G.M. Palmer's Blog, page 7
January 7, 2013
On music, visuals, and perception
Here's an article about interesting study on how our emotional perception of auditory and visual stimuli are similar.
I've not read the actual study (PNAS paywall) but I'm intrigued--I also wonder how reading literature (which is audiovisual) and reading poetry and--even more--reading comics would play into this (if at all).
There's a lot to be learned about how cognition works with what we read (and experience, etc.).
I've not read the actual study (PNAS paywall) but I'm intrigued--I also wonder how reading literature (which is audiovisual) and reading poetry and--even more--reading comics would play into this (if at all).
There's a lot to be learned about how cognition works with what we read (and experience, etc.).
January 3, 2013
Fairy stories?
I've posted a lot regarding narrative poetry.
I've been interested for a long time in folk tales and fairy stories.
Which leaves two questions:
1) is anyone interested in reading narrative folk/fairy poems
and
2) is anyone interested in publishing them?
I'm half determined to publish them only with illustrations but lack the skill to do that myself, even though the webcomic economic model seems to work for a strong pack of writers.
I would love to read some commentary on this.
I've been interested for a long time in folk tales and fairy stories.
Which leaves two questions:
1) is anyone interested in reading narrative folk/fairy poems
and
2) is anyone interested in publishing them?
I'm half determined to publish them only with illustrations but lack the skill to do that myself, even though the webcomic economic model seems to work for a strong pack of writers.
I would love to read some commentary on this.
January 2, 2013
Videogames are an entertainment apex predator?
There's an interesting article over at Penny Arcade today.
The relevant part is at the end:
Videogames are, in entertainment terms, an Apex Predator; nothing else compares to them, minute for minute, they deliver brain chemicals at an unprecedented rate. They’re pure HFCS, and the other things you fill a life with don’t deliver those squirts with the same regularity. It’s a matter of acclimatization for people maturing in this environment. In the end, I can say with confidence that books are right out, and movies; dubstep and porn gifs will be all they have left.
Hm.
I don't know precisely how 1) true or 2) good this is.
That is, as someone who grew up a console kid, I tell you now that videogames, at least for me, just got boring. Rock Band was the last thing I had a lot of fun with. The videogame I play the most now is Androminion--and that's because I like playing the card game. I use my XBOX to play Netflix.
My kids would all rather watch movies or read than play videogames. Even that alligator-water game.
I suppose both Mr. Holkins and I are operating out of a pile of confirmation bias but I would surmise that if the assertion is true then we'll see a backlash akin to the organic/slow food movement.
Regarding how good it is--well, we know (and seriously, studies continue to pile out) how bad a diet of straight sugar/HFCS/etc. is turble for you. I'm interested in Holkins' knowledge of this and the fact that he says right before the quote "I don’t think videogames are a social ill." He is, of course, referring to the tragedies regarding school shootings and kids playing video games (which folks is stupid but not because desensitization to violence doesn't occur; it's a stupid argument because other factors and warning signs are far more important in the scheme of things--much like guns are "to blame" because they're easily accessible, etc.) but it's clear from his analogy that they're some kind of ill.
Unless he's going to argue that all entertainment is an ill which is odd given his choice of job.
The relevant part is at the end:
Videogames are, in entertainment terms, an Apex Predator; nothing else compares to them, minute for minute, they deliver brain chemicals at an unprecedented rate. They’re pure HFCS, and the other things you fill a life with don’t deliver those squirts with the same regularity. It’s a matter of acclimatization for people maturing in this environment. In the end, I can say with confidence that books are right out, and movies; dubstep and porn gifs will be all they have left.
Hm.
I don't know precisely how 1) true or 2) good this is.
That is, as someone who grew up a console kid, I tell you now that videogames, at least for me, just got boring. Rock Band was the last thing I had a lot of fun with. The videogame I play the most now is Androminion--and that's because I like playing the card game. I use my XBOX to play Netflix.
My kids would all rather watch movies or read than play videogames. Even that alligator-water game.
I suppose both Mr. Holkins and I are operating out of a pile of confirmation bias but I would surmise that if the assertion is true then we'll see a backlash akin to the organic/slow food movement.
Regarding how good it is--well, we know (and seriously, studies continue to pile out) how bad a diet of straight sugar/HFCS/etc. is turble for you. I'm interested in Holkins' knowledge of this and the fact that he says right before the quote "I don’t think videogames are a social ill." He is, of course, referring to the tragedies regarding school shootings and kids playing video games (which folks is stupid but not because desensitization to violence doesn't occur; it's a stupid argument because other factors and warning signs are far more important in the scheme of things--much like guns are "to blame" because they're easily accessible, etc.) but it's clear from his analogy that they're some kind of ill.
Unless he's going to argue that all entertainment is an ill which is odd given his choice of job.
Wiman leaving Poetry for Yale
From the horse's mouth.
I wonder what the developments at Poetry will be from this. Don Share as the head?
Who knows? Shakeups can be lovely.
I wonder what the developments at Poetry will be from this. Don Share as the head?
Who knows? Shakeups can be lovely.
Poetry's use in a collapsing society
I think one can argue that the current civilization of Western-based American-hegemonic society is headed towards some sort of reset.
It may be catastrophic or it may not be.
But what does art--and of course for this blog, poetry--have to do with such widespread events?
I mean on the one hand we don't have a lot of great literature from the late 5th century A.D (or the 18th century for that matter--especially when one is discussing creative literature).
But we have a great deal of great literature from the 1st centuries B.C. and A.D.
Both were times of mass upheaval and disruption with regards to the way a civilization was put together.
At the birth of the Roman Empire, however, there wasn't a wholesale collapse of civilization, simply a "changing of the guard." At the very least this means there were better record keeping and distribution abilities--hence our having such literature extant. But it's not as if 470 A.D. were wholly without literature. The writings of the Christian Patriarchs from the period are fairly extensive--but it doesn't have the same creative verve.
There's some discussion of this (especially with regards to, say, the literature of the English Civil War) in McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary, a book I still need dearly to review--but which you should read immediately--but I don't think it quite grasps all of the sociological reasons for the creation of art (as it was outside the scope of the book anyway)
Can we as poets somehow shape events or are we merely recorders? Can we make the transition safer? Can we stop it altogether? Has art at all shaped the law-abiding nature that both provides for our fashion of civilization and plants the seeds for its destruction or was that done by breeding and capital punishment? For sure The Aeneid impacted Roman society, but does research exist regarding that impact?
What does what we write have to do with the world? What should it have to do with the world?
I think we ought to answer (or at least try to answer) these questions if we want poetry to again see the light of relevance.
It may be catastrophic or it may not be.
But what does art--and of course for this blog, poetry--have to do with such widespread events?
I mean on the one hand we don't have a lot of great literature from the late 5th century A.D (or the 18th century for that matter--especially when one is discussing creative literature).
But we have a great deal of great literature from the 1st centuries B.C. and A.D.
Both were times of mass upheaval and disruption with regards to the way a civilization was put together.
At the birth of the Roman Empire, however, there wasn't a wholesale collapse of civilization, simply a "changing of the guard." At the very least this means there were better record keeping and distribution abilities--hence our having such literature extant. But it's not as if 470 A.D. were wholly without literature. The writings of the Christian Patriarchs from the period are fairly extensive--but it doesn't have the same creative verve.
There's some discussion of this (especially with regards to, say, the literature of the English Civil War) in McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary, a book I still need dearly to review--but which you should read immediately--but I don't think it quite grasps all of the sociological reasons for the creation of art (as it was outside the scope of the book anyway)
Can we as poets somehow shape events or are we merely recorders? Can we make the transition safer? Can we stop it altogether? Has art at all shaped the law-abiding nature that both provides for our fashion of civilization and plants the seeds for its destruction or was that done by breeding and capital punishment? For sure The Aeneid impacted Roman society, but does research exist regarding that impact?
What does what we write have to do with the world? What should it have to do with the world?
I think we ought to answer (or at least try to answer) these questions if we want poetry to again see the light of relevance.
December 19, 2012
December 17, 2012
Because a shackle is never enough to hold a man: Jake Adam York
The problem with being a reviewer is that I will never be able to review everyone while you can still know not only their words but them.
Jake Adam York, a poet who was simply good, passed this weekend. Jake and I met only a few times at conferences and yet I feel his loss deeply. Perhaps it was because each time we met he was not only kind but inclusive, warm, and intellectually engaging. Perhaps it is because he's only 6 years older than I am and yet died of a stroke. Perhaps it's because so many of my close friends are close friends of Jake and I grieve for them. Perhaps it's because Jake, as a poet and editor, cannot be replaced in literature. Perhaps all four.
This is an elegy he wrote. It originally appeared in Diagram . Rest in peace, Jake.
Elegy for James Knox
Because a shackle is never enough
to hold a man, but only his body,
and because the body must be made
to hold the man, to join with the chain
until the grip is overwhelming,
they took you from the prison
and sold your labor, your body
for five dollars a month, into the mine
to dig coal for Birmingham's furnaces,
the heat already pressing in on you
like a hand, the coal dust
in your lungs' own flexings
lacerating breath right out of you
little at a time, the hard pump of the arms
speeding it up in the candle-lit dark
that lay on your skin the way
they already saw you, a density
to be burned so iron could rain
from rock, purified and bright.
But to take you out, the hands
sudden from the tight, dark heat,
and beat you with a wire
spun from the kind of steel
you had begun to forge in the shaft,
to return your muscles' work this way
till you were red as ore, and then
to tie and dip you in a laundry vat
and boil the hair from your body
as if it were any pig, and then
call it suicide, as if you had done this
to yourself, to say you drank
bichloride of mercury instead of sweat,
instead of blood, instead of heat
and coal and nigger, to rule it
poison, to inject your dead body
with corrosive metal and call it
another day at the office, ready
to do it all again should the sun rise,
God willing, to ship the coal out
to charge the ironworks so someone else
could draw you from the hearth
for forging a thirty dollar check
in Mobile, and burn you into textbooks,
something dark to be turned
like this chip of iron I finger
as I think of you,
a small, hard strip of Alabama
that's losing, that's turning back
red as the clay that buries it all—
was it ever, will it ever be, enough?
Jake Adam York, a poet who was simply good, passed this weekend. Jake and I met only a few times at conferences and yet I feel his loss deeply. Perhaps it was because each time we met he was not only kind but inclusive, warm, and intellectually engaging. Perhaps it is because he's only 6 years older than I am and yet died of a stroke. Perhaps it's because so many of my close friends are close friends of Jake and I grieve for them. Perhaps it's because Jake, as a poet and editor, cannot be replaced in literature. Perhaps all four.
This is an elegy he wrote. It originally appeared in Diagram . Rest in peace, Jake.
Elegy for James Knox
Because a shackle is never enough
to hold a man, but only his body,
and because the body must be made
to hold the man, to join with the chain
until the grip is overwhelming,
they took you from the prison
and sold your labor, your body
for five dollars a month, into the mine
to dig coal for Birmingham's furnaces,
the heat already pressing in on you
like a hand, the coal dust
in your lungs' own flexings
lacerating breath right out of you
little at a time, the hard pump of the arms
speeding it up in the candle-lit dark
that lay on your skin the way
they already saw you, a density
to be burned so iron could rain
from rock, purified and bright.
But to take you out, the hands
sudden from the tight, dark heat,
and beat you with a wire
spun from the kind of steel
you had begun to forge in the shaft,
to return your muscles' work this way
till you were red as ore, and then
to tie and dip you in a laundry vat
and boil the hair from your body
as if it were any pig, and then
call it suicide, as if you had done this
to yourself, to say you drank
bichloride of mercury instead of sweat,
instead of blood, instead of heat
and coal and nigger, to rule it
poison, to inject your dead body
with corrosive metal and call it
another day at the office, ready
to do it all again should the sun rise,
God willing, to ship the coal out
to charge the ironworks so someone else
could draw you from the hearth
for forging a thirty dollar check
in Mobile, and burn you into textbooks,
something dark to be turned
like this chip of iron I finger
as I think of you,
a small, hard strip of Alabama
that's losing, that's turning back
red as the clay that buries it all—
was it ever, will it ever be, enough?
December 14, 2012
The Hobbit
Well, of course it's good.
But there are a few quirks. One is the expanded role of Azog. I suppose Jackson put him in in order to "amp up" the "danger" of the piece AND to give gravitas to Thorin but I don't know how necessary he is. If anything it makes it harder for one to take small children to the film because, in general, it's not terribly "scary" without Azog. Again, that's perhaps the reason for his inclusion but I'm suspect of the overall benefit to the story.
The second is the increased role Radagast plays. Not that I mind Radagast, but I find it hard to believe that Jackson would deliberately skip over Tom Bombadil and then come back with a very Bombadilian Radagast.
The other complaints/oddities make sense within character improvement and Jackson's reframing, such as Bilbo's advice to the trolls on cooking dwarfs. I would have very much enjoyed seeing Gandalf ape their voices but part of Jackson's "drama" in this piece is tension between Thorin and Bilbo (which I assume will come to a head with the discovery and theft of the Arkenstone) and having Bilbo save the company a few more times than in the novel is important to that.
However, it is odd that Gandalf sort of more or less pops in when needed (rather than being around more) but oh well, he's a wizard, right? The real deus ex machina problem is that the eagles don't speak at all. Coupled with their double appearance in saving people in LOTR, Jackson appears to simply make them into salvation engines--which is sad specifically because their appearance in The Hobbit and their conversations with Thorin & Co provides so much more explanation for their behavior in the subsequent events.
Anyway, it's a great 3 hour romp. Looking forward to the others.
But there are a few quirks. One is the expanded role of Azog. I suppose Jackson put him in in order to "amp up" the "danger" of the piece AND to give gravitas to Thorin but I don't know how necessary he is. If anything it makes it harder for one to take small children to the film because, in general, it's not terribly "scary" without Azog. Again, that's perhaps the reason for his inclusion but I'm suspect of the overall benefit to the story.
The second is the increased role Radagast plays. Not that I mind Radagast, but I find it hard to believe that Jackson would deliberately skip over Tom Bombadil and then come back with a very Bombadilian Radagast.
The other complaints/oddities make sense within character improvement and Jackson's reframing, such as Bilbo's advice to the trolls on cooking dwarfs. I would have very much enjoyed seeing Gandalf ape their voices but part of Jackson's "drama" in this piece is tension between Thorin and Bilbo (which I assume will come to a head with the discovery and theft of the Arkenstone) and having Bilbo save the company a few more times than in the novel is important to that.
However, it is odd that Gandalf sort of more or less pops in when needed (rather than being around more) but oh well, he's a wizard, right? The real deus ex machina problem is that the eagles don't speak at all. Coupled with their double appearance in saving people in LOTR, Jackson appears to simply make them into salvation engines--which is sad specifically because their appearance in The Hobbit and their conversations with Thorin & Co provides so much more explanation for their behavior in the subsequent events.
Anyway, it's a great 3 hour romp. Looking forward to the others.
December 13, 2012
Dangerous, Sensible, or Both?
From an interesting article about decision theory:
"It is wise to value winning over the possession of a rational decision
theory, just as it is wise to value truth over adherence to a particular mode of reasoning.
An expected utility maximizer should maximize utility—not formality, reasonableness,
or defensibility."
What is "winning" in poetry?
"It is wise to value winning over the possession of a rational decision
theory, just as it is wise to value truth over adherence to a particular mode of reasoning.
An expected utility maximizer should maximize utility—not formality, reasonableness,
or defensibility."
What is "winning" in poetry?
