Conceptual Poetry

Samhain                                                                         Thanksgiving Moon

if every word spoken in new york city daily
were somehow to materialize as a snowflake,
each day there would be a blizzard.

Kenneth Goldsmith, Soliloquy.  Postscript

 

The last week of ModPo.  The conceptual poets.  The book from which the quote above comes, Soliloquy, is every word the poet, Kenneth Goldsmith, spoke in a whole week.  He wore a microphone, recorded his speech, then sat down and transcribed it.  A lot of work.  Not as much work, however, as another work of his, Day, in which he transcribed every word in one day’s New York Times.  A 1,000 page book.

Christian Bok, a Canadian poet, took seven years to complete his project, Euonia.  In Euonia he writes 5 chapters, each of which had to have a banquet, an orgy, a feast, a voyage, refer to the act of writing and, most improbably, use only words containing only one vowel, the same vowel, 98% of those words available.  There is a bit more to Euonia, which means beautiful thinking and is the shortest word in the English language that uses all the vowels.

These are highwire acts of virtuosity and the real creative act is in the concept, especially in Goldsmith.  The concept–what would every word in one edition of the New York Times look like transcribed into a linear text and bound in a book look like?–was the creative moment.  The act of fulfillment, the days and weeks of transcription, is either non creative or uncreative.

Interesting stuff.  I’m more with this than I was with the Chance poets of last week.