(Ikars–I hope you don't mind, but I've cross-posted
this to a few list-servs and interested parties–not a
manifesto, more of a rumination–bliss, l)

~~~~~~~

1.) What interests me most about any artform (indeed,
about the world in general, perception, etc.) is
juxtaposition. Man is a meaning-making animal; no
matter what is placed before her, she will make sense
of it to herself. This gives the artist a great deal
of liberty to combine and recombine all the elements
of her art.

2.) Syntax can be a reflection of this. What the poet
accomplishes with syntax is an at-times deliberate
spacing of perceptual objects. In the poet's case,
these are words (NOT their referants!); the poet
strings a necklace of words that interact and relate
via juxtaposition. If the necklace is good, it won't
break. Sometimes it will turn one's skin green.

3.) It took a long time for poetry to catch up with
the plastic arts. Painting went through its
phases–figuritive, non-figuritive, the blends
between–and now poetry too has aspired to
non-figuritive work. It is, however, both easier and
more perilous to try this with language; because the
basis of language is convention (that's all that holds
signifier and signified together), and because
language is such a common material (we all talk and
write to one another, few of us paint "pass the
potatoes").

4.) Poetry reached its non-figuritive phase; but, as
Rothenberg quite adroitly points out in his
anthologies of tribal poetries, this was inherent in
the literatures of the people of the earth all along.
Yes, Clark Coolidge does have something in common with
the Bushmen.

5.) Now, 2003, we have the internet, we have
technology. This is turning the publication and
distribution of texts upside-down, of course, but the
technology has also brought us new possibilities for
the poet. Now she can appropriate all the candy of
cinema in her work; and, if she's really adept, she
will know enough about programming computers to extend
her work, to create works that are reactive,
stochastic and unstable: works that change.

6.)To be a poet and to investigate high-level computer
languages is an act of recognition. Semiotics and
structuralism has prepared the poet for the
modularity of code. Code is the realization of a
utilitarian view of language; it's purely indexical
(there may be some iconic elements; there are
"tokens"), every element of the program pointing to a
function, event or variable. It's "pass the potatoes"
in overdrive.

7.) Authorship will become even more problematic as
this goes on.

~~~~~~~~

=====


NEW!!!–Dirty Milk–reactive poem for microphone http://www.lewislacook.com/DirtyMilk/

http://www.lewislacook.com/

tubulence artist studio: http://turbulence.org/studios/lacook/index.html








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