Next, make a poem out of your brainstorming using the vocabulary from one or more of the contexts that you mentioned in your brainstorming. The more different or dissonant the vocabulary from the topic of your poem, the better. Gather samples of texts from that context to use as resources if necessary.
Post your response by clicking the "Comment" link below. Hint: If you want the post to look like it does on the page, upload it as a bitmap image file not to the comments but as new blog post.
Wasn't exactly sure what "vocabularies" meant, so I just went with my initial interpretation of language subsets associated with particular subcultures or areas of academic interest.
ReplyDeleteFavourite subjects and their vocabs:
-Tech/nerd/lolspeak/l33t (FTW!)
-Sociology, particularly Weberian, Durkheimian
-Mythology (having to do with original texts and academic analysis)
-Sartrean existentialism
-Psychoanalytics and Chaos Magick
-Semiotics and zoosemiotics
-Medieval/Ren Faire Speak (Does that fall under "nerd"? I'm not sure.)
NOT favourite subjects and their vocabs:
-Chemistry
-Econometrics
-Christianity (particularly it is the modern vocabulary that I do not like, not necessarily the religion itself)
Below is the poem. I decided to use a combination of l33t and lolspeak, mostly because it's extremely annoying and alienating to those not familiar with it, but also because I thought they possessed the most possibility for dissonance with the subject matter, or rather, an ironic relationship with it.
----
Crystal Skulls
0 I C W4T U DI|} THAR,
Sovietcat
wut wid the alienz & stuff
8ut
I wuz
lurking dat idea
F.U.R.S.T.
Nawt Sekkund
and
I
DO NOT WANT!!1!!one
2 f0||0w j00
down teh p4th
ov d3d memes
Cuz that was s0, like,
last Tuesday
the l45t ting we needz
is MOAR Tuezd4yz
(amirite?)
BUT EVERYTHING IS COPYPASTA
& im j|_|st anodda chix0r
l00kin 4 Eaaastar Eggz
and findin'
Schadenfreude
כּהeפוjהאדלהjזתרוהבּשהכּאמפבּגאזuובּקנוeא
(try highlighting)
c wat i mean abowt alienz?
MOONSPEAK!
But ur thinkin tl:dr
and im leik wh4t3v,
butt i r butthurt,
truly
So
Now t0 b3com3
An Hero
1.
2. ????
3. PROFIT
kthxbye
Favorite topics and vocabularies would include
ReplyDelete- Theology and history
- Words associated with color
- Words associated with maps, migration
- Names of plants, animals, places, and their histories
- Terms used in music
Not favorite vocabularies would include
- Very technical language, particularly having to do with sciences, social sciences, and politics (ironically, since history is above as a favorite)
- Highly rhetorical language
- Sentimentality
- Obscenity
So the version I post here is a try at metaphoric interplay between highly technical language and a theological moment, largely because in the process of doing so I found a kind of appreciation for some opaque biological words.
Photoheterotrophs sip liquid vitality
His ascendance enriches their pedalfer
Slow multifoliate unfolding face by face
Downrushed viscosity spreading veins
Reconstructing bones, sinews, skin
Eternal biosynthesis of wholeness.
They reach arms forward, upflung heliochryse
Blooming heads, eyes jacinth chrysoprase
In argent foliage of foaming flesh.
Fingers’ mesmerism stretch toward the source:
No heliodon needed to track his path
Metamorphosed chrysalises sprout
His swath cyclosis, infinity’s heliotropes.
Favorite types of words
ReplyDeleteMythology
Theology
Philosophy
Slang created by my friends and I
NASB Bible Translation
Astrophysics
Types of words that I hate
Obscenity
Sociology
Ebonics, particularly using the letter “d” instead of “th”
German
Levinas
This is based on a mix of the NASB translation of the Bible and Astrophysics.
In Time
Born
Of a light dying death
Entangled
On the horizon
You are the firstfruit:
Quantum Father
Fragment
Expanding through the word
A faith in spoken
pushed/pulling
Created
Of a particle name
For my sake
Accelerated
A magnetic
Fallen
Vocabularies I like:
ReplyDelete-Film (whether screenwriting or theory-related)
-Vocabularies that arise out of a group of high people
-Lit. classes
-Critical essays about books and film
-Old news reels—think “NEWS ON THE MARCH” with clips of soldiers going to war and all that business.
-For some reason the language of beat-type poets is really exciting to me (I know that’s obnoxious, but whatever)
-Something musical in people talking about drugs, the exchange of drugs and all (even though that’s kind of obnoxious too)
-Astronomy
-Calculus
-Feminist theory
Vocabularies I dislike:
-Most vocabularies that are video game or internet related. except for maybe lolcats, but we all have our vices...I’m not too proud. But I guess it’s kind of cool that they are spawned out of a void—out of a need for new words and expression and that’s kinda cool that it’s happening right in front of us. WELL I GUESS I HAVE SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT.
-The vocabulary of modern EXTREME conservatism: infuriating, but almost poetic in its absurdity
Used:
WWII News Reel, Feminist stuff, some Astronomy, Vocabularies relating to drugs.
Can’t come up with many vocabularies that I dislike. Too bad for old Claire Edwards.
Heroes in warm green heart of battle telling them who was the high now--Positively careening toward a hunched emptiness, emptiness cored out of apple core in danger it is dangerous to woman as non-penis bearing fruit as made of lack--of a certain impossibility of puckered out of the unmoving.
The impossibility of a car stopped. Always to be found where the fighting is toughest, OUR HERO, trained for mechanized war is blitzed out of mind-body, space-time speaks in words pour out thick, sweet, heavy as molasses on cow tongue: it won’t fit.
Witness final capitulation on proud battleship Missouri as cameramen and reporters of many nations are hands linked across the streets and won’t fit into this phallocentric model of high-cheek-boned, pit-stained hunger huffing smoke out of bug screens and pinched into sweet brief existence for the push back of a Jap reality under broad thumb of emperor Hirohito getting nothing but the best from an uninterrupted supplies line.
The Ecuadorian prime minister shows his sympathies lie with the United Nations but just now OUR HEROINE is lost is wondering who the hell she is in the backseat of just vomiting up sushi bad choice sushi better taco bell or taquito or something that will really put hair on yer lungs or stomach—no more of this prepubescent pussy shit, unsettling infantile sexualization, eat exactly one dick—this is dirt weed, man, wouldn’t have paid more than 50 for it and Mickey said he bought it off some kid up in Pawnee, called Nebula, where German soldiers are rounded up on the Tunisian front over practically non-existent roads.
The daughter of the governor of the state christens the battleship Missouri and it is a photo teetering on edge, poising on edge of supposed state of female grace, of falling back into the compressed singularity it sprung from in the core of apple core lack.
Posting my poem separately...when it's done.
ReplyDeleteVocabularies are an interesting thing to think about because there is so much overlap due to the multiple meanings of word, but at the same time so much of the language of specific subcultures, activities and disciplines can be so obscure and exclusive. Anyway.
Vocabs I like:
-Flower and plant and fruit and vegetable and tree names. Maybe I just should have said plant. But flowers in particular and food plants.
-Nonsense talk. Like when people just repeat and repeatedly morph their words into ever-growing senselessness. (Does that make sense?) Non-words that sound like they should be words. Transposing letters in phrases.
-French philosophical terms are so infuriating but also attractive.
-Sociology is beloved.
-Food food food food.
-Curse words and the strange permutations they can take. Ex: "That's a shitstorm of a fuck."
-1920s-70s slang is pretty cute.
Vocabularies I don't like (this is harder):
-Really old sounding stuff. Turns me off.
-I'll echo others and say contemporary evangelical protestantism.
-Also whatever wordbank the alternative newspaper on campus uses, complete with strategic capitalization of hallowed words. "this University."
-Many sex words. Not because I am a prude but because they are always either too technical/biological or too cheesy/violent.
-New agey hippie stuff. It's kind of love-hate though.
So we'll see what I come up with.
I also really like Norwegian and Swedish words but maybe I shouldn't go there. I might make a list of obvious cognates.
ReplyDeleteapproaching this exercise, i was influenced more by the feelings surrounding some of my favorite words than the actual words themselves. for me, vocabulary is more tethered to an experience, and less to any particular written or spoken language paradigm. below are the puddles left after my brainstorm. =]
ReplyDeletehandi-able. monomaniacal wheelchair ramp
harvest moon raped by dinosaurs is back to
SQUARE. ZERO.
can't say: Tulsa, left lane
word of the day: circuitous.
ça fait chier. church
SOCIAL
i don't even own a goddamn comb!
somnifères...reverse gas mask chamber
of commerce totally trashed out whore
undescended amygdala.
shitsicle. avoid.
Look at the old girl now, fellas! to the point
of "jesus forgive me."
cowgirl breathin'
Vocabs I like:
ReplyDeleteRitualistic words of Catholicism
Military speak (The 900 acronyms for everything that nobody is ever completely clear on what they actually stand for, the just know how to use them)
Medical Jargon
Some legal jargon, but not full on legalese
Sociology terms
Profanity...perhaps this makes me simple-minded, but sometimes the only right word for a situation is fuck.
I also like veiled drug and sobriety references.
Vocabs I do not like:
Anything used by insurance companies
Christian fundamentalist over dramatizations...sin having two syllables.
I attempted to create something combing sociology, military, and Catholicism.
Civis will never be the same.
Transubstantiated from boy to Soldier,
resocialized to be 'All that you can be'
in a socioeconomic system that will never hire you.
Two identities in one body.
walking between the worlds.
ACUs can't be worn to the bar.
new POV driven without orders...purgatory
Deactivation activates the search for absolution.
A Wish List for Syllabi
ReplyDeleteWe will also spend a substantial portion of time
replacing energy with solar and wind
books may be ordered exercises, dictating what kinds of work they want
on the cusp, on not simply because of the skill
for the unending future, a self is a must
nations shuttered, winters recriminated and regretted,
needless to say, placing a set of poems on an arbitrary continuum is equally absurd
to David or George or Paul, abdicating readerly duties, tentative and subject to revision, my
read drivel, pick lisps, address any bureaucratic issues,
wordless time, fixed eyes falter, generation delivered.
Like:
ReplyDelete-words that are simple, beautiful, contemplative, concrete, or whimsical
-Greek words
-words from favorite theologians/philosophers/poets/authors
-Puritan prayer book, although words from there are not used with as much ease
Dislike:
-political jargon
-business / legal jargon
-psychology jargon (even though I used it a little bit in my reading response!)
-obscenity for the sake of itself, used in a gratuitous, tasteless manner
-ironically, blog comment threads-- especially on popular blogs that attract a lot of idiots, and even more so on contemporary Christian / evangelical blogs.
-Jane Austen
-Feminist psychology, and I suspect, feminist theory in general
-Above all, I cannot imagine a more useless pursuit than celebrity gossip.
It's easier to point at what I don't like than at what I do like. So, this ended up being a hodgepodge of things I hate.
Cast off thy conditions of worth, foolish ones. If you always know the best thing to do, then get on with it and leave me alone. The world is full of rancorous opinions, and here, I'm giving you my unsolicited advice:
Autonomous automatons, unite.
Lead us not into Utopia, but into Egalia.
He's not in want of a wife, because, y'know, he's just not that into you.
You're a special, talented child. So special, all of you. You're gifted.
Get out of the rat race while you still can, kid. Don't climb the corporate ladder.
Trust only in your Roth-IRAs.
Breaking news! Bailout administrations on leave are taking taxpayer dollars into their own hands. Eight trillion billion zillion dollars in deficit. Woe to you. Stay tuned for more American auto company bashing. Smashing, crashing, lashing.
The government can read all your insipid text messages; somewhere in the Pentagon a computer exploded from the sheer stupidity of it all. The solution to bring down wiretapping, then, is to flood them with insightful missives at three times the rate you already do.