Post deconstructionism

Poem for the week, 16 January 2023

 

 

 

 

 

Post deconstructionism

Our landscape has changed.
Spaceland, faceland, wasteland, what you will.

The users wtf and lol in the distance,
a gurning orgy of burning thesauri;
a lethal injection of terse free verse.

The others --
there's no sound of them
on this blasted derivative heath.

Meanwhile,
a thousand cottage industries
forge endless aphorisms;
embryo memes in screaming template font,

post after post after post,
gathering virtual dust on virtual walls.
Three likes.

Other poetry by this author:

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

See more at http://brucemarsland.com 

A rondeau for Ukraine

Poem for the week, 4 December 2022

 

 

 

 

A rondeau for Ukraine
an entry for the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, September 2022
after ‘Take Heart’ by Bonnie Riedinger
and in homage to ‘In Flanders Fields’ by John McCrae

A Rorschach map that bleeds with yellow blood
drenches the flag where seeping borders could
turn poppies into blue, a weeping sky
inverted in distress; no norms apply
in murder harvested from brotherhood.

The sea and tears and gore mix in a flood
of fiery images by drones of mud,
all blurred, all smudged. You might as well tie-dye
a Rorschach map.

But clearing out the sulphur and the crud,
restored integrity can point to good,
a word the world’s forgotten in the lies
fed to us daily, blinding all our eyes.
Slava Ukraini. Show honesty withstood
a Rorschach map.

Other poetry by this author:

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

The awkward geometry of a warming oblate spheroid

 

My latest poetry pamphlet is available now.

 

Get some words and ideas for a climate protest or a climate rally!  

The awkward geometry of a warming oblate spheroid is about climate change. The oblate spheroid is, of course, the Planet Earth. 

 

 

The movement through the various forms in this sequence of poems can be interpreted to echo the disruption caused by catastrophic climate events, as the shape changes from the formal and lyrical, to free verse, concrete poetry, and ultimately a parody of all that has been lost.

Click here for details.

Personality quiz

 

Author website

 "Quomondo sedet sola civitas. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited 

Maybe this quotation should be at the top of every author website.

Nevertheless, every author training course everywhere says every author should have a website, so at last, A Bit of Bruce proudly presents ... The Author Website!

For the manually inclined, just type brucemarsland.com into that bar at the top of your screen, and press enter.

For the mousers, click the image.  You know the drill.

We are a writer

It's nice to be noticed, and this week sees yours truly given a profile piece, including an interview and a selection of poetry, as the featured Monday Writer in Sentinel Literary Quarterly.

Publishing a book is often compared to giving creative birth, so receiving just a little recognition of one's bookbabies ... well, it gives one just a slightly warm glow inside.

Read the full profile piece here.

Get copies of the poetry books here.

Quarantining: Poems in the Time of Corona

Those Footsteps Behind: Around the World in 50 Poems

Magnetic Resonance Imaging 

A post about a feed about a blog

A bit of a bit of Bruce's poetry is for sale!

Yes, there are now two ways to own your very own bit of a bit of Bruce.

Option 1: Amazon

My very own piece of Amazon virtual real estate, in the form of an author page, is up and running.  It includes a feed from this blog, so don't get lost in the ol' click to infinity there.  Just choose a book and buy it.  Simple.

Option 2: Lulu

Or, if you're more of a kind of indy type of person who prefers to go to the authentic source, the alternative kicks involve heading over to my *other* author page on Lulu.  Get the feed direct from the horse's mouth, so to speak.  Hipster heaven.

Either way.  Hey.  Go crazy.

Quarantining: Poems in the Time of Corona

A collection of Poems in the Time of Corona, from this blog, is now available in a printed collector's edition.

Order and find out more at Lulu:
Quarantining: Poems in the Time of Corona

Support a poet. Buy a book.
Quarantining: poems in the time of Corona
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Reality fractures

Poems in the time of Corona

Reality fractures

                      I shower

                      and switch on the news.

A virus is spreading,
they say.

                      My coffee tastes good;
                      it's a fine day to write a poem.

You must stay at home,
they say.

                      It'll be a poignant piece
                      about a dog who passed away.

We have no supplies,
they say.

                      No, maybe that's too sad;
                      I'll be surprisingly funny in verse.

The doctors are sick,
they say.

                      A pangolin would be novel;
                      koalas are chic these days.

There's no time to bury the dead,
they say.

                      So now I'm searching
                      for a rhyme for marsupial.




Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Brian Patten read a poem of mine

Poems in the time of Corona

Brian Patten read a poem of mine

The universe is upside-down;
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.

He may have said some words aloud
or clicked delete without a thought.
It's all the same.
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.

He wouldn't recognise my name;
it's likely that we'll never meet.
It's of no account.
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.

Now when the undertakers come
for an epitaph to adorn my tomb,
it's here and done:
Brian Patten read a poem of mine.



Support a poet. Buy a book.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging: lyrics of love and loss
Those Footsteps Behind: around the world in 50 poems

Cascading over the edge of reason

An illustrated reading of an extract from Those Footsteps Behind: Around the World in 50 Poems.

The route to the future lies through the past

A reading of an extract from Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

This poem was first performed in 2009 by Fabien Rapin as part of 'Poetry & Jazz' by the Finn-Brit Players, at Arkadia International Bookshop in Helsinki, Finland.

Chasing lions in our pyjamas

An illustrated reading of an extract from Those Footsteps Behind.

Imaging and footsteps

At first glance, the two volumes of poetry that I have recently self-published may not appear to be very closely connected.  They are, however, conceived as different sides of the same coin. To put it another way, Magnetic Resonance Imaging is the yin to the yang of Those Footsteps Behind.



Some of the material in Magnetic Resonance Imaging may be familiar to readers of this blog.  At a personal level, it represents "the Finland years" and was mostly written in the period 2005-2009.  The themes of pain and loss play a large role, whether physically or emotionally.  Moreover, the point of view is very much an inwardly directed gaze.  The intention is that this is enhanced by the use of the structure of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, as the music bounces around in the writer's mind.

On the other hand, the material in Those Footsteps Behind was, in chronological terms, written later. In this case, the writing represents the period 2012-2016. However, this is not necessarily synchronous with the time at which any events represented in the work took place.

The overarching themes now have become travel and time, and the point of view has become more outwardly focused. On the surface, the work is possibly more descriptive of physical landscapes than of emotional ones. The use of illustrative photographs, I hope, enhances this type of imagery. However, the poems in this case are intended to initiate at least some resonance in linking the concrete world of the traveller's footsteps to the intangible world of the traveller's experience.  Occasional echoes from other past and future travellers arise here and there to further muddy the mix.

The reader may choose to view the connections in different ways, of course: maybe not just inward-looking and outward-looking, but possibly pain and recovery, or shade and light.  Once beyond the writer's reach, words take on their own lives in a reader's hands, after all.  However, these two volumes will remain in the writer's mind as, if not twins, at least siblings.

"if they photographed my head they'd probably see her.
she's always there"
(Magnetic Resonance Imaging)

"life for us from this point on
means chasing lions in our pyjamas."
(Those Footsteps Behind)

Now in print

Self-publishing seems to be a thing now.  Maybe 'twas ever thus.  It's vanity press, of course. ("Vanity of vanities, all is vanity", to quote Evelyn Waugh; although he had a publisher, so he was obviously talking about something else. Ah, "Quomodo sedet sola civitas".)

Nevertheless, we must keep up with the Joneses, even if the Waughs are out of reach.

Here's a brief update.

*New* Those Footsteps Behind: Illustrated Poems of Travel.
Available in print from Lulu.  Submitted for distribution through Amazon (forthcoming).

Magnetic Resonance Imaging: A Poetry Collection.
Available in print from Amazon.

A Kick up the Balkans: A Diary of a Year of Change.  First published on this blog, and now available in print or for Kindle from Amazon.

Experimenting with poetry, part 2

It has been some time since I posted the first part of my socio-poetic experiment, attempting to analyse the poetry that appeals to the contemporary online market.  I have now expanded my 'research' sufficiently to update my findings.  Once more, I note that this is purely subjective, with no scientific or statistical validity.

The first expansion of the scope of my experiment has been to include online magazines and reviews, as well as online competitions.  The second and possibly more significant expansion has been to probe the trends in the UK, as well as in the USA.  In expanding like this, I have had a handful of publication successes (more on that below).

My two main sources of input for my entirely subjective conclusions have been: 1) comparisons of winning or published work with work that I know was not successful, such as that which I submitted myself; and 2) where available, published feedback from judges or editors, although this is too rarely available and tends to be fairly generic in nature.

I will jump straight into my impressions at this stage.  These may, of course, change or continue to develop over time.

1. For the United States, I have strengthened a couple of my original opinions.

• The predominant point of view taken in competitively successful poems is first person. I have little way of knowing, of course, if this use of 'I' is mostly truthfully autobiographical, or if first person is simply used as a technique to make the content appear more intimate or more real.
• Whereas I noted last time the overwhelming use of grammatically standard prose, formatted into the appearance of poetry, I would now take this idea further.  Beyond the prose poem, it seems to me that online poetry has been largely taken over by flash fiction.  Given the preference for the use of the first person, this often leads to the surface appearance of a textually complex journal entry, sometimes confessional but more likely describing an event or another person seen though the author's eyes.  I have come to think of this as 'reality poetry', if narrative in form; or as 'show-and-tell poetry', if it is more condensed as a scene or character sketch.  
• (At this point, I should note that these principles often do not hold true for poetry that reaches mainstream book form, of the sort that you might find on the very limited poetry shelf of an actual brick-and-mortar bookshop.  In these cases, the publishers or editors seem to work with different criteria, but I am not attempting to analyse those here.)
• Another apparent ingredient for success is the shock of the new or the weird. A weirdness in language use or a weirdness in turn of events, for example, seems sometimes to be enough to merit publication.  There seems occasionally to be the view that if the narrative of a poem is wrapped in unfamiliar packaging, such as in phrasing, contextual positioning, or metaphor, then the whole work must have intrinsic value.
• Beyond general online poetry competitions and generic online poetry publications, where an unfriendly characterisation of many successful entries may be 'soap opera in poetic form', successful submissions to topic-based online publications, such as for politics, which is currently a hot theme, also tend to follow the principles above: first person, vers libre-cum-flash fiction, with an element of weird.

2. For the United Kingdom, I have started to form separate opinions.

• Successful entries in general online poetry competitions tend to be thematically diverse, encompassing wider social issues more often than in the USA.  It is notable that the one success that I have had in an open UK competition was political in content, whereas in the USA (so far), this theme has only been taken up in places that are specifically looking for it.
• There is more of a focus on what you might call poetic stylistics.  While free verse remains very much in pole position, some winners that I have seen in general poetry competitions have taken quite strict forms in terms of rhythm or, less frequently, rhyme.  One open competition that I entered was even won by a sonnet, which I could not see happening in the current poetic climate in the USA, other than in a competition specifically for classical forms.  
• Within this, however, the preference for a first person point of view seems to be similar to that in the USA.
• The key point in the UK seems to be uniqueness: a unique point of view or a previously unconsidered setting in history or society, for example.  This is similar to, but different from, the weirdness that seems to be sought in the USA. Within the terms of this comparison, I would describe uniqueness as having less of a shock factor than weirdness, and more of a sense of exploration and discovery.

3. Finally, I have to appraise critically my own sense of what is 'good poetry'.

• I have had four pieces published online in just over a year: one in the UK and three in the USA. Links to these are here (UK), here (two poems in one link), and here.  (Note the use of the first person in all four published pieces.)  This is not a huge number, so I obviously have some way to go in being able to craft something that is successful. However, ...
• I have submitted poems that I know to be inconsistent in quality.  Let's say that I mentally grade my poems as A, B, C, or Fail.  Contrary to the popular and predictable notion that you should only ever submit your best work, I have experimented by submitting poems from all four of these grades.  Unsurprisingly, all the poems in my self-defined grade of Fail have failed.  More surprisingly, all the poems in my self-defined grade of A have also failed.  Of my four publication successes, three have been from my own grade B, and one has been from my own grade C.  (I won't reveal which one of the above I consider to merit only C.)
• This leads me to conclude that my own sense of quality for a poem is somewhat out of whack with that of many judges and editors.  So the big question remains: do I try to work to their (probably more professional) standards, or do I try to remain truthful to my own educated but fallible sense of quality?

Based on all this fluff and supposition, there are a couple of hypotheses that I will take forward as I continue with this project:

Hypothesis 1, if you will, is that my style is overly 'poetic' for the US market.  Part of my next step may be to experiment with a style that you might term the 'flash fiction poem'.

Hypothesis 2 is that my content is insufficiently unique for the UK market.  This is less easy to test as a hypothesis, because conjuring uniqueness in poetry is not a simple act.  Heck, you might even consider it to be art!

However, what is life without a challenge?  Onward....

A socio-poetic experiment

I have just completed Part 1 of an informal, personal, literary experiment.  It has absolutely no quantitative scientific validity, but this is a blog not a thesis, OK?

I identified an open poetry competition (that I will not name here) that allows for rankings and feedback by the contributing writers.  It is largely American (more on that later), and my expectation is that many of the contributors will not be formal judges of competitions and will not be creative writing, language, or literature professors.

I then submitted two different styles of competition entries: one more formal in a classical or quasi-classical manner, and one more modern in form but still with lyrical overtones.  Each 'style' included poems with different approaches, such as in person and subject-matter.  I assume fairly even writing competence across the material.

Now, before defining Part 2 of my experiment, I attempt some rudimentary analysis of my initial impressions.

1. The 'classical' and 'modern' samples both averaged out with similar rankings, but they varied in how they got there.  Whereas the 'modern' was consistently rated on the low side of average, the 'classical' achieved individual scores at the extremes - some people rated these forms very highly, others very poorly.  The comments reveal that the choice of style was a clear factor in these ranking decisions.  There are several references to the 'classical' as being a surprising mode of expression, with many positive notes from that. On the other side of the coin, the following comment stands out as a summary of several of the negative views: "If you were not rhyming you could have found a more honest and genuine way to express something."  As far as the 'modern' is concerned, the most negative aspects are perhaps characterised in this comment: "I thought it all too modern for my liking ... the many modern poems that remain are not to my taste."

It might be tempting to deduce from this that a better-executed classical entry might catch the eye of those who like the form while winning over some of the doubters.  However, the highest-ranked work in the competition tended largely to be a style that I did not touch in my entries: I would classify it broadly as the modern non-lyrical.  Much of the winning poetry appears, in terms of bare syntax, to be largely grammatically standard prose that has been formatted to have the visual form of poetry. This syntactic view ignores other significant elements of prosody, such as choice of vocabulary, but the pattern is so prevalent that it is worth noting. A comment on my own 'modern' entry highlights how the dominant style is somehow seen as the default: "in one of the poems you choose not to capitalize the beginning of each line. This lets me know that you understand to use proper grammar."

2. In both samples, person was important in achieving positive feedback. Poems written as 'I' gained a much more sympathetic hearing in both 'classical' and 'modern' mode.  Conversely, the reaction to work that utilised the second-person 'you' was comparatively defensive, and the material was open to being perceived as "condescending" in a way that did not seem to arise for similar subject-matter in the first and third person. Clearly, 'you' was uncomfortable for readers, over and above the other elements of style.

3. Alongside the preference for first-person statements, there was a clear leaning in comments on both the 'classical' and 'modern' samples towards subject-matter that could be categorised as personal history.  Subject-matter that could be described as 'outside world descriptive' was less keenly welcomed.  The worst rankings and feedback were reserved for subject-matter that could be viewed as political or philosophical. One comment, "This is not really a poem. It's opinion", acts as limited evidence that this ranking of subject-matter is a conscious choice for some.  (One exception to this observation seems to be the military-patriotic theme, which sometimes appears high up in the overall rankings.)

In terms of the subject-matter in relation to the style, there was a clear and voiced difficulty in accepting contemporary themes and vocabulary when presented within a poem written in a classical style.  The readers on these occasions seemed to prefer the subject-matter and style to come as a package: modern style for contemporary themes, with classical style accepted for feelings and attitudes placed somehow outside a time frame.

4.  Beyond the limited scope of this initial analysis, some other areas jump out as being ripe for exploration. Winning entries clearly exhibited, within their sentence syntax, the use of more complex vocabulary, particularly in the choice of adjectives, as well as frequent use of a number of fairly standard literary devices, such as simile. This is not surprising, maybe, but is certainly open to deeper analysis.

In summary, I can make three tentative conclusions about the ways in which I might improve my overall ranking in this particular forum for competitive poetry:

• the use of an adjective-rich prose style that excludes rhyme and metre
• a preference for first person over third person, avoiding second person altogether
• the use of personal and specific family and relationship events, avoiding 'world themes'

Having come to this point, I now face a more existential question. Namely, is this what I want to write? My preference tends to be for writing that I can read in my mind as a performance.  This often means rhythms and word-play, with things that don't achieve this being scrapped or restructured. On top of that, I recently picked up a pamphlet of contemporary British poetry, which at first glance is very different from the winners in this (possibly not entirely representative) American competition. The British poems contain more shorter lines that 'bend' grammatical correctness, more 'outside world descriptive' subject-matter, and a stronger rhythmic presence.  So now I face a decision on Part 2 of my experiment.

The choices, as I see them, are to:
a. Change my style of writing, to pursue a technical exercise in creating a 'winning poem'.
b. Strengthen my existing style of writing to try to achieve a break-through in that voice, despite feedback comments that suggest that it's the style that is the problem.
c. Change the audience, and experiment in a British competition using the material recently rejected in the American competition (or maybe just in a different American competition).

I will ponder. One day, maybe I'll let you know what I decide.

For words' sake

you you a the he he his but for as can needs needs give paying know work tools craftsman well

Roll up, roll up! Here they are, ladies and gentlemen! Just what you've been waiting for! Twenty lovingly crafted words that'll fit neatly into a readily preconcepted and grammatical sentence. I'll even throw in the necessary punctuation for free: , . ,
Syntax not provided. Capitalisation negotiated as layout. Extra charges apply.

Yes, you see. Because after (as my New Zealand immigration official put it) "going all over the place", I've decided to see if I can do some "writing all over the place" as well. Heck, I'm going to get £150 for one job, so I must be a professional, right?

So there I was. Looking at these submission guidelines for this online magazine, see. And I did a bit of thinking. And I looked at the article length what they was looking for, like. And I looked at the pay what they was offering, you know. And I thinks to myself ... why, I thinks, that's a good three (euro)cents per word, that is. So I thinks, well, if I can come up with twenty good words, like I have just there at the start, well, that's about forty minutes worth of rent on my flat. Innit?

So there they are. Twenty shiny lexical items - not all different, it's true, but then bricks don't look too much different from each other neither, if you get my drift - and they're going to keep my head and DVD collection dry for the best part of an hour, right? That must be a good deal.

Oh hell, I can't keep this up. [Insert actress/bishop joke? - ed.]

The point being, you see, what's a word worth?

As an aside, and for reasons that I won't go into right now, I've also recently become the loving owner of the domain name luv-u-2.com, like what they have on them internets. Unfortunately it's worth next to nothing, what with hyphens and numerals being, apparently, the linguistic equivalent of mould when it comes to virtual real estate. But maybe someone will come along who wants to do it up and make it look nice. You never know.

Aha! Back to the main plot. Location, location, location! It's not the word. It's where the word is that matters. Luv is fine, but its flatmates bring down the neighbourhood.

And while I'm on this internet stuff: why, everybody's at it, ain't they? Everybody's bleedin' writing stuff. Our whole wwworld is swimming with words and sayings and sentences and all sorts. Some of it right shoddy material, too, I can tell you. But it's all there.

Talk about market saturation! Everybody's their own bleedin' columnist these days! And here I am adding to the pile. For free, dammit!!!

But if you can't beat 'em....

Roll up, roll up! Buy all twenty words and I'll knock 50% off your syntax costs. Best deal on the net!!!