Quiz #9


1) If architecture is merely sculpture that bodies can enter, then is poetry merely prose into which certain tunnelings and orifices have been chiseled? If this definition is valid, would you qualify it as an effective materialist definition of poetry? Write your answer in block letters. NO, RATHER THE CONVERSE: PROSE IS POETRY ALL THE AIR HAS BEEN LET OUT OF. IF YOU WANT A MATERIALIST DEFINITION OF POETRY, TRY DESCRIBING THE MOTION OF BIRDS MATHEMATICALLY. WHEN YOU SUCCEED AT THAT, GO FLYING.
2) Assuming that there is something to the above definiton, consider the following: Recent research into Egyptian pyramids has found that the famous and heretofore puzzling secret passageways that rise from the burial chambers toward openings at the outer walls...intended as a sort of launching ramp through which to shoot the mummy-spirit to the stars. ...would you say that poetry has a like purpose, in any way? If not, would you say that there are particular objective historical forces (beginning with 17th century English copyright laws) that have progressively accreted to seal over the launch-openings with a kind of viscous substance? I would tend to blame, rather, an education system that compels, & hence inculcates a dislike of poetry from early on; the reward system, also, is skewed toward consistently mediocre performance, rather than that excellence which illuminates. But always, things of the spirit are commandeered for ego-purposes.
3) If architectural theory has any utility for innovative poets today...then what happens when Steve McCaffery, for example, writes a poem under the influence of Vitruvius and Alberti, both of whom insist that the ordering and structure of their respective theoretical treatises perfectly match that which they prescribe for building (theory as art work)? (snip) Well, Milton thought he was following Christian theology, but as Blake told us, he was of the Devil's party without knowing it. And Marxist poetry never got any better than Vallejo's... However, those who believe they are writing sonnets when they make a fourteen line poem in free verse--will be condemned to burn in eternal styrofoam.

   Quiz #10


1) Go back to Quiz #6 and review the outline given there of Total Design as insistent concern in 20th century architecture, in both its implosive and explosive traditions. Now consider the following dictum/ars poetica of Barrett Watten...: that poetry is, in its essence, the manifestation of a mind in control of its language. What is the relationship between the connotations of such a terrifying pronouncement and the overall look of Architectural Digest magazine? I don't know. I live in a yurt. My language is under the control of my Spirit Double. What is this Architecture Stomach magazine?
2) What is a thematic house? Define this with reference to Charles Jencks. And what kind of design, inner and outer, would you give, if you were the architect, to a multi-million dollar commission for a House of Poetry? Would you spend all the money on the building itself? The thematic House of Poetry would be something like the Wincester Mystery House, a structure that disregards both need & probability. On the other hand, you can charge admission to it. But i believe that the House of Poetry is better off left as the Destroyed Temple--a symbol of our exile, dispersion, & eschatology. Therefore i would spend the "Poetry"* bequest on shelter for the homeless, because some of them might oneday write a true poem.
3) What is the security alarm system that is likely to keep a poet like the Australian desert dweller John O'Brien from being published in a magazine like Jacket (if, indeed, he gets around to sending his work there)? (snip) In other words, would O'Brien be rejected because his poem is ugly, or would he be rejected because the poem doesn't fit into the Total Design (a concept whose ideological vectors remain virtually uninvestigated within the institution of avant-garde poetry)? People become poetry editors in order to enforce their snobbery. If people became poetry editors out of a love of poetry, they would welcome interesting poetry of every description. The concept of a uniform magazine is one step removed from a Final Solution to poets you don't like. I buy up every one of those magazines i run across & then i set fire to them in a heap at midnight on Samhain, with weird howls.
4) How high can a poem be built? Some haiku almost reach the Moon. Can it have elevators? does a dog have Buddha-nature? Can the cable on the elevator in a high-rise poem snap so that the elevator drops for hours, crashes through the ground floor, and keeps going all the way down to Hell? Happened to me one time. What do you think the architecture is like in Hell? Like Dallas, only when you look in the mirror-walls, you see the image of George W. Bush.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
*now funded, at its past rate of expenditures, through the year 3541 AD.