Poet as Radio: Writing from Intuition

Course Materials Week One
(Sunday, November 10, 2024, 3-5 pm PDT)

Matt’s Week 1 Notes (pdf)

We’ll start by looking at how simple games can break open the writing process to allow for the unexpected. The Parisian Surrealists in the 1920s were fascinated by parlor games and how arbitrary rules allowed children to collaborate and create surprise and joy outside of conventional logic. They experimented with using variations on these games to pre-occupy the ego and access the imaginative part of the mind repressed by social pressures and education. Take a look at the opening section of The Book of Surrealist Games (complied by Alaistair Brotchie in 1995) and a short article on one of those games, The Exquisite Corpse, and see what rings some bells for you. Maybe even give one a try if you have time. We’ll discuss what these ideas have opened up for us, even if that happens to be a can of worms, and (time permitting) even try our best to play a round of Exquisite Corpse adapted for cyberspace. 

November 10 Course Recording

Course Materials Week Two
(Sunday, November 17, 2024, 3-5 pm PDT)

Read: Week 2 Notes

For this week:

While I find most audio books to be a tortuous experience (probably because prose in our culture is far too utilitarian to be anything but monotone or cartoonish), I do love listening to talks and poetry readings, and PennSound is a great repository of those types of recordings. They probably have recordings of many of your favorite poets from mid-20^th-century to the present. The PennSound page for Jack Spicer has recordings of his Vancouver lectures. As an exercise, listen to as much as you can from Lecture 1 (parts 1 and 2) and (unless you’re driving) spontaneously jot down words and phrases that come alive for you as you listen. These don’t have to be what Jack actually says; the goal is to listen for whatever arises in the moment. If you can do the listening and note taking in the dark, that would be ideal but go with what is most accessible for you. Later on come back to those notes, and see if you can make a poem from them.

Here’s print versions:

Internet Archive version of The House That Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer, Textbook of Poetry

Other reading for when you have time:

Jason Morris, “Crystal Gazing”—an essay on Clark Coolidge’s The Crystal Text, which is a 10-month daily journal in which the poet attempted to listen to a rose quartz crystal he was given as a gift. The book had long been out of print but has recently been reissued by City Lights.

Also, you might want to check out the work of Hannah Weiner, who in the 1970s began keeping a poetic journal in which she attempted to capture words she would often see appear on her forehead and on the forehead of others. Her book, Clairvoyant Journal 1974,gives a visual sense of the experience. But there’s also footage of her from Public Access Television in New York reading (with some of her peers) that conveys the auditory aspect of the experience.

And here’s a couple of albums I like to put on repeat to write with:

Son Volt, Trace

Adrienne Lenker, Bright Future

November 17th Course Recording

Course Materials Week Three
(Sunday, November 24, 2024, 3-5 pm PDT)

Read:  Week 3 Notes

For this week:

Read Hoa Nguyen’s short essay “Divinatory Poetics” adapted from a panel talk at AWP in Kansas City earlier this year (if you have time, here’s a recording of an online version of that same panel from Sept of 2023),a 3-way conversation on Poetry and Tarot with Hoa Nguyen, Airea Matthews and Trevor Ketner from Catapult Magazine in 2017, and at least one of these samples of divinated poetry by: 

Hoa Nguyen from Violet Energy Ingots (Wave Books, 2016),  

Noah Eli Gordon from The Source (Futurepoem, 2011),  

Cedar Sigo from Royals (Wave Books, 2017),  

Losarc Raal (aka Carlos Lara) from No Material (Black Sun Lit, 2023). 

Try your hand at writing a poem by divination. Bibliomancy, or divination by text, is an ancient form of this. To prepare, on a small slip of paper write down a word or phrase that stands for something that is personally vexing you – it should be something in your everyday experience (i.e. not some abstract idea like capitalism or Trump or cancel culture. You get the picture). Fold it up and put it somewhere on you (a pocket works well) and be sure to keep it on you until you’re done. A day or two later, go to your bookcase and grab a number of books. The actual number doesn’t matter but should be at least 3. Try to see if a number pops in your head once you start or if you experience a feeling that says you’ve got enough. Stack the books in a random order and put the stack near your writing space. Wait another day then sit down to write. Take out your slip of paper and read it to yourself. Then, take the first book in your stack and turn to page 26. Scan the page until a word or phrase (best if it’s 9 words or less) jumps out and write it down as a single line. Then pick up the 2nd book and repeat the process until you’ve used all the books. Read the poem out loud and take some notes on what the poem says about your vexation. DO NOT REVISE!!!!! 

If you really want to have fun with it, have someone else write down the vexation and read the poem back to them and see what jumps out to them. 

Listen: Here’s some aural journeys beyond the looking glass by a couple of Alices 

Alice Coletrane, Journey in Satchidanda

Alice Notley, “Two of Swords” from Live in Seattle

November 24 Course Recording

No class Sunday, December 1 (Holiday Weekend)

Course Materials Week Four
(Sunday, December 8, 2024, 3-5 pm PDT)

Read: Week 4 Notes

Check out Allan Kaprow’s essay “The Real Experiment.” Kaprow was a student of Zen practitioner and avant-garde composer, John Cage and a friend an inspiration to the artists of the Fluxus movement. He was briefly art-world famous for what he called “Happenings,” in which everyday events were engaged as conscious performances. The idea was to get art out of the galleries and museums and apply it to everyday living. However, much to his chagrin, the idea was co-opted by the art world he was rebelling against, and turned into “Performance Art,” which he saw as a caricature of his intention. This is essay is from the end of his career and really gets at some great examples of how we might blur those lines.

In that same vein, take a look at Fluxus artist (and lightening rod for Beatle-fan misogyny) Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, which is a collection of poems which are instructions for little rituals, or rehearsals for the real poem, which takes place in the mind of the reader-as-a-collaborator. It’s like a text book in how to ritualize little things in your life. Also, take a look at the online archive for Learning to Love You More, an art-as-living project by Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, in which the artists gave volunteer participants on the internet simple assignments for having and documenting creative experiments in their communities.

You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with the work of CA Conrad, who for the last 15 or so years has been presenting their poetry in the context of what they call (Soma)tic ritual. Take a look at this brief JUPITER HUMANIFESTO: A (Soma)tic Poetry Entrance, this basic breakdown of the practice into 3 parts, the short introduction to their book ecodevience, this course packet of CA’s rituals compiled by Michelle Taransky at UPenn, this video of a Ritual construction workshop CA gave for Mack (live) in January of 2022, and poems from their most recent collections posted at A Velvet Giant, Just Buffalo Literary Center, and poets.org.

Read what you can and try to envision a small ritual for yourself that you can practice over the next two weeks. The ritual should involve your body in some fashion and engage some aspect of your everyday life. Maybe there’s a nervous tic you have that you want to become more aware of, or a regular interaction with a person or group that’s become more habit of personality than conscious relating. Maybe you want to explore how your vexation from your divination exercise shows up for you. Whatever it is you want to wake to in your everyday life, find some physical intervention you can practice in the moment (have a safeword or phrase or a gesture to inject in those routine conversations, or clench your toes or fingers, or shift your posture or gaze to a new perspective, etc) and TAKE NOTES. Give yourself some brief time (5min) each day to write automatically (faster than your editor can keep up). DON’T EDIT these notes (yet). We’ll engage them in class and come up with a strategy for letting the transmissions come through as they want to.

Listen: Joe Henry, The Gospel According to Water

December 8 Course Recording

Course Materials Week Five
(Sunday, December 15, 2024, 3-5 pm PDT)

Read: Week 5 Notes

Try your hand at turning the line, so to speak. Take 1-3 (or more if you have time) of your poems or ritual notes and sit down for a 2^nd pass at it. Don’t think of this as editing or polishing, but a re-visiting or re-turning the piece like you’d turn a line. You might try bringing a different tool or process to the poem. If you started with bibliomancy, maybe try bringing in ritual, or a Surrealist game. If it’s a ritual note, maybe try copying the note over, and using Bibliomancy to bring in other material. Just go with your gut. It’ll tell you what you need to do next.

We’ll review those 2^nd passes in class next week and talk about thoughts or ideas each of you have for what you might do post-lab, how you might (or not) incorporate some of the tools or practices we’ve talked about during this 5-week lab.

Listen: In 2018, St. Vincent recorded a follow-up to her wildly popular MASSEDUCATION (2017) that was like a 2nd pass, re-recording the same songs but with altered arrangements and acoustic instruments. Take a listen to how the 2nd pass, MassEducation (2018) opens up the songs and album and make room for a new range of emotional response.