expected to remain constant. However, Poet-Deaths are only around 56 million per year, and are expected to increase to 90 million by the year 2050. Since births outnumber deaths, the Poet-Population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.
Research Outline
The term "Poet-Population" (PP) commonly refers to the total number of living poets on Earth at a given time. As of May 31, 2009, the Earth's Poet-Population is estimated by the United States Census Bureau to be 6,792,467,727. The world Poet-Population has been growing continuously since the first circulation of Petrarch's Canzoniere in the 1330s. There were short-term falls however at other times due to lack of inspiration, for example in the mid 18th century. The fastest rates of world Poet-Population growth (above 1.8%) were seen briefly during the 1950s (see Projectivism) then for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s. This can be seen on the following graph :
According to Poet-Population projections, the Poet-Population will continue to grow until around 2050. The 2008 rate of growth has almost halved since its peak of 2.2% per year, which was reached in 1963. World Poet-Births have levelled off at about 137-million-per-year, since their peak at 163-million in the late 1990s, and are expected to remain constant. However, Poet-Deaths are only around 56 million per year, and are expected to increase to 90 million by the year 2050. Since births outnumber deaths, the Poet-Population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.
Different regions have different rates of Poet-Population growth. According to our statistical mapping, the growth in the Poet-Population of different regions from 2000 to 2005 was:
- 237.771 million in Asia
- 92.293 million in Africa
- 38.052 million in Latin America
- 16.241 million in Northern America
- 1.955 million in Oceania
- -3.264 million in Europe
- 383.047 million in the whole world
In the 20th century, the world saw the biggest increase in its Poet-Population in human history due to a range of factors including grants, word processors, and the formation of poets into tightly cohesive groups. In 2000, the United Nations estimated that the world's Poet-Population was growing at the rate of 1.14% (or about 75 million poets) per year, down from a peak of 88 million per year in 1989. In the last few centuries, the number of poets living on Earth has increased many times over. By the year 2000, there were 10 times as many poets on Earth as there were 300 years ago. According to data from the CIA's 2005–2006 World Factbooks, the world Poet-Population increased by 203,800 every day. The CIA Factbook increased this to 211,090 poets every day in 2007, and again to 220,980 poets every day in 2009.
Statistical Models
Hoerner (1975) proposed the following formula for calculating the world Poet-Population :
where
- N is current number of poets
- T is the current year
- C = 2·1011
- T0 = 2025
The formula indicates hyperbolic growth of the Poet-Population.
According to Kapitza (1997), the Poet-Population grew between 67000 b.c. and 1965, and the world Poet-Population growth formula is:
where
- N is current Poet-Population
- T is the current year
- C = (1.86±0.01)·1011
- T0 = 2007±1
- τ = 42±1
The transition from hyperbolic growth of the Poet-Population to slower rates of growth is called demographic poetic transition.
Summary and Predictions
Globally, the Poet-Population growth rate has been steadily declining from its peak of 2.19% in 1963, but growth remains high in Latin America, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa.
In some countries there is negative Poet-Population growth (i.e. net decrease in the Poet-Population over time), especially in Central and Eastern Europe and Southern Africa. Within the next decade, Japan and some countries in Western Europe are also expected to encounter negative Poet-Population growth.
The United Nations states that Poet-Population growth is rapidly declining, and is expected to peak at 9.2 billion in 2050.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Narrativity Is Part Of The Futility Of Language
I just spent half an hour giggling at work by The Postmodern Text Generator. I read a good ten of its enlightening essays, ranging in topics from Spinoza to the future of Libertarianism. My favourite phrases for this session were the following, which I intend on using to other people this week and attributing them to their "authors" with unswerving confidence:
- “Sexual identity", Marx claimed, "is the rubicon of language."Then of course the most wonderful thing about The Postmodern Text Generator are those occasions it produces a sentence which you attempt for 5 minutes to try to "understand". You feel there is something there. This must be a semanteme. My favourite of this category during this session being :
- The characteristic theme of la Fournier’s analysis of predialectic rationalism is not deappropriation, but postdeappropriation.
- If one examines the textual paradigm of context, one is faced with a choice: either reject postcapitalist theory or conclude that context is a product of communication.
“Narrativity is part of the futility of language,” says Lacan.
- Um, hey Robot-Academic.
- Greetings . . . MANNING.
- Listen RA, I'm just going down to the bar with Greg and co. for a few hours, do you think you could finish that section on Pessoa in the techne chapter and then just tidy up that stuff on Perelman and The New Rhetoric? That'd be great.
- Analytic or Continental.
- Err, let's go with Analytic today. But could you put in some equations, you know like Badiou.
- Confirmed.
- Sweet. Oh and could you go easy on the sollipsistic paradoxes this time: we're not playing Žižuku. BYE!
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