MORE ACCIDENTAL "POETRY"

I had an extra half-hour of prep-time available today, and so thought I'd try the random poetry thing again, only this time with just one book: my The Annotated Alice, the Definitive Edition.  Using only Carroll's words, and randomly generating page, line, and word numbers from which to start my word count for each "phrase."

Here are the parameters and their results, all randomly selected by the generator at random.org:

number of phrases (10-20):               12

words per phrase (3-5):                       5

Wonderland (1&3/5); page (7-127); line (1-38); word (1-10)

Looking-Glass (2&4/5); page (133-274); line (1-38); word (1-10)

"Wasp in a Wig" (5/5); page (293-298); line (1-38); word (1-10)

	book	page	line	word	phrase
1	4: LG	175	4	5	body is a crust, and
2	2: LG	229	33	6	a fabulous monster! the Unicorn
3	4: LG	158	14	3	you! cried the Tiger-lily, waving
4	5: WW	297	29	10	Wasp went on: but the
5	1: WL	62	5	8	be listening, so she went
6	5: WW	294	28	8	spread out the paper on
7	2: LG	198	10	1	What is the matter? she said
8	4: LG	188	8	2	he ate as many as
9	3: WL	9	24	1	rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket
10	1: WL	113	27	3	at the Hatter, who turned
11	3: WL	23	3	7	the great puzzle!  And she
12	5: WW	283	23	3	only shook his shoulders, and

What are you able to come up with if we allow that these phrases be organized in any order, so long as the 5 words for each remain contiguous?

Through The Looking Glass VII -- chapter 5: TRANSMOGRIFICATION

Chapter 5 is nearly as slippery as the subjects of its contents, but I think there are some patterns that emerge which lead to some likely insights.  The chapter is dominantly divided in two, with the first part a fairly innocuous discussion with the White Queen, and the second a combination of the sheep, the shop, and a stationary rowing expedition.

Nothing is solid or, more accurately, permanent in chapter 5; this impermanence is the foundation of any understanding to be had here.  Consider the following points:

• Jam, or treats (despite Alice's dislike of jam--or iam in Latin, which interchanges i and j, and means "now," but only in past and future tenses), are only available tomorrow or yesterday;
• there are tears in anticipation of an event, but once the event has happened, the emotions are spent;
• the crow is gone, and Alice's words support the acknowledgment of the crow as death omen by admitting a fear of nightfall (which nightfall indicates death in the introductory poem), now optimistically passed;
• Alice laments of Looking-Glass House's loneliness, which is interesting as Wonderland was not significantly more populace, but Looking-Glass certainly has a dense air of solitude;
• and finally, the White Queen (Carroll, perhaps) indicates that it is healthy, important, and even necessary to believe in impossible things, which is an uncharacteristically optimistic sentiment for this book, along with the fallacious belief that the threat of nightfall has passed (night and death are always coming).

*****

• Again, nothing remains the same, and all the less so now we're in this shop.  Nothing is found when you look for it: the toys and amusements always in the periphery and nothing directly before you; however, when Alice isn't looking, she is suddenly back in the boat again (I say "back . . . again" because this is exactly how the Alice books got started in the first place: in a boat, rowing) and with, of all things, an innocent, white sheep.  The river banks are not golden this go-'round, however, and they frown disconsolately, and still Alice is so lonely.
• Feathering is a rowing technique, which can be seen in use quite expertly in the movie The Social Network (no further connection between Alice and the film or filmmakers intended); to catch a crab was slang for extending the oar too deeply and it's subsequent "catching" in the water would often unseat the rower.
• Also the rushes, similar to the items in the store, are elusive, especially those that are the loveliest, which are also the farthest away; and regardless of the ease of picking or getting at them, once picked the rushes rapidly lose their beauty.  Beauty, of course, is just as elusive and ephemeral, both in its subject abstraction and its permanence, and, according to the text, the beauty of dreams all the more so; but Alice, despite and perhaps for her similarity to these rushes, doesn't notice, distracted as she is by everything else, their wilting.
• What do you make of the egg and the trees?

Harry Stephen Keeler: THE BEST WORST WRITER OF ALL TIME

The Collins Library edition,
by McSweeney's

There's crappy writing and then there's crappy writing.  Likely you know what I mean.  If not, think about it this way: some of my, and likely your, very favorite movies and books are crap.  Critics like to employ the euphemism "camp" for "crap."  It's all the same to me.  Camp, as far as I'm concerned, is simply crap with a high polish (and by crap, it's generally meant that the subject is "mere" entertainment for entertainment's sake, and not meant to hold, or is otherwise devoid of ability to leave in its wake, any lasting impression or meaning or reflection of reality--you know, all the stuff that the "good" "literature" supposedly possesses in spades.

The Riddle of the Traveling Skull is exceptional camp--poop with the very highest of all possible polishes; and even going beyond the typically campy camp of my otherwise favorite "popcorn" fiction.  On one side, this book is the prototypical, skillfully wrought mystery/thriller, opaquely and gleefully noir, which qualities I love most about my favorite page-turners.  What I believe elevates The Traveling Skull, however, over the other, more typically popcorny (read either "popcorn-y" or "pop-corny;" take your pick) fluff of grocery-store trade novel paperbacks is its complete acceptance--think not the mere grudging handshake of a truce between opposing parties (and I have a sneaking suspicion that most popcorn novelists wish they were more and use their best-seller status as justification for their low-brow writing), but a mighty bear hug, brotherly, loving, and hearty--of what it is: ri-freaking-diculous and proud of it!  Characters are not based in the bland reality of museum guards or cab drivers or factory employees; they are world-traveling candy salesmen, nouveau luggage designers, and amateur brain surgeons; Bible-quoting con-men, German hypnotists, and shrinking-violets.  And they're names!  My goodness: Milo Payne, Abigail Sprigge, Sophie Kratzenschneiderwumpel, Mrs. Winterbotham-Higginsbottom, and, my favorite, Ichabod Chang.

And this is all for one book!

Which I just finished.

And which I loved.

And which I will read again and again, like I do all my camp favorites (Preston and Child's Relic and Cabinet of Curiosities, Carr's The Alienist, and Card's Ender's Game (and yes, no matter how brilliant, EG is camp), among them).

Premise: candy salesman, Clay Calthorpe, has just returned from the Philippines, where he has just successfully contracted exclusive purchasing privilege of all the country's Julu berries, and makes his weary way home.  By mix-up of two identical, one-of-a-kind (yes) travel bags, and the flubdubbery of one well-meaning German trolley conductor, Clay comes home not with his own bagful of collars, calling cards, and clothes, but a bag carefully packed with a trephined skull, carefully stuffed with a slightly-mushroomed bullet and the carbons of some odds-and-ends poetry.  Clay recognizes, despite the hour and his fatigue, what must have happened (the residual adrenaline of a possible mugging--but false-alarm, thank-you-very-much, at least for the time being--certainly assists his faculties of deduction) and seeks contact with the clergyman, who was sitting aside him and whose bag he must have gotten by mistake.  From here, well, it all spirals out of control.

The very glee and astounding confidence with which Keeler writes renders the would-be typical mystery (well, not quite typical) into something to be savored, not ripped through in a frenzy (though you get the impression that Keeler wrote it in such fashion--frenzied, like sharks on seals).  He is an accomplished word- and sentence-smith, and injects these short strings of words with all the cockeyed imagination and flayling freedom that he does his swollen plot.  Though page-turner it was nonetheless, and I read it like I read (is this sacrilege?) Chabon and MacCarthy.  Seriously.  With Chabon, sentences are jaw-droppingly brilliant, beautiful, and rhythmically perfect; MacCarthy is stark simplicity at its naked best; Keeler's sentences, on the third face of the same coin, are indeed jaw-dropping--equally expert, held against either of these two recognized masters--but with the added bonus of being freaking hilarious!

*

My favorite moment of the book was not penned by Keeler, but his publishers.  I have a code: I will not look ahead.  Had I flipped through the novel before reading it, I'd have found this already, and it's revelation would have been much less exciting--far less satisfying.  Just before the big denouement, comes this page:

(Please excuse my thumb.)

Better still, especially considering my interest in becoming a casual expert in Keeler, was the reverse side of this very page, which left me the following note:

Consider a membership in the

Harry Stephen Keeler Society

Since its inception in 1997, the group has grown to some seventy-five members in half a dozen countries.  Its organ is Keeler News, appearing five times each year and featuring articles, letters, reviews, and a vigorous emporium of Keeler’s many books.  The News has produced fifty issues; all, back to the first, are available.  On CD-Rom ($5), the full run comes with the Keeler Dust Jacket Vault, a compendium of original artwork.  Mail payments to Richard Polt, [-----] –or consult the internet:

http://staff.xu.edu/~polt/keeler/index.html.

I wrote Mr. Polt, and am now a proud member of the HSK Society (76 members now!).  I am excited, particularly, about the Keeler News and the "Read Keeler" link, which, if you so choose, may direct you to Ramble House, which offers nearly everything Keeler ever put to paper and the public--even the stuff never available in English!

In short, get the book, read the book.  It is a seriously, hysterically good/fun, ridiculous/diverting read--no, experience.

Sunday Poetry XVII -- Accidental Poetry, and a "Writing" Challenge

Remember the "bookmash?"  There are two approaches to "creating" one, the first a little less pure than the second:  1, you find a bunch of book titles on your shelves or at the library or wherever, and you arrange them in such a way that the titles create a poem of sorts; 2, you look up at a recently read pile of books or a short row of them on your shelves, and they have already, accidentally, formed a poem.  I don't know about the other contributors, but I confess, I intentionally arranged my titles.

Not that this is bad, but what if the Fates had more to do with it?  

I'm going to try something and write it up as I go, and maybe it will turn out to be poetry, but maybe not.  (I am relying on the website www.random.org for my very numerological approach.)  The question, of course, before and after the completion of this little experiment, is this: 

Is there any value to accidental poetry, or other accidental art?

parameters	randomized result
Number of lines (3-15)	4
phrases per line (2-4)	3
words per phrase (3-5)	5

For each phrase, I’ll randomly assign a shelf number (1-7) from my fiction bookcases, a book number (1-25), a page number (1-200), a line number (1-25), and a word number from which to begin the phrase (1-15). 

(I have no idea how this is going to turn out.)

phrase	shelf	book	page	line	word	phrase
1	4	14	22	16	3	“rush.  a vortex” (Wicked – Macguire)
2	6	20	34	25	5	“richer tone was (Grapes of Wrath – Steinbeck)
3	2	3	28	15	4	“part of the” (In the Time of Butterflies – Alvarez)
4	5	24	36	16	15	“light patch on” (Nightjohn – Paulsen)
5	7	19	35	15	3	“father also loses” (Fatherhood – Cosby)
6	2	6	53	23	2	“monastery.  Early boards” (Museum at Purgatory – Bantock)
7	3	11	24	2	10	“the other man” (The Mysterious Flam of Queen Loana – Eco)
8	1	5	168	14	9	“him the honor” (The Believer, March 05 – McSweeney’s)
9	4	12	3	11	4	“come here! – all” (Franz Kafka, Collected Stories)
10	4	19	79	24	9	“go, he said” (The Road – McCarthy)
11	2	2	95	13	2	“di iosafat qui (from Jehoshaphat above)” (The Inferno of Dante)
12	3	14	193	17	7	“drawer those nice” (On Literature – Eco)

The "Poem," unedited

by Accident

rush. a vortex richer tone was part of the

light patch on father also loses monastery.  Early boards

the other man him the honor come here! – all

go, he said from Jehoshaphat above drawer those nice

The “Poem,” with altered punctuation and line breaks

by Accident, with Help

Rush: A vortex;

richer tone was part of

the light, patch-on father—

also loses.

Monastery, early boards,

the other man:  Him

the honor come here!

“All go,” he said, from

Jehoshaphat above.

Drawer: those nice. 

So, obviously, this isn't a great poem, though I'm surprised at and pleased with some of the phrase combinations.  I bet if I do this a few more times, I might actually stumble upon something half-decent, or even, maybe, good.  

CHALLENGE:

Do this yourself,

see what you get,

post a comment here with your results.