Poem 3- Collage and Catalogue Poem
Apr. 17:
YouTube video on Timothy Liu's Hard Evidence and Collage Poetry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iQaBBRgRzg
Don't overthink it, but think a bit at times about relationships between successive items and even items that are not next to each other. Frequently in the collage poem, the relationship between items has to do with metaphor/simile or metonymy or synecdoche (see our Textbook for definitions).
Examples of collage poets (sometimes with long poems indicated) include:
Please click on the following link to watch my YouTube video on Catalogue Poetry, Adnan, Abse:
YouTube video on Timothy Liu's Hard Evidence and Collage Poetry:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iQaBBRgRzg
Collage poem and List poem (catalogue)
Mostly not narrative—fragmentary stories
Mostly not meditative—fragmentary thinking
Collage poem versus List poem (catalogue)
Reader has to figure out or The connection betw elements
intuitively feel relation betw (overall context) is clear or soon
collage elements & may fail becomes clear
Poet does too!
When you write collage poem, ask:
- Do these 2 fit next to each other? Why? Why not?
- Do they fit too obviously? Should I change words—make it more interesting?
- Does this order (collage elements) feel right?
Don't overthink it, but think a bit at times about relationships between successive items and even items that are not next to each other. Frequently in the collage poem, the relationship between items has to do with metaphor/simile or metonymy or synecdoche (see our Textbook for definitions).
Examples of collage poets (sometimes with long poems indicated) include:
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Ezra Pound, The Cantos
William Carlos Williams, Paterson
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge
Harryette Mullen, S*PeRM**K*T (close to a list poem, not quite) and Muse & Drudge
John Ashbery, “Europe”
Eileen R. Tabios Paolo Javier Tyrone Williams Cecilia Vicuna
Lyn Hejinian Ron Silliman Tan Lin Susan Howe
Mark Young Charles Bernstein David Shapiro
If you are interested in learning more about any of these poets individually, you can find some of their work online, of course, and then email me about them. Those of you who took American Literature II with Professor Gordon Tapper, former Chair of the English Department, undoubtedly read Eliot's The Waste Land.
*********
April 3, 2020
Please click on the following link to watch my YouTube video on Catalogue Poetry, Adnan, Abse:
There are SO many cases of catalogue poetry, which includes the subcategory of poetry with anaphora, that any list would be misleading. Many would say that the Old Testament book, Song of Solomon is one big catalogue poem. And to cite Professor Tapper and American Literature II again, Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" could be the first well known poem to include long section of catalogue and anaphoric poetry in the U.S. Certainly, Whitman's twentieth century disciple Allen Ginsberg--also frequently taught in American Literature II-- has quite a few well known poems that are either partially or completely list poems. This term, the Lebanese poet/visual artist Etel Adnan, who lives in California and is now 95, gives us our example of a catalogue poem with anaphora for the purpose of Poem 3, but later on, when we're doing a poem in another category (metapoetry), there will be a second catalogue poem with anaphora by Tom Beckett.
A catalogue poem is a poem in the form of list. The challenge is to make the list interesting!
A catalogue poem is a poem in the form of list. The challenge is to make the list interesting!
Subcategory: catalogue poem with anaphora—Beginning of every line or most lines is the same.
What do I (TF) think is a successful catalogue poem?
- Category (context) should be understandable but not super obvious
- Accumulation of details creates emotional buildup
- Interesting images
- Interesting tropes
- Not much abstraction/generalization; when used, used w tropes & images
- Avoiding the obvious—cliché
- Variety: concepts, images/tropes, tones, dictions within larger category
- Surprising connections between sentences/lines/other units
Typical Procedure:
- Decide if it will be anaphora or not.
- Think of loose category.
- Brainstorm freely.
- Put first draft away.
- Add and subtract in first editing phase
- Then rearrange order if necessary for max. impact
- Second editing: improve the quality of the language
Form? No set form
- Can come before or after you brainstorm
- Stanzas (Abse), strophes, or no stanzas/strophes (Adnan, Beckett).
- Some poets: one line = one sentence (Adnan).
- Still Other poets: several lines for unit with enjambment (Abse, Beckett)
- Yet Other poets: enjambment between stanzas/strophes.
- Still Other poets: poetry shaped on page (enjambment as norm)
I enjoyed Timothy Liu's Hard Evidence. I find it cool how each line tells its own story but you have to read in between the lines to get the message the poem begins - donta
ReplyDeleteI remember some media would do this to piece together a story, there was a video game called Dark Souls where they did this and Life Is Strange.
DeleteManuel, in Liu's case, there is no single narrative, as Donta said, so the video game is either collaging loosely related elements or they are pasting several different narratives together into one larger narrative, which is different from what Liu is doing. Various artistic media share an abundance of artistic strategies. Cultural historians frequently trace which media "teaches" another how to use the technique. Note that video games borrow many and maybe most of their artistic--as opposed to their new technological --methods from earlier forms of art, whether literary art, cinema, or visual art.
DeleteYes, Donta, and do you believe there's a single message, or multiple messages? If it's a single message, what do you think it is?
ReplyDeleteI believe its multiple messages telling one story. Its like that same story your grandma tells over and over but everytime she tells it's to you it has a different meaning lol - donta
DeleteI remember a cartoon show where that happened where it tells a poem that foreshadowed how the show would end and another poem within a show called Cloud Hunt. Here's the example:
ReplyDeleteOver the mountain, the ominous cloud
Coming to cover the land in a shroud
Hide in a bushel, a basement, a cave
But when cloud comes a-huntin
No one's a safe!
That's cute!
DeleteYou see, this kind of foreshadowing is in a dominantly narrative mode, and so it's not very experimental, like Liu's collage-poem, which is barely narrative at all.
Also the show is called Adventure Time and the show is in a post-apocalyptic environment. This poem within the show's universe is telling of a Nuclear War, it kinda like Ring Around A Rosie.
DeleteJust so I'm clear on the difference between a collage poem and a list poem, a list poem is about one subject (different fruits for example) while a collage poem ties different subjects together as a compilation like a visual collage would? -Erika Perez
ReplyDeleteErika, I like your definition very much: it's clear and concise. Sometimes, the subject matter of the list poem is so broad that it seems like a collage poem.
DeleteI found learning about collage poetry to be very interesting. The way I look at it is to write a collage with poetic elements and language. There were two terms you mentioned during the lesson I would like to know more about: juxtaposition and pun. Can you please define these two for me and if possible, give me and example? Also, why is the title of Timothy Liu's poem, "Hard Evidence", and example of a pun?
ReplyDeleteJuxtaposition means that two verbal, visual, or other elements are put next to each other. The root, "juxta," basically means "next to," and "position" means exactly what it says. Perhaps I did not define the word "pun" in the Textbook: a pun involves the multiple meaning of a single word.
DeleteTo answer your last question, I am going to have to be a little... hmmm, "impolite"? "HARD evidence" can mean substantial or RELIABLE evidence in a legal trial--for example, fingerprints on a murdered person, but in this case, "hard" can also mean a physically SOLID or erect sexual organ, which is "evidence" of sexual arousal.
A space molded in sea walls.
ReplyDeleteMoving straight through their circadian rhythm.
An elated call the smell of spring.
Janessa, I believe that the first two elements are connected. One strategy might be to acknowledge this through the spacing choices:
Deletespace molded in sea walls moving straight through their circadian rhythm.
An elated call the smell of spring.
OR
space molded in sea walls.
Moving straight through
their circadian rhythm.
An elated call
the smell of spring.
This comment is from Aliyah:
ReplyDeleteCatalog poetry seems very complicated. I struggle with incorporating tropes that are not cliche, and one of the main focuses when writing a catalog poem is not being cliche. Tropes basically make the poem throwing imagery back and fourth to convey a strong message. I want to be able to switch between different tones with ease, but that will be difficult. When writing poetry for this class my technique is to generally write whatever comes to my head and edit it that way, but I’m not sure how well that will go with a catalog poem. How do you know which list of words perfectly flow to follow the guidelines of catalog poetry? Can the words contradict itself? How do you effectively incorporate emotion without being cliche?
- Aliyah Brown
TF: Aliyah, you are bringing up very important points, not only for this assignment, but for the entire poetry writing class. Before I comment, I want to hear what other students have to say in response to Aliyah's questions.
I agree with Aliyah about incorporating tropes that are not cliche. I don't know if this helps but I've found that using a thesaurus for cliche words helps to transform lines. In terms of catalog poetry what I've been thinking is to come up with key words that blend together so they look more like a list and then tying them together with full lines. This was how I came up with my practice quatrain when we used Dickinson's end words. I hope this helps in any way. -Erika Perez
DeleteAliyah and Erika,
DeleteI'm not giving my full response here, but I'm just responding to Erika's idea.
A thesaurus definitely helps. An even more radical measure might be to put a blank where a particular word made the phrase a cliche, and then to free associate 10 or 20 words in its place and write them separately without thinking whether they are good or bad. It's like free-writing but just individual words. Then you see if any of those words fit: probably most won't, but if there are more than one, then you just figure out which is best. An example of a double use of blanks would be: ________ is a many splendored _______. The omitted words are "love" and "thing."
John Ashbery was famous for taking a cliche and creating a single change in it or bashing part of it against another cliche in the sentence. This created a fresh use of language out of a boring one.
As for the key words approach for a catalogue poem, it's a good start, and then you have to fill in sentence structure.
Hi Aliyah,
DeleteI definitely understand how you feel. I struggle with tropes too. For me, what helps me in creating tropes is to think about my feelings and my experience of them. Then, I try to find words that will convey my experience of a particular feeling and present them in a way that could give the reader an image of what I might be going through. I'll show you an example from my sample collage poem from Wednesday:
Space molded in sea walls moving straight through their circadian rhythm.
An elated call the smell of spring.
Here, I was describing my room and the relaxation my room gives me. By me using the word "molded", my goal was to draw in the reader's mind a picture of a space, my room, being put together, constructed, made by. Then, I said "sea walls" as a way to help the reader picture the relaxing color of my room's walls, which is the color of aqua like the seas and the waters. I added "moving straight through their circadian rhythm" as a way to help the reader draw a picture of how my walls, in a uniform manner, contribute to the relaxed environment of my room's feel. Since this was on a day where the sun was shining through my room shades, I said: "An elated call the smell of spring" to convey to the reader how the sun's radiating it's shine on my aqua-colored walls, motivated me to embrace hope of the excitement and positivity of the coming spring season.
The key thing to remember when writing your poetry and constructing tropes and imagery is that you want to aim to show more than tell. In addition, something that helps me too is practicing brief mindfulness which can help you get in tune with your senses and how you feel in that moment. Using your senses can also help you create tropes and images as well.
I agree with Aliyah, they are very complicated but I've seen many examples of it from Shakespeare to an old English one. Speaking of old English, I think I've seen one through Beowolf.
ReplyDeleteMy questions is why does it matter if the catalogue is boring even if it has everything else needed? .
ReplyDeleteWhat did you mean when you some people “ shape peom on the page” ? Via Diamond.F
Manuel, Beowulf may have some catalogues. But where did you find either a catalogue or collage poem in the oeuvre of Shakespeare? I'm puzzled!
DeleteDiamond, I guess "boring" is in the eye of the beholder, to use another cliche! But what I mean is that you could do a catalogue of really ordinary items and make them boring:
salt
sugar
chocolate chips
mint extract
bleached flour
baking soda.
To make a dessert recipe interesting, you'd not only have to add some words but find some elements that are a little unexpected.
Now let's take the same "poem" I just wrote and make it into "a shaped poem on the page":
salt
sugar
chocolate
chips
mint extract
bleached flour
baking soda.
Blogger formatting would not allow me to do the shape, but I put salt in the middle of the line
Deletesugar near the beginning
chocolate near the end
chips at the beginning
mint closer to the end, etc.
So out of the words, I created a shape that looked round like a cookie, but you couldn't see it, because the formatting didn't work. You should go online and see if they have George Herbert's "Easter Wings" or "The Altar" somewhere. Those are visual poems or shaped poems.
https://www.folger.edu/easing-shakespeare-modern-sonnet This.
DeleteI just checked: they do have George Herbert's "Easter Wings" online. His seventeenth century metaphysical shaped poetry was often called "Emblem poetry."
ReplyDeleteThis comment is from Aliyah:
ReplyDeleteErika- thank you for your suggestion, i will look into finding similar words with a thesaurus.
Diamond- i agree with your question as to why it matters if the poem is boring if it’s followed by the guidelines but i feel as though the point of Catalog poems is to excite or entrap the reader.
I found the reading of both Etel Adnan's and Dannie Abse's poems interesting. In regards to Etel Adnan's "The Arab Apocalypse", what I noticed what the imagery she created in her poem. For example, when she wrote: "When the combatants' teeth become knives...When the aggressors' nails become claws", I felt she made excellent use of juxtaposition in creating images and evoking emotional response. I also feel here too, that she made good use of pun because "teeth" was shown to have two meanings, one being the biting of teeth and the other, the sharpness of a teeth's biting. What impresses me about this was how she was able to put two words together to create abstract meaning that gives rise to emotional build-up and responses.
ReplyDeleteIn regards to Dannie Abse's poem, I feel that the main catalog of his poem was irony. I feel through his contrasting colors, he was expressing the irony of how something very beautiful can also be the very opposite and even, deadly. My favorite one is when he writes:
"And healing greens, leaves and grass, so springlike,
in limbs that fester are not springlike".
I relate to that line because I love green, especially when I'm out in nature and observing the beauty of it. I also feel that it's sadly ironic that such a beautiful color could also appear in such an unpleasant disease or infection.
I enjoyed reading these poems and learning new techniques to incorporate in my poetry.
Janessa, I find your reading of both poems has the kind of subtlety and sophistication, the balance of general and specific insights, that I look for in students' writing when I teach ENG 102 and Intro to (Reading) Poetry (270), and what is more important for THIS class (271), you understand how the techniques that you identify can be used to good effect in YOUR OWN poetry.
Delete
ReplyDeleteThere are other aspects of Aliyah's original statement that we haven't covered; I will just respond to the first two for now:
Aliyah: I want to be able to switch between different tones with ease, but that will be difficult.
TF: You can't force the ability to switch between different tones with ease. You can practice it as an exercise, but instead, maybe don't worry about it: keep writing freely and it will happen when the time is right. if you listen sometimes to your own mind when you are not trying to write a poem, you can go very quickly from an emotional state of calm, to positive excitement, to anger, to sadness. This is often how a collage poem feels.
Aliyah: When writing poetry for this class my technique is to generally write whatever comes to my head and edit it that way, but I’m not sure how well that will go with a catalog poem.
TF: Writing whatever comes into your head (i.e. free writing or automatic writing) is a good technique IF YOU DO IT FOR LONG ENOUGH. In other words, if you get tired after 10 minutes, take a rest, and come back and do it again, and maybe also a third time. Then look at what you have, and let it go through 2, 3, or 4 careful revisions. Then the catalogue poem can work.
How do you know which list of words perfectly flow to follow the guidelines of catalog poetry? Can the words contradict itself?
How do you effectively incorporate emotion without being cliche?
I guess you would have to first have a category and then the words would come from that. I think that words can contradict themselves in terms of them being antonyms because the connection is still there. -Erika Perez
DeleteYes, Erika, my long response didn't get to the notion of contradiction, but I thoroughly agree with what you say about contradiction, and in fact Whitman in "Song of Myself" and Emerson in several of his (very poetic) essays both write about the usefulness of contradiction in a poetic context. Poetry can do some philosophizing by other means, but it is NOT philosophy, so contradiction can be generative.
DeleteThis discussion was wonderful, but since it's after 2, I think it's my responsibility to consider Aliyah's last 2 questions, which I will, but any time this weekend or over the spring break, those who haven't commented today can also give advice about this or comment on any aspect of the discussion part of this blog post:
ReplyDeleteAliyah: How do you know which list of words perfectly flow to follow the guidelines of catalog poetry? Can the words contradict itself?
TF: I don't think poets should worry about "perfection" in following "guidelines of catalog poetry." There is no magic list of words, but one principle is: if you want to write a particular kind of poetry a lot--for example, catalogue poetry-- read a lot of this kind of poem (i.e. online) and see for yourself what works and doesn't in what you read, and then spend a lot of time writing and revising them. You may discover a new way of juxtaposing elements in a catalogue that you haven't seen in other poets' catalogue poems, and you know it's interesting, so go for it.
How do you effectively incorporate emotion without being cliche?
This question assumes that cliche is a perfect vehicle for emotion. I would argue that human beings only think that it is because there is behavioral conditioning: stimulus/response. In other words, you hear certain words over and over, and it triggers an emotion in you automatically. But really, tropes and images have great precision that SHOW and don't just TELL, and when you get used to this kind of discourse (way of communicating), it has a richness that cliches do not. I could go on talking about this until the moon comes up, but let's come back to this issue soon.
After reading Timothy Liu's "Hard Evidence", I was struck with a hyper awareness of my own body. Where i was lying, how my bed was made, what I was wearing, the folds of my very being. I admire Liu's use of introspection, sexuality and navigation of anatomy. The pornographic overtone was sterilizing and voyeuristic and it left my skin crawling (in a good way). I would say the most eye-catching lines were, "late night glory hole", "motel carpet melted", "A soul kiss swimming solo in a n open wound", desire". Additionally, there is a sensual brutality, a coercion in the way he says, "the yes inside of the no". A consent is withdrawn, a vestige body left to limp in repose. The inclusion of "the bird of paradise", conveys a desire or longing for fleeting freedom, for an anonymous sexuality. This entire poem elicits a feeling of sterility but yet a corruption, a hedonistic perversion of the body. His lines leave your ears buzzing and your senses left gut-wrenchingly wide open.
ReplyDeleteAfter looking at my environment, I wrote a collage of three lines:
Wine stained curtains blink like butterfly eyelids
Pepper-and-salt posters plaster the monochrome wall
Rabbit-eared blankets quiver with poacher's guilt
Question: If i were to do a poem about insect mating rituals but I was talking about say, the female experience and body, would that constitute as definitely a collage or catalouge poem? I'd be talking about one thing (womanhood) but using different insect related facts and metaphors to symbolize the same idea. I am still grappling with the linguistic difference between collage and catalog poetry.
ReplyDeleteLabels are useful for exercises and critical categorizing, and exercises are one of the backbones of a poetry writing class at the undergraduate level, because they encourage students to get away linguistic habits that stifle their ability to explore a full range of options for poetic production and to find new ways of making (and hiding) meaning. A poet doesn't need to take the difference between these modes of writing verse--you might call them sub-sub-genres-- so seriously after a certain period of acquaintance with them. I don't know any poet who has been writing for 10, 20, or 30 years who thinks about the distinctions between collage and catalogue poem in order to generate actual poetry.
DeleteThe poem about mating rituals/female corporeality is an excellent example of allegory, which is basically, in this case, an extended analogy.
If you tell me why what I said in the video (and I think it's also on this blog post) about the difference between collage and catalogue poetry is either not clear or not convincing, I can elaborate in order to be more specific and more convincing.
In my reply at 10:11, I left out the preposition "from" in the first sentence; it should go after the infinitive phrase, "get away." Sorry about that.
DeleteAdnan's "The Arab Apocalypse" is a violent and visceral poem. There is an intestine hiding in every line. This poem, I remember was the first one I read from the packet when I was browsing through the packet on the first day. It struck me then because of the iconic use of repetition. The use of "when" and "become" used as a way to grapple and keep the reader's attention, I think is a powerful technique. The "death" motif has an bloating effect; using lines and words like, "living rot", "crucify", "carnage", "teeth become knives", "arsenic". Adnan's choice to transform average people like clergymen, mountain men, old friends, etc into volatile weapons is effective because Adnan is trying to express to the reader how metamorphic war is, not only for a untied country but for a singular, personal experience. The line ,"When roses only grow in cemeteries", to me is the only line that has a lightness to the overall dark and muddy overtone of the entire poem. The final line, "the human tide" evokes an image of people drowning in their own chaos and in their own blood. In particular it reminds me of the memorable redrum scene in The Shining. Overall, I love this poem. It is a list of very violent images that does its job of leaving you with a metallic taste in your mouth. It forces you to reflect and look upon one's own dirty mirror.
ReplyDeleteFor Abse's poem, "Pathology of Colors"; immediately I am hit with a dolor smack of unhealthiness. The very word, "pathology" reminds me of illness, identifiable as it reeks of disease. I am struck with the immediate overarching yin-yang dynamic of this poem. The poet talks about colors in a beautiful way starting with lines such as, "I know the colour rose, and it is lovely", "in the simple blessing of a rainbow" and "healing greens" but later juxtaposes it with the dichotomous decay of death. Turning light into dark and health into rot, the poet utilizes lines like, ""in the plum face of suicide", "when it ripens in a tumor" and "an autopsy when the belly's opened" to twist the reader's perception into a knot. I think Abse's poem sets out to teach the reader about the opposites of life; as there is as much beauty as there is present tragedy. While reading the poem, all I visualize is the colors of bruises; swollen purples, mottled blacks, infectious yellows and greens, pallid whites and bloody reds. Though Abse talks about a motley of colors, this sickly spectrum is the one that rings the most true. Overall, I quite adore this poem, because it is what I like most about life and about poetry; the good and the bad, ugly and the prepossessing and both the stormy and the clear. Thanks for the read!
I appreciate the strong, elegantly detailed close reading of both poems. When you say that the line about roses and cemeteries "is the only line that has a lightness to the overall dark and muddy overtone," I agree yet that lightness is diminished by Adnan's phrase, "only grow."
DeleteAt least, they still grow.
DeleteHi Professor Fink,
ReplyDeleteGood afternoon. I wanted to ask you if it's ok for me to spend this class on editing my poem because I didn't get an email from my peer editors so far.
Yes, Janessa: that's fine.
DeleteI realize that some of you will be posting "after hours," so we'll keep these 2 poems up until Monday.
ReplyDeleteWhen you're looking at these poems, think about
how they function as catalogue poems (and in the first case, a catalogue poem with anaphora),
the relation of the title of the first one to the poem itself,
the use of concrete images/tropes vs. abstractions,
the choices involving free verse meter and stanza/strophe/no stanza or strophe.
I hope others will say something now or later, but since we only have 10 synchronous minutes left, I suppose I should make some observations, right?
ReplyDeleteIn the first poem, "Agape," the Greek term in Christianity (and perhaps with pre-Christian connotations) for a divine or transcendent love that goes beyond ordinary desire for personal gain, provides a context for the catalogue elements indicating proper human behavior, and therefore, even if the tropes/images like "when prize is our wake" are a little hard to follow, we can figure them out because the title guides us.
In the second poem, there seems to be a very deliberate movement from abstract, general characterization to imagery/tropes that are directly linked to abstract thinking. And the triple repetition of the "too diapers and bottles" images plays ironically against the abstract notion of human beings evolving as time passes.
Whoever wrote the "Suitcase" poem should definitely submit it to The Lit. I particularly enjoyed the lines, "temporary treasure trove", "personality of a chameleon" and "shifting it’s entrails". The whole, zip and unzip lines are very imagery driven as well. Personification is strong in this poem, as the suitcase seems to take on a whole other life of it's own. Just as a reminder. submissions for the magazine are still open until the 19th of April. If anyone wants to submit any of the poems that we've written here so far, it would probably be a good idea.
ReplyDeleteWebsite | thelitmag.com/submissions
Instagram | the_lit_mag
Twitter | the_lit_mag
Email | submissions.thelit@gmail.com
Brianna, I am forwarding this to the author in case they don't see it.
DeleteIt's okay,Professor Fink. The deadline for submissions already passed. Also the writer already sent it in to The Lit. I saw the email in the magazine's inbox.
Delete