Intro to (Limited Fork) Poetry

Moving Day of the 340

Are you one of the 340?

Go HERE from now on.

Forkers, What's Your Blog?

Please post a link to your blog in the comments.
Thanks.

Open Invite to Navigate an ATLAS OF LIMITED FORK Navigational Systems

Welcome New and Returning Forkers!

Please take advantage of all (we'll talk about allnesses soon, but without --necessarily-- ever saying all that may be said about a single allness let alone all allnesses) that this blog --that you are joining in progress-- has to offer.
I will be pointing you to various posts from time to time, but you do not have to rely on my prompt to delve into the archives.

This post features a video (you'll need real player in order to view it) from early in my writing life, from a time that self-identified as a writer instead of as maker, my preferred enclosure now.

This pre-fork video of a poetry reading, a term I would not use now when given a choice, is a map of a prior location of body and mind (a map of prior body/mind stations that I did not put online; a map I found while searching for something else; perhaps you can locate some paths to Limited Fork sensibilities here, but if present, they were deeply embedded and/or encrypted so that I could not access them then.

That this location may be perceived as being on the Limited Fork path is possible since I was there before arriving where I am now, all forked (though not yet to the max); however, the location in the following video may not one that made Limited Forkiness inevitable. While this location (part of --a branch-- of the significance of initial conditions) may have imposed some limiting factors, those factors did not then make Limited Forking the only possible path; the inevitability (a form of) happened some years later in the Quality 16 cinema (refer to DOD: the death of depth Limited Fork Atlas post).

FreeVideoCoding.com

This is a map of an aspect, a facet, an angle of some of the *surface* of what I've become now that I've been forked:

(source image by Strexx of strexx.com)

Here's more: another aspect, facet, angle of some more of the *surface* of what I've become now that I've been forked:

(source image by Strexx of strexx.com)

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Speaking of surfaces, what's your take on advantages and disadvantages of mapping (only) surfaces? What are (some of the) relationships between surfaces and volume? What is the purpose of advice to not confine written commentary to the surface?

Consider the problem of surface-based rendering in this image

from the Computer Integrated Medical Intervention Laboratory. Explore the full context there.

and think about ways in which it could be appropriate to think of surface-based rendering as a function of print poams (products of acts of making) as a function of surface-based rendering of (an) idea.

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]]> Please accept this open invite to navigate an atlas of Limited Fork navigational systems

DOD: the death of depth; the Birth of Fork (a re-gifting [for the season] of a gift received while at the movie)

Once upon a time, a few years ago, there was no limited fork, so forker girl could not be forker girl. That thinnest sliver of moon when the moon is waning away could not be seen as the tine of limited fork it also is, so had she had her she-ness then, she would have slipped right by that tine (as many things do).

There wasn't even --please forgive the shock of this -- there wasn't even yet the POAM (product of an act of making), an enclosure system for way more than poems, print and otherwise, these just a part of PES: poam enclosure system.

But at the end of an October that was different as if because of what was going to happen at the end of that month, in a movie multiplex that was different at that moment in October also, in response to reverberations, perhaps, of the wobble responsible for this difference; certainly in the brain of the forker-girl-to be these was some vibration; and all that was tuned to a similar frequency produced a concert of meaning finally (that end of October, the week before the witches) within a perceptible range and bingo!: a limited fork passed right through her.

This video essay tells the tale of my skewering
(I am now open to so much.)

FreeVideoCoding.com

]]> Some before & after shots of my forked existence:

Before: not enough substance to be perceptible; sorry.

After: some FEP: fork-eye phenomenon

(photo by strexx of strexx.com)

and some forked fertility

(photo by strexx of strexx.com)

Finally, a video poam gift for the winter holiday season: The Ostrich Culture of Snowmen:

(thanks, Nick, for reminding me, in your post, about the existence of snowmen, an existence you mentioned in response to Transient Poams, another one of my posts --we've got quite an interacting system going on!)

SYSTEMS of ENCLOSURE

To start, to join something already in progress --systems and enclosures--
enclosure helps establish itness, helps identify things as things.

(the Limited Fork plant didn't just sprout, didn't just blossom; it took hold in a fertile area from seeds that came from something enclosed in a system just as fertile)
(image of Limited Fork plant in the Garden of Forked Delight by Proforker T Moss)

So to be able to identify a poem (which is a creative product enclosed by poam: product of an act of making) is to also be able to enclose what is called poam in poem..

System implies activity in the establishment and/or maintenance of connections between parts of a more complex network which itself may function within a larger network; something is/has been at work.

(image of Limited Fork tool at work by Proforker T Moss)

Enclosure refers, at least in part, to what binds the network (in some way, on some scale, for some duration, at some rate); enclosure refers, at least in part, to the logic or method by which the parts are a set or group (in some way, on some scale, for some duration, at some rate); the substance of the link(s), of the connection(s) is an indicator of enclosure.

**Be sure to discuss in your grand finale post the nature of the system of enclosure you are using to map your understanding of poems/poams as systems of enclosure. Be sure to articulate the rationale that you are using, that you are updating (through 18 December for the purposes of the class as enclosure) as you prepare your blog and supporting materials (visual and sound enclosures may be part of your blog enclosure).**

How flexible, how rigid, how varied is your system of enclosure?
What are the properties of your system of enclosure? The rules of inclusion/exclusion? What are the limiting factors that help determine what is the property, that is: what belongs to and what doesn't belong to your system of enclosure? --of course your system of enclosure may have subsystems, parts each one of which may be viewed as a whole or an allness.

The following audio piece, Poetry Is a Dynamic System, by forker girl and ansted of strexx.com offers some of the details of some of the properties and property's of the Limited Fork enclosure system:

I remind you now that margins may be one of the more important parts of your enclosure system. The margins may help identify the shape of the enclosure system. The margins, especially occupied (define occupancy margins function as the framework of the system, so that which is marginal, that which is peripheral may delineate the shape of the system.

(image by Gary Fewless from the Cofrin Center for Biodiversity U of Wisconsin website)

Of course some enclosure systems do not have the physicality of a third dimension, so these systems are not objects from an unenhanced human perspective (yet another enclosure sustem); the code with which the following sonic enclosure system by Proforker Moss is embedded in this post is an enclosure system, and the sonic content is about an open, shifting (or blossoming) fork and ladder system of enclosing:

Visually, most print poams can be considered or can be mapped onto modified ladder systems of enclosure. As the situation of the poam system or the ladder system on which the print poam is mapped changes, so will the nature of enclosure. The margins and rules change as systems and/or subsystems interact with some entity, some variable.

Limited Fork itself may be understood as a system of enclosure that emerged as an outcome of interactions with complex or dynamic systems, the impact of technology in this digital age, and aesthetic expression of idea systems. Under these converging situations, poetry could not remain only as it was without modification, without reconfiguration. Acquired knowledge systems allowed poetry and thinking to reflect the process (or system) of that acquisition.

When Walt Whitman found himself needing to express an American poetry with European systems of poetic expression, the wildness of America did not fit the formal poetic frames well; too much was situated in the margins, and the American situations interacting with the need for accurate aesthetic expression allowed Whitman to develop an American poetics exemplified quite well by Song of Myself.

Innovation and aesthetic expression partner easily and of necessity when changing situations (forms of systems) support and/or even demand interaction, resulting in systems of enclosure in which modifications may be anywhere from subtle to profound.

Hiroshi Sugimoto, visual image maker, in reimagining math, mapping the abstract into/onto/as a tactile system of enclosure of great use to tactile learners, simultaneously demonstrates that art is possible even without artistic intention

The need for an American system of poetic enclosure or an American poetics was shared by many interested in more authentic engagement with American situations, and a pursuit of authentic expression/representation drives many aesthetic movements.

As America matured and various groups (subsystems) tested and questioned the rules and protocols of enclosure, Walt Whitman's model of an American poetics was tested by some makers to see whether or not it could accommodate emerging situations, especially those situations whose volatility might seem more pronounced than an aesthetic aspiration; authenticity itself, things themselves, red wheelbarrows full of whatever Americans in any situation put in them, America as it is, America as Allen Ginsberg enclosed it in a poam system known as Howl, a system of enclosure structured according to how Ginsberg breathed, the manner in which he lived in America, the manner in which he freed his voice so that it could be located, its structure, its situations, its properties and property's identified and mapped.

So in Howl where breath and pulse form a system of enclosure, we modify a system of jazz enclosure, of Pharoah Sanders embedding a system of heartbeat, a situation of metered irregular living (for the healthy heartbeat has natural variance) in his album With a Heartbeat.

Achieved: an irregular circle, we are back with the heart of Pharoah, but the properties and property's of situations of poam systems has evolved, has behaved like the system that it is, a linked network of irregular circles that form, when viewed within this curved frame, an irregular system of spiral enclosure (a form of ladder --recall a previous post: LADDER SYSTEM OF THE POAM AS ECOSYSTEM, a list (or unfolding blossom) of system of enclosure models and metaphors).

And also achieved, I hope, is the poam of your having been part of this blossoming semester for reason other than grade. I hope that other systems of enclosure that are part of your academic and personal lives have been able to connect with limited fork poam systems, with limited fork methods of building complex aesthetic networks of meaning in which any system of information and/or perception may contribute. Please listen to Proforker Moss' comment on systems of quality interacting with the limited fork system of participating in existence:

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Here are a few more poam systems and idea systems about poam systems for you to consider as your system of enclosure unfolds within its emerging and evolving rationale:

Magnetic Poery online
Word of thhe day
Random Haiku Generator
sublethat
Drunken Boat
Value of Sulfur by Charles Bernstein
The Last avant-garde by David Lehman

CONCEPTUAL POAM SYSTEMS

Introducing the conceptual text-based visual systems of Jason J Gillingham.

You are not likely to find work like Gillingham's in most anthologies of poetry, even in anthologies of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry where there is exploration of the language's inexactitude and uncontrollable interfaces so that its use does not clarify and only seems to because of the trust placed in language without considering the structural and conceptual limits and fallibilities of language. The fragmentation implicit in language usage in exposed by Language poets; there should not be expectations that groups of words can form reliable coherency when it cannot be determined with any exactitude just what is being connected and what the logic of the connections might be.

Rather than trying to produce incoherent poems, language poetry extracts the meanings and portions of meanings that might be available in arrangements operating on other logics, often based upon the nature of experiences words have endured in use, misuse, overuse, abuse. negligence, assumption, over trust. etc.

HIGHLY COMPATIBLE WITH LIMITED FORK POETICS, AND MAY BE CONSIDERED A BRANCH OF LFP

Gillingham is not deliberately making poams; while text is a part of his work, the text is not meant to convey meanings based on their definitions. The words are placed in situations that change them, revealing alternative concealments, often at the expense of linguistic and syntactical integrity. As the words interact with their environments, there is a physical reaction. Usually, words are representational, but in Gillingham's poams, the words have thingness, and as things they are liberated from representing what they are assigned in language systems.

Of course it is possible to view Gillingham's text objects as fragmented, but I think of the situation of Gilligham's text objects more as the splitting of pods when growth erupts, the accessing of the interiors of the egg; Gillingham opens the words, none of which are empty.

The use of words as objects, and the making of poems that arrange these objects according to systems other than definitions is also compatible with L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry although Gillingham's work, nor the work of Ed Rusha is usually categorized as poetry, as problem with dominant and domineering systems allowed to shape the systems of significance/insignificance that shape the rules and protocols of society.

Ed Rusha, Lisp, and Lisp detail from National Gallery of Art.

"CREDITS

Web feature written by Sally Shelburne, designed and produced by Donna Mann, and edited by Ulrike Mills. Thanks to Jeffrey Weiss, Barbara Moore, Phyllis Hecht, Lesley Keiner, Ira Bartfield, and Ric Foster for their contributions to this project.

A special note of gratitude to Ed Ruscha and his staff for their generous assistance in the development of this online feature.

NOTES

1. Neal Benezra and Kerry Brougher, with contribution by Phyllis Rosenzweig. Ed Ruscha [exh. cat., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden] (Washington, 2000), 144.

2. Benezra and Brougher 2000, 147.

3. Benezra and Brougher 2000, 145 and n. 1.

4. Yve-Alain Bois, Edward Ruscha: Romance with Liquids, Paintings 1966-1969 [exh. cat., Gagosian Gallery] (New York, 1993), 15–16."

Text & credits from National Gallery of Art

I hope that you find considerations of intention a bit different in these conceptual poam systems than you've found in other more conventionally displayed print poams.

For some of you, what follows will be an introduction, for others an opportunity to reacquaint yourself with what I consider extremely significant conceptual poam work by two visual makers whose text systems are enclosed by visual systems further enclosed by the placement of text systems within visual systems and by the content of the text systems.

Those of you unable to readthe text systems literally, will still be able to read non-literal implications of the text systems.

Shirin Neshat is primarily visual (still and moving) poam maker whose pages (a page is a host of a poam event; where a poam event pccurs) often disallow negative space, text filling any location in the map of the poam that may be filled:

This visual poam by Shirin Neshat may be experienced in its source context, and more
of her visual poams may be experienced at Iranian.com.

Lalla Essaydi, visual poam maker of Converging Territories, a collection of visual poams in which what might otherwise be consigned to negative space is populated with text to an extent that saturated black areas of visual poams may be perceived as areas where text is so dense, so saturated, that individual parts of texts are not discernible, as evident in:

This visual poam may be experienced in its source context, a neighborhood of other Essaydi visual poams from Converging territories at: Laurence Miller Gallery.com

**Please Note: the comments about text density are offered only as a way of considering that visual poam aspect/element, not the way.**

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Notice (as a result of what you've already encountered in this post, and in other posts, and in your poem and poam experience) how the resonance of an idea can help sustain interaction (a form of poam vibration, emanating pulses, waves, reverberations, etc.) , linking a poam or allness (area of forcus) to other areas, those linked areas being shaped by each other into other implications, other possibilities. Indeed, my incorporation of Galway Kinnell's Saint Francis and the Sow into my print poam Deirdre in Kinnell's Saint Francis and the Sow is sustained interaction, interaction bridge, and mutating (over time) reverberation. The link to Tokyo Butter's table of contents (actually referred to as search results in the book, offers a basic framework of sustained interaction or interaction bridge systems through close examination of your search of these search results.

It becomes evident that a conceptual system organizes the book, and reasonable conjectures can be made about possible principles of organization of the conceptual system --just from examination of the What Is Found There, a collection of charged essays considering how poetry can interact meaningfully with world systems, shaping them through interacting with them, and with persons who can also act as shapers, not just by regarding the intentions of makers, but also by extending those intentions, personalizing them so that the participant in a poam system acquires some intentions; that is: find something in a poam system that you can use meaningfully.

What can be found in poam systems can be profound, but the finder must be receptive to finding something, and must have a set of tools (that the finder must define) able to extract something from a poam system, a something that the finder can then attempt to shape into something from which others can find something.

(and that is also [part of] why we blog)

Here is a conceptual poam system of enclosure, Where Poetry Lives, submitted by 240 Forker Priya:

FreeVideoCoding.com

[I also recommend the print book What Is Found There by Adrienne Rich)

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Let us assume that each part of a poam system contributes something (on some scale for some duration of time on some scale) to the poam system(s) to which the part belongs, and that parts of a poam system can include, to some degree, on some scale, for some duration: syntactical elements, images, linguistic patterns, aesthetic devices, maker intentions, syllabic patterns, rhythmic patterns, sonic patterns, visual patterns, oral patterns, co-maker contributions and extractions, and so forth;

and let us assume that readers of poam systems are also co-makers of poam systems in the interpretive patterns that co-makers construct during encounters with a poam system, interpretive patterns which themselves may be eligible for consideration as poam systems.
]]> Here is Bubbling, one of forkergirl's video conceptual poam systems
(also available for download in both or either a high or low resolution version from the Limited Fork podcast, and available for viewing on you tube ):

FreeVideoCoding.com

The entire Bubbling system includes print pieces configured similarly to the print poam Me and Bubble Went to Memphis, that appeared in the online journal Oregon Literary Review

and will include a huge quilt that will be able to cover (conceal?) the walls of a room (a lot of variety here! in the size differential)

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The following video poam components (or video stanzas from You Tube (that fascinating bifurcating enclosure system) by way of Baraka, a film (video poam) by Ron Fricke

(by the way, each video excerpt or video stanza is also an allness that is also hub, bifurcation point, bifurcating system, fluid stanza, visual and sonic punctuation, illumination, etc.):

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This Baraka video stanza allness is available by link only; embedding has been disabled for: Baraka II.

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Please continue blossoming and enclosing, folding and unfolding, illuminating and being illuminated, configuring and reconfiguring

not just by 17 December 2007, but for the rest of your lives.

TRANSIENT POAMS

Let me share that of course radiant (or illuminating) qualities of poams may pass through us --for myself, this passage is much closer to certainty: I believe that radiant qualities of poams pass through me whether or not they do in any measurable reality.

(image from Quasar9)

This comes from a comment I left in Maxell's Blog
"Please don't overlook the poam configurations that exist within a scale that seems like incredible brevity from the human scale --poam configurations which may endure only as long as a lightning flash --sometimes the evidence is only a radiant pulse we (think) that we feel, we believe that we have experienced even when there is no proof but our commitment to belief.

So please watch some of the videos in the link below about the poam configurations that occur. often incredibly briefly, in the work of "nature collaborator" Andy Goldsworthy (don't you find how he self-identifies so illuminating? He tags himself with identifiers in a manner that maybe perceived as similar to Elizabeth Bishop tagging her sestina poam "Sestina." Consider the certainty that something has been correctly identified in such tagging).

You Tube excerpts from "Rivers and Tides," a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy in acts of making:

What can you say about intention when the poam melts, floats away, collapses, is carried away in its components by water, etc.?

Who is this for?

What is the value?

Why work so hard for something that does not result in the kind of monuments that often indicate human presence? Monuments perhaps designed to outlast us --why?

How do we study such poams that no longer exist? --only the record of the poam having happened remains

But then again, and I urge you to think carefully about this; but then again, why assume that what is on the print page IS the poam? In some ways, is not the print object a record of the event as it occurs in the mind and feelings of the maker? Is not the illumination something that (sometimes, when the maker is lucky) occurs in the impulse to make, in the act of making? And while the print object may illuminate those who experience it, what is being experienced may be a model of what the maker experienced to produce the print object and not the actual poam event."

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Here is a chromatic motion print (a map) of the sonic tracks made by a Claude Debussy piano poam, as incorporated by Nick in his posted response to this post:

According to Nick: "This work takes the piano score and visually shows the song as it progresses. There is also an interesting representation of color in the piece, which helps to remind of Debussy's quote about color, music and ideas."

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Perhaps more tangible is reminding us to (re)consider what we may assume is moving through our bodies although we usually do not see the subcutaneous travels of blood (though we may see the mapping of veins and arteries under the skin, may see pools of bruise blossoming).

The electrical coding of idea in our neural networks in not usually seen, but does happen, is happening as I type, as you read.

As stated in this description of a part of Body Atlas
at Ambrose Video where the series is available:
"Day and night, there's a clock ticking within our bodies. This clock is driven by chemicals in our blood-stream, the body's hormones. Made by half a dozen glands scattered throughout the body, hormones provide the unseen balance within our bodies that keeps our systems in harmony."

(image from Ambrose Video)

There are yet other instances of sensory awakenings as a result of unseen particles and waves passing through us (indeed, when to >i>see an object is to have unseen mechanisms deliver a rendering of an object to the optic nerve. There are occasions when unseen neural events allow, for instance: . The name for these a typical perceptual events is Synesthesia. The outcomes of cross-sensory interactions are synesthesian poams

Brainwaves (image from Corante (Brain Waves monthly archives)

Jane Mackay painted “Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto” to creat a synaesthetic composition that bridges the gap between sight and sound. (Credit: Jane Mackay)

(image and image caption from Yale Scientific)

Consider this illuminating imagining as you prepare your system of course enclousure(s):

(image from Synethesia Research)
]]> Another take on transient forms passing through, interacting with the body unseen is part of the Story of Pakistan

Commentary about dreaming and neutrinos are at Science Musings Blog

--And do not forget what happens when we do, at some moment, Go Gentle into that Good Night:
the passage of consciousness through? out? of the body?

--Is it the very idea of the self that departs?
that degrades?

--even Houdini, who promised to return to report what the other side was like, has not done so; even Houdini--.

Harry Houdini, who himself built a career on creating illusions, was critical of "spirit photographs." To expose the fraud, he photographed himself with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln.
(image and caption from: Wasington Post.com where the image source is listed as Library of Congress

THE LIMITED FORK OF ILLUMINATION (a love affair)

FORK: for attempts at access

(including the accessing of illumination)

About My Forky Qualifications:

--a diploma of course, but also the headline of Scandalous Tines

(Just a little reminding that I do know something useful, something illuminating about forking systems)
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You have considered situations of fork, properties (plural) and property'sof fork; multiple and separate bifurcations can occur in a simultaneity that is not confined to a single increment of time for its measure; no universal human understanding or experience of time. Simultaneity is used to refer to a number of events occuring at different interpretations of time during a length of time specified according to a system of time measurement.

This basic approach to time can be applied to poems (a form of poam: products of acts of making), establishing some of dimensionality and complexity of poem duration. It is not necessarily the case that a poem progresses in time with all systems of the poem sharing the same system of time measurement. Each stanza, each line, each word may use different systems of time measurement in order to respond to events. While at line endings it is natural to go to the next line, that next line may be located on a differnt plane of existence (consider how stars in constellations are actually vast distances apart and are not radiating in the perceptual formations apparent from earth).

The line break is a bifurcation point, a location where an event (the line itself) has obvious opportunity for change. The corner that a line break is also offers multiple directions, some not as well formed as others; so for many interacting with the bifurcation point, only the movement to the next line seems s reasonable choice. It is a reasonable choice, but not the only choice, for the line continues, in all of the directions possble from that bifurcation point. Various conditions and interactions with variables encountered in those directions shape the structure of form of what ovvurs in a particular location along a particular continuing line.

Just as tools of magnification can help reveal other scales of activity, so too can magnification of conditions along any of the continuing lines at any bifurcation point (some lines passing through the point of course, not just/not necessarily originating at the point) help to reveal some of what occurs in the poem when a line is continued.

Not only line breaks are bifurcation points; any point in the poam can be, but the status of bifurcation point is particularly evident at line breaks, and the term line break does much to remind those interacting with the poem that a disruption has occurred, disruption offering a powerful invitation to opportune variables to get a foothold in the obviously vulnerable poem system, and attempt to shape/reshape the poem system (to some degree, a negligible degree, a profound degrees, & so forth), perhaps toward increasing staibility, which may hold for some moment (as measured on some system of time measurement) before once destabilizing, or these opportunistic variables may help the system destabilize further, at some rate on some scale for some duration of time.

In some systems of interprepation and literary analysis, investigation of the range of what can happen at bifurcation points in poems is not conducted, but in Limited Fork, it is important to understand the possibilities of a system, and to determine the rules at work in the various situations in the host location(s) of the poem, which even in the case of print poems on paper is not confined, or limited, to the paper page, for the interaction of a reader with the print poem, removes a subsystem, the act of reading the poem is a bifurcation from the print location, but I am also interested in the rest of the activity in host locations, and in where/how that activity moves in time.

Each tine or prong of a forking system can approach something different, in different planes of existence, locations of different materials and substances.

The tines themsleves may be composed of different materials at different times in different locations.

The limited fork functions within what is possible for the device, those possibilities adapting to what is possible according to the particular iteration of fork in use, an interation shaped by use and by the situation in which it is used. Collaboration is extremely prominent in systems of behavior in interacting bifurcation systems. That the systems interact implies collaboration.

Keep in mind:
These are quite generalized comments; they are not made in reference to an enhanced or extended or magnified surface or layer or scale of fork dynamic behavior; modifications will be made to account for specifics according to the situational focus of some aspect at some moment in some investigation.

Bifurcations may occur at either end, along tines, along the handle, at any location of the forking system of which an eating utensil fork is only a generalized model.

A generalized static model of a bifurcating system, image by Linda Wright/Science Photo Library. Includes interactions with sub-effervescing(a bifurcating form) system and interactions with light.

No information is given at SPL about the material of the fork, the weight, the length, the design of the handle or even whether or not the handle extends.

Here is a generalized diagram of how a fork eating utensil is made:

(from How Products Are Made: Volume 1: Cutlery

**Tine shift: Science Photo Library is a great location for science-related images which may be freely downloaded in their low-res versions as long as the credit is given fully. The fork image used here is an example of SPL's low-res quality.**

My favorite limited forking system, my favorite sition of fork, my favorite fork property is the mouth of the Ganges

as shown in this NASA satellite photo of southwest Bangladesh shows where the mouth of the Ganges River meets the Bay of Bengal (as featured on the Georgia tech research News site):

A model of the Ganges bifurcating system is available for purchase from Hidden Art Shop.
The Ganges Delta Cube by DH Products

Photo by Full Focus.

The Ganges Delta Cube is based on an aerial photograph. The delta could be seen as a huge evolving drawing made by nature. It is long lasting, in contrast to the transient qualities of lightning.
(from the Hidden Art site)

(recall the Lichtenberg Figure as seen below, image from Bert Hickman's Tesla Mania site, gallery 2)

FORK: for attempts at access

(including the accessing of illumination)

The Great Situation ID challenge (YOU CAN WIN!)

While you're engaged with determining your 50/50/50:
situations of fork, properties of fork (plural), and property's of fork (possessive),

I'd like for you to visit a gallery of fish prints by Annie Sessler; note how much detail is revealed as a result of this intimate encounter, the beauty of structure and form (I say this with a bias toward a belief that disarray, that irregularity, that chaotic systems --that that resist accurate prediction of their specifics display form, have structure).

(ART OF THE DEEP A black sea bass, inked in white and printed on black silk by Annie Sessler)(image from The New York Times)

(Recall the level of detail in The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop and the details & understanding of structure that emerged for the student who experienced direct contact --or interaction with the fish in The Student, The Fish, and Agassiz.)

(and saying this has made it necessary to also take you to Saint Francis and the Sow by Galway Kinnell, a print poem I wanted to steal because it is necessary sometimes to reteach a thing its loveliness, and that lesson sometimes has a better chance of being taught/transmitted and learned/received if the teaching/learning occurs in words and touch --you can read Contemplating the Theft of the Sow here, if you like; it is the second essay in this group. There is not yet an essay in which I comment on the successful theft showcased in Tokyo Butter)

Part of your task is to determine how to get something to reveal its properties and property's; what are the situations in which revelations of aspects of something (are more likely to) occur?

Consider the poam as one of the somethings with something to reveal; sonsider that even an incoherent poam has form, has structure --what are the situations, what are the modes of consideration (feel free to invent modes of consideration) in which the poam reveals aspects of its nature, in which ways to enter and exit the poam become apparent to you.
]]> ~~REMEMBER:
PRIZES ON MONDAY FOR THE FORK PROPERTY GROUP WITH THE MOST 50/50/50 NOT SHARED WITH OTHER FPG's~~

COME ARMED WITH ROUNDS OF 50/50/50 AMMUNITION!

By the way, Robert Hass, former US Poet Laureate is coming for an AIDS Awareness Day With(out) Art event on 1 December at 4 pm in the Rackham Amphitheater.

(September Inverness, a broadside created for Between the Lakes: an Interlochen Symposium for Writers and Readers, which features this previously unpublished poem by keynote speaker and former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass. Printed on mould made Somerset Textured paper (250 gsm). Text font is 18 to 36 pt. Bernhard Booklet and Bernhard Roman. Sheet size is 10 by 11 inches, limited edition of 200. NFS Deep Woods Press.com. Caption and broadside from Deep Woods Press.com)

To experience print work and audio versions of print work by Hass, please click here
and to experience more print work and audio versions of print work by Hass, please click
here.

Do take a close look at Sonnet by Hass, whose print poem in the sonnet form bears the name of form, proudly, as the poem's title and earned badge.

Recall that the form badge as title was also a naming strategy in Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop.

So that the third of the three primary traditional formal poem forms can join the sonnet and sestina, please take another look at Do not go gentle into that good night, a villanelle by Dylan Thomas, probably the most famous, certainly the most anthologized villanelle.

These three major forms of tradational poetic forms offer examples of obvious structure. The basic rules can be determined fairly quickly. Other form and structure, in these examples and of course elsewhere, may be embedded, may be more subtle, but still possible to identify upon examination and reexamination in a variety of situations --for it is possible to discover that there are rules and patterns of configuration that may sense when examining a poam, rules and patterns of configuration that have not been applied to those poams before.

Validity of assessment of a poam's situations/properties/property's is not limited to what has been previously determined;

indeed, you have a limited fork (that itself, as a tool of poams, has situations/properties/property's) that can turn up new ground, help you plant new seeds while also exposing roots of prior assessment. There are fertile areas of investigation that come from fields of inquiry outside of literary analysis.

FORK: the tool, the utensil, the (forgive me this indulgence, please) way

The are five (limited) forks here tonight, presented in an array on a multi-purpose table.
Five only five similar (note the resistance to say identical) forks.

Forks similar to these, forks whose arrangement on the table included asub-arrangement similar to the arrangement of forks in this image :

(image from Global b2b Network)

Please form five groups of the fork, and designate the group member to be charged with selecting one of the five forks. The designated chooser should then choose a fork from the array on the table, according to a rationale of selection to be shared with the group; the chosen fork should be taken to the group where

SITUATIONS and PROPERTIES and PROPERTY'S of the fork will be determined.
Please identify and document at least 10 of each (for each group member, so a total of 50/50/50 --please note overlapping and non-oberlapping identifications. The group may make the 50/50/50 in which case strategies of determining overlap may become necessary.
If necessary to make any of these identifications in other locations, please do so, but return, identifications made by 8 p.m. est.

You have until 8:00 p.m. to accomplish this.

]]> PART OF THE PURPOSE OF THIS IS A CONSIDERATION OF FORM VS FORMLESSNESS
and of MATTERS OF INTENTION

**The fork as literal, as generalized blueprint (think of how the tool is/can be used; think of how the structure influences use) will be outcomes of your realizations about aspects of the purpose of the device.**

Please refer to Fork by Poet Laureate Charles Simic.

Please also refer to more of Simic's work at poets.org

as you further ponder form vs formlessness, even the possibility of formlessness --what does your mind associate with formlessness?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

For more prongs (or tines) of your fork, with some degree of transparency (which suggesys what concerning situations, porperty plural and property possessive?) go to Henry's Illumination - additional comments post and follow the link there to a Frost poem. (watch the video in his post, too)

Illumination

There is a bifurcating way in which idea is mapped into the mind.
I really must stop referring to an idea as a singular thing --oh so simple; I have an idea!--.

Perhaps the vehicle the idea uses to travel and attach itself in the mind is more like a snowflake, like the ferning of the captured lightning of a Lichtenbeg figure —what appeals to me about such a model for the vehicle of an idea is the negative space involved; the gaps between bifurcating elements, emphasizing, among other things, how an idea is now so complete that growth, that continued movement, development and so forth is not possible or necessary.

("Outline of random snowflake curve after five iterations." (fractal or dynamic/complex system behavior). Image from: LS SketchBook by example)

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Before going further, please board the Drunken Boat, an online journal featuring a range of poam forms, text and hypertext, sound, video, fusion, hybrid forms. Really challenges adhering toa static understanding of making.
]]> You will work on an illuminating packaging of your journey through Poametry.
You will start with a decision about working alone or with others.
Why would the solo or the group model be more revelatory (or illuminating) for you as you investigate the illuminating function of aesthetic expression.

How have you been illimunated? What have you found illuminating?
What is the poetry, the poem that you associate with an illuminating moment?

No poetry has served this function for you?
How can that be? Please elaborate; please offer some illumination on why
no poem has any responsibility for an illuminating moment of yours
—or could it be --say it ain't so-- that you haven't had one of these illuminating moments yet?
Could it be that you feel only one genuinely illuminating moment happens in a life?
Why such skimpy allocation?
Plural illumination might/does dilute illumination? Reduces the magnitude of the brightness?
The bulb goes out? The rocket just fizzles?

Two days, any two days, any combination of forty-eight hours worth of documenting all illuminations you encounter --they must be your illuminations, your ahs, your wows.

I figure that with Thanksgiving coming, maybe your chances of being illuminated are increased.
But I could be wrong about that.

You will look for, alone or in concert with the partners you select (if from outside the class, they must come and be illuminated with us, must share their illuminations) some aesthetic extension into Poam/poem that (also) is illumination. It can not come from a location dedicated to exposing illuminating poems. No anthologies of poetry. You must find this illumination in locations without a purpose of presenting aesthetic extension. You must share this aesthetic extension after Thanksgiving, allowing that time to possibly offer aesthetic extension.

BUT FOR NOW: You have until 8:05 p.m. to accomplish the following: identify a poem or passage of poem that you find illuminating in some way. Make sure you have a copy of the lines if you have not memorized them. Conduct a survey; find out whether or not five persons (outside of this class) have had an illuminating moment today. If not today, then when was the most recent? What made that moment an illuminating moment? When was the last time poetry illuminated the person? She the illuminating lines you identified, ask the person to respond to the lines; ask the person whether or not those lines were illuminating. **these questions are guide questions; tweak as necessary** Feel free to take this on the bus.

Speaking of illumination, ask about the Lichtenberg figure (again), if you like —there could be one in the room.

Bishop's Sestina at Great American Pinup: AN IMPACT POST

Now that you've considered Bishop's Sestina through a mapping of your response to some questions, please go to this 5 June 2005 post in The Great American Pinup blog to read what others (the post and the comments) have to say about this sestina.

Please investigate other comments about this sestina here and here
]]> Go here and herefor the history of the sestina and for exercises to help with your understanding and/or appreciation of the form. Do post any original sestina you map/create in sonic form and/or visual form --perhaps even a 2D or 3D puzzle in your blog.

Are there any examples of contemporsry music (with or without lyrics) whose structure is close to if not outright sestina-like? Can you find an examplke that could become closer to being sestina-like with a minimum of tweaking?

Why might we want to get intimate with the sestina form as 2007 wanes? Do you see a political or cultural or social or economic or scientific or engineeing issue where the sestina form might offer insight?

MAKE A CASE FOR SUSTAINED USEFULNESS OF THE SESTINA (a mapping strategy) OUTSIDE (and/or inside) THE STUDY OF POETRY

Going Fishing (followed by the cheat)

Please go to this link and follow instructions.

Then, examine Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop and record your observations about the structures of this map.

What do you notice about the form of this mapping?
What, if anything appeals (to you) about the mapping of a poam as a sestina?
What helps this appeal and/or what hinders the appeal of this structured mapping?
How is idea served by this mapping?
What are your ideas about the (continued) purpose of such mapping?
How might you describe the relationship between map (form) and idea in Bishop's Sestina and in Bishop's The Fish (as published) and in one alternative mapping (either one of the provided remappings --here or here-- and/or a remapping that you make yourself).
]]> THE CHEAT

Want some help with the sestina map (form)?
Are you sure?
Don't you want to record your impressions, the outcomes of your interactions with the form and Bishop's Sestina while those interactions are yours, before they interact with the cheat stuff right here at eHow?
Sure you do, so record YOUR interactions and then go to eHow to write a Sestina.

Arts & Minds - an event for everyone

Understanding the physiology of the brain may not sufficiently map what occurs during creative acts. A physiological understanding of creativity may not yet be available to us, yet there's no denying that creativity occurs in the mind.

The Arts & Minds event --free and open to the public, but registration is required; I hope that some of you will participate--

will, in part, explore interfaces between the science of the brain and the making of art, a product of the brain still defying certain kinds of quantification.

Please join us in the mapping of this exploration.

(image from Mizzou News where you can read the article Shaping the Brain)
_________________________________

Important Update:

A link to Nick's response to the impact of only the first third (all he was able to attend) of the Arts and Brain session.

This quote is from Nick's post about attending the event:

"On November 1st, I was able to skip out of part of another class and experience about the first hour and a half of Arts and the Brain. I hope that many people from our class were able to attend, because never before have I seen a more accurate display of a 'fluid' map. Watching the interactions unfold was amazing.

Background

Imagine the visual studio, set up with mirrors in the middle creating pathways for people to pass through, projection screens on each wall, displaying both preselected imagines and a current map of what was going on taken from above, and music playing in the background. The people interacting and moving among the mirrors were all wearing white caps, so when looking at the projection screen with the video being taken from above, the identity of the individuals was hard to distinguish. What did differentiate people though, was the reaction to the environment that they were placed in. People reacted differently to the music, some chose to dance, some let it dictate they pace that they moved among the mirrors, and still others seemed to not be affected by the music at all. It was also extremely interesting to see how the people reacted to one another. Some people let the others in front of them control the pace that they walked at, while other chose to walk at their own pace through the 'map' and walk around and amongst people that were taking in their surrounding environment at their own pace.

Watching this amazing visual display sparked a flurry of thoughts about how this related to both poetry and the mapping of all different types of poams. My immediate reaction was that this was probably the best 'map' that I had seen that addressed the problems of differing interpretations of a poam depending on the individual. Since the people who were interacting were part of the map, their reactions to their environment was captured and could visually be seen. The thing that I realized and discussed about my map of The Lightning is a yellow Fork was that my map meant something to me, and had quite a bit of meaning, but could have held no significance to anyone else. This is what made Arts and the Brain so interesting, that the participants reactions to their changing environment was the thing that was captured as the map. The idea was for the map to be fluid, and constantly changing, which it was.

The handout from the demonstration also aimed toward the same purpose, from my perspective. The map was initially small, but when opened, folded out to show the different parts of the diagram. It aimed toward distinguishing the different parts of the presentation, while tying them all together through the 'Arts and the Brain' topic. I wish that I had been able to view more of the presentation, because I was only able to see one part of the whole."

_________________________________

This is the Elements of Damage component of the video installation poam offered by Thylias Moss in the Arts & Brain session of the event:

FreeVideoCoding.com

(This video poam component may also be viewed at you tube and may both viewed and/or downloaded from the Limited Fork podcast.)

The Active Map We Are

Of course I realize that although you are submitting your mapping (note that I did not say mapped) of The Red Wheelbarrow or The Lightning is a yellow Fork the need to map persists,

for we are all involved intensely in the mapping of our lives, in the mapping of meaning in our encounters, in the mapping of a 240 in which a relevance of poetry to the other aspects of our lives is established, that establishement constituting a map.

So we will use the metaphor of mapping to refer to journeys through poems
such as Elizabeth Bishop's The Fish
which accomplishes, among all else that it accomplishes, the mapping of a fish and the mapping of an encounter with a fish, and a mapping of the the outcomes (or impact) of that encounter with a fish. Note the level of specificity achieved without naming a species of fish.
Can the species of fish be determined based on the details the poem provides?

Perhaps these initial maps will be part of the atlas you submit at the end of the course.
(more about this context later)

I have done some mapping/remapping myself, and I invite you to explore these maps in the following links:
A Limited Forker Girl's Tines
Bifurcation Station
Limited Fork 101
Limited Fork Academic Split Tine, and
Tine D.A.D.A. Club

Happy mapping of your journey to and nabigation of these mapped tines.
]]> Now for a fishy remapping:

I caught a tremendous fish and held him beside the boat half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of its mouth. He didn’t fight. He hadn’t fought at all. He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable and homely. Here and there his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper, and its pattern of darker brown was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses stained and lost through age.

He was speckled with barnacles, fine rosettes of lime, and infested with tiny white sea-lice,
and underneath two or three rags of green weed hung down. While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen — the frightening gills, fresh and crisp with blood, that can cut so badly —
I thought of the coarse white flesh packed in like feathers, the big bones and the little bones,
the dramatic reds and blacks of his shiny entrails, and the pink swim-bladder
like a big peony. I looked into his eyes which were far larger than mine but shallower, and yellowed,
the irises backed and packed with tarnished tinfoil seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass. They shifted a little, but not to return my stare.

— It was more like the tipping

of an object toward the light. I admired his sullen face, the mechanism of his jaw,
and then I saw that from his lower lip — if you could call it a lip — grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces of fish-line, or four and a wire leader with the swivel still attached,
with all their five big hooks grown firmly in his mouth. A green line, frayed at the end
where he broke it, two heavier lines, and a fine black thread
still crimped from the strain and snap when it broke and he got away.
Like medals with their ribbons frayed and wavering, a five-haired beard of wisdom
trailing from his aching jaw. I stared and stared and victory filled up
the little rented boat, from the pool of bilge where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine to the bailer rusted orange, the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings, the gunnels — until everything was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!

And I let the fish go.

--Okay --we're establishing the importance of details in this discussion --yet an obvious detail is missing: catfish? rainbow trout? (etc)

Now for more about the importance of details, go here (a famous tale, popular in college intro expository writing classes --and in creative writing classes)

Now another reconfiguration as we fish for more blossoming of relationships between structure and meaning:

I caught a tremendous
fish
and held

him

beside the boat

half

out

of water, with my hook
fast in a corner

of its mouth.
He

didn’t fight.

He hadn’t fought
at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered
and venerable
and homely.
Here and there

his brown skin
hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:

shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost
through age.
He was speckled
with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,

and infested
with tiny white
sea-lice,
and underneath two or three
rags
of green weed
hung down.

While his gills were breathing in
the terrible oxygen

— the frightening gills,

fresh
and crisp with blood,
that can cut
so badly —

I thought of
the coarse white flesh
packed in like feathers,

the big bones
and the little bones,

the dramatic reds
and blacks
of his shiny entrails,

and the pink
swim-bladder

like a big peony.

I looked into his eyes

which were far
larger than mine
but shallower,
and yellowed,
the irises backed

and packed
with tarnished tinfoil

seen through the lenses
of old scratched isinglass.

They shifted a little,
but not
to return my stare.

— It was more like
the tipping of an object
toward the light.

I admired
his sullen face,
the mechanism

of his jaw,
and then I saw

that from his lower lip
— if you could call it a lip —

grim, wet, and weaponlike,
hung five old pieces

of fish-line,
or four

and a wire leader
with the swivel
still attached,

with all their five
big hooks
grown firmly
in his mouth.

A green line,
frayed at the end
where he broke it,
two heavier lines,
and a fine black thread

still crimped
from the strain and snap
when it broke
and he got away.
Like medals

with their ribbons
frayed and wavering,
a five-haired beard
of wisdom trailing

from his aching jaw.
I stared and stared

and victory filled up
the little rented
boat, from the pool

of bilge
where oil had spread
a rainbow
around the rusted
engine to the bailer rusted

orange, the sun-cracked
thwarts, the oarlocks
on their strings,
the gunnels
— until everything
was rainbow,
rainbow,
rainbow! And I let the fish go.