Thursday, February 16, 2006

Corroding the Narrative

Last night, in a workshop I'm taking at ColoState, one of the other students talked about corroding the narrative. I think that's a useful idea.

One corrosion of the poem I've been tossing around gives me this.

***

Flats

Flashlight beam pools scorpion announces tamarisk rocks knot raft past Moab since dusk six thousand stars nothing the stern and arc hear constellations sizzle on their black and water look each into the other sleep.

***

Andrew corroded his narrative, and I corroded this narrative, by taking out words, especially connective words. Is it possible to corrode the narrative by adding? Is it possible to corrode the narrative by replacing?

6 Comments:

Blogger Glenn Ingersoll said...

Used to be when I would read my poems to Kent he would get mad because I was "betraying the narrative." The poem would seem to be telling a story but would never quite come through on story.

Not the same thing as this corrosion.

I don't think I understand "corroding the narrative", unless it just means making sure the reader can't put together a story from the parts presented.

2/16/2006 9:57 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know if I understand it either, but it's interesting to fool around. I will admit that Andrew's poem seemed to me to be just an arbitrary string of words until I heard him read it aloud.

My other question about corroding the narrative is why? Why corrode the narrative?

I'm going to keep fooling with it though, at for a while.

"question corroding narrative why? Why.

"Fooling while."

Always a pleasure, Glenn.

Jack

2/17/2006 4:16 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

the metaphor might work, but not in the way andrew wants it to. corrosion of the narrative could be a way of speaking about the natural deterioration of remembered experience, either slowly, over the stretch of time, like a sixty-five impala exposed in the back yard, or instantaneously, like putting a dream into words.

the representation of this would have to incorporate some kind of prolonged and/or repeated attempt to narrate a past experience, an attempt that is necessarily doomed to fail yet irresistably forced to continue.

or something.

2/17/2006 8:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I don't know. I think the metaphor works both ways. But I like your take on it.

Jack

2/17/2006 2:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

and there's probably no substantial difference between the two takes, either, hence, kinda stupid on my part to controvert.

thinking about this brought to mind something eliot offered as a "suggestive analogy" to elaborate his valorization of the depersonalized artist (a version, i believe, of keat's negative capability): "the action which takes place when a bit of finely filiated platinum is introduced into a chamber containing oxygen and sulphur dioxide ... the analogy was that of the catalyst. when the two gases previously mentioned are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphurous acid. this combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum, and the platinum itself is apparently unaffected: has remained inert, neutral, and unchanged. the mind of the poet is the shred of platinum. it may partly or exclusively operate upon the experience of the man himself; but, the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates; the more perfectly will the mind digest and transmute the passions which are its material."

so i studied the process a bit and got really confused, since the analogy, upon closer inspection doesn't really correlate to what eliot says it does (the essay is "tradition and the individual talent") or to how, at least to me, and made me chuckle.

then again, it could just be me repeating my inclination for false controversions.

2/17/2006 5:41 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like the metaphor Pound uses. Several places on the internet, inclduing in a Wikipedia entry, it says, "While Eliot was writing, and Pound editing, The Waste Land, Pound had said that he looked upon experience as similar to a series of iron filings on a mirror. Each is disconnected, but the iron filings are drawn into the shape of a rose by the presence of a magnet."

Do you happen to know the original source for this. I remember my teachers talking about it when I was in grad school, but I don't think anyone's ever stated the primary source to me.

Eliot's analogy and Pound's analogy remind me that the poets of the twentieth century, especially the first half, were under big pressure from science. Eliot and Pound were being scientific in their analogies. Many critics were trying to avoid going outside the text to interpret poems--New Critics, Formalists. There was pressure to be objective.

What pressures are poets under in the beginning of this other century where we sit?

I suppose I should posit, too, instead of just ask. Let me think about it.

2/18/2006 2:05 PM  

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