Symbolic Efficiency

Dale Smith, following up on a post of his I previously linked to:

First of all, any misunderstandings in the “Tag Clouds” post result from a rapid-fire application of Jodi Dean’s potentially useful notion of “Tag Clouds.” I should have skipped her provocative terms, however, and just gone straight to the source: Zizek (and behind him, Lacan). I’ve warped it to my uses because symbolic efficiency is important to grasp in criticism not only of Flarf, but also in understanding how other aspects of contemporary life contribute to this decline.  ... Zizek and others see a decline in symbolic efficiency, and indicate that it’s a result of the ongoing transformation of capitalism. I suggested that Flarf naively contributes to this decline not because of its recycling of texts or its hyposyntax, but because it doesn’t account for its symbolization process—doesn’t suppose the significance of the big Other, nor does it much seek association between its symbolic acts and a corresponding reality. 

Read the rest here.

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Perform-A-Form: A Page Vs. Stage Alliance

The performance body, via breathing and gesture, dramatizes form. It makes it theater. It makes it action. It makes it living, alive, as in “get live,” as in “all the way live,” as in lyric. The idea body, via text and thought, flattens form. It makes it fixed. It makes it language. It makes it literature, an imagined living, as in artifice. The work of the performance body is not without craft, control, or form. It is not lowly. The work of the idea body is not without attitude, improvisation, or flow. It is not closed. A perform–a–form occurs when the idea body and the performance body, frustrated by their own segregated aesthetic boundaries, seek to crossroads with one another. This coupling, though detrimental to aspects of their individual traditions, will repair and continue the living word. 

Thomas Sayers Ellis puts forth his manifesto at the Poetry Foundation.

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Apostrophes Abolished

From now on, no sign produced by Birmingham City Council will contain the punctuation mark. Debates over whether Kings Norton really should be King's - or even Kings' - Norton may rage on, but they will be useless. And nearby Druids Heath - which was never actually home to one, let alone many, druids - will never take on the possessive, no matter how furious local apostrophe advocates become. The council said the move had been taken for the purposes of consistency and to avoid costs and confusion over whether place names should ever take an apostrophe.

This is what happens when losers and spoilsports collide. More over at the Telegraph.

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Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links

The work of art “itself” does not exist, only incommensurable social contexts through which it emerges and into which it vanishes.  ... A work of art is the overlay of a set of incommensurable possibilities, linked together around an original vanishing point.  ... L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y: a loose affliation of unlike individuals.

Charles Bernstein's turn to get fragmentary at the Poetry Foundation.

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Visual Poetics & Advertizing

A PEPC digital exhibition. via Charles Bernstein

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The Wolf: Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath

Wednesday 11th February, 8pm

• James Byrne
• Harry Gilonis
• Sandeep Parmar
• Zoë Skoulding
• Carol Watts

The Wolf and Poetry Wales magazines celebrate the lives of Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. The Wheatsheaf Pub, 25 Rathbone Place, London, W1T 1DG Visit The Wolf. via modernpoetry

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Rhyme Schemes

Off rhymes founded on consonants are more literary than off rhymes founded on vowels (assonance). Vowels are shifty. Assonance is in the mouth, not the ear. It is performative.  ... Translators who translate poems that rhyme into poems that don’t rhyme solely because they claim keeping the rhyme is impossible without doing violence to the poem have done violence to the poem. They are also lazy.  ... Rhyme is an irrational, sensual link between two words. It is chemical. It is alchemical.

This is the bit where I rhyme some lines for the benefit of brinkmanship. Never. More A.E. Stallings musings on rhyme over at the Poetry Foundation. Personally, I don't have a problem with people using or not using rhyme, just people who avoid using it.

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Charing Cross Bookshops

Interactive map of bookshops on Charing Cross Road, with a comparison of the same area 40 years ago.

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Today the Postman brought me a young virile Arthur Rimbaud

by Tom Beckett

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Textsound: Call for Submissions

The online audio publication text*sound* is currently listening to submissions of only text/ sound for its third issue. Deadline is March 1, 2009. Send .mp3 files to editors (at) textsound (dot) org or share files uploadable from a free site (like yousendit). For detailed submission guidelines visit textsound.org

The first two issues have been excellent and I would encourage anyone who is thinking of submitting to submit and anyone who is not thinking of submitting who could possibly submit to think why they are not submitting and reconsider it. via Crg Hill

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