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Thursday, January 15, 2009
Responses to Week 2 Readings
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FYI, here is what poet Ron Silliman said about Pcoet in his introduction to Melnick's A Pin's Fee (1988?):
ReplyDeletePcoet’s (G.A.W.K, 1975) constructed language...again reveals the materiality of the signifier as a mask, only this time with language itself lurking underneath the zaum text. As a critique of sense, Pcoet is closer to Joyce’s later prose in its accumulation of linguistic strata than it is to the talking-in-tongues automatic writing of the Russian futurists. Even in the heady period of language poetry’s heroic period of the early 1970s, Pcoet proved an extraordinary event, opening a wide realm of possibility to other poets, demonstrating that a work that went far beyond what most readers’ considered language could still be writerly, witty and even beautiful.
A quick note, too, on Levinas's idea of the distinction between "the said" and "the saying," which he uses but does not define in his essay. In a nutshell, the said is any utterance or writing, including it's system or rules, grammar, vocabulary, connotation, etc. The saying, on the other hand, is beyond the said but dependent upon the said--like the other side of a coin. However, the saying cannot be said. It's only message, if one can be so bold as to translate it, would be that "we are ethically obligated to the other." The saying says only that we are always already in relation to others. It is this saying that Levinas aligns with the poetic in his essay on Blanchot.
ReplyDeleteReading Melnick for me was like watching a TV static with occasional fragments of dialogue buzzing through. His arrangement of... units? linguistic symbols? words? on the page was intriguing, particularly as "Pcoet" drew to a close. In one sense, I think Melnick's work does enact Levinas's essay by preventing language from carrying a definite meaning, freeing language from the perceived burden of communication, permitting the "saying" to seep through onto the page. In another sense, though, I think Melnick goes beyond Levinas's essay. Levinas speaks of "An eternal present, an eternity of tautology or of iteration" (154), and I wondered as I read Melnick how his use of linguistic markers could be said to carry tautology or iteration. It seems to me that some sort of common understood communication, even if contradictory, is necessary for Levinas's interplay of paradox and contradiction. By refusing, for the most part, to use recognizable diction, Melnick creates something that is only barely the iteration of connotation and association. The contradictions created by Levinas's juxtapositions seem to be filtered out of Melnick's work, only a flicker.
ReplyDeletemelnick does not age with time. i am convinced that he actually wrote a bunch of poems, but all the letters out of each word in each poem, put them all in front of a fan, and picked them up starting with the closest scraps of paper to the fan. utter nonsense in my opinion. i understand the task of attempting to surpass language by putting it in the unemployment line but i feel like this does not succeed. indeed, as evelyn said, he does do a fair job of saying without having the said. but i feel as if this carries no purpose with it. so we are aware of the relation of language. every word or letter in anything allows us that awareness. if the saying is dependent upon the said, then i feel like melnick fails, for indeed there is nothing that is said.
ReplyDeleteLevinas quotes Blanchot’s text: “she gave the impression, when she spoke, of being unable to connect words to the richness of a prior language. The were without history, without the links to a common past, unrelated even to her own life or indeed the life of anyone”(157). Is this true of Melnick’s words in Pcoet? I don’t think so.
ReplyDeleteIn Pcoet, some of the made-up words still closely resemble real words, and I know that I at least tried to identify what real words they were base off of. I mean, the title of the poem itself is Pcoet. Even when faced with gibberish, we still seek one meaning for a word. Language isn’t freed from the stranglehold of patriarchal definitions. We still attempt to make it “closed like a bedroom”(Levinas 154).
However, is it possible for language to offer an exit out of philosophy if it has no basis whatsoever in the past or in reality? Is it necessary for letters themselves to be torn apart? By using the alphabet itself, isn’t he still working within a system closed off by definitions and time? Is it even possible to write a poem that transcends all this?
Even though this is my second time tackling "Servant and her Master", I still had a really hard time trying to pick it apart, and I feel like maybe that's part of the point of the essay. The "Other," the unsaid/ unsayable, is impenetrable by its very nature, and so it makes sense that any writing that attempts to discuss the Other will be somewhat impenetrable as well. Pcoet, to me, is in that same tradition, but is somewhat less useful.
ReplyDeleteWhen reading Pcoet, I can understand how it hints at the Other, but still exists in the framework of the said, which is a problem for me. I would read parts of it aloud (sort of) because Melnick put down rhythmic or at least pacing elements through spacing the words out on the page. The book is conveniently, traditionally broken up into either stanzas or separate poems, whichever. My point is that Pcoet is seemingly trying to say the unsayable not only through content (by using the alphabet and mimicking words but ultimately making no sense), but also through form. Trying to bridge the gap, maybe. I just don't think Melnick gets at the Other well enough. His work is just mildly confusing. There's meant to be something horrible about the Other, something terrifying in how far beyond us it is. It should be somehow overwhelming, but Melnick's work seems very contained.
First, I would like to talk a little about my emotional response to Pcoet. At the end of the reading I felt frustrated and distrustful of it. I intellectually gravitate to written language as code for meaning, no matter its apparent arrangement. I half-heartedly tried to "decode" Pcoet, but was not aggressive about it at all because I thought, "What if there is nothing to decode? What if I am being made a fool of for trying to find something clearly not there? Is that what the poet is trying to say about language?" So I ended up waffling and not doing much at all except stare at it and try to pick out some sort of visual rhythm (Which is still a form of decoding, methinks. Alas!).
ReplyDeleteLooking at Pcoet in relation to The Servant and Her Master, I tend to keep getting caught up in the idea of the "said" and the "saying". I disagree with Russ and his contention that nothing of value is said, and thus Melnick fails. Evelyn mentioned that she thought Pcoet succeeded in freeing language from the burden of communication, and yet from my point of view it all the meaning I imposed on it meant that it was not free of that burden, thus demonstrating an inescapable boundary of language. To me, this is piece is valuable, because, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, it says something because it says nothing.
In her last paragraph Claire ruminated on the boundaries of language. She asked if it was even possible for language to offer an exit out of philosophy. In my opinion, the answer is no.
That is all.
-Strix
Pcoet helped me to recall a very basic concept I learned in cognitive psychology, about how your brain stores a vast network of concepts called "schemata" by which you recognize and interpret everything. Recognition only occurs through the use of various schemata, and Pcoet recombines schemata in unusual ways (much like the way it treats our alphabet), but it never gives us enough of a foothold for true recognition. Few have observed the dark side of the moon, and few are comfortable with the "unsayable" that resides outside of language, but none can live there. I hadn't consciously thought about schemata since taking that class last spring, but I felt them at work as I read Pcoet, especially with the almost-words: I saw real English words for a split second before realizing that they were one or two letters off. Pcoet called subconscious assumptions to my awareness and forced me to abandon them. Punctuation might not mean what it means in English; in Greek a semicolon means a question mark.
ReplyDeleteTo someone who has fluent working knowledge of several different languages, would Pcoet be more confusing, or less? When I found something that made sense to me in Greek (sort of), I couldn't help translating: "kai kai kai kai kai kai aki kai" = "and and and and and and nad and" (#77). Of course, it doesn't make much more sense this way, but I was happy to have found it anyway.
Levinas introduces a terrifying black hole of monotony: "of the identical beginning to proliferate like a cancerous cell producing nothing other than repetition and tautology" (152). I thought reading Pcoet would feel like this, but it probably isn't capable of tautology, as Evelyn said. I'll admit I don't understand Levinas at all--in fact, I might "understand" Melnick better-- but I think of Melnick's work as cancerous cell mutations of real words.
Although, for the sake of this assignment, I attempted to engage the poem in the typical dominant and condescending language of criticism / interpretation, the poem did provide a welcome and unexpected exit from this detached, droll examination of the text. (So it freed me in my method of interpretation, but not from the act of interpretation itself; it's impossible not to try to interpret Pcoet, even if you end up dismissing it as an exercise in futility. You must have done some interpretation even to reach that conclusion.) I can't imagine that Melnick took himself too seriously as he wrote this, because it evokes a sense of playfulness. Children love to make up secret languages, and some of us never grow out of that. I really hope that Melnick, at the very least, included some inside jokes in this text; or maybe, as Whitney suggested, Pcoet is a joke at everyone else's expense, poking fun at us for trying to find meanings in it. I'm content to play along, though. Reading Melnick's work gives me permission to spawn more "nonsense" instead of trying to provide a formal, critical interpretation; it seems that one reaction is just as legitimate as the other. I enjoyed #67, which said only, "foretoid." I thought, "Foretold! Foretold a toad. Toyed."
I just had to comment really quickly on Crystal's observation of the "kai kai kai kai kai kai aki kai" thing.
ReplyDeleteWhile she associated it with the Greek word for "and", I associated it with the Japanese onomatopoeia for evil laughter (not even the regular kind of laughter), which usually goes something like "kei kei kei".
However, even though I speak Spanish, nothing in particular stuck out to me in that language, and I gleaned no extra meaning via that route.
I think knowing multiple languages would add layers of interpretation for people that would like to to take Pcoet seriously. But for those like Cryastl--and I'm beginning to lean her way--it would just make the text more fun.
in response to this "strix" character. i say that i feel that melnick fails. perhaps i should clarify myself a bit more. there is much talk of language trying to free itself from having to communicate. why? why are we trying to do this? if language loses its communicative power, of what use is it? i see language as a highly useful tool. why are we trying to take that away from it? if i have a hammer but decide to never use it for hammering, and instead to try to appreciate it within itself, then i have taken away something of value from it. never again will i use it, or will it have any value or meaning to me. lets not strip language of its most powerful ability, communication. heidegger will back me up on this when we read his essay. i feel like melnick fails because he takes letters and words too far from the boundaries of communication and thus they become useless.
ReplyDeleteI read this poem as a reflection on the divine, and it starts with the very first signifier in the poem, "thoeisu", as well as the second "thoiea." The whole thing reads like a secret, sacred language known only to some coterie of high priests. #43 (55) begins with "god", ends with "peoticz", or poeticize. Thematically this poem deals with the relationship between deity and humanity. Variations on the root "theo-" pervade this text, though few of them are "real" words. It continues in #44, 50, 57,. Perhaps he is gesturing at the ineffable alterity Levinas talks about.
ReplyDelete"This language of poetry becomes...a language which contradicts itself" (Levinas, 156)
ReplyDelete"By using the alphabet itself, isn’t he still working within a system closed off by definitions and time? Is it even possible to write a poem that transcends all this?" (Claire, above)
I think if you assume that to "escape" (and I'm still unpacking what that means) it is necessary to shed anything that even hints at meaning by using the base structures of language (being created to convey meaning), then Claire's questions are valid. But the fact that Blanchot himself doesn't seem to have discarded conventional language outright, from what Levinas quotes, I wonder if that's not what he meant. (Let me say that this is hard to understand without having read the text that Levinas refers to.)
But Melnick's poetry IS at least contradictory, as Levinas says characterizes poetic language, in using the structures of languages but making meaning less important (or trying to abandon it). "Affirmation is followed...by its negation." I think perhaps Melnick's teasing embodies this.
Pcoet is haunting me...I had a dream in which I could read it like plain English, and this somehow caused me to reach Nirvana.
ReplyDeleteI think I had the dream because I was thinking about Pcoet in relation the other and values we were talking about in class. One of my core beliefs, probably the foundation of my other values, is that the Universe has its own rhythm, reasoning, and timing. While we can't understand or exactly match the Universe, we can be at our best when we yield to and respect its power, I feel that Pcoet is something like this idea. There is a rhythm and pattern, but the rest is indecipherable to us. All we know is that it must serve a purpose and mean something. I would say that man's relationship with the Universe is the same way. Which, to me, implies that Pcoet is as close to harnessing the beauty, power, and unknowingness of the Universe as we may ever come.
From Renata:
ReplyDeleteMelnick's Pcoet somehow enacts Levinas' idea that poetry liberates language from repeating itself :poetic language breaks through the wall of repetition, Levinas says.
Melnick's language seems to appropriate words from living and dead languages: grammatical endings, forms of invocation which look feel like Roman oratorical addresses, and borrows from different grammatical structures and mixes them all together.
A form of madness but an avoidance of repetitions. On p. 155 of his essay, Levinas comments: Reflection brings to the surface the old stones of the foundation and mixes them in with the things of the moment. I ask myself what is the result of this process?
The reading of Melnick's work shows an erosion of what can be said, even when using those 'stones of the foundations.' At the end he is left with "butterflies free from the chrysalises" p. 155 " which are the living words flying freely on the page and away from the page. At the end of the book there's a total absence of words which is the inability to say anything or the freedom of life to move on.
As to my Poetic Statement, there is one more goal I have in mind - but vaguely - to compose a manuscript with a priori idea of where I want to go.