>> So now let's look at some of these and see what they do for us, okay? And remember, the point isn't just to enthuse about how much fun it would be to do this, how playful, or how expansive. But, actually to think about it seriously in relating to this, to this part of our course. Okay. So, Bernadette dis, urges us to keep journals of answering machine messages. Why would that be, why would that help? Molly? >> Well. >> You didn't t have to be profound about it. >> That's true. I guess, you get an interesting cross section of people who you come in contact with and the things, the reasons why they're calling. >> Max? >> It's sets such a great instance of, of kind of an off the cuff quotidian monologue. >> What was that? >> Just relating a message about. >> And what about the self? >> Well, it's not you. >> It's not you. >> It's, it's people. >> It's very personal, but not you. >> But it's not you, yeah. >> That could be, I like that one. Here's a more serious one relating back to the French symbolist of the nineteenth century. >> Mm-hm. >> Systematically, oh, I'm sorry, systematically deranged the language is the one. Why? Emily, systematically deranged the language. Love that word, derange. >> Yeah. >> What's. >> Something systematic isn't really deranged. >> Okay, you're pointing out the paradox. >> [laugh] >> But. >> Cheap shot. >> But, what it means is when you are doing your deranging, you're disorganizing, you're discombobulating, you're doing it systematically. What's the result of such a thing? >> Derange, the result of derangement is deranged. >> Yes, that would be the case. >> That's logical. You're punting it. Okay. >> [laugh] >> Amaris, what's the result of systematic derangement of the language? >> Well, it's no longer conventional. So, we have to, it forces us to read it in a different way. Perhaps in a, what we'd consider a deranged way. [laugh] ... >> Okay, here's a related one. Systematically eliminate the use of certain kinds of words or phrases from a piece of writing, eliminate all adjectives. Didn't, wasn't there a fourth grade teacher who told you to stop using so many adjectives? >> Adverbs. I got one for adverbs. >> You were an ad, you've got an adverb problem? >> I did, yeah. >> Okay. So, why, why would anybody suggest eliminating your adjectives and your adverbs, just to in a conventional way. >> Cuz it makes your language clunky, there's too much going on. >> What else does it do? >> Those qualifiers aren't necessarily of [unknown]. >> They're not, they don't, they're, they're dead. A lot of them are dead metaphors. >> Yes, they are. >> Right? There's more to this. Eliminate all adjectives from a poem of your own or take out all words beginning with s in Shakespeare's sonnets. What would be the result of that, Dave? >> Something unintended. Just they would, they would create a different intent and you would read it differently, and you would interpret it differently. >> I know Shakespeare's Sonnet's not quite as well as the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag but I, I feel that relation to them that I've sort of internalized them. And I think it would be good to see if I could Shakespeare's language in a fresh kind of, different way, I wanted to be challenged. Get someone to write for you pretending they are you. Ali? >> Talk about a weird kind of perversion of the ego. >> [laugh] >> I just think that would be really, really interesting in terms of for both the kind of person who is being emulated and for the person who was trying to you know, imitate. >> And, and, and, and in the case of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, that was a relationship of love. To do this in a relationship of love is really a challenge, right? I mean, I'm not sure how that, that, that book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas which was written by Gertrude Stein. I don't know how it originated. >> [laugh] >> It's not even clear whether Alice had a lot of say in the matter but. >> [laugh] >> There's something wonderfully defamilarizing about that. Okay. There's a related one, trade poems with others and do not consider them your own. Ali, back to you on that one. >> Yeah. I think that's probably one of the most challenging kind of tasks, yeah. And, the list just because. >> You write all night and you wrote this thing and it says what you wanted to say and you give it away, which challenges the whole notion of authorship. Yeah? Anything else to say about that experience? >> Well, I guess it also kind of challenges what the point of poetry and art is in general. If, you know, who does it belong to? Does it belong to the person who's in possession of it? Whose, whose hands it's actually in or. >> That's interesting. >> The, or the person who came up with it. It's just it's destabilizing but also potentially. >> It's an issue of intellectual property, in a way. Because if you gave me a poem and you gave me, really gave me the poem, I could copyright it and it would be mine. I just though I'd add that in there. >> [laugh] >> I'm not sure what that means. Take an already written work of your own and insert at random or by choice, a paragraph or section of a psychology book or a seed catalog. Anna, what's going to happen there? I mean, what, what is the point of that? >> The point is to, I mean, let's, let's say you have like, a passage that you've already written. Let's say you have, like, something from The Sun Also Rises. Then all of a sudden, you have from a seed catalog. >> Seed catalog. What does a seed catalog do, do to a paragraph of The Sun Also Rises? >> I mean, for one thing, it totally it's, it's such a radical jump from talking about, you know. >> Yes, it's definitely a radical jump. Thank you for that, for that observation. >> And it's, like, it's super, it's super jarring and defamiliarizing. It's, like, what are you actually reading? >> What does it defamiliarize? >> The sun also rises as you know it but also the seed catalog. And also, who the writer is that would put those two things together. >> What does it defamiliarize? Amaris? >> I think it just puts you in a whole other vocabulary system. >> Another vocabulary system. >> So. >> Another genre. Another sort of set of assumed facts. It's kind of calls into question the fictive quality of what Hemingway is doing. Write what cannot be written. >> [laugh] >> Max, what can not be written? Give me an example. What can not be written? >> What can not be written? >> Mm-hm. >> Either a certain, I guess there certain feelings we have that we cannot express. We can't [inaudible] express. >> I don't think Bernadette Mayer meant that. That sounds [inaudible]. >> [laugh] >> The example she gives is an index, and I believe in index. >> Sure. >> But the only reason you write an index is if you've written a book and you're, what a strange experience writing indexes. You are alphabetizing every phrase or keyword in a 250 page book. Write what cannot be written. I think, what she means is write what you typically don't write and call writing. >> Write first what you would normally write afterwards. >> Nice. Find the poems you think are the worst poems ever written. >> [laugh] >> Either by your own self or other poets, study them then write a bad poem. Ali, start us out. >> I just think that the longer you've been kind of studying poetry, the harder it is to actually do that because ... >> To write a bad poem? >> Well, no, no. Not even. But to write a poem that is just a hundred, it's just hard to get, it is hard to get away from intention or to get away from, well, the, you know, all the possible interpretations. And even, you know, writing something kind of, when I tried to do this, it just ended up being really kitchy. But, you know, that's kind of one of the wholes thing in flarfs. >> Flarf, F, L, A, R, F. What's that? >> It's it was an internet. >> Did you say was? >> It is. Well. >> [laugh] >> I know, I think it might be over. >> Yeah. >> [laugh] >> Who's, who's to know, but flarf was a movement of deliberately kitchy, bad writing. Typically, taken from Google searches and so forth. >> Right. So, Googleisms for example where you might just search a word and see just all the kind of immediate language that comes up. >> Visa goes Postal, the things one it. >> There are some pretty famous ones drawn from Crapola headlines from the Midnight Express whatever, the Midnight Star. It's Emily's, Emily is so happy we're not doing a flarf poem. >> [laugh] >> Because it would be, but actually we are, we're sort of doing a proto-flarf poem in section, Chapter 9.3, Mike McGee's My Angie Dickinson. >> Oh. >> Which was obviously riffing off my Emily Dickinson. But, my Angie Dickinson, well, we'll talk about that another time. Write a work gazing into a mirror without using the pronoun I. Go ahead, Max. What's that going to be like? >> Well, this, we've already been talking a little bit about challenging your own authorship and authority with, with language and challenging your ego. And so, that's very difficult to have to. >> Look in the mirror. Look literally. >> To stare at yourself and, and essentially not evoke your, your self. I mean, you, you will, necessarily. But, to avoid that pronoun, identifying yourself, saying I do this. >> This is a moment where we can say something general about what Bernadette Mayer is trying to get us to do. Do you want to take a shot at it? >> Oh, I, I think I started to edit it a second ago, that she's encouraging us to, to write without getting hung up on, on the ideas of, of intent, and, and authorship in ourselves. And what are our words, and what we want to express, and can express. But rather to just, to write and that's what all of these, these exercises are here for. To just get you to start writing. >> Yeah good. And, and, and don't you, when you read this you feel like you want to just quit this. >> [laugh] >> Discussion and go write? Dave, don't you feel like you want to write? >> Absolutely. >> [laugh] >> I think we can be very productive. Let's look at two more really quickly. Take a traditional text like the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. For every noun, replace it with one noun that is seventh or ninth down from the original one in a dictionary. And this is the famous n + seven or n + nine, mostly n + seven. So, what, what, what results. Emily, you take a noun, and you move down the dictionary, and you somewhat arbitrarily, but systematically replace it. >> Well, it's sort of avoiding the Pledge of Allegiance. Just scrambling that sort of immemorial significance, immemorial meaning but not in a random arbitrary way. Not in a way that's purposefully subversive. >> So unpurposely, nonintentionally defamiliarizing the most familiar phrase for Americans, one of the most familiar phrases. Good, and we're going to be looking at an n + seven poem in the next section, what is it? Rosmarie Waldrop's poem, Shorter American Memory of the Declaration of Independence. So, that, that should be a lot of fun. Okay. Finally, attempt to write in a way that's never been written before. Let's have a couple comments on this. Anna, what's it mean? >> Write in a way that's never been written before. >> Mm-hm. >> I mean, it's a little bit like, what she said earlier about write what cannot be written. >> Yes, but it's stated in the positive. What's she saying, Amaris? >> Well, it seems to point us to writing in an original sense. But, since we're moving towards the uncreative process it seems. >> Yeah. We're moving in this course to uncreativity. >> Yes. >> Unoriginality, and here's Bernadette Mayer saying, write in a way that's never been done before. How, how could, how do those two things square? Is she an outlyer in the movement toward originality? I don't think so. >> Well, I think uncreativity is meant ironically right. So , we're saying that we're going. >> Be creative. >> To recycle. >> Be creative. >> Language. >> Yeah. >> But by recontexturizing it and not by. >> Okay. >> Keeping an independence. >> This is, this is a chance to say something really big about the chorus. Anybody want to try it? >> No pressure? >> [laugh] >> No pressure at all. What did the Chapter two poet say? >> Make it new. >> Make it new. And she is saying right in a way that's never been written before. This is a good chance for us to remind ourselves that no matter how our contemporary poets push toward unoriginality, toward collaging language that's already been written, toward allowing us to hear the ambient language that's already out there, re, reformatting newspaper articles and transcripts of press conferences in terms of floor of just sort of setting up a Google search and using that language. No matter how they're moving in that direction, they are still seeking the how, how you say what you say is more important than what you say. The how of that. They're seeking newness in the how, not in the what. They're seeking newness in the how. This is a continuity for modernism. It's excited, it's Utopian. It believes in the new. It's what gets Bernadette Mayer up in the morning because she's going to do something that's never been done before.
