Michael Ray and Brendon Dorn

Words in and of themselves have no power unless they are presented in such a way as to convey a message. It is when they are viewed through a filter, whether the filter of technology or restructuring or manipulation, that they are given their power. Every time an envelope is pushed and a boundary broken, there becomes a new boundary.

Art and writing is a radical expression, not for the weak hearted or the drone. The man who stays in the confines of his box and keeps plucking the same note, keeps writing the same way without change, will not leave an impact on anyone. Pushing and changing and adapting to technology requires athletic stamina and commitment.

It is not enough to just experiment with form. One must master it, then move onto the next level. Communication is key. There is no check box for the writer--no do it this way and then you are done. Understand how to manipulate form. Find out what the ceiling is and then break through. Define what the future of writing and communication looks like for you.

Michael Ray and Kendal Kirby

One difference that sticks out in these newer writings versus some of the older is that they are more academic in nature and lack passion. When communicating how to break boundaries and to stray from form, it is somewhat contradictory because they themselves are restricted to a box. This makes the arguments less persuasive and less able to move the reader.

However, they contained facts and information that is necessary if we wish to learn the skills necessary to create passion, unconstricted writing. In that sense, I believe that the academic leads into the creative. Ultimately, it would probably be most effective to combine the information of these later pieces into the style and freedom-pushing mantras of the earlier, more passionate work.

Concrete Poetry, Technology and Words

Technology is an extension of the written word. Words become pictures. Pictures become words. Artists then create work through an extension of themselves. Technology is as much a tool as words themselves are.

Push the envelope of what words are "supposed" to be. There is no single message, no single image that conveys the mire in your head. But an image might give a piece of the picture and a word another. Stack them on top of each other; run them through your mind; add some words and more images. Is the picture more in focus? Can you see it?

Poetry is not a "beautified discourse." How can words alone, words that tear and bite and stack themselves up in codified piles of nonsense, possibly tackle beauty? Words can become a part of something more. Arrange your l e t t er s on a page a little different and see what happens. Are there messages you haven't seen? Are the words you're reading e v e n w h a t y o u t h i n k t h e y a r e ? Words are a tool. Can you see it?

Poems "formulate the appearance of reality" but are not reality. Typing my own name does not create a new me. How can I expect you to see who I am through two simple words. Michael Ray. It is too simple then. We need more to see. Structure can bind or can liberate. Technology can illuminate or distill the reality. All things are tools, for good or for bad. Learn to use them.

No one can make us stay within the verbal limits of a word. Within Mary is an army. Within Michael, He [can] claim...something more. Get on the road. Can you see it?

Edward is a drawer or a reward and is contained inside him. Pull words apart; play with them. Deconstruct and find the pieces. Put them back together in different orders. This is a game. Structure vs. Anarchy writing--which is better, more true? What game we are playing makes for different answers.

The pen is an extension of the hand is the extension of the mind is the extension of the heart and it beats. The television, the name called into the night, the scrawl of a child, blocks stacked on top of one another--all can take a single word and make it mean something more. And we should allow ourselves the liberty to do it. Push words off buildings. Stack them on top of one another. Strip off the extraneous. Let words live. See it.

Word Idea

SO after very little thought actually, I have chosen the word "blood." I don't plan on playing around in some macabre wonderland, but instead would like to trace the word through a Biblical eye.

For example, the blood of Isaac almost shed by Abraham's hand, the blood above the doors during the passover and the blood of Christ as He hung on the cross.

Ideally, I would integrate renaissance artworks into the animation and use them more or less as canvas to draw on top of and to have the word play across.

More Responding

As a poet, I tend to get more caught up in the perfect word to capture an idea that is playing around in my brain. What this series of poems helped me understand more clearly is that sometimes there is no perfect word, but by arranging the words on the page and structuring them in different ways, that the idea can be conveyed just as well if not better than words alone.

For example, in "A Plan for a Curriculum of the Soul," the structure to me reads almost like an equation. Poetry and math don't normally seem to fit together in this sense. Sure, there is the meter and line structure ideals, but this is different. What I learn then is that structure is not confined to any particular school of thought. We can pull pieces from math or science or anywhere and introduce them into writing. And somehow, the dullness of math translates into something interesting--it makes the piece come alive in a way that is new.

Lay all your ideas on the table. Plan out your poem. Pick the words. Then see how the idea can be twisted or distorted through structure to better convey your meaning or perhaps to distort it beyond recognition. Why be bound to structure? Poetry does not need to be ababcdcdefefgg nonsense. We can invent new ways to put our hearts on paper. We can create new revolutions and new styles. We can be more than poets, better communicators, and make the world listen.

Pool Poem

So I look at this and want to think of something profound, that jumps out and grabs me and sends me spiraling down the rabbit hole of geniusness. But I can't. It's a poem and the first few times I looked at it, it kind of bored me.

And then I saw it or I think I saw it. Poetry is often about rhythm and rhyme and meter. The Pool Poem reads more like a list, and so I assumed that there was no real rhythm here. But there it is, in the way each lines flows into the next by their placement on the page not necessarily because it's profound or deep.

Deep. Do I need to scratch my head at a poem and wonder if I'm one of the enlightened for it to be good? Or can the aesthetics of the way it is set on the page capture me as well. Obviously, most people shoot for both. Is it present here? Yeah, though it took me a while.

It is a list, of places and memories, of pools and other things that flicker through Murray's head as he's writing. It's like a freestyle pouring out of thought, just simple phrases that help him see those places and that time. And it's simple. One word. Two. Three. It doesn't take much but it still makes sense. The flow comes through because of how it's presented. Were this just a list, left indent and go!, it wouldn't work at all, any more than a grocery list would be considered art.

So then, if I can achieve rhythm not only by phrasing and words, but by placement, I have another tool to help me communicate with my audience. I can speak of rain and give the feeling through groups of words shaping raindrops. The possibilities go on, and the raindrops idea might be cliche but the idea works. Break it up. Let's let our words flow, let our sentences flow, let our thoughts flow. Then there is less lost in translation. Then my brain can spill more into yours. Maybe you don't want that, my brain is a mess. But we have options.

If anyone made a list of the places their mind travels through the course of a day and charted it on paper and arranged it in such a way that we could see all the interconnectivity and the flow and the person through the page, then we could touch consciousness within one another and come as close as possible to reading thoughts.

If we can list our memories and draw them out through words on a page and link them and color them with adjectives or any other tool we have, then we can better understand ourselves and where we come from and how and why we are what we are.

If I see this poem as just a list, if I look at it and say "Hey, a boring list of pool names," then I rob from myself and no one else. And honestly, I'm not as excited about Foghouse Nick and the Long Pool as I am about what the form can do for me.

The Last Y

Break Every Rule and Rant

Is a war against the confines placed on the imagination the same as a war against the constructs of writing, thoughts, prose? I think we tie together the two.

I think that where "Rant" leaves us, "Break Every Rule" picks up. It is not enough to let your imagination loose, to create your own little world. The problem is the word little.

Do we want to be little? Do we feel that this war is only a war for ourselves? It is not enough to constrain ourselves to only ourselves. When we push further, we will see that pushing down the barriers of our imagination and tapping into the stream that is welled within us is one door. Walking through it is freedom and the country before you is the rest of the world, stuck behind their own little doors.

What to do then. "Break Every Rule" seems to encourage us to knock on other doors. Behind each door is a person in bondage. And we don't knock politely if we want them to answer. We pound on the door, disrupt our "social contracts." At stake is freedom.

If I am free, do I not want everyone else to experience the same? If I delight in my freedom, does it not make sense that I want to share it?

First my imagination, then your imagination. I want to tap into your mind, thoughts, life and I can see how that seems intrusive. But if we are one, if this a war of the worlds, if language is capable of utopia, then part of me is is in bondage as long as anyone wears chains.

Imagination loosed, then loose the filter. I will not be watered down. I will be heard. Not one door opens and another one closes, one door opens and other doors follow. Knock them off their hinges.

Y...Hebrew and Middle English

Maso-Break every rule

Playing by the rules keeps us in the box. And since as people we are by nature, out of the box, why should we communicate as if the only interesting things about us are that which fit in the box? Are we not more than the constructs, the form, the function, the little world set by social norms? Do we have to play by the rules, live in the center not on the edge and be constantly understood only by the piece of us that fits in the norms?

Or are we more and can we be more?

If we are breaking function, breaking rules, letting it all slip aside, are we condemning ourselves to the fringe...are artists and geniuses appreciated in their time...are we going to be left behind if we break the rules?

Will we be concerned visionaries or mad men? Chain-breakers or lazy bastards? Are we afraid to explain the area outside of the boc, outside of our home, over the fence and down the street and into blackest night?

We stay in form because it is the easiest way, not because it is the best. The box has a roaring fire in the middle that we cuddle up in front of. Lack of form is a wall of ice. People know how to see in our box. Lack of rules comes with blinders.

The box is a prison, a jailer, a regime and a madness infecting. Form is shadows and mirrors that lie and the fire is facade. Brilliance is beyond the madness, beyond the ice, break through it, live through it and make it what you will. Maybe you will fall off the earth, maybe be cast into a corner, spat upon and die in a twisted pile of yourself. But you are yourself, not a man in a box, not a woman in bondage, not a life never lived

Form

Form is constraint. If everything is, by nature, chaotic and haphazard, then any attempt to constrain it is form. In this case, however, constraint is not a bad thing. To properly communicate chaos, that is, to present it in a way that others are able to register and understand it, form is key. It is to toss chaos through a pre-assigned filter. The rules are there and we know them. It can be difficult to toss our chaos through the filter, kind of a wood chipper exercise that is both cathartic and heart-breaking. But in the end, there is form.

Form is a social construct. We need to communicate with one another to fill some void within ourselves and form gives us one of the tools needed to do that. In the end, this conformity can strip away some of the message we intended to give. The idea in my head is never perfectly the idea that ends up on paper; something is lost in the translation. But if the idea remains only in my head, it is unable to grow, to bounce off other ideas, to inspire others in any form or to stir the emotions it has stirred in me. This is a social norm that is necessary. Without it, we are many. With it, we can become one.

The Letter Y

The letter

y carries for me the sense of enigma and, when I'm being all math-nerdy, of variance.

y is a question, a place-holder and unlike its often-time associates, Wh,

y can stand alone without looking the fool.

y takes the shape of a tobaggon,

flying down a hill in winter,

the rider half blown back by the wind

and clinging for dear life.

y is a sentence in itself, no punctuation needed

y is a philosophy, a lifestyle, a pursuit.

y needs no introduction, lives in the mouth of every child and gone unanswered,

y confuses, frustrates and sends grown men on adventures.

y is a myth and a mystery,

a character always remains,

a thought in every mind,

a friend in every life.