minimus poems, or, the value of small systems

rusty congaree

outsized ambitions

Since Romanticism, poets often share a love of idiosyncratic, ambitious & hermetic systems. Think: Whitman's Leaves of Grass or Pound's Cantos. Most iconic for me is Charles Olson's Maximus Poems & its obsession with size: Gloucester as portal not only into American colonial history but also the prehistoric supercontinent of Gondwana. The physical book's got heft too; the University of California edition runs 652 9” x 12” pages.

I am exhausted by this obsession with large scope projects, this need for a poem contain the entire world. My brain can only process so much before it vomits words everywhere.

downsized poetics

There are poets who avoid the epic.

Larry Eigner is one. An acquaintance of Olson, Eigner swerved away from myth-making or even a locatable “I.” Instead, Eigner offers curated language:

Jan 20 78 #1057

the fleering snow

off the eaves

of the garage

I'm not quite sure what “fleering” is, but snow certainly does it. Eigner's quiet inventions turn away from the P.T. Barnum antics of so much experimental poetry.

Another example: Mexican poet Efraín Huerta invented the poemínimo, a compressed anti-poetry mixing riddles, bad jokes, street slang, & esoteric theory. Jerome Rothenberg has translated a number of these at Jacket2. The following is a personal favorite:

Francisco I

Paráfrasis

Todo Se ha Jodido Menos El amor

Saint Francis I

A Paraphrase

Everything's Fucked Up Except Love

I've also tried translating poemínimos, but they're tricky. Each word is multivalent & carries tremendous weight. This is the most successful attempt:

Arenguita

Paranoicos De todos Los matices ¡Uníos!

Arenguita

Paranoid freaks Of all stripes Unite!

Huerta describes his words in the following way: “The poemínimo is like the turning of a corner or the next stop on the subway line. A poemínimo is a crazy butterfly, captured sometimes, sometimes crammed into a straitjacket.” Instead of whole worlds, Huerta offers small bits of uncanny bizarre mystery.

composition machines

When talking of poetic systems, it's necessary to pay homage to those who compose through procedures & programs. These writers, the descendants of the 'pataphysicians & OuLiPo, also seriously question any Romantic/Modernist notions that language can simply & naturally express the human condition. These writers draw attention to words' unstable, provisional nature.

Ron Silliman defines poems in “Surprised by Sign” in a striking manner: “Any poem's a language: a vocabulary plus a set of rules.” In 2019's algorithm-dominant zeitgeist, is there more relevant description for poetry? Let's look to poets working in the fluxing nexus between poetry & computer programming. Allison Parrish is a skilled practitioner of this sort of creativity. On the federated social media network, Mastodon, she's programmed a poetry bot, Icebox Breakfast Bot, which cannibalizes William Carlos Williams' great-yet-overtaught-in-every-fucking-English-class “This is Just to Say.” Here's a great example:

Those Were Precisely to Perceive

They were glycerolizing a few of the plums who were with regard to your icebox

and whom it will probably repose during breakfast

Endanger them I am delicious decidedly sweet but fitly cold

On the bot's GitHub, Parrish frames her bot as a response to Mark Sample's Just to Say Bot. While Sample's bot uses Williams' poem to highlight capitalist exploitation, Parrish says her bot “is about all the whimsical scenarios you can think up about plums, iceboxes and breakfasting.” Whimsical estrangement indeed abounds in Icebox Breakfast Bot's posts. The delights of breaking apart conventional syntax & reference. It reminds me of Charles Bernstein's slapstick theoretical poetricks.

conclusions

Whether it's thru bots, “Language” poets, or OuLiPo procedures, small-scale systems can help poets escape the void of personal expression, the me, me, me of it all. Let's transform writing into a series of controlled experiments. We need more room for small-scale poetic systems that make the everyday strange again. Unassuming poems that spark surprise & goad us to approach words anew. Something like this piece of poetic play from Ryan Randall, another Mastodon user:

Wishing I could make an Espers-meets-Forest Swords kinda autumnal ep

d(t

he

ba ss

dr op

s) ub

step