Once in a Poem by John Berger

From: And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

Poems, even when narrative, do not resemble stories. All stories are about battles, of one kind or another, which end in victory and defeat. Everything moves towards the end, when the outcome will be known.

Poems, regardless of any outcome, cross the battlefields, tending the wounded, listening to the wild monologues of the triumphant or the fearful. They bring a kind of peace. Not by anesthesia or easy reassurance, but by recognition and the promise that what has been experienced cannot disappear as if it has never been. Yet the promise is not of a monument. (Who, still on a battlefield, wants monuments?) The promise is that language has acknowledged, has given shelter, to the experience which demanded, which cried out.

Poems are nearer to prayers than to stories, but in poetry there is no one behind the language being prayed to. It is the language itself which has to hear and acknowledge. For the religious poet, the Word is the first attribute of God. In all poetry words are a presence before they are a means of communication.

Yet poetry uses the same words and more or less the same syntax as, say, the Annual General Report of a multi-national corporation. (Corporations that prepare for their profit some of the most terrible battlefields of the modern world.) How then can poetry so transform language that, instead of simply communicating information, it listens and promises and fulfills the role of god?

That a poem may use the same words as a Company Report means no more than the fact that a lighthouse and a prison cell may be built with stones form the same quarry, joined by the same mortar. Everything depends upon the relation of the words. And the sum total of all these possible relations depends upon how the writer relates to language, not as vocabulary, not as syntax, not even as structure, but as principle and a presence.

The poet places language beyond the reach of time: or, more accurately, the poet approaches language as if it were a place, an assemble point, where time has no finality, where time itself is encompassed and contained.

If poetry sometimes speaks of its own immortality, the claim is more far-reaching than that of a genius of a particular poet in a particular cultural history. Immortality here should be distinguished from posthumous fame. Poetry can speak of immortality because it abandons itself to language, in the belief that language embraces all experience, past, present and future.

To speak of the promise of poetry would be misleading, for a promise projects into the future, and it is precisely the coexistence of future, present and past that poetry proposes. A promise that applies to the present and past as well as to the future can better be called an assurance.

The Flocking Party from Courtney

The Flocking Party is an interactive, non-linear web-based online story by artist Chris Landau. if you have some time and a good connection and the latest Flash installed, take a look at it. What I find interesting is how through the idea of an "electronic journal," a futuristic story about ecology, the loss of birdsong, and the reorganization of the world's political boundaries into regions by watershed, unfolds. I like its reliance on drawing - it makes me continue to think about how Jeff's drawings can be used and animated.

from jeff

I am thinking a great deal about memory, how places and objects have memories What does Kitty Hawk remember about the Wright Bros. The memory of Cape Canavral. What does the Enola Gay remember. What was the last thoughts of the planes involved in 9/11? The black boxes recording data in planes, what poetry can we find in that data?
I am also thinking about the planes and pilots susposedly lost in the Bermuda Triangle, where are they? Where is Steve Fossit?
Jeff

Kansas, from Lisa D.

Inspired by Daedalus and Icarus.
Who knew? (thanks Wikipedia)
Rock On...

Carry On Wayward Son
by KANSAS

Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more
Once I rose above the noise and confusion
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion
I was soaring ever higher
But I flew too high
Though my eyes could see I still was a blind man
Though my mind could think I still was a mad man
I can hear the voices when I'm dreaming
I can hear them say
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more
Masquerading as a man with a reason
My charade is the event of the season
And if I claim to be a wise man
It surely means that I don't know
On a stormy sea of moving emotion
Tossed about I'm like a ship on the ocean
I set a course for winds of fortune
But I hear the voices say
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more
No!
Carry on
You will always remember
Carry on
Nothing equals the splendor
Now your life's no longer empty
Surely heaven waits for you
Carry on my wayward son
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more

from J

funny kathy's assignment re. daedalus - i was reading up on him this morning and wondered if the clown/air traffic controller wasn't also daedalus several things intrigue me in addition to the icarus story - one seems to be that his genius/artisanship was the very thing that kept getting him into (and out of) trouble [he was almost trapped by the labyrinth
that he created, he exposed himself to minos by solving a puzzle]
another, perhaps a little more overwrought involves daedalus almost killing his nephew b/c his skills were approaching daedalus's, maybe there was something similar w/ icarus, ie icarus flew too close to the sun b/c daedalus planted the idea (to remove the competition)

J's assignment for lisa: instructions from falconer to falcon (some sensical some nonsensical) and maybe it's the falconers instruction that cause the falcons to fly out of earshot thus:
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

Assignments

Hey everybody!

Just got a great update from Jeff regarding the rehearsal last night. I'm carving out some time over the next few days to write, and will send some material to play with on Sunday. I have received small assignments from Kathy and Ashley and would love to have a few more for my stew pot. They can be tiny or big, according to your whim. I am pasting in Kathy's assignment to me below, to give you an example, but anything goes, so send 'em on.
Be Well,
LISA D.

KATHY'S ASSIGNMENT TO LISA
I would like for you to write some conversation between Icarus and Dedalus at any point in there relationship.
Some examples:

Deadalus explains birds to a 3 year old Icarus
Deadalus finally lets Icarus know he has been developing wings for them to fly away from their prison
the two planning their escape
conversation while flying
Icarus' thoughts flying fast on his descent into the ocean
Dedalus speaking to his son sometime after his death

or anything else that strikes your fancy

other archetypes I'm interested in:

the Wright brothers and their sister Amelia Earhart

Paintings by Jeff's student