Sunday Service

Chad Hardy Poems

from Zapatagraphy

29

An hour passed, and soon
my mind, and yet, in the

mouth is in an order. One could
be one, it is true, sensibly

in mathematics. It cannot be
more. The expression is what

will say it is not telling
everything, in a certain

sense—that from the dark red
trees—all this makes that sun.

30

He was then outline, a single
form of wax or a little boat

with a sheet. The dead
instigated me and hovered round.

What there is of consequence
was not in the boat. Zapata felt

gratitude towards those shores which formed
a calm far more monstrous.

“The streets // resounding and empty // are rivers of shadow // heading
toward the sea // and the sky, threadbare, // is the new // flag // that flares //
over the city.”

MANUEL MAPLES ARCE

31

This state of active occupation
stood in the house and sometimes

with the blood from it. After all,
its productions and features may

be called a precipice.
Gaze on the trees, all the firmness

of deformity. A curve, no
doubt, of the church. And in it

no peace. “We have failed” they shout.
I grew feverish. It stood.

32

When he returned to us, he was
bigger, not merely a

petty experimentalist.
He did not feel for those

on the top of affairs
who could perceive his calm

in leftover bundles.
I sat up much longer,

conversing with his desires
like a flood of strangers.

Chad Hardy is a contributor on the Gnoetry Daily website (gnoetrydaily.wordpress.com) and blogs infrequently on his own Male Cousin (malecousin.wordpress.com). In 1999, he voted for Jerry “The King” Lawler in Memphis’s mayoral race. He is currently completing an MFA at Purdue University.

February 7th, 2010 / 11:50 am
Sunday Service

17 Comments

  1. mjm

      Dig this. And to not make this a jerk party, I’ll write: I enjoyed the precise/measured ambiguity. It has the better side of Armantrout, as I prefer some sort of sense to be discernable from poetry. And for some Yoda: nonsense is not an automatic precursor to sense-make. Felt more like you were describing a scene mixed in with particular ideas, but you were doing it with a bit of surreality, a surreality that, somehow, was hard like concrete. I don’t know who Arce is, but the quote really became a buoy for me as a reader.

      I think I like these more than the others.

  2. mjm

      Dig this. And to not make this a jerk party, I’ll write: I enjoyed the precise/measured ambiguity. It has the better side of Armantrout, as I prefer some sort of sense to be discernable from poetry. And for some Yoda: nonsense is not an automatic precursor to sense-make. Felt more like you were describing a scene mixed in with particular ideas, but you were doing it with a bit of surreality, a surreality that, somehow, was hard like concrete. I don’t know who Arce is, but the quote really became a buoy for me as a reader.

      I think I like these more than the others.

  3. ChadAHardy

      A little context: These are from a longer sequence titled Zapatagraphy, and are a meditation on Emiliano Zapata. They were written using the computer program Gnoetry pulling from a few source texts including Gertrude Stein, and Mary Shelley. I used the Gnoetry program in conjunction with research on the Mexican Revolution and the modern Zapatista movement. I began placing Zapata into the computer generated poems, allowing his name to argue with the text around it, find resonance, etc. If you’re interested, there are more of the unedited gnoems over at gnoetrydaily.wordpress.com.

  4. ChadAHardy

      A little context: These are from a longer sequence titled Zapatagraphy, and are a meditation on Emiliano Zapata. They were written using the computer program Gnoetry pulling from a few source texts including Gertrude Stein, and Mary Shelley. I used the Gnoetry program in conjunction with research on the Mexican Revolution and the modern Zapatista movement. I began placing Zapata into the computer generated poems, allowing his name to argue with the text around it, find resonance, etc. If you’re interested, there are more of the unedited gnoems over at gnoetrydaily.wordpress.com.

  5. Blake Butler

      how does Gnoetry work Chad? i know nothing about it

  6. Blake Butler

      how does Gnoetry work Chad? i know nothing about it

  7. ChadAHardy

      It performs a statistical analysis on any number of source texts then offers you a poem that is a synthesis of the properties of each text. The “end-user” can then go in and select sections (one word, one line, the whole thing) that he/she doesn’t like and have the program offer another option. This process is repeated over and over until the “end-user” is happy with the final poem.

  8. ChadAHardy

      It performs a statistical analysis on any number of source texts then offers you a poem that is a synthesis of the properties of each text. The “end-user” can then go in and select sections (one word, one line, the whole thing) that he/she doesn’t like and have the program offer another option. This process is repeated over and over until the “end-user” is happy with the final poem.

  9. mjm

      Now I somehow feel cheated out of the experience. Not only that, I feel stupid. I am not sure why.

  10. mjm

      Now I somehow feel cheated out of the experience. Not only that, I feel stupid. I am not sure why.

  11. Seth

      Please. No room for sentimentality here.

  12. Seth

      Please. No room for sentimentality here.

  13. ChadAHardy

      Well, now I feel stupid for talking process.

  14. ChadAHardy

      Well, now I feel stupid for talking process.

  15. mjm

      Naw don’t. Thinking more on it, I found that you talking process made me question what exactly humanity is and why we tend to ‘need’ it from our art. Why we’ll look at a painting different if we were to program various coordinates or codes to go at random intervals — we tend to demean it a little or it looses value. Even if an elephant or a primate paints something, it is considered somewhat human, somewhat alive.

      Even if you are picking and choosing there is a supposed cold/mechanical thing between you and something that should exude the, ahem, warmth of what it is to be human.

      While opening GEB: the golden braid to a random page, it questioned why a circuit board isn’t considered alive because it isn’t within the realm of what we consider living. Just because a rock is a rock and isn’t a flower, does this not make it alive? Are we crazy to call a rock a living thing?

      I actually appreciate the piece more by knowing the process behind it. Sure, it changes my initial statement and sentiment, but it has opened my thinking up more beyond the poem. The sad byproduct of this event is the poem becomes secondary to the more interesting process and questions of the process behind it, whereas before the poem was a central figure.

  16. mjm

      Naw don’t. Thinking more on it, I found that you talking process made me question what exactly humanity is and why we tend to ‘need’ it from our art. Why we’ll look at a painting different if we were to program various coordinates or codes to go at random intervals — we tend to demean it a little or it looses value. Even if an elephant or a primate paints something, it is considered somewhat human, somewhat alive.

      Even if you are picking and choosing there is a supposed cold/mechanical thing between you and something that should exude the, ahem, warmth of what it is to be human.

      While opening GEB: the golden braid to a random page, it questioned why a circuit board isn’t considered alive because it isn’t within the realm of what we consider living. Just because a rock is a rock and isn’t a flower, does this not make it alive? Are we crazy to call a rock a living thing?

      I actually appreciate the piece more by knowing the process behind it. Sure, it changes my initial statement and sentiment, but it has opened my thinking up more beyond the poem. The sad byproduct of this event is the poem becomes secondary to the more interesting process and questions of the process behind it, whereas before the poem was a central figure.

  17. Swaggerattack16

      you ass