Michelangelo
once said regarding his artistry as a sculpture that the statue was already
encased in the marble, he just chipped away anything that was not the statue. I
find the most important part of the creative process, as a poet, is the process
of re-writing. Like Michelangelo, I sometimes feel that the poem already exists
and that the process of drafting and redrafting is akin to a sculptor “chipping
away everything that is not the statue,” or in my case, the poem. One evolutionary development of Post-Modern poetics is the rhizome.
In the process
of re-writing the poem we do so, of course, with some vision of the poem’s
final incarnation. There are also considerations to be given to the physical
structure of the poem itself as it appears on the page. In the post-modern age
artists veer towards the creation of works that are dramatically different than
the styles the dominated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
When public
access to visual imagery was limited, so was the level of literacy. Rhyming was
a necessary component to song and poetry writing. The reason is simple. How
else to remember a thousand lines of poetry when you can’t read if the damn
thing doesn’t rhyme? Now, at the dawn of the 21st century we find
ourselves constantly surrounded and bombarded by a cascading flow of visual imagery.
Indeed, the average person today can see as much visual imagery in a day as a
serf from the European Dark Ages was likely to see in a lifetime. As a result,
our attention span has shortened and our need for the rhyme as a method of
memory retention has faded. Rhizomatic poetry reflects a parallel evolution in
our literary tradition.
The rhizome is
defined as a type of plant-life that grows without any central root and in no
particular pattern. Rhizomatic poetry defines a type of poem that typically
lacks central organization structural patterns. It may also depend on a
literate audience that can project an understanding of issues the poet may only
allude to in the poem. Poetry prepared in a heavily structured style, such as a
Shakespearean sonnet, is no longer the vernacular of the everyday reader.
Consequently, writing in such a format is likely to isolate the writer from the
reader.
Given the above,
we explore the older poetic styles of a metered rhyming scheme more as an
intellectual exercise rather than an active expression of literary creativity.
This is not to imply that rhizomatic poetry is not an intellectual exercise,
but, as the cutting-edge expression of 21st century poetics, it is free from
the baggage that bogs down older, more traditional, poetic structures — just ask
any 9th grader who has had to slog through Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.”
This is not to
suggest that there is no place for rhyming in modern poetry, for certainly it
still serves a purpose. From rap-style poetry slams, to more subtle uses where
a couplet might be used to emphasize a point, the rhyming structures are far
simpler than the older sonnets and villanelles.
Nevertheless, as the
rhizome has evolved in response to the formal structure from earlier periods,
it has developed among academics into a language almost unto itself, requiring
a formal and sophisticated higher education to fully appreciate the literary
allusions and poetic mechanics.
Gilles Deleuze
and Feliz Guattari in their book, A
Thousand Plateaus Capitalism and Schizophenia, states “A rhizome
ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of
power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles”
(Deleuze and Guattari 7). The poetics behind the rhizome, seeks to connect
ideas to larger academic disciplines and social constructs.
The human mind
naturally seeks patterns, so the rhizome challenges that basic inclination. By
forcing a conflict with the reader, the writer engages the reader and forces a
reaction. The potential flaw in rhizomatic poetry is that the topics often
explored are so esoteric that it appeals to a relatively small part of the
population, even among those inclined to read poetry. When that has occurred, I
feel the poem has failed in its most basic mission — to communicate ideas
simply and effectively.
The Electronic Disturbance, by the
Creative Art Ensemble, uses the rhizome to explore the effect of mass
media/communications on the individual. The work below, while taken out of
context from the text, nonetheless ably demonstrates the rhizome as an approach
to poetry. This particular piece is meant to reflect the contribution of the
classical Italian poet Dante to what the authors call “The Virtual Condition,”
which they define as the effect of technology in removing the boundaries
between such bodies of knowledge as history and philosophy, to produce a new
body of knowledge, and a new language to express it. The original formatting is retained.
VI
1321
So here on earth,
across a slant of light
that parts the air
within the sheltering shade
man’s arts and crafts
contrive, our mortal sight
observes bright
particles of matter ranging
up, down, aslant,
darting, or eddying;
longer and shorter;
but forever changing
So here on screen, across a slant of
light
That parts the air within the
sheltering shade
man’s arts and crafts contrive, our
mortal sight
observes bright particles of matter
ranging
up, down, aslant, darting, or eddying;
longer and shorter; but forever
changing
(Critical Art
Ensemble 9)
In the above
example, the poem is repeated nearly word for word, exchanging only “earth” for
“screen.” The different fonts used suggest different voices, sort of a
religious antiphonic response. This is a technique used throughout The Electronic Disturbance. Yet, in
reading the above piece, one cannot help but feel a sense of ambiguity on
behalf of the author. This poem, this rhizome, is more of an intellectual
exercise rather than a visceral emotional release. I certainly enjoy poetry as
a cerebral exercise; however, the high-brow academic intellectualism of the
rhizome often leaves me with a sense of detachment, rather than engagement.
Any relationship
between Dante and the overall theme of the text in the above piece seems a bit
buried in an monologue completely shared with the reader, unless you already
speak the language of the rhizome and happen to know that Dante died in 1321
(ergo the numbers in the title).
Taking a step
back from the more heady intellectual approach, I used the rhizome as the model
of composition to express a more common existential meditation:
Version 1.0
before i was
wherefore i
before i’m born
borne
and died
before i dreamt
dreams i’ve seen
before i go
wherefore i’ve been
i always was
as now am i
middle of the being
who, what, and why
i’m always leaving
before i’m left
as i’ll grieve
before i’m bereft
sometimes often
i am me
which i’ve been told
i seldom see
The above poem
was composed in a workshop led by Professor Pierre Joris at the University at
Albany. Joris is an author and a leading proponent of the rhizome as a poetic
model of composition. This poem was composed using a "restricted
vocabulary;" avoiding longer words layered with meaning and instead
utilizing one or two syllable words that are essentially at a grade school
level of comprehension. The rhyme is still present, leading the reader from one
line to the next, but it follows no particular pattern.
Joris defines the rhizome in Action Yes Online Quarterly, Winter 2011, in a manner that
exemplifies the academic obscurity of the rhetorical tools used to develop this
particular genre of poetry.
Joris:
What is needed now is a nomadic poetics. Its method will be rhizomic: which is
different from collage i.e., a rhizomatics is not an aesthetics of the
fragment, which has dominated poetics since the romantics even as
transmogrified by modernism, high and low, and more recently retooled in the
neoclassical form of the citation—ironic and/or decorative—throughout which is
called “postmodernism.” Strawberry Fields
Forever. A nomadic poetics will cross languages, not just translate, but
write in all or any of them. If Pound, Joyce, Stein, Olson, & others have
shown the way, it is essential now to push the matter further, again, not so
much as “collage” (though we will keep those gains) but as a material flux of
language matter. To try & think, then, of this matter as even pre-language,
proto-semantic, as starting from what Julia Kristeva calls the chora, which she
defines as “a temporary articulation, essentially mobile, constituted of
movements and their ephemeral stases.” And then to follow this flux of ruptures
and articulations, of rhythm, moving in & out of semantic &
non-semantic spaces, moving around & through the features accreting as
poem, a lingo-cubism, no, a lingo-barocco that is no longer an “explosante
fixe” (Breton) but an “explosante mouvante.” (Eshleman)
If you managed
to survive reading the above you will now understand why I stopped writing
poetry for about a decade after taking Joris’ class. The use of literary
technical jargon by devotees of the rhizome puts a distance between the poet
and the reader, rather than creating an emotional connection. To his
credit, however, Joris is a generous instructor who gave me the freedom to explore my
own voice and I consider him an important influence on my later work.
Both of the
above poems show the flexibility of the rhizome as an approach to modern
poetics; however, the academic basis of the rhizome does limit the audience. In
contrast, the poetry read at modern-day “slams” is much more visceral in its
emotional content and arguably enjoys wider popular appeal. Indeed, poetry of
the rhizome is often better appreciated when read alone or in small groups than
before a larger audience.
Whether any poem
succeeds, however, is wholly dependent on a relationship between the writer and
the reader. Certainly, poets should write for themselves first; however, if the
poet is the only one who “gets” the poem, so to speak, the poem has failed.
Great poetry, in addition to the mastery of a certain style, should be
visceral, the kind that leaps off the page, kicks you in the gut, and sticks
with you.
Or, as Robert
Penn Warren wrote, "You can feel a good poem in your toes."
Works Cited
Creative Arts
Ensemble. The Electronic Disturbance.
Autonomedia:
Brooklyn. 1994. Print.
Brooklyn. 1994. Print.
Deleuze, Gilles
and Feliz Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus:
Capitalism
and Schizophenia. University of Minnesota Press:
Minneapolis. 1987. Print.
and Schizophenia. University of Minnesota Press:
Minneapolis. 1987. Print.
Eshleman, Clayton.
“Organized Nomadistorms of Broken Oases.”
Action Yes Online Quarterly. actionyes.org, Winter 2011.
Web. 7. July 2012. < http://actionyes.org/issue15/eshleman/
eshleman2.html>.
Action Yes Online Quarterly. actionyes.org, Winter 2011.
Web. 7. July 2012. < http://actionyes.org/issue15/eshleman/
eshleman2.html>.
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