Pause Bubtton

http://www.ubu.com/ubu/pdf/davies_pause.pdf

Pause Button
By Kevin Davies

I've been enjoying this little PDF chapbook
More on why tomorrow or the next

chestnut

Wake up the feelers it’s time to go find

down the blades. Cut him off at the ankles.

Cut him off at the waist. Leave enough tackle

for the median lust; the frosted flicker.
Bordeom becomes the blunt object.

Flat board bruised forehead.

Nail through the temple and she shrieks.

With or without our whites we’ll go forth

in the flatbed full fuel free and fall.

With or without our whites we’ll go froth

in the latbed ull uel ree and all.
Ache up the eelers it’s time to go grind

round the shades. Shut sin offer the dangles.

Boredom becomes the blunt object.

Flat bored bruised ahead the median musk

mailed through the temple and he reeks.

Boredom becomes the blunt object.

Williams, meaning, and funk

Where's the meaning in:

So much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

W.C.W.

There's more actual "meaning" in this example than I wanted, but it's what came off the top of my head. I think we can all agree that the substantive syntax here is limited. The stanzas however, are almost musical with a funky syncopation. I mean if you're looking for an emotive response here you're not going to get it. This is just some damn nice wordsmithing. A tight, trimmed down polaroid in full light shot from the hip. I don't think the fact that it this poem's literal, narrative meaning is almost nonexistent makes it any less effective. We're still allowed other facets to admire. We're still left with this funk, this image, all around economy of langauge that should knock the socks off an open-minded reader. The first time I read this poem I thought, "Did he really just do that with words?" Sometimes meaning can get in the way of the of apppreciating what it is we're observing whether it be a piece of art or anything else. There are these horse chestnuts I've been finding on campus lately. They're beautiful. They're smooth in the hand. They have a deep, rich wood grain. I like these chestnuts because they have a tactile beauty. The whole power of their beauty can only be experienced when you hold one in your hand. There's no meaning behind the beauty of these things. They just are what they are in your hand or in the ground. I think Williams' poem is like one of these chestnuts. You either pick it up and put it in your pocket or move on, but whatever you decide to do it doesn't change. It remains perfect.

What looks natural about a given poem is actually the result of a number of procedures and assumptions about writing that the author may be more or less conscious of when composing. Those procedures and assumptions are in fact social constructions which have become conventions. Thus most Language poets attempt to remind us of the socially contrived basis of any writing. They do not do so, however, by abandoning modes of writing, for such an action is impossible. "Modes cannot be escaped," Bernstein continues, "but they can be taken for granted. They can also be meant" (p. 44). It is the mode-that-is-meant, so to speak, the exploration of the possibilities for meaning-production, which lies behind most Language poetry.
From George Hartley's "Textual Politics and the Language Poets"

Hartley has a point here. Most constructs of the poem, or of writing in general, are as involuntary as putting a period at the end of this sentence. Who, or what social construct is behind that period? When we read something like Silliman's Tjanting, we have to question what it is we're doing with language everyday. We have to scrutinize and redefine our terms. What is a sentence? What is a paragraph? Why can't I use a sentence like this, or that? If we all agree that language is organic and continuously in flux (i.e. LOL, and btw), then maybe the language poets are looking forward, predicting and interpreting that change. When I think of language poetry I think of those outlandish fashions that come streaming down New York's cutting-edge runways. Very few of us are going walk down the beach in his and hers acetate bathing suits. Nevertheless the design is conceptual. It comments on what is being done today, and what is on the horizon. Language poets are like this; one big, baroque fashion show commenting on how we communicate.

What looks natural about a given poem is actually the result of a number of procedures and assumptions about writing that the author may be more or less conscious of when composing. Those procedures and assumptions are in fact social constructions which have become conventions. Thus most Language poets attempt to remind us of the socially contrived basis of any writing. They do not do so, however, by abandoning modes of writing, for such an action is impossible. "Modes cannot be escaped," Bernstein continues, "but they can be taken for granted. They can also be meant" (p. 44). It is the mode-that-is-meant, so to speak, the exploration of the possibilities for meaning-production, which lies behind most Language poetry.
From George Hartley's "Textual Politics and the Language Poets"

Hartley has a point here. Most constructs of the poem, or of writing in general, are as involuntary as putting a period at the end of this sentence. Who, or what social construct is behind that period? When we read something like Silliman's Tjanting, we have to question what it is we're doing with language everyday. We have to scrutinize and redefine our terms. What is a sentence? What is a paragraph? Why can't I use a sentence like this, or that? If we all agree that language is organic and continuously in flux (i.e. LOL, and btw), then maybe the language poets are looking forward, predicting and interpreting that change. When I think of language poetry I think of those outlandish fashions that come streaming down New York's cutting-edge runways. Very few of us are going walk down the beach in his and hers acetate bathing suits. Nevertheless the design is conceptual. It comments on what is being done today, and what is on the horizon. Language poets are like this; one big, baroque fashion show commenting on how we communicate.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

above is a paragraph

Silliman and the paragraph/stanza as vessle

I've been thinking about this idea of Silliman's that the paragraph is a unit of quantity, not logic or argument. I find this redfining of the paragraph interesting because it forces the writer to treat his page more like house. Silliman's idea seems so liberal at first glance in tossing "logic [and] argument" to the wind. But when you think about it this idea of the paragraph actually lends the writing some constraints. It's kind of like framing a house. Once you've laid out the bare bones it's pretty much the house it's going to be from there on out. What matters from that point on is what color you paint the walls. Sentences become sheets of drywall which render enclosures. Sentences become your pallet, trim work, wall hangings, windows, etc. Given Silliman's idea, I've been framing up recent poems with heavy-duty word-processing studs (columns, ridiculous margins etc.). I realize how literal I'm taking this, but it's kind of fun to look at your page a vessel that isn't quite as boundless as the usual ocean of white we normally give ourselves. It's kinda like building a great big cattle pen for all them range rovin' words (yee-haa! get along little doggies!) Its been a challenge and an excercise in letting go. Allowing a one-inch column to dictate line breaks is a humbling experience.

the word as virus

W.S. Burroughs says the word is a virus. By definition the virus is any organism that exists solely to self-replicate. I would say he means this as a metaphore if I believed he did, but I don't. Consider the source. I wonder if we can think of truly new forms of poetry as novel mutations of that virus. I think what we talk about when we talk about false sentiment in the New Yorker poems are simply a constant strain of the virus with which we've all been infected for centuries. When we look at something by Jennifer Knox we must think, "hmmm, this is new, I don't think there's a vaccine for this kind of thing. " I think truly successful and progressive poetry is defined by words being put together in such a manner that they signal a coming pandemic; something incurable that assails the immune systems of generally health, upstanding poems the world over.

...listening to Manu Chao on headphones
while writing a poem and watching the World
Series without a remote control (v.#243)

The players celebrate a world series win
and he celebrates getting the lid off a jar of pickles.
He convinces himself it's the little victories.

The veternarian has put the dog in diapers
to deal with a "severe bowel condition." They loved

that dog so much twenty years ago.

Ten bucks in the classifieds. A little farm
out Dairy Highway. Woman selling the dogs,
one under each arm
and two at her feet
smelled alarmingly of marijuana, and they both liked that.
Named the little mutt Mary Jane, took it for walks
to shit in the neighbor's lawn. That was back when

no one picked up after shitting dogs.

That was back when you could just let your dog
shit on a stranger's lawn and nobody gave a damn.

That was back when people threw their styrofoam
Big Mac shells out the car window like they were
scarves in the wind. He hates himself being

sentimental over those days. Back then,

the salad days, when the world series
was worth watching and he ate
whatever he wanted.

black water compost

How with the fires along the shore she
decides we'll row the black waters and row
the black and waters row the rest of the way
until tomorrow freezes that warm lake dry again.

Moon light away the world beneath our bags of sleep
until tomorrow freezes that warm lake dry again.

Run-off the fertilizer grows new grass and new grass grows
and grows open the reflection of fishless skies
above a waterless lake without water
until tomorrow when where you've decided we'd row

is nothing more than one green meadow boat-grave
with no wake to speak of beyond the lawn mower tracks.

Bag up the black water compost honey, she says, bag it up.

turn ons

God her plugged in ipod makes him hard.
All the way down the bottom of the Grand Canyon her ipod
displays 214 digital pictures of him posing with her ipod
in front of 1 sick Buffalo at Henry Vilas Zoo.
Her ipod's the reason his cell vibrates and barks like a Golden
Retriever every time she just calls to say
her great big Orangutan heart loves him like an arboreal ape.