More Thoughts on Internet Identity

One of the strangest things about the internet--and blogging--is its enormous reach, and the personal vulnerability (or nakedness) of one's presence on it. Like all forms of media projection, it facilitates the creation of a specific persona. Soon, virtual visual interaction is coming, allowing users to watch each other--literally to look into each other's real physical space--while spending time online. Whether or not people choose to allow this kind of exposure will depend upon a number of factors. Privacy as it has been thought of in the past will have to be revised. 

 

We already know that much of the world is "under continuous surveillance" by cameras and hand-held devices of various kinds. As technology penetrates ever further into our personal space(s), we continue to lose privacy, to lose the anonymous (incognito) physical sense of being inside our personal envelope, secure, secret, contained. 

 

The satellite mapping devices and street-mounted address programs allow us to look at private addresses (at street level) and down upon neighborhoods throughout the world. 

 

It occurred to me a few days ago that people I've known throughout my life--starting right out with my early childhood, following me all along the roads and byways of my adulthood--could all, given a half-way efficient computer, and an internet connection--see exactly what I'm doing, what I've become, and what I think. It gave me pause. Perhaps unexpectedly, I've only been able to establish any kind of contact--however brief--with just a handful of these people. That seems odd. I was in a high school graduating class of over 500. It's true that I can only remember the names of perhaps 20 people on dead recall, but I'm sure I'd be able to "identify" many, many more if I saw their pictures with the names. And yet, they're hidden out there in the world. Many of them must be dead, many have moved into remote parts of the globe, many have fallen into obscure, hopeless backwaters. 

 

But many of them probably don't wish to revisit their pasts, and even with the venues that now exist--such as high school alumni websites--their curiosity about the fates of those whom they started their lives with, is simply absent. Either they don't want to evoke their past(s), or they're too embarrassed to expose themselves to view. It's strange.

 

Sometimes I catch myself thinking: Do I really want people to know this stuff about me? Maybe there's something exhibitionistic about it. Maybe it's a juvenile craving for bland forms of ersatz "friendship" and pointless contact. Yet the great majority of people I meet here are strangers, people whom I will almost certainly never meet in person, and whose lives will never intersect in any other way, in any other place. It's like having a wide correspondence with a regiment of aliens. Who ARE these people!?  

 

They're just like you and me. Or, maybe not. I always think of the phenomenon of my own birth as a combination of weird accidents. The same could be said of most of our life contacts. They're accidental. In some small villages of the world, the inhabitants may spend their whole lives in close proximity to just a handful of individuals, many of whom are relatives. In the modern world, with its portability, mobility, anonymity, loneliness, disconnection, the only glue that seems to keep people connected is family, and even that frequently breaks down under the pressures of work, dislocation, and generational disapprobation. 

 

I don't know where this is all leading. Am I looking for something here? Why do I write these brief essays and personal accounts? Who am I trying to reach? Who do I think cares about all this? Am I my only true audience?           

The Bicycle - Whence & Whither

When I was a child growing up in the 1950's, most kids had bikes. Boys more than girls, I suppose, but any child who wanted one could get one. I got my first bike for my 8th birthday, a great big wide-wheeled green monster with a beeping horn, bell, front and rear fenders, a riding platform on the rear, and a spring suspension on the front wheel. It was pretty heavy. We lived in the suburbs of a small Northern California town, Napa, and typically we were allowed to ride around in the neighborhood without supervision from a very early age, and by the time I was 10 I was riding all over town on weekends or during the Summer. When I was 11, I took a job as a paper-delivery-boy, 110 papers seven days a week, roll-em up and pedal around an eight block area. That lasted four years, and by the time I gave it up, I was already in high school. That was my first real job, and it taught me a certain application and duty from an early age. I think in some respects it might have been better if I had spent a little more time socializing and traveling in those years, but we were so poor we could hardly have afforded much real recreation. It was both a way of earning an allowance, and of getting good regular exercise. My heavily-muscled thighs testify to that. In those days, the narrower-wheeled "Schwinn" bikes were a novelty; eventually the wider-wheeled bikes would disappear entirely, only to be "re-introduced" as "trail bikes" and "off-road" wheelers later. Today, there are many variations, even fold-up versions which commuters can carry onto trains or busses.  

 

I mention this because bicycling seems more and more to be at issue today. When I was a boy, grown-ups didn't generally ride bicycles. In America, bicycles were for kids. Almost no one rode bikes competitively, or as a sophisticated recreation, the way they do today. People didn't commute on bikes. Bike racks were confined to school-yards. If you'd suggested to either of my parents that they ride a bike, they'd have thought you were nuts. 

    

But today, bicycling is growing in popularity, for a number of reasons. Automobiles have never been cheap, and the price of operating a four-wheeled vehicle is becoming comparatively inconvenient, especially in (bigger) cities--not least because of the cost and inconvenience of storage and temporary (or longer term) parking. 

 

Eastern Seabord cities weren't originally laid out for motorized vehicular traffic lanes, but have had to be adapted. In the Midwest and West, most towns and cities grew up during the advent of cars and busses, as well as rail, and hence are in fact designed primarily for automobiles. With the rise of two-wheeled vehicle use, natural conflicts of access and right-of-way have begun to occur. In California where we live, they've begun to create "bike lanes" between the automobile lanes and sidewalks. This has put additional pressure on parking. 

 

In principle most people favor bicycling as an alternative to automobile usage, since it's cheaper, healthier, cleaner, and lest wasteful. In Europe and part of the Third World, bicycles are much more ubiquitous. You can see the consequences of widely expanded bicycle use in places like India and China, where the streets are clogged with them. In cities where this occurs, major safety and congestion issues have developed. I'm not sure why it should be, but bicycling seems to encourage a flagrantly cavalier attitude towards rules of the road. 

 

When I was a kid, most people didn't get their bikes licensed, and laws governing usage were typically ignored. Today, in California, helmets are required by law, something we would have thought quite unnecessary in the 1950's. But today, bicycle riding is serious business. 

 

Though as I say public opinion is generally in favor of encouraging cycling, there are a number of problems associated with their increased usage, and they're only going to get worse. Controversy has heated up over the last few years in West Coast cities, involving militant advocates of expanded bicycling lanes and bike parking. In cities where parking has already become quite difficult, further restrictions on automobile access and parking are regarded by the business community with a raised eyebrow. 

American cities have been designed to accommodate movement primarily through automobile usage. The American suburb paradigm was posited on the prevalence of the car. Attempts to force people out of their cars, and into public transportation or onto the streets, on foot, have been largely unsuccessful. Inner city planning has misapprehended the European pedestrian model, creating downtown wastelands in some cases, where no one but bums and delinquents go to loiter or kill time. The mercantile core of our cities was not helped by the design initiatives intended to "revitalize" our cities by forcing cars away from the city centres. 

 

If anyone thought seriously about the actual effect that widespread adoption of the bicycle in American cities might have, enthusiasm about the bike might be muted. Bicycles and automobiles sharing the same street is a recipe for problems. The more bicycles there are per block, the more dangerous things generally become. On a typical day, one may encounter a half dozen bicycles pedaling along the right-hand edge of the road. Imagine what it might be like if that number were to increase a hundred-fold. Navigation by bicycle is typically less controlled laterally than with cars, and when several bikes are lined up, they can effectively take over a lane. Then there's the matter of safety. For each additional bike on the road, the stakes go up. Many bikers seem to regard their unfettered right of way as a cardinal virtue, mocking or sneering at traffic, violating every principle of courtesy and every rule of the road. Most laws governing bicycle use are designed to protect the biker, who is nakedly exposed to every kind of physical hazard, with or without a helmet. There is something about the casual, recreational quality of bike use that encourages riders to think of biking irresponsibly. 

 

I won't live to see the death of the automobile as we have come to know it, but it seems safe to say that, even with the transformation of fuels which will doubtless occur in this century, the four-wheeled vehicle isn't going away. One must view with trepidation the coming impacts of increased mixed-use vehicular thruways and streets in 21st Century American cities. My guess is that bicycling will become less and less fun; and driving in town will become very hazardous indeed.          

 

Meet Soo-Mee, our new male Siamese

Meet Soo-Mee. He's our new male Siamese kitten who joined the family on July 3rd (born on April 4th). We lost Lottie in January, to breast cancer (which spread to her lungs), and our other two Siamese needed a third member to recapture their social balance. We got Soo-Mee from a regular breeder in Marin County, and he was raised with sensitivity and lots of human handling in a quietly supportive household.   

   

 

We have preferred the traditional apple-faced Siamese, over the show-worthy pointed-faced hybrids. Soo-Mee is an odd mixture, with a classic "pointed, curved" head shape--narrow eyes, and very large, triangular-starred pointed ears. That's him on the right in the photo above. Unlike most Siamese males, his personality seems altogether docile and trusting, and he possesses none of the feisty combativeness--at least not now--so characteristic of the type. 

 

Siamese typically live between 12-19 years. I may not outlive Soo-Mee. Following a pattern we started 35 years ago, each cat is named after a coffee or coffee mixture. Sumatra's abbreviated name, therefore, became Soo-Mee, which sounds as if it might belong to a panda. 

 

So these three, Mocha, Cocoa and Soo-Mee now happily co-exist with us in a symbiotic relationship whose rhythms follow the schedules of our days. Soo-Mee is somewhat less affectionate than Mocha and Cocoa, but with time he may come to "adopt" us as his life companions. People make the best pets.    

An Autonomous Submission

                          Quotient        

 

  

                                               By Garrett Staughton     

  

                                      I

 

The world divided by itself equals zero. Ice caps evaporate into void. 

  

I arrive bearing the evidence for a conviction.   

 

Embedded logic shifts along fractured intervals.  Inside white walls, insulation spontaneously implodes. 

 

Lead doors.    

 

The smallest seizure may be undetectable.   

 

I break my gold-rimmed glasses, throwing them on the pavement.  This is not a gesture, but a sign.   

 

Each paradigm supplies its own analog.   

 

Returning to a point preceding his birth, he finds prehistoric structures in an advanced state of decay.    

 

We're temporarily experiencing technical difficulties.

 

Irritability is a tic. Surveillance systems track our every move.

 

I stands for something.   

 

You make a wish. The world waits breathlessly for your decision.

 

The typographer's dummy. Duh. Duh duh duh!!!

  

Distorted vowels, frayed towels, sleepless owls, flabby jowls, wooden dowels, feral yowls. Making it up as it goes along, he sings his onely song, going going gong.

 

A snoring.   

 

Form follows function.  Stairway to the stars. 

 

Hostile precincts of the countryside are camouflaged as landscape. Morale is high.

 

Clouds approaching from three directions.

 

The roots of the tree snake along underneath our presumptions.  Thought is insidious, impossible to kill.   

 

Repeat after me. 

 

Birds chirping to define territory and secure mates, we hear as pure song.  Coffee cools in the cup.   

 

Contamination occurs at all points. Black dust seeps in under the floorboards. 

 

Age dates the slugger.     

 

The young king’s tomb spills tokens through a hole into a plastic tray.  London Bridge is falling down.  

 

Driving a golden spike through Ford’s mercenary heart.    

  

We greet the nuclear blast standing atop the tallest building in the metropolis, arms spread, awaiting armageddon like the ghosts of Babylon. 

 

Meaning fizzles in a random dance.  Sky colors awe the summer crowds.

 

I intend a contradiction.

 

Moon looks down on a black lake, a tar puddle surrounded by flickering gas fumes.

 

An Alabama drawl softens the spoon.  

 

Drones are the pornographic metaphor for the jack-off culture of intuitive leaps: frustration leads to premature ejaculation.    

 

Jackhammers gunning for gas lines, break through the city water main, transforming the street into a Harlem fountain. 

   

In early youth, the learning curve levels off.

  

This is a poem.

  

Universe in the shape of a canoe.

 

Traveling in a train, we walk backwards toward the caboose, arriving at the engine car. 

 

He killed his puppet.

  

Outcome determined by chance operations.

 

Sheet glass windows sheer diagonally along crystalline fault lines. 

  

You don't have to think about breathing.  Someone has brought in the paper.

  

Imagine that women can read your thoughts. 

  

See Rome and die, but don't forget your health insurance card.

  

It's the afternoon commute, traffic reports and the evening news concluding the number of dead in Afghanistan. Sunset blood red.  

 

The effect can't be duplicated. You had to be there. 

  

The general bristles and his little finger twitches. Tanks rumble down Main Street to make their point. 

 

Competing factions grease the hand-organ.

 

Matter is arrested light. The tunnel is sealed off. 

 

Beltway rusted shut. Impressions are conveyed via our nerves.

 

Each object defines its use; we carve up the consequences.

Billboard at the end of the world--Zeppelin's upside down... 

 

Can you imagine something that wasn't there?

 

Bowsprit's rather yar. America wins Nobel Peace Prize!

 

Salt flat one inch above eye level. Black stripes on white roadway lead to....

 

It's so easy you could do it in your sleep. Examples are virtually everywhere.  

 

Identity is a disguise. Someone's knocking at the door. 

 

Check the sub-cats and then lock up before you leave. 

 

Familiar mascot's a crash-dummy with a prosthetic arm.

  

Not funny, McGee.

  

You are directed to appear. Everyone is writing mysteries.

 

The level of statement is exactly proportional to the sentiment expressed.

  

Audience clicks and hisses. Orchestra omits third movement.

 

Now I'm being serious. What's the matter?

 

Haitians reading bar codes. Mountains of dead batteries.

Flash cards pop up along the horizon-line.

Any part of the grid is not more compelling than a chocolate milkshake.

Alex Smith - Here We Go Again

 

It's difficult to define what makes a winning combination of skills and traits in a successful NFL quarterback. It's not about intelligence, certainly, and not about raw physical talent. Luck may be involved, especially in the early part of a career, when a slow start may relegate a highly rated college prospect to the bench. Great quarterbacks may flower in their third year, or in their 8th--there's no scenario that holds true for every individual. 

 

A few observations may narrow the parameter: Successful QB's in the NFL had better not be short in comparison to their fellows, since the difficulty of looking over tall NFL lineman precludes ordinary visual access to the patterns of weaving receivers and defensive backs down field; a short man will have extreme difficulty overcoming this. 

 

An ability to "read" defenses, and to intuit the movements and tendencies of your receivers and backs, is also crucial. Preparation and focus are important, since most of the decisions a QB makes once the ball is snapped must either be memorized and automatic, or be made instantaneously, almost without thinking. 

 

Finally, there are two indefinable qualities which winning QB's possess. The first is a determination to overcome odds, to press forward against adversity and repeated failure. The second is a coolness or control under pressure. Neither of these two key elements can really be learned. Courage, and the ability to block out distraction and stress, are probably a genetic inheritance. Joe Montana had them. When the game was on the line, a level, concentrated, dark mood came over him. He was able to put on mental blinders, and devote 100% of his attention on the problem at hand, picking spots and improvising serially, down by down, to maximize the potential yardage in each situation as the end of the game wound down in a sequence of increasing risk. 

 

After having watched Alex Smith over five seasons (he was out for the whole of 2008 with injury), I've come to the conclusion that Smith doesn't possess these crucial qualities as an NFL QB. I previously said on this blog that he isn't the answer to the 49ers' Quarterback Problem, that he would never bring the team to contention. But I would go further now, after watching him in the first game of 2010 against the Seattle Seahawks (which the 49ers lost 31-6). I don't think the 49ers can reasonably expect to win any game in which he's the starter this year. Next week, the Niners take on the champion New Orleans Saints. 

 

I can still recall seeing, in person, the 49ers crush the Saints under Steve Young a few years back, 38-0 in the New Orleans Superdome. In those days, the feckless Saints, under Mike Ditka, could hardly make a first down, much less a touchdown. But that was a long time ago.

 

Now, these teams are so unevenly matched, it's hardly a contest. I would bet a spread of 14 points in favor of the Saints; yet they might win 56-0! 

 

In the NFL, the importance of talent at the quarterback position can't be overemphasized. It accounts for 85% of a team's success. It's safe to assume that in the NFL, even the poorest teams have the best talent available. But a bad quarterback can make a whole team underperform, dragging it down hopelessly into mediocrity. This is what has happened each time the 49ers have gone with Smith. He's tall, he's very intelligent, he works hard, he shows courage in the pocket, but he doesn't possess the determination and coolness under pressure that are the pre-requisites for ultimate success over odds.  

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Smith isn't the answer. The 2010 season will be a bust. Until we can find a decent replacement for Smith, the Niners will not be competitive, either in their division, or in the league as a whole. The man has to go.                     

The Giants in 2010 - a Year of Ironies

 

The 2010 year for the San Francisco Giants has been a year of ironies. Thinking back to an earlier era--one which I lived through as a youngster just beginning the long road of devotion to the home team (which had arrived, with much fanfare, in 1958)--I'm reminded of another string of young rookie phenoms who came along in quick annual succession during the 1950's and '60's.

 

Today's young stars are appearing with the same frequency, and (one hopes) with the same eventual flowering of success.

 

 

 

In 2007, Tim Lincecum came up to the Bigs, with the highest expectations imaginable. And he didn't disappoint, winning two Cy Youngs in succession (2008, 2009). In 2008, a chubby, effusive young Venezuelan Third Baseman named Pablo Sandoval arrived, knocking balls all over the park and endearing himself to fans, affectionately, as "The Panda," hitting .345 and .330 in his first two years. In 2009, a highly touted young catching prospect, Buster Posey made a quick visit to the Show, and this year has precociously taken over as starting catcher, prompting the departure of veteran Bengie Molina (traded to Texas on July 1st). Each of these three wasted no time displaying their talents, and all three are now front and center, budding stars for a young team on the rise.

 

 

 

50 years ago, almost the same phenomenon took place. In 1958, a very young (20) Orlando Cepeda arrived from Puerto Rico, winning Rookie of the Year honors. In 1959, a very tall, lanky, soft-spoken Alabama boy broke in, going 4 for 4 (including two triples) against Robin Roberts, winning the ROY award himself. Then, in 1960, a smiling, cheerful pitcher from the Dominican Republic arrived; he started more slowly, but eventually went on to have six 20-win seasons. All three of these heroes made it into the Hall of Fame. 

  

 

 

Cepeda, McCovey and Marichal were each instrumental in bringing a Pennant to San Francisco in 1962, the year they lost the Seventh Game of the World Series when Bobby Richardson caught McCovey's screaming liner in the final inning, closing the door on the Giants last, best chance at a Series win. 

 

 

 

It's been 55 years since the Giants won it all, and those of us old enough to remember 1962, as well as 2002, are growing impatient with the passing of years. The arrival of these talented youngsters in 2007-2008-2009 gives us hope for a brighter future. 

 

 

 

This year both Sandoval and Lincecum have suffered setbacks. Timmy lost some velocity on his fastball, and experienced periods of wildness. He seemed hittable in August. Pablo, as passionate and emotional a player as you could imagine, has been swinging wildly at balls off the plate, over-anxious and impatient. Had either one of these two performed up to the level of their accomplishments of last year, the Giants would almost certainly be games ahead in the National League West Division by this time this year. But the quick development of Posey--who seems at moments to be almost like the reincarnation of a Johnny Bench or a Mike Piazza--has actually carried the team, almost single-handedly at times, on his young shoulders, for days at time.

 

History doesn't repeat itself, at least not exactly in the same way. Certain patterns may emerge which are similar, even eerily reminiscent. The arrival of Lincecum, Sandoval and Posey, the three of them, all young, all filled with promise, all raring to go from the get-go, feels just like things did in 1960, when another young Giants team (albeit with a resident super-star, Willie Mays) was going through a serious re-building stage, fueled then by the sudden influx of Central American and Caribbean talent. 

 

We can at least pretend that the same success that followed the arrival of those earlier Hall of Famers, may visit this team again, half a century later.      

              

Looky-Touchy-Feely - The Atomized Bombs of Jessica Smith [Part III]

 
 [This post is a continuation of two earlier ones on Jessica Smith's book Organic Furniture Cellar.]
 

Part III: The Poems

 

It would be difficult to imagine a trade edition poetry book--particularly a first book--published before 2000, which included a long, dense, somewhat apprehensive essay by the poet herself, documenting her sources, her influences, her intentions, and the proper manner in which to read the contents, following a 7000 word Forward. Yet Jessica Smith decided to present her work, self-published, in just this way, taking the opportunity to declare her aesthetic principles and methodology, much in the manner a serious graduate student might approach her graduate degree thesis. Indeed, Ms. Smith's essay, or Forward, to Organic Furniture Cellar [2004] seems very much a kind of professional academic obligation, a proof and application to the world of poetry at large, that she had arrived, was prepared to be recognized, honored, and rewarded with praise, and perhaps a handsome assistantship at a comfortable Eastern Ivy League edifice. Organic Furniture Cellar was the tender, but the essay was the clincher, the very definition of a proposed entitlement, the passport to the avant garde poetry scene. Without the official approval implicit in the acceptance of the manuscript by a major New York or University Press publisher, Smith's first self-published book was intended to serve as an efficient short-cut to the game, by-passing the turnstiles of taste and orderly recognition, the benighted reading public's oblivious irrelevance. 

  

As the generations of structuralist and post-structuralist waves break over the shore of post-War American culture, the text itself has become increasingly irrelevant as well. Cultural criticism, which purports to trump mere aesthetic objects, taunting their probable audiences, dissecting their assumed deficiencies, and weaving ever more complex webs of ratiocination and dialectical machination, now bids to become the repository of a dissolving fabric of meaning itself, in a grand end-game of multiple interpretations, incestuous cross-fertilizations of mediated, relativist exchange. As the text recedes into impertinence, exegesis replaces art; and justifications and analyses of content and form supersede composition as the very aim of literary enterprise.

  

Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Jessica Smith graduated from SUNY Buffalo in English and Language Theory (studying under Charles Bernstein), then spending time in Northern Europe for two years, ultimately earning a Master's Degree with a thesis entitled Sonic Territories: Deleuze and the Politics of Sound in Kafka and Duras. Currently she is studying library science while teaching writing at her Alma Mater. 

  

Smith's whole orientation, then, has been inside the academic sphere, where the meanings and functions of texts derive primarily from what can be expressed about them--their commodity-existence, their value as objects for description and de-construction--rather than through their use as texts for consumption as pure art; under the decadent sophistication of the contemporary graduate workshop system, where budding writers and artists are taught to master models of performance and style, honing their careerist skills in an increasingly crowded and competitive professional market-place. These twin trends--the hyper-critical inflation of textual assessment, and the alienation of the writer from her probable audience--has created a hybrid artist-type, committed to a narrowly defined profile of avant garde textual eccentricity completely divorced from a probable audience, with a relentless dedication to self-promotion along purely theoretical lines. In other words, a writer devoted to the production of a text whose only purpose is its potential for the parasitism of analytic regard--its only raison d'etre. 

  

Ms. Smith is the quintessential expression of this role model. Still only 31, she is anxious that we should know that she has won two poetry prizes, has had her work published in a number of obscure literary periodicals, that she has editied a poetry journal herself, has had some of her work set to music, runs a blog, twitters, has had her work "exhibited" in America and Europe, has had work translated into foreign languages, and edits a series of pamphlets and monographs, and assisted in the editing of a woman's broadzine. The resolute emphasis on a curriculum vitae, fraught with honors and deeds and recognitions, various and eclectic, is indicative not, however, of a precocious proficiency of talent, but of a naked ambition, to be seen and noticed, to impress and brag. 

  

All of which serves to put one on immediate guard as to the actual nature of Smith's accomplishments as a writer. It is certainly one thing to build an academic career out of textual analysis and critical skill; but quite another to demonstrate a lyrical or formal genius in the production of specific, original works. There's an ironic disconnect between what she puts on the page, and the hemorrhage of explanation that flows down over the poetry, obscuring it, diluting it, and ultimately replacing it with extravagant claims for its formal achievement. After 7000 words of Forward, in which Plastic poetry is promulgated as the latest incarnation of High Late Modernism's marching procession of Greats, one might be forgiven for having exaggeratedly high expectations, for anticipating nothing less than a masterpiece, from its self-proclaimed Priestess of Liberation.                                                      

     

*Before addressing the poems proper, I should point out one error. In her Forward, Smith says "If you turn to the glossary of Swedish words in the back of Organic Furniture Cellar," --but there is no such glossary that I could find. Perhaps she originally intended to include one, but either forgot, or decided not to have one. Given that only a handful of the poems is written in foreign language (Swedish), my first impulse was to wonder why she included them at all--with or without a glossary. Why not simply translate them into English, instead of leaving them in, unreadable and untranslated? It seems like an obvious oversight.            
 
 

 

 

In order to talk about the poems, it will be necessary to resort to an expanded display link, since Smith's pages are 1) too large [with small type face] to reproduce, 2) use parallel conflicted half-spacing of lineation, and 3) use a font (Garamond) which is not available on Google Blogger (and even if it were, the poem are too large spatially to fit into the blogger window). Hence the reader will need to link on each of the two URL under each displayed text page image to see the expanded version in a separate users window (which may then be viewed concurrently with the commentary). As I noted previously, the font size in the book is much too small, barely readable, but there is no immediate remedy I could think of to display the text.

  

It may be that on a theoretical level, no reading of any text is the ultimate, uniquely correct one, but Smith carries this notion to an extreme limit in insisting (in her Forward) that there is no proper entry point into her separate poems. Spatially, they may, for instance, be read traditionally from left to right, or they may be read right to left, or bottom to top, or in any order one might choose. However, this is only a ruse, since she declares that she intends to disarm the reader by thwarting his reading progress (from memory, the "old-fashioned" way). In effect, what this means is that a reader will begin to read each poem from the upper left-hand corner and proceed by means of the usual left-to-right progress, encountering various road-blocks and unexplained hazards and non-sequiturs along the way, until he either exhausts his patience, or arrives at the bottom of the page (in a state of advanced confusion). 

   

Each of Smith's poems is like a scattered, unorganized outline of fragments, all of which might have been intended for inclusion into an organized sequence of language (paragraphs, stanzas, constellations of words...). The reader is given no clue as to how these fragments might be organized, nor what--in many instances--they refer to. If the poem is meant, as Smith claims, to refer to something out "in the world" then that something must first be filtered through Smith's deliberately disorganized arrangements or unorganized impressions (or as she says, her "memory" of experience). In the poem "Passage," below, there are a series of numbers--74, 400, 14, 15, 615, 101, 910, and 830--which are not explained. Are these the numbers of roads, the times of day, or some other increment which the reader is supposed to "invent" for his own amusement? Mountains, traffic, crickets, flowers, kisses, fingers, sunsets, dandelions, bulbs, a city, sugar/cotton/snow, cultures and shoulders--all of which occur as proximal fragments of a greater whole, whose inter-relationships are unspecified, remaining docilely inert and disconnected. There are the colors red, and white. The mountain is red; the snow and sugar and cotton are white--this is important information. There is humming, and undulating, and clicking, and cropping up, a covering. Something is magnetized, something is littered, something is unreclaimed, something is inescapable, something remains. We have no idea what the underlying circuit-board for all these things is, because it is hidden beneath the surface of the poem's display. 

 

Perhaps, like a child, we could be allowed to move the separate parts of the poem around--as with a puzzle or a scrabble board--into probable relationships, that could actually make some kind of expedient sense. But Smith has already thought of this, no doubt. We can't ask of her that she perform this function, because that might serve to confirm our expectations about how to "read" her work, and that's just old-fashioned nonsense. The "mnemonic mapping" which she is striving to make could never be attained by organizing these constituent fragments into a meaningful whole. If we try to put lines together, we may have some limited success: "distances/are magnetized, they/push us away, they/repel." "Bulbs like cotton bolls like/white flowers/they crop up/never/the same." "Distances sadly/inanimate/unreclaimed/whiteness." "White over everything as if it fell from the sky/like sugar like cotton like snow like dandelions/the undulating/complex of/insensitive whiteness." "Rhizomatic network of memory." Etc. 

   

What a reader is faced with here is a mess. The vague, disorganized flock of words, the reader might suspect, could be rearranged in any of several approximate formations, none of which would be any more instructive, or syntactically informative, than the one chosen. The potential generative, dynamic propulsion of syntax is ignored, in favor of a mobile of mildly suggestive parts, none of which is compelling in itself, to tilt our attention towards a determined effect. Since none of the fragments tells us enough about the experience to which they seem to refer, we have no way of interpreting them, and so they lie, elusive, unrecognized, categorically flat.                                       

 

                                                                                              Passage         

 

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In flores para los muertos ["flowers for the dead"], we get pretty much the same kind of thing. Except that here, individual words are broken up into separate letters which may be re-combined in various possible ways, but to what purpose? "Con" might combine with "viv" and "i" and "al" to form convivial; or does con combine with stant to form constant? What does the possible discrepancy between alphabetical parts tell us about anything? "Cannot be a poem" certainly tells us something concrete! There is some kind of jeopardy going on--fear, could be lethal, fear again, violence, fear again, and again fear. What the impetus or etiology of this fear might be, we are not told. Perhaps it's the Day of the Dead. Then, again, perhaps it's the day I got drunk (clinking glasses) and missed you. The refusal to specify what the hints and pointers imply, gives rise in the reader, either to a suspicion of a kind of hesitancy on the part of the speaker (what Katherine Anne Porter called "the look of the runaway in her eye") or a kind of petulance, a reluctance to acknowledge that the speaker (the poet) has no resonant response to experience, that her experience finds no medium, no analogue in her sensibility which could inspire her to memorable utterance. Or, perhaps, faced with the materials of her craft, she is simply clueless about how these might be shaped into a mental narrative or a diverting design. Who can say? 

 

One of the advantages of removing lyricism--any semblance of a sequential logic or development--from the poem--is that there is no gradient for comparing the relative success or failure of any rhetorical flourish. If Ms. Smith lacks the lyrical inspiration to write interesting poetry, the simplest solution is to posit a style that is utterly without music, without plot, without formal organization. Offered up as latter-day quasi "concrete" experiments in "visual" arrangement, and buttressed by a complex series of analytical definitions, such exercises can mask an initial incompetence by throwing out a blizzard of dogma and speculation. This is a potentially devastating indictment, but one I find myself reluctantly sensing here. 

 

                                  

                                                                                  floras para los muertos

 

 

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I think that much of what Smith discusses in her excessively long Forward could be said about any of several different examples of post-Modern verse. It might be applicable, for instance, to the work of Clark Coolidge. But the comparison would stop right there in its tracks; because in the work of Coolidge one has, despite the departure from denotation and referentiality, considerable demonstration of skill with language, of the joining and organization of parts, and of whole regions of lavish, connotative blurring, tortuously involved association, varied resonance and expansive internal landscapes. 

 

In Smith's work, no reading is correct, because nothing in the poem has been deliberately formed. Randomness replaces deliberation, and meaning escapes down the drain. In addition, all readings are non-reflexive, and hence impersonal, autonomous, and indeterminate. Language is exploded into atomized bombs, scattering meaningless fragments of matter. Trying to read her poems is like wandering across a scene of devastation following a detonation; the material, once constituted into use and shape and coherence, is blown apart. We have to start from scratch, picking up the pieces, piling up the rubble, building everything from the ground up, by hand, scraping together fragments, starting over. Practical knowledge at a premium, know-how and energy required. Careful planning. Hope.       

     

 

I think Smith is ultimately fooling herself, if not her readers. Compositional experiments--such as choosing words from matrices of pre-existing text, or yoking discrepant segments of language into new arrangements--can be mildly diverting. Ronald Johnson's R A D I O S, for example, or the work of Dick Higgins, or John Cage's experiments with indeterminate performance. But poetry which opts out of the lyrical mode to explore synthetic applications exterior to the medium will inevitably lack substance. Words can be separated from their function, but without that function, they're just things. The trick is in putting them together. Organic Furniture Cellar is an embarrassment, perhaps most astonishingly because its author is an acutely intelligent woman. Alas, she's been mining fool's gold.