Author Spotlight
Some Thrilled Thoughts on Mark Cunningham’s eBook, Georgics, With Eclogues for Interrogators
I like it a lot.
People talk about the importance of sentences, their primacy. Georgics, With Eclogues for Interrogators, the new Lamination Colony ebook by Mark Cunningham, gets down to the importance — or sheer unimportance — of words, through phonemes. What does “Poison Ivy” mean? I tried to trace out the time of day, found nothing. Tried to tie the synonyms in the algorithmic georgics to each other and not much accrued. Said the words out loud and stopped, fell down, rolled around happily. Yes, may the powdery leaves keel over. I’m not a Buddhist or a surfer but I know the tide when I see it coming for me.
A Georgic is a poem about the country. An Eclogue is a poem written as a dialogue between shepherds. Yeah, they got a name for that and an Internet to look it up in. There’s even some controversy about that definition coming from a mistake in etymology, whereas it in fact means, simply, a shorter poem excerpted from a larger work, especially in reference to Virgil’s pastoral poems appearing separately from the original in a form called “ekloge,” Greek, or “selection.” Answers.com is seriously the rulingest tool for the public intellectual. (Here’s a tip: when looking up a word, don’t go to dictionary.com or m-w.com or whatever. Just type the word after a slash after answers.com — for instance, http://www.answers.com/eclogue.)
So because of that I wonder: were the various sections broken up like this originally, or was that an editorial/collaborative decision later? I can see this being a collection of three or four longer poems, broken up, entwined. I would love to have seen the original manuscript.
The “–” sections strike me as kind of typical “Life’s Little Instructions,” but new, new poems — very good, very enjoyable, smart and fetching, but not surprising to me. Clever is never so wow as huh. (In a writing workshop this semester we were assigned to mimic Jamaica Kincaid’s rules piece, “Girl.” That’s what these remind me of.)
Fetching is my favorite word when describing poetry. It means attractive in the sense that it goes out and gets you and pulls you in. I would like to find a word that means that but also means repulsive. I think this word is “abject,” but I’m not sure how Kristeva would use it in a sentence. If that David fellow is still around, maybe he can explain.
I would buy this if it was an actual book. I would want to have it on my shelves. I would take it down and show people, and wish they would read it too so we could talk about it, and be annoyed that they wouldn’t read it, or if they did, they wouldn’t have anything interesting to say about it.
It’s really a fun thing.
This text should shame Justin Taylor for his meanness about e-chapbooks not being chapbooks. Who cares, grampa? Who cares what it’s called? Words are important and should be used correctly, but they are also malleable, and for anyone to diminish the power of this ebook because of whatever lameness he senses elsewhere is lame, is mean, as in average, as in base, paltry.
The eclogues for interrogators thing, I wonder if that’s the ones about the two people, one who looks one way, the other who looks the other way, and if that’s about, like, interrogation techniques. Like you know a person is lying if they look up in response to a question. Anyway, sometimes they are whoa, wait:
I glared lower right — she blinked
I glanced upper left — she blinked
I would buy this if it was an actual book because I need to ease up and slow down on my reading of lines like,
that oven-bird just answered a call.
that sharp-shinned hawk just grunted.
that northern flicker just went ah-ah.
that spotted sandpiper just said morning George.
I mean, these words are for pure enjoyment. I don’t expect anything more of them.
In the poem “Chicory,” Cunningham references and dismisses the philosopher Novalis in preference of a cup of coffee. I’m sure he does this because Novalis also wrote:
Matters concerning speech and writing are genuinely strange; proper conversation is a mere play of words. We can only marvel at the laughable error people make—believing that they speak about things. No one knows precisely what is peculiar to language, that it concerns itself merely with itself. For that reason, it is a wonderful and fertile mystery—that when someone speaks merely in order to speak, one precisely then expresses the most splendid and most original truths.
Which encapsulates everything I’m trying to say about everything he’s trying to say.
Anyway, this is no rational treatise (clearly). I think poetry can be discussed stupidly, and I just wanted to post these thoughts to see if we can discuss this book, stupidly.
Let’s get stupid about enjoying ourselves with poetry.
Make lists.
Tags: Lamination Colony, mark cunningham, novalis
this excited me a lot to read. i think you milked a lot of the things that excited me about it: immediacy, with surprising ways of feeling inimmediate, casual. thanks adam.
this excited me a lot to read. i think you milked a lot of the things that excited me about it: immediacy, with surprising ways of feeling inimmediate, casual. thanks adam.
Yeah yeah yeah. Immediate is such as understanding — that is to say, un-understood. When something is immediate there is nothing between me and it. So awesome to get things raw, with the skin off.
But here’s me again, saying how to read something, never what something is.
Yeah yeah yeah. Immediate is such as understanding — that is to say, un-understood. When something is immediate there is nothing between me and it. So awesome to get things raw, with the skin off.
But here’s me again, saying how to read something, never what something is.
Brillig! I love reviews that range so widely to encompass and sew. The echap completely rules and must be clicked and applied as a sort of salve. Ah, royal terns, mimosas, and that oven-bird. I’ll be tracking down and buy more of Mark’s verbiage soon. I’ll print out the echap and use it as a bookmark for the Gordon Massman books I’m rereading now.
Brillig! I love reviews that range so widely to encompass and sew. The echap completely rules and must be clicked and applied as a sort of salve. Ah, royal terns, mimosas, and that oven-bird. I’ll be tracking down and buy more of Mark’s verbiage soon. I’ll print out the echap and use it as a bookmark for the Gordon Massman books I’m rereading now.
This looks like an exciting project, but I have to say that praising it doesn’t seem to have required a swipe at me, especially inasmuch as you concede that “Words are important and should be used correctly,” which was the only point I was ever trying to make. Your point, if I’m reading it correctly, is basically “This is such a cool, inspiring, and high-merit project that we should totally saddle it with a made-up form-tag that will basically scream ‘irrelevant’ to 98% of the breathing world.” Not the strategy I personally would go with, but what do I know? On top of being a geriatric, I’ve never even taken a marketing class.
This looks like an exciting project, but I have to say that praising it doesn’t seem to have required a swipe at me, especially inasmuch as you concede that “Words are important and should be used correctly,” which was the only point I was ever trying to make. Your point, if I’m reading it correctly, is basically “This is such a cool, inspiring, and high-merit project that we should totally saddle it with a made-up form-tag that will basically scream ‘irrelevant’ to 98% of the breathing world.” Not the strategy I personally would go with, but what do I know? On top of being a geriatric, I’ve never even taken a marketing class.
i’m trying to think of stupid things to say about it. ok, do you read every word? or do you just start ‘registering’ the words, as in the ‘look left, blink’ parts? does it cheat the poem to only register the words w/o reading them? at first i read them all but then started just registering them. i think the poems are probably just as good the second way as the first, that they don’t need all to be read. what’s that say about the poems?
i’m trying to think of stupid things to say about it. ok, do you read every word? or do you just start ‘registering’ the words, as in the ‘look left, blink’ parts? does it cheat the poem to only register the words w/o reading them? at first i read them all but then started just registering them. i think the poems are probably just as good the second way as the first, that they don’t need all to be read. what’s that say about the poems?
The point is that this text should justify any of your reservations about the format.
The point is that this text should justify any of your reservations about the format.
Oops, I mean, this particular e-chapbook should justify the format.
Oops, I mean, this particular e-chapbook should justify the format.
What’s that say about the words? That’s what I meant about how this book reflects on the things people say about fiction they like — that Gary Lutz place great import on creating sentences, for example. These poems make even the words seem unimportant. I think I read every word, but I read them quickly, basically scanned them.
I’d say it’s nearly the opposite reading technique as I use for your writing.
What’s that say about the words? That’s what I meant about how this book reflects on the things people say about fiction they like — that Gary Lutz place great import on creating sentences, for example. These poems make even the words seem unimportant. I think I read every word, but I read them quickly, basically scanned them.
I’d say it’s nearly the opposite reading technique as I use for your writing.
That bastard Dibiase used to make Virgil do the worst things.
That bastard Dibiase used to make Virgil do the worst things.
Looking up doesn’t denote lying. Neither does looking left or whatever other nonsensical notions people have of body language that they learned in grade school.
I agree with Justin. Words are important. How you use them is important. For those that argue that being able to communicate a thought or feeling concisely within the paramenters of literature, words and how you use them are definitely important. I am not a writer who wrenches himself over aesthetics, which is why I tend to stray away from the “sentence cults,” but I think the constructive elements of a story or poem can influence the way I process meaning. It’s substantive for me. It is for everyone, but I think that others can overlook things of that nature in the name of “avant-gardeism” or post-modernism.
Looking up doesn’t denote lying. Neither does looking left or whatever other nonsensical notions people have of body language that they learned in grade school.
I agree with Justin. Words are important. How you use them is important. For those that argue that being able to communicate a thought or feeling concisely within the paramenters of literature, words and how you use them are definitely important. I am not a writer who wrenches himself over aesthetics, which is why I tend to stray away from the “sentence cults,” but I think the constructive elements of a story or poem can influence the way I process meaning. It’s substantive for me. It is for everyone, but I think that others can overlook things of that nature in the name of “avant-gardeism” or post-modernism.