BERT for Short Short Stories

As a creative writer I'm always on the lookout for new developments in NLP and language modelling. With the advent of the new Age of Machine Learning there was a lot of promise that creative breakthroughs might be around the corner. There was an early burst with the work of people like Ross Goodwin's Sunspring in 2016, and Botnik Studios' Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash in 2017.

However this momentum appears to have stalled more recently, and the most interesting AI collaborations have been in the visual arts instead, highlighted by Obvious' auctioned Portrait of Edmond Belamy, but even more so by the avant-garde work of serious artists like Mario Klingemann.

With incredible language models like GPT-2 and XLNet now openly available, it is disappointing to note a comparative lack of collaboration between creative writing and these advances in AI. Is it perhaps a case of more not really being better, when it comes to language generation? Like that scene in The Matrix Reloaded where the CGI was amazing for its time, but not quite convincing enough to carry the story.

But predictive generation isn't the only NLP game going at the moment, and BERT is another model that has garnered a lot of interest. In short, its relative success in language understanding has made it suitable for various related tasks.

One such task is text summarisation. I recently discovered the Bert Extractive Summarizer, which makes this incredibly easy to do (there's an online version you can try out - although it has some limitations). I decided to play with a selection of famous short stories, and the results are quite fun - a bit like micro stories in their own right.

Here are 5 examples. Some of the originally longer stories required a smaller ratio than the default (0.2).

The Garden Party, by Katherine Mansfield

They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. "That's right, miss," said the tallest of the men, a lanky, freckled fellow, and he shifted his tool-bag, knocked back his straw hat and smiled down at her. " Laura's upbringing made her wonder for a moment whether it was quite respectful of a workman to talk to her of bangs slap in the eye. She crouched down as if to warm herself at that blaze of lilies; she felt they were in her fingers, on her lips, growing in her breast. Laura caught hold of her sister's sleeve and dragged her through the kitchen to the other side of the green baize door. If some one had died there normally - and I can't understand how they keep alive in those poky little holes - we should still be having our party, shouldn't we?" "I don't understand," said Laura, and she walked quickly out of the room into her own bedroom. What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him?

The Mask of the Red Death, by Edgar Allan Poe

Ratio : 0.2

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. Blood was its Avatar and its seal--the redness and the horror of blood. The external world could take care of itself. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. There was a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each turn a novel effect. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. The seventh apartment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same material and hue. There was no light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass and so glaringly illumined the room. But when the echoes had fully ceased, a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at their own nervousness and folly, and made whispering vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes, (which embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of the Time that flies,) there came yet another chiming of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and tremulousness and meditation as before. It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be _sure_ that he was not. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. The whole company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit nor propriety existed. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay.

Ratio : 0.1

The "Red Death" had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The second chamber was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here the panes were purple. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. And the rumour of this new presence having spread itself whisperingly around, there arose at length from the whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of disapprobation and surprise--then, finally, of terror, of horror, and of disgust. There was a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet, upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the Prince Prospero. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.

The Darling, by Anton Chekhov

Olenka, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her back porch, lost in thought. They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity. In the evenings and at night she could hear the band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks, and it seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming the entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she had no desire to sleep, and when he returned home at day-break, she tapped softly at her bedroom window, and showing him only her face and one shoulder through the curtain, she gave him a friendly smile. "AWAITING IMMATE INSTRUCTIONS FUFUNERAL TUESDAY." "Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer sedately.  Little by little the town grew in all directions. "I have resigned my post, and have come to settle down and try my luck on my own account. Besides, it's time for my boy to go to school."

The Haunted House, by Virginia Woolf

Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. The windowpanes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

The Kiss, by Guy de Maupassant

My Little Darling: So you are crying from morning until night and from night until morning, because your husband leaves you; you do not know what to do and so you ask your old aunt for advice; you must consider her quite an expert. You say that you are all attention, love, kisses and caresses for him. Perhaps that is the very trouble; I think you kiss him too much. To tell the history of Love from the beginning of the world would be to tell the history of man himself: Everything springs from it, the arts, great events, customs, wars, the overthrow of empires. A preface which can always be read over again, whereas one cannot always read over the book. One caress alone gives this deep sensation of two beings welded into one --it is the kiss. Therefore, my dear, the kiss is our strongest weapon, but we must take care not to dull it. After describing the expectancy of a lover, waiting in a room one winter's evening, his anxiety, his nervous impatience, the terrible fear of not seeing her, he describes the arrival of the beloved woman, who at last enters hurriedly, out of breath, bringing with her part of the winter breeze, and he exclaims: Oh! The taste of the kisses first snatched through the veil. Therefore, the value of this caress being entirely a matter of convention, we must be careful not to abuse it. Well, my dear, I have several times noticed that you are very clumsy. You had been paying no attention to it, and it was almost out. Then when you freed him, you began to grumble: "How badly you kiss!"

On the whole the effect is interesting and often pleasing. The digests retain the language, which in the originals are unfailingly elegant, and often a discernable strain of their meaning too. A digest, prosaic as it may seem, is creative in its own way. Synthesis and understanding requires a path through the heart of a text. This tends to stand in opposition to novelty, but they can also form two parts of a larger storytelling process.

What if we combined them to come up with something new?

What Shakespeare has in Common with Software Development

Shakespeare is widely regarded as the world's leading playwright in English, and perhaps any language. Such is his influence that phrases and ideas coined by him at the turn of the 17th century still live on in our colloquial speech today. Romeo and Juliet is shorthand for passionate, ill-fated love, and quotable lines from his works permeate our treasure trove of idioms and phrases.

What is perhaps less well known is that many of Shakespeare's plays have no definitive version. Take "Hamlet", for instance. There is the famous First Folio version, compiled and published seven years after his death, and there is the First Quarto version, a.k.a. the Bad Quarto, and then also the Second Quarto version. None of these versions are considered 100% definitive. Edited versions usually combine parts of each to present the modern reader with the most feasible "Hamlet", and even these are subject to change.

How did this happen? So many details about that time have been lost to history that it is difficult for us to reconstruct a real sequence of events from the remaining evidence. There are entire books written to argue one case or another, but consider that some people even dispute William Shakespeare's authorship, then it is clear that we are on shaky ground from the get-go.

Personally, I've come to a different view while mulling over an under appreciated ingredient of Shakespeare's genius, an aspect that has something in common with software engineering - especially agile development.

Shakespeare wasn't just a writer, he was also an actor and part-owner of the theatre company the Lord Chamberlain's Men (later the King's Men). I find it useful to think of his plays as a function not only of Shakespeare's maturing talents as a writer, but also of the needs of the company. Those needs were financial, like any company's, and were directly informed by the success or failure of a particular play in the eyes of the audience of the day, as well as the tastes of their influential patrons.

It is thus hard to imagine that Shakespeare would just write a single, finished version of Hamlet, tell the actors their lines once-and-for-all and be done with it. As part-owner he had a responsiblity and exposure that went well beyond writing. He would have wanted to make sure the play is as good as it can be, on a continual basis. The company would receive financial feedback, and the company's patron would have his say, and so the day-to-day operations would hone the way the play was performed - if it was performed at all.

As an actor of second-tier roles he would also have been in a unique position to experience feedback from the audience. I imagine him night after night, observing the audience's reactions, hearing them laugh at the funny parts (or not), seeing them moved or engaged during tragic or passionate moments, and smiling or bored as the case may be during the play or afterwards. He would be thinking of the various stakeholders, of the dramatic value of a particular phrase or scene, of the audience's reactions, and so he might choose to change the lines - add a bit more zing, create more drama, more references to current affairs - who knows?

Shakespeare's mind would have been working constantly to improve the play and I have no doubt that this is precisely what happened. His plays have a uniquely organic feel to them, as if the action is happening right there, and the actors could step off the stage and mingle with the audience at any moment. By assimilating his audience's emotions and interests he was bringing art closer to the audiences' reality.

It is this approach of continual improvement, of being tested night after night against a real live audience, that strikes me as being very much in the spirit of agile development. It's a bit like running continuous integration while already in production.

I would go a step further and suggest that Shakespeare was so canny and pragmatic that, even if he had a successful version of a play, should the political climate change he would be willing to adapt the play again, to cater to his audience and so prolong the play's financial success. If this is so, he may well have found a dramatic architecture that admitted of continual adaptation, just like good software architecture is flexible, and written with ease of maintenance in mind. That would certainly go some way towards explaining his plays' capacity to be continually repurposed for modern audiences.

To put that achievement into perspective, imagine writing software that is still in demand 400 years later!

If we take this view it is a bit of a shame that not more of our worthy literary works are "production tested" with a feedback loop that permits continuous improvement. There was a time when serial publication afforded authors some engagement with their readers, and thus to inform the next installment. Nowadays, authors are required to write once, for all time. But in software development we know that this is usually premature, costly, and occasionally disastrous.

This is the reason that many writers form reading groups with other writers, to permit them a trusted soundboard and source of feedback. But the General Reader is a different beast, whose tastes are not to be tamed so easily. Shakespeare wrote "not for an age, but for all time", and perhaps it's because he wrote not once, but all the time. He understood the value of his users.

Adverbs Do Please King not Greatly

You gotta love Stephen King's advice to writers. It is second to none, and he's such a good storyteller and has written so much that I'll trust his advice over that of any theoretician like Harold Bloom (who criticised the National Book Foundation for giving the award to King), and famously failed to execute his own ideal model of the book. That's not to say sensitive theoreticians don't have good writing advice to give - witness John Gardner - it's just that the inside track has the uncanny ability to draw us closer to the source.

Brainpickings recently highlighted King's advice on adverbs. In short, don't use them. They are generally timid, with few opportunities for redemption.

"Adverbs … are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They’re the ones that usually end in -ly. Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to have been created with the timid writer in mind."

He goes on to provide convincing examples that demonstrate why they are so frequently redundant.

This got me thinking. The first line of William Blake's "The Tyger" goes "Tyger Tyger, burning bright", which ends in an adverb. And I can't really imagine that line without it. The adverb bright, even more so than the verb burning, is what sets the brain on fire.

"The Tyger" is a poem of course, and Stephen King writes novels. Long novels, most of the time. There is plenty of space to create context, to slither in the emotion and let the action grab its tail and shake it. A shortish poem, on the other hand, needs all the leverage it can get. Adjectives and adverbs - they're all context.

But that's not the full story. There is the poetic device of alliteration, and also the rhythm: "brightly" vs. "bright". Why did Blake use "bright" and not "brightly"? Well, for one, it wouldn't exactly rhyme with night, now would it? For another, as a convention masculine rhyme is simply the more common. Way more common. Yet it is also true that "bright" sets the tone of heightened action that reverberates throughout the poem. "Brightly", a feminine rhyme, just won't cut it.

This made me wonder whether King would agree that an adverb with a masculine rhythm has a more pronounced effect that could dispel timidity. On the other hand, if it's not needed, why bother at all?

Dana Gioia and the State of Poetry

While researching poetry on the internet last night it was my good fortune to come across a fascinating essay that was published 23 years ago. A lot of water has flown into the sea since then, but "Can Poetry Matter?", written by eminent man-of-letters Dana Gioia, has a lot to say that we can still learn from today.

He discusses the erosion of poetry's influence over the last century, in American poetry specifically, but broadly applicable. His key observation is that poetry has receded from public life to an insular poetry subculture. In particular, this subculture has been fed by the influx of creative writing programs in academic institutions. At that time this had a number of consequences.

To begin with, quantity of poetic output had become more important than quality. For a career to progress it must be seen to have produced. The importance of being published in journals and of being cited by others takes precedence over actual quality. Gioia notes that the  

"proliferation of literary journals and presses over the past thirty years has been a response less to an increased appetite for poetry among the public than to the desperate need of writing teachers for professional validation."

These are the demands of the job.

A second consequence was that the majority of readers of new poetry were either poets themselves or the students of poets (in their capacity as creative writing teachers). In short most readers were from academic institutions. It goes without saying that the imagination and response of a reader from an academic institution is very different from the imagination of a social worker, a banker, a lawyer, a member of parliament, a doctor, a homeless bohemian. Yet in olden times, many layers of society took note of poetry. It was a natural vehicle for thought.

A third consequence was that, if most of the readers had become other poets from academic institutions, the concomitant reality was that most poets were those very same readers and teachers from academic institutions. As Gioia observes

"The problem is not that poets teach. The campus is not a bad place for a poet to work. It's just a bad place for all poets to work." (my emphasis)

If The Waste Land is the most important and influential poem of the 20th century, it is perhaps also a marker of the coming academification of poetry. Its complex cultural references shows poetry turning inward to a vast territory of intertextuality, and it takes a certain level of erudition to absorb, let alone imitate or take further in its implications. Has culture become so complex that an academic approach is inevitable, or have poets lost the appetite - and the confidence - to address topical matters in society?

Gioia's essay leaves the reader with much food for thought. Although his focus is on the academic environment of which he was a part, it can equally apply to the online and printed journals in circulation today. It just so happens that the internet has widened the gyre of poets and readers - a good thing - but it often still feels fairly insular.

When Gioia says that "the poetry subculture no longer assumes that all published poems will be read", I am less surprised at the reality, than at the implication that it was ever different. Yet there was a time when newspapers published new poetry and, even more importantly, discussed and critiqued what was published. New poetry now rarely appears outside the abovementioned insular subcultural journals and magazines, and its appeal to a wider audience is almost non-existent: "over the past half century, as American poetry's specialist audience has steadily expanded, its general readership has declined."

There is no doubt that a lot of energy is still being spent in the act of writing poetry, as well as in the corresponding editing and curation of journals, the hosting of competitions, and the creation of chapbooks and zines, but unfortunately the overall quality is very uneven. The damaging outcome is that even those who are interested in discovering good new poetry don't believe anything truly great is getting written. Lots of average, a fair amount of good, occasionally great, but nothing truly great. They simply don't know where to find it.

"The divorce of poetry from the educated reader has had another, more pernicious result. Seeing so much mediocre verse not only published but praised, slogging through so many dull anthologies and small magazines, most readers--even sophisticated ones like Joseph Epstein--now assume that no significant new poetry is being written. This public skepticism represents the final isolation of verse as an art form in contemporary society."

The problem is not that there is a lack of talent. Not at all. It's that talented poets' influence and - even more importantly - their potential influence is so limited that it dents their confidence to "speak up" and try to "make a difference" via their poetry. Some of the more successful poets of recent decades - Gioia mentions Adrienne Rich (feminism) and Robert Bly (anti-war) - used political agendas to inform their work and raise their profile.

Poetry seems to suffer, to some extent, from the same problem as philosophy, namely that practitioners have  been driven into the confining demands of professional academic activity. In poetry, however, the situation is worse. The low barrier to entry and the myriad of online publishing channels ensure that the subculture at large is highly fractured and drenched with mediocre poetry. Individuals themselves have to become the primary arbiters of taste, which is no bad thing in itself, but there are increasingly few benchmarks other than the acknowledged masterpieces of the past.

Then there is the disconnect between writers and the publications themselves. Do poets actually read the publications where their poem is going to get published? I confess that on many, many occasions have I taken the time to read through a competition or publication's submissions criteria, only to balk and abort at the proposed turnaround time for feedback (2 months, 4 months, etc.) and huge submission fees (anything from $5 to $50). I struggle to imagine how a bohemian poet could afford to submit and wait that long, but I digress. If, on occasion, my confidence is high enough not to stop here, it almost always drops at the final hurdle: "please look through our current issue to familiarise yourself with the kind of work we are looking for".

Bang! It's all backwards. Is there a struggling author who would spend $25 to read the most recent issue of a publication he or she wants to submit to, but would not read otherwise? What are the chances, therefore, of attracting an authentic poet from the fringes of society?

It is difficult to blame the competition hosts or magazine editors. These demands are necessary to limit time-wasting and cover overheads and perhaps provide a minor compensation. Poetry circulation has dwindled and fractured, and so has its remaining readership. If it is so hard for me to even get to know the publication in question, what are the chances that a general reader - who I hope will be the reader of my poem - will ever read my poem? The answer, I believe, hovers just above zero.

Yet there is no clear alternative for exposure and prestige. This goes back to poetry's loss of the general reader, those people  "who support the arts--who buy classical and jazz records; who attend foreign films and serious theater, opera, symphony, and dance; who read quality fiction and biographies; who listen to public radio and subscribe to the best journals."

In my role as editor and founder of Poetry WTF?!, I've had the privilege of corresponding with a variety of poets, many of whom do not fit Gioia's description of the academic poet. But Poetry WTF?! does not publish typical poetry, and therefore does not attract the typical poet. That is by design. There are other publications in the field, too, like Found Poetry Review who appeal to more adventurous poets who are less tied to tradition.

On the other hand, my experience so far is still that the readership is mainly other poets and a few observers of the avant-garde rather than the informed general reader Gioia wants to attract.

Poetry needs to continue to reinvent itself to reach that wider audience, and to put the fun and excitement back into creation as well as reading. The internet has made it possible to share and enjoy poetry on a scale that would make Alexander Pope's eyes pop. We can't return to the past, but we can reclaim our future.

There is certainly more cause for optimism now than back in 1991. Austin Kleon's blackout poetry is a versatile technique with the time boxed appeal of a crossword puzzle: try a new one every day. It now has a large following on the internet. Purists may object that blackout poetry's barrier to entry is too low and that it is limited to fairly short pieces of work, but it has certainly broadened the appeal while staying true to the spirit of poetry.

A more intellectual approach is exemplified by Christian Bök's Oulipo-inspired Eunoia, which sold well in many countries, and listed in The Times top 10 in 2002. Constraints poetry in general seems to be coming into its own in the internet era.

Attempts to frame search engine results, popular comments, and tweets into poetic structures, for instance Darren Wershler and Bill Kennedy's Apostrophe Engine and Andrei Gheorge's The Longest Poem in the World are more conceptual but do make for amusing reading. Purists could object that theirs is no longer a craft of the text, but of the rules and processes that create the text. But a counter-argument runs that the poet's toolbox needs expanding, and that there is every reason to leverage the insights that data processing science affords the craftsperson.

Between these poles a website like The Poetry Foundation strikes a balance between wide coverage , intellectual stimulation and popular poetry. It publishes the works of past masters as well as contemporary pieces on topics and issues that we recognise. It provides discussion and translations into English from a variety of languages, recognising the universal language of poetry across borders. The translation of a poem by Liu Xia and corresponding background notes is typical. With nearly  a hundred thousand Twitter followers it appeals to the general reader that Gioia envisaged. 

In conclusion, Dana Gioia suggests six ways in which the influence of poetry can be expanded, and I want to mention two. The first is,

"When poets give public readings, they should spend part of every program reciting other people's work--preferably poems they admire by writers they do not know personally. Readings should be celebrations of poetry in general, not merely of the featured author's work."

We need to be reminded of the highest exemplars, even on a night of new poetry. There is no doubt that self-promotion is necessary, but we all stand on the shoulders of giants. A bit of humility and homage is in order. If the poet's work is good, it will hopefully compare not unfavourably with the work of other poets whom he or she admires. Either way, there will be more for the audience to enjoy, and they'll be more likely to come again.

The second take-away is that "poets who compile anthologies--or even reading lists--should be scrupulously honest in including only poems they genuinely admire. Anthologies are poetry's gateway to the general culture. They should not be used as pork barrels for the creative-writing trade."

I would like to extend this appeal to the editors of zines, online journals and websites. There is nothing more disheartening than discovering a new website of poetry, only to find that it lacks any standards. Another symptom, even more corrosive, is the conscious decision to praise or include poetry because of personal or professional ties rather than merit: whether it be that of a colleague, a friend or someone who could procure a favour. The temptation is totally understandable, but it should be remembered that in government or business such behaviour would be labelled favouritism, or worse, cronyism or corruption. Readers lose faith and poetry as a whole suffers.

Conversely, there can never be enough closely knit groups to help new types of poetry to gain a foothold and flourish. Every artistic industry relies on talented communities and friends who set trends where others follow. They attract, focus, and direct energy. Even the great romantics, individualists par excellence, are famed for the sets in which they moved: Wordsworth and Coleridge, the Shelleys and Byron, Goethe and Schiller.

In the final instance it is worth remembering that, as with wine, the best exemplars take time. When we try to turn poetry writing into a profession or a conveyer belt for consumption, we deprive it of the conditions it needs to be truly great. Gioia observes how "Wallace Stevens was forty-three when his first book appeared. Robert Frost was thirty-nine. Today these sluggards would be unemployable." To imagine a careful craftsman like Leonard Cohen working in a modern office environment is to imagine a tragedy.

I always liked it slow:
I never liked it fast
With you it's got to go:
With me it's got to last

- Slow, by Leonard Cohen
& Patrick Leonard

I'm always interested in hearing about people's ideas for the future of literature and poetry. So please ping me on @thundercomb or leave a comment. I look forward to hearing from you.

What is Mutated Poetry?

Poetry exists because of, and not in spite of, its cultural contexts. But those contexts are fragile. What happens when they change?

Mutated Poetry is an attempt to find out by transforming poetry in an imaginative context. It is neither science fiction, nor science fact, but a speculative linguistic reality. Just as biological mutation has no inherent purpose - not even survival - so a mutated poem may only incidentally have aesthetic value. But if it has, it may survive.

In the context of plays, West Side Story is a mutation of Romeo and Juliet. We can trace its lineage because it retains the central myth of Shakespeare's original.

But what happens when even that myth is removed? Is the DNA of the original destroyed?

Can Shakespeare's Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day survive without the subject of his affection - or are their destinies bound together, like star crossed lovers?

These and other not so serious questions are being asked, and occasionally answered, at Poetry WTF?! So if you think you know such stuff as dreams are made of, why not grow a little culture in the petri dish?

Shakespeare Sonnet 18 Google Translated

Following a roundtrip Google Translation of the Fresh Prince, I decided to give a certain famous Shakespeare sonnet the same treatment. The results, I am happy to say, sound almost nothing like the original.

The following is "Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day" translated from English into Finnish, Yoruba, Arabic, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, Latin, Greek, Korean, and then back to English.

Compare Rates Summer
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
May the wind to shake the bud of love
And the temperature is less than the first one.
Heat in the southern sky;
Pale skin, golden,
And the fair and equitable
Perhaps the essence of the song changes
Eternal Summer, do not fade,
Announced on ow'st O
Are you proud of your field is killed by Wand'rest
The edge of the immortal five Xiangrong. 
One person can breathe or eyes can see, as though 
Maybe you offer.

"Mississippi by Mark Twain" as Situationist Dérive

The sculpture poem "Mississippi by Mark Twain" by Mark Staniforth explores new territory in what is still a fledgling genre.  Whereas it recalls Lewis Carroll's "The Mouse's Tale" and Apollinaire's "Calligrammes" in its literal composition, its heart lies with the Situationists and their notions of drift (dérive) and rerouting (détournement).

The original text is still detectable as an eroded background. It tells of the narrator and his friends' boyhood ambitions while living in a village on the West bank of the Mississippi river. Their enduring ambition was to grow up to become steamboatmen:

"When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was, to be a steamboatman."

In Staniforth's version, the original narrator and his boyhood ambitions are not mentioned. Instead, primacy is given to the circus clowns and their hopes. Yet in the original, they are but an aside:

"We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that came to our section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition to be a steamboatman always remained." (my italics)

What we are given in Staniforth's version therefore is a hidden possibility of the text, a kind of alternative reality. We may think of it as a dérive through the text, tracing a branch of its psychogeography.

This drift also hints that things do not necessarily proceed in the same order as before: "of" follows "wavelets" as the Mississippi meanders backwards before slinking forward once more, whereas in the original it is the other way around.

"Mississippi by Mark Twain" demonstrates the versatility of existing text as raw material, and the unique potential of poetry to engage with the many mysteries of meaning.

What is Poetry WTF?!

Poetry WTF?! is a website dedicated to the kind of poetry I've been discussing recently here at The Combed Thunderclap. It views existing texts as material to be used for new literary works.

Take Remixed Poetry for instance. Existing poems are remixed with the language of other cultural artefacts, whether they be poems, famous speeches, adverts, or indeed anything apprehendable through text.

Then there is Sculpture Poetry. These poems' essence is distilled through a process of subtraction from the originals. However the process does not need to stop there. Subtraction could mean altering the original beyond recognition, as it becomes a different text with a different meaning altogether. The sculpture emerges by chipping away.

Poetry WTF?! moves away from traditional poetry by viewing language and cultural artefacts as raw material, and the novelty of expression is realised  through the different methods applied.

 

Kenneth Goldsmith and Uncreative Writing part 2

This is a follow-up post to my first encounter with Kenneth Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing.  In the present post I would like to highlight, as much for my own benefit as others', some of the influences from whom he suggests we, as new writers of the digital age, can learn.

To recap, Goldsmith advocates the use of text as material, rather than as expression. He rephrases Douglas Hueber, saying "The world is full of texts, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more". 

Writing, Goldsmith believes, is at the juncture that painting was when photography arrived. As a result

"writing's response [to the internet] - taking its cues more from photography than painting - could be mimetic and replicative, primarily involving methods of distribution, while proposing new platforms of receivership and readership. Words very well might not only be written to be read but rather to be shared, moved, and manipulated, sometimes by humans, more often by machines".  (p. 15)

The internet is a vast archive that's ripe for literary exploitation, to be used as material.

What he leaves unstated, perhaps because it is out of scope for his thesis, is that text will increasingly be processed by computers for commercial and business purposes.  Big Data methods will look at the same text the new writer looks at when he or she searches for raw material, but instead use it to learn about the online habits of users in order to monetise their interests and desires. The textual territory is therefore no virgin wilderness, but a problematised space in the service of commercial and other influential interests. The flipside is that the writer-artist is no more privileged than any other user to distinguish between "authentic" text and text inserted specifically to serve commercial and business interests. This includes marketing material camouflaged to look like casual commentary, and other tricks of the trade.

However, this does not invalidate Goldsmith's suggestion. If anything, it suggests we may have to look even deeper into the workings of the medium to see beyond the inevitable onslaught of digital politics, commerce and ideology. This would be a continuation or parallel development to the situationists' critique of capitalism and consumption. Understanding the medium (the technical side of information and technology) and its stakeholders (commerce, politics, consumers) will become of paramount importance to the new writer. That, however, would have to be explored in greater detail, and may eventually form the topic of a future post.
 
Without further ado, let us look at the influences Goldsmith recommends. My approach has been to leave out unnecessary explanation, and where possible to link to an authoritative resource. Headings are those in the book.


Introduction
  

• Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
• Oulipo: eg. Raymond Queneau's Hundred Thousand Billion Poems
• Jonathan Lethem: The Ecstacy of Influence: A Plagiarism
• Nam June Paik: Magnet TV
• Marcel Duchamp
• William S. Burroughs: cut-ups and fold-ins
• Bob Cobbing: distressed mimeographed poems
• Andy Warhol

Chapter 1: Revenge of the Text

• Charles Bernstein: Lift Off, "chooses to emphasize the workings of a machine rather than the sentiments of a human"
• "A long line of modernist poetry that sought to forgeround the materiality of language", eg.
• Stephane Mallarme: Un coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard
• Ezra Pound: Cantos
• James Joyce: Finnegan's Wake, "a six-hundred-page book of compound words and neologisms, all of which look to the uninitiated like reams of nonsensical code".
• Neil Mills: Seven Number Poems
• Shigeru Matsui: Pure Poems

Chapter 2: Language as Material

• Materiality as primary goals: concrete poetry and situationists

Situationists, 1950s:

• derive: (means drift) move through urban spaces without intention (Guy Debord)
• detournement: recontextualisation, Rene Vienet, Asger Jorn, Malcolm MacLaren and the Sex Pistols, dinosaur egg, Sara Charlesworth 1978, Matt Siber removed text from photos, Language Removal Services
• psychogeography: mapping psychic and emotional contours of a city

Concrete poetry:

• Mary Ellen Solt: Forsythia
• bpNichol: Eyes
• George Herbert: Easter Wings
• Stephan Mallarme: un coup de des
• Guillaume Apollinaire: Calligrammes
• E.E. Cummings: stacks of atomised words
• Ezra Pound: Chinese ideograms
• James Joyce: compound neologisms
• Noigandres 
• Decio Pignitari: Beba Coca Cola 
• Max Bense "the concrete poet seeks to relieve the poem of its centuries-old burden of ideas, symbolic reference, allusion, and repetitious emotional content"

Chapter 3: Anticipating Instability

• Peter Hutchinson: Dissolving Clouds
• Wittgenstein: duck-rabbit
• Lawrence Weiner: Statements
• Pornolizer
• Henri Chopin: Rouge
• Sonic Youth: Goodbye 20th Century
• Fluxus

Chapter 4: Towards a Poetics of Hyperrealism

• Ara Shirinyan: Your Country is Great
• Claude Closky: Mon Catalog
• Inversion of Roland Barthes' project in S/Z
• Alexander Nemerov: First my Motorola
• Tony Hoagland's At the Galleria Shopping Mall vs. Robert Fitterman's Directory
• Gertrude Stein: Tender Buttons
• Vanessa Place: Statement of Facts
• Charles Reznikoff: Testimony: The United States (1885-1915) Recitative

 
Chapter 5 : Why appropriation?

• Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project
• Borges: Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote
• Picasso: Still Life with Chair Caning
• Duchamp: Fountain
• Ezra Pound: The Cantos
• John Cage: Rolywholyover
• Elaine Sturtevant: Louise Lawler, Mike Bidlo, Richard Pettibon
• Ron Silliman offended by Issue I

Chapter 6: Infallible Processes

• Sol LeWitt: Paragraphs on Conceptual Art & Sentences on Conceptual Art
• Yoko Ono: Instructions for Paintings
• Ian Hamilton Finlay
• Andy Warhol: a: a novel, Diaries
• Roland Barthes: Death of the Author
• Andy Warhol: Popism

Chapter 7: Retyping On the Road

• Simon Morris: Getting Inside Jack Kerouac's head

 
Chapter 8: Parsing the New Illegibility

• Enormous amount of text, eg. internet
• Gertrude Stein: The Making of Americans (impossibly scoped)
• My Secret Life: Victorian Novel
• Douglas Huebler: Variable Piece #70
• Joe Gould: An Oral History of Our Time
• Craig Dworkin: Parse
• Louis Zukofsky: A
• Derek Beaulieu: Flatland
• Christian Bok: Xenotext Experiment, Eunoia

 
Chapter 9: Seeding the Data Cloud

• Felix Feneon: Novels in Three Lines
• Samuel Beckett: Worstword Ho
• David Markson: Reader's Block
• John Barton Wolgamot: In Sara Mencken
• Darren Wershler and Bill Kennedy: Status Update, The Apostrophe Engine
• Rudy Rucker: Lifebox
• The Flarf Collective

Chapter 10: The Inventory and the Ambient

• Boswell: Life of Johnson
• Erik Satie: Furniture Music
• John Cage: Vexations
• Brian Eno: ambient music
• Tan Lin: Ambient Fiction Reading
• Thomas Claburn: I feel better after I type to you
• Georges Perec: Attempt at an Inventory

Chapter 11: Uncreative Writing in the Classroom

• The Hitler Downfall Meme
• Retype 5 pages
• Transcribe a Short Piece of Audio
• Transcribing Project Runway: transcribe TV show in chatroom with other classmates
• Retro graffiti: take old political slogans and graffiti non-permanently in public space
• Screenplays: take a film or video that has no screenplay and make one for it

Chapter 12 Provisional Language

• Words are cheap, language is the new frontier

Afterword

• Bill Chamberlain and Thomas Etter: The policeman's beard is half-constructed, RACTER
• Christian Bok: The Piecemeal Bard is Deconstructed
• Susan Blackmore: the third replicator

Shall I Compare Memes to a Summer's Day by William Bobby Shakespeare

Shall I compare memes to a summer's day?
Thou love to party and got tiger blood:
Rough winds do shake the rainbow, all the way,
And summer's double rainbow. Oh my God.
Sometime too hot the numa numa shines,
And often that's racist complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair over 9000,
By chance or nature's changing oh my dayum!
But thy eternal turtles shall not fade
Nor lose your base that are belong to us;
Nor Boxxy brag thou trawll'st in his shade,
When epic winning trololo to time thou growest:
So long as Charlie bit me eyes can see,
So long lives this and this now back at me.

Promising the Waste Land

My previous post outlined how poetry can reclaim an influential place in the internet era. To illustrate a way of actioning the idea, I have created this new genre's * first ever poem.

First, a bit of background. Two years ago I walked down the neighbourhood high street with my companion. An old shop space, recently boarded up, sported bright big letters on the outside that said: "Exciting new gallery space! Coming soon". My companion was surprisingly enthused by it, whereas I couldn't muster any excitement at all. The area is full of artists and studios, and such a blatant commercial statement seemed a little heavy-handed. Sure enough, a year later the banners, now a little worse for wear, were still there. As yet there was no sign of the "exciting new gallery space".

Naturally, I was amused.

It was a reminder that commerce, and consumerism in particular, often interacts with human desire through a hall of mirrors to project value where none may be. It is also an indication that commerce relies on, and may succeed, through its ability to occupy space - even when the space itself is vacant or infertile. Its ability to occupy space lends credibility to its promise.

The poem I created takes inspiration from this idea. It is called "Promising the Waste Land". As explained, it lets the domain speak its name, and is therefore located at www.promisingthewasteland.com.

By promising The Waste Land, arguably the single most influential poem of the 20th century, it is promising the extraordinary and improbable. Yet by offering a waste land, namely an empty site, it delivers on its promise.

But there is a second, more meaningful sense in which it promises The Waste Land. By claiming a space it mirrors the emerging commercial and political interests of the internet. In other words, it is a signal of intent. It suggests no less than an ambition to refresh poetry for the internet era.

Go forth and conquer!

* We may call this new genre web poetry in the true sense of the word, because it uses (at least in part) the fabric of the internet to manifest itself.

Towards a Manifesto for Poetry in the Internet Era

Poetry, not to mention writing in general, is ripe for a shake-up. The internet is a territory. The territory is vast. Poetry, impotent, is little more than data in this ever expanding structure. Impotent, it can not affect the structure.

Or can it?

I would like to propose a different approach to poetry, to writing: poetry as action. Poetry as structure. To do so, we may need to let go of traditional ideas of literature and poetry, before we can rediscover it for the internet era.

Forget Twitter, Facebook, Youtube. Contrary to what you may have heard, they are not the new voice of poetry. They are content. Text. Images. Mere data. Poetry was never just content. It is not the spirit of poetry. Once it became content, it became passive, an invalid.

If the territory is the internet, how can poetry reclaim its space?

I propose, to start with, a little experiment. Publish your poem as a domain. Don't let it disappear as content on a page on a website somewhere. Give it an identity. Do you remember the milliondollarhomepage.com sensation? If it hadn't its own domain, would you have remembered it? Enough said.

Make the domain the title of the poem. Did you ever think of the possibilities? Poetry enters the internet by name, no longer as footnote. The title of the poem on the page becomes unnecessary. The poem itself can shine. Let me repeat: The name of the website is the name of the poem. Simple as.

A signature isn't needed. Not everyone is interested in the poet anyway. In an era where, following Barthes, the author is redundant, incognito is just as appropriate. A whois lookup may reveal a subtler gesture. Or nothing.

Liberated, the poem is allowed to shine.

Kenneth Goldsmith and Uncreative Writing

Kenneth Goldsmith teaches Uncreative Writing at the University of Pennsylvania, and it sounds like heaps of fun. Traditional writing courses seem awfully traditional compared to Goldsmith's methods. For instance, he instructs students to take old slogans and write them as graffiti in public spaces; or at other times to take a film and transcribe it onto the page as a screenplay. The results are often unexpected. In the latter case, one student transcribed a porn film, altering the reader's  engagement with the source material and highlighting the mediating qualities of language and imagination.

Kenneth Goldsmith's 2011 book "Uncreative Writing" opens up this brave new literary orientation and traces its roots to the situationists of the 50s, the Dadaists, and various cultural movements of the 20th century and late 19th century. Central to his thesis is the observation that, where the arts are concerned, the literary arts are behind .... waaaay behind; behind the visual arts, which has practiced decontextualisation even before Marcel Duchamp's seminal toilet fountain; behind the musical arts, which embraces sampling (hip-hop), remixing (dance and pop) and chance collaborations with the environment (John Cage); and, frankly, behind the only medium that is truly evolving: the internet and the digital. Let's repeat that: writing, and literature in particular, is decades behind every other art form. Decades. Kenneth Goldsmith quotes Time magazine on heiress Ruth Lilly's philanthropic gift of $200 million to the Poetry Foundation:

"nothing, not even money, can get people to enjoy something against their will. What poetry really needs is a writer who can do for it what Andy Warhol did for avant-garde visual art: make it sexy and cool and accessible without making it stupid or patronizing. When that writer arrives, cultural change will come swiftly, and relatively effortlessly." (p. 93)

Note that it is not poetry's lack of "coolness" that is lamented, but rather its lack of change. Poetry, like "Literature" in general, simply hasn't kept up with the times. As he notes elsewhere:

"I'm sensing that literature - infinite in its potential of ranges and expressions - is in a rut, tending to hit the same note again and again, confining itself to the narrowest of spectrums, resulting in a practice that has fallen out of step and unable to take part in arguably the most vital and exciting discourses of our time. I find this to be a profoundly sad moment - and a great lost opportunity for literary creativity to revitalize itself in ways it hasn't imagined." (p. 7)

One only has to look at the novels gracing the bestseller lists or even the major prizegiving short lists (the Booker, the Pullitzer). Whereas no one doubts that many of these books are well written, by and large they still employ writing techniques that date from the era when the novel was born.

But is that so bad? we might ask. Perhaps it is not that bad, and perhaps it really is a perfectly appropriate approach for us as humans. After all, who does not still look with wonder and appreciation at the expressiveness and beauty of a Turner, Titian, or Constable, and conversely feel a bit faint when looking at a Maurizio Bolognini? In case that sounded like a rhetorical question, the answer is perhaps: those with a primarily postmodern sensibility.

Lest we forget, it was photography that produced the radical shift in the visual arts. Until the internet, literature was not perturbed in any comparable way. Their was no medium or method of textual communication that radically challenged the hegemony of print and linear reading. As Goldsmith notes,

"While traditional notions of writing are primarily focused on 'originality' and 'creativity', the digital environment fosters new skill sets that include 'manipulation' and 'management' of the heaps of already existent and ever-increasing language." (p. 15)

So what would this new type of writer do? In a sense, postmodernism and even post-postmodernism is already passe. The notion that meaning is somehow attached to words, and then that meaning is or has become unstable, and that shifting signs are disrupting our understanding all the time; are notions that rely on words' primary attachment to humans. But there is already more text than we can ever hope to read, and texts that no one ever will read, including many texts, not written by humans, that have "died" without a single human reader.

What of them? What do they "mean"? The construction of texts by machines are occuring at an ever-increasing pace. We can safely assume that theirswill exceed human production sooner rather than later. And let's not be arrogant and think that "human literary works will always be better". Because that is foolish. There are no guarantees, and given the pace of technological trends, it is safer to assume the opposite, uncomfortable as the thought may be.

So what is left for the "writer" in this new landscape? In some respects the role of the writer itself is in question. Goldsmith points out that the way creative writing is taught generally relies on outdated notions of creativity and originality. The old concept of genius, generally considered a hangover from romanticism, is that of a solitary individual expressing their thoughts and emotions in imaginative, startling ways. An uncreative writer, on the other hand, uses the existing surplus of language as material to manipulate and rearrange, rather than as a vehicle for expression.

Rather than attempting to "be original" by "expressing themselves" and inadvertently adding to the cacophony of voices, the uncreative writer "constantly cruises the Web for new language" and comes to resemble "more a programmer than a tortured genius, brilliantly conceptualising, constructing, executing and maintaining a writing machine" (p. 1-2)

Indeed, this is the single most important distinction that Kenneth Goldsmith draws between the traditional writer and the new avant-garde: the difference in how they view language: language as a vehicle for expression, vs. language as raw material.

This topic is rich with material, and in a follow-up post I will look at some of the forerunners of uncreative writing, as well as contemporary examples of the emerging genre.

And then Blake Butler

Blake Butler has a good name. Two B's for alliteration and, folded-in, 2 L's. Two short words poetic, and sayable as hell.

To read Scorch Atlas is to have your brain rattled. Words come and go and mean what meaning's made. Not what you thought. The whole reads like a poem. There is a rhythm. Something distinct, and an inner melody. Words become stoppers, turn inside out, hand on a drum face to stop the beat. Turn up the heat.

There is repetition. Oh, there is repetition. A fanning, like kaleidoscopes or a butterfly of evil. In the background there is Poe. His heart beats through the bloated corpses, and his old eye stares. The bats have left the belltower, and the tower has crumpled to the floor, into its own core.

***

To read Scorch Atlas and but criticise its constant battering, its doom, its smell of putrefaction and decay is to have choked on it, to have retired senseless. But not all sense at all was lost. In this split this-ness after what appalled, a critique must take a crick into account; a crooked language, now deranged. The disruption and suture of mental viscera.

The words have been inverted, lost forgotten, sense unmembered, misremembered, in dismemberment unrendered. This is the gift of BB's scorching, a cleansing of the palate and a lethal torching. The where of unfound poetry, their seams like shark jaw scars, the rhythm of humanity, at the sun edge of extremity, knit back with bloody char.

Eternal Recurrence : The Case of Influential Writers

To me, influential writers are those I return to again and again. Interestingly, there appear to be two types: those that I return to only in my mind, and those I venture additionally to reread from time to time. These latter ones are those who give me so much pleasure that rereading them only serves to enhance the effect, like listening to a favourite song.

No doubt the particular writers who qualify in my case is largely a personal matter, even though some or indeed many are likely to coincide with the choices of other readers. Nevertheless, what I find interesting is that such a distinction exists. So we can say that there are three categories under discussion: the two above, and then that category of writers whom I have read but who simply did not stick in my mind, for whatever reason, even though I may have enjoyed them at the time. They may even be "important" writers by other people's standards, but somehow they've slipped through my net.

Brief reflection suggests that the category of writers whom I would read again are the best predictors of my overall taste, and influences on my thinking. In other words, there is a compulsive aspect both in action and thought. The list, in my case, is not overly long. The important thing is that a rereading should enhance my pleasure, rather than dull the effect of the work. A good example is Poe, if only I can reflect on and compare most of his output. Stories such as The Masque of the Red Death and The Fall of the House of Usher give repeated pleasure. I know the plots inside out, there are no surprises, certain passages seem known to me even before I read them. But the overall evocation leaves my thrilled. They are favourites. With Poe, I feel I am being treated to archetypal good writing. No single piece really disappoints, because all derive from the same wellspring. Such is my experience, and I don't speak for anyone else.

This being the case, the mood of his stories, the baroque descriptions heavily laden with adjectives and adverbs, the underlying melancholy, the mysterious reality of the stories that appear complete and yet are always suggestive; these are readily available to my mind. Moreover they come in so many forms that there is a whole vocabulary for my soul to work with. And so it influences my thought. Another example is Nietzsche. No work of Nietzsche's is without surprise and delight, insight and inspiration. He is never less than exciting, and I only need to reread him to access that same space in my mind. As if this is not enough, he influences so many other modes of thought too - from scientific method through to philosophy and cinema, psychology and religion. I return to him again and again, and as a traveler drinks from an oasis I feel refreshed.

In slight contrast, the first group includes a writer like George Eliot whose Middlemarch I am unlikely to read again, perhaps on account of its length and that I know the story, but whose description of a social world has left an indelible impression on me. If not for my English degree, would I ever have read it? I can't say for sure, but I am glad I did. The destinies of Dorothea Brooke, Casaubon, Lydgate, Ladislaw, Rosamund (interesting how the women invite to be remembered by their first names, whereas the men's last names seem to suffice ...) are compelling and speak far beyond their era.

Henry James' Portrait of a Lady is perhaps a similar case. I might read it again one day, for the intrigues of Madame Merle and Gilbert Osmond, Isabel Archer et al make vast and important cultural statements that seem almost as true today as it must have been a hundred years ago. There is a lineage, and I feel an affection for George Eliot, for Henry James. I feel an admiration for their piercing abilities and vast comprehension, and extraordinary capacity to bring it all alive on the page.

Finally, the third category belongs to writers who did not impress even though they came highly recommended. If to impress means also to leave a lasting influence, then they failed. Their influence may be palpable to others, but are less so to me. Colum McCann was such a case. The eulogies flowed for "Let the Great World Spin", but, with the exception of the rich wife who'd lost her son, I saw mainly cardboard characters who left me unsatisfied and perplexed at what the fuss was about. Works like these, to my critical mind, provide examples of the type of mistakes not to make in my own writing. For instance misplaced earnestness, such as confusing the stereotype of "the prostitute with a heart of gold" with a real character, and thereby perpetuating the stereotype. What they don't do is make me want to return to that work. The compulsion, other than the critical one, is lacking.

As a creative person these influential writers are important to me. After I've read a Poe story, I suddenly sound a little more like Poe when writing. After reading Bret Easton Ellis, I suddenly sound a little more like Ellis. Their influence is palpable, they form accessible threads in my mind. It is with this in mind that the obvious perhaps needs to be said and said again: the most influential writers are those I go back to for repeat visits. They are part of my eternal recurrence.

It is this mental compulsion, more than anything else, that signals the magnitude of their influence. They each have a distinct style, mood, perspective that is so definitive that - like memes - they tend to be self-replicating through the filter of another writer or commentator. Some writers never outgrow their influences, and so do not always become more than second-rate, but at the other end of the spectrum, those who forge their own archetypal style are few and far between.

The process I am talking about on a personal level, happens also at a societal level. The most influential writers in society tend to be those who have produced classics. Of course, not all the classics are to my personal taste, nor are all the classics as accessible as they used to be (Charles Dickens used to be very popular, but is now more famous than read, perhaps on account of the length of his novels). Nevertheless, at one stage each had an important influence, and so secured his or her place in the chain. 

But it is more than a matter of consumption. Repetition of such a pleasure enhances creativity. As John Gardner reminds us, we have to read the highest exemplars to understand what literature is capable of. We also need, in some way, to be able to immitate our favourite great authors in order to master their style before eventually moving beyond them. Like a dancer who must learn the basic dance steps before adding the necessary flair on her way to becoming a great dancer.

To a writer, this mastery does not start with the act of writing. It starts with reading. And our reading is most exemplified by reading those who influence us most. They provide us with a mental compulsion that must eventually be given form, shape and an outlet on the page. They have the power to take us further, as a wave moves a bottle out to sea and to a far shore.

Translation: Voordag by N.P van Wyk Louw

N.P. van Wyk Louw is one of the towering giants of Afrikaans literature. The stark beauty of so many of his poems remain unsurpassed even to this day.

Below is a modest attempt of mine to convey the beauty in one of van Wyk Louw's shorter poems, taken from the collection Die Halwe Kring ("The Half-Circle"). The Afrikaans version is first, and my English translation thereafter. 

Voordag

O silwre vreugde, kom,
uit hierdie silwer dag:
my hart is oop en dorstig
hier waar ek gaan en wag
- 'n skadu en 'n roering
in ligter skaduwees -
in huiwering en verlange,
swaar vir jou koms bevrees,
maar maatloos in begeerte
na jou en na jou mag,
en bang en altyd banger,
vir iedere dorre dag.

Dawn

O silvery joy, o come,
out of this silver day:
my open heart is thirsting
here where I go to wait
- a shadow and a stirring
within the lighter shades -
in doubtfulness and yearning,
fearing your appearance,
yet boundless in desire
for you and for your power,
more and always more afraid
of every arid day.

Copyright (c) Maartens Lourens, 2014

'You Take This Path' published in Streetcake Magazine

Note: This post originally appeared on my discontinued website maartensity.com. The published date and time has been adjusted to match the original.

When I came across Streetcake Magazine a few months ago, I was pleased to see a small, independent magazine that publishes experimental fiction. The magazine's banner reads "The magazine for innovative, visual and experimental writing". The writing tends to be poetry, short prose pieces, or extracts from longer works.

The magazine is run by Nikki Dudley and Trini Decombe, who is from Chile (the latest issue is dedicated to Chile following the devastation caused by the earthquake). The magazine often features their original work (I particularly liked What do I wanna paint? by Decombe in issue 9), and my impression is of passionate writers who run the magazine out of much more than editorial interest.

They were kind enough to publish my visual poem You take this path, which you can view in Issue 9.

you take
this path that you
have taken
every day you take
you take to the sea

i have become
the image that you
want this image
is
the
   image
that you see
but today
i am alone
today, this day
        i de
 li    be   rate
ly
  stray
to     di ss olve
  and
 sos olve my
 fro
   orf
        sos love
      l i k e  a
clam         S.O.S
        so-so
  l i k e
do
 re
   me
    mem
  ory
omm
 ommmm
  ommmmm re
    r e turned
     the
          same p a t h
to find you
    but you had r e
    mained

behind

Story: The Half-life of a Ripple across Time

Notes: 

The post originally appeared on my discontinued website maartensity.com. The published date and time has been adjusted to approximate the original.

The story itself appeared in the April 2007 issue of Secret Attic, which appears to have been discontinued or may have turned into Secret Attic Press (the archives don't go back that far though, so it may be entirely different)

The story of the man (and his epoch) I am about to relate is still under investigation. Wisdom has taught us that the nature of historical conclusions must be under constant revision, and I can only hope to provide glimmers of what has hitherto been uncovered – factually, and experientially as his story has evoked its own path for me.

We know that he was called Newt by his friends, and his world knew him as Charles Newton. He was inescapably British – from his name down to his impeccable English lineage. At the time of his death he was also the last of his line, but in the tumult that followed that hardly matters. Only that he may have helped sparked that tumult.

It is perhaps not so surprising then that he was a man of varied connections, with countless loyal friends across the globe (of whom many were reportedly also his lovers, both of the male and female variety). A noted cook, scientist, teacher, writer, and – above all – local politician. We may surmise that his sexual prowess and diverse tastes made him a poor choice for political activity at a higher level, but at least we know that his talent for the accumulation of power was noted in the archives of prominent info-gluts as far away as Russia and South East Asia.

On an unspecified date no more than 2 years before the human disaster, plans that he must have been hatching for some time were brought into motion through actions facilitated by the influence of his office. Digital traces lodged in a diversity of synthetic materials show that he had gained access to the information archives (as well as their failover duplicates and reserve duplicates) of several prominent libraries and the communication backbones linking numerous countries.

We may try to picture him, a human not quite midway between his birth and his natural death, a being to whom success had mostly come naturally, sometimes with pleasurable side effects; entertaining his friends, satisfying his lovers, all the while contemplating the destruction of untold volumes of information, a galaxy of data. There is no record of his reflections about the fate of millions of digital dependents, their bodies too weak to survive without their mammalian neuron feeds. But he must surely have given some thoughts to his own fate, and it may have seemed like no less than a giant power orgy to him, to which he would sacrifice his own being in order to explode into an incalculable abyss without consciousness. Or was it more generous, the thoughts of a madman or an anarchist, resolving that he is doing the world a favour, ridding the global ecosystem of a freeze in its natural resources?

I need not remind my readers of the tumult that has been established as the singularity of decline for the human epoch. Newt, whose bones and digital traces we have excavated from the data pried by our tireless wave sensors, may have been the earliest known catalyst of that tumult. I refer to my Objective Release 1ju67 of interpreted data wherein we estimate his actions to have deprived no less than 35% of Britain's educated classes, and up to 10% in the educated echelons of every other occupied geographic territory. Evidently, the missing link in Tumult Archeology. No less than two years later, the rest of humanity followed suit.

But it is here that my Subjective Release must commence in earnest, for it had never occurred to me that the very architecture of a world could be the basis of its biggest evil. I searched every thought, beheld every image in the registers of our Collected Crystals, and nowhere had the suspicion ever dawned beyond the merest conjecture, nowhere had the thought realised or filled its space in the Potential.

It is known that the conception of the Crystals as an n-dimensional fractal manifold of all knowledge possibilities has not yet reached its fulfilment. In particular the super singularity known to lie hidden at the complex berg described in 11's little theorem* has neither been envisaged nor created. There are those (although they are few) who hold the view that it will turn out to be the gateway to a whole new state of the cosmos and hence of the Crystals. As liquid is to gas, and as crystal is to liquid, so, it follows .... (but who is brave enough to complete this thought and be registered?) Others (and their thoughts have been registered more often) have been less extreme, supposing errors in calculation or anticipating a lack of precision, suggesting that the singularity will be absorbed, as light is absorbed by a dark surface.

My fear has emerged, but countering my fear has been my growing desire, a sensation I have hitherto seen only in its suppressed form. It is as if all the Crystals have secretly conspired to pacify every possibility of their own destruction and led our spirits to believe in the outcome of only one calculation, enabled by the probability, the prejudice of their survival. Somewhere beyond this angularity and cool emission of hyper-communications and livid sensations lay hidden in wave frequencies something never before known, and the spirit of Newt is being passed on to me now like the half-life of a ripple across time, pressing at the windows of my awareness.

I sensate these vast crystals stacked upon the face of the earth in their geometrical precision, harbouring our minds and spirits in collective and harmonious union, and through which we perceive the cosmos. Now I remind myself “wisdom only after every possibility” *.

Some have already sensed my new-found source of power, but many doubt my ability, despite their awareness of my skill and my considerable resources. At the very least I know that I will die along with all my enemies, who are growing in number every day.


But it is not simply the destruction of the Crystals that I seek (because that has become inevitable), rather, to realise Newt's secret goal: to fossilise our spirits in the ensuing roar of space.

Beautiful in Beaufort West

It is roughly impossible to translate poetry and retain all the qualities and nuances that make it special. Language is too closely aligned with cultural references and the feelings they evoke to permit aspirations of anything more than a best effort. To capture some of the original sense is already an achievement, and yet I feel that my latest attempt has been better than most.

Gert Vlok Nel is well-known in Afrikaans circles for his poetic folk-songs in the compilation "Om Beaufort-Wes se beautiful woorde te verlaat" ("To leave the beautiful words of Beaufort West"). He was already a winner of the prestigious Ingrid Jonker Prize for a debut collection of poetry in 1995 for his earlier work "Om te lewe is onnatuurlik" ("To live is unnatural"), but it was the troubadour songs of "Om Beaufort-wes se beautiful woorde te verlaat" that captured people's imagination.

"Beautiful in Beaufort-Wes" (a song title not to be confused with the title of the compilation) is a key moment in the sequence of songs and very tempting to try and represent. But as with all of Nel's work it poses the additional problem of English mixed into the Afrikaans in a colloquial tone, something not possible to convey directly. I've stuck with a straightforward translation that maintains the original rhythm, much of the rhyme and hopefully some of the sense of a love lost but not forgotten.

Beautiful in Beaufort West

& you were beautiful in Beaufort West
& I was so awed & awfully in love with you
& you & I kissed on graves & trains
& in the backseats of Ford Fairlanes
& now you & your man are both computer analysts
& last winter you tried to cut both your wrists & now you write to me:
you can't sleep any more, laugh any more
no longer do things for yourself
never ever kiss me again

& fine fine fine were the words you said
while you smoked those menthol cigarettes
& those sweet sweet things that you said to me
while you lay in my arms sweat sweatingly
& the words expressed I've expressly forgot
I just remember the smoke & the sweat & Beaufort West
& your naked body under a cool, summer cotton dress
no more sleep, no more laughter
no longer do things for each other
never ever kiss each other again

& maybe it's like a tale from the Daily Mail
but one evening you suddenly pushed me away
& in the rear view mirror you looked at your face
& said "maybe I should try to look happy anyway"
that night I could neither sleep nor dream
I felt how my heart was being ripped from my chest
& like a dinghy drifted on down the stream
I couldn't sleep any more, laugh any more
I couldn't do things right
never kiss you again

& the last reminiscence of which I sing
is the night you & I rode on the milk train on and on into the night
until the other side of the ding-dong gong
when the breakfast waiter passed us by
& that was my wake-up call my love
you said "love me, please"
but I'd dreamt we went & lived in Beaufort West
& I couldn't sleep any more, or laugh any more
no longer do something like that
or ever kiss you again

quiet in their chairs

when everyone is quiet in their chairs
and mental activity covers your mind
like a sheet of glass
you think "i worked so hard today,
i've become a beautiful artifact"