March was a terrible month, sorry for not posting much. I should have more time from now on.. In January (or Feb?) I was trying to work out what Cubism in poetry actually meant. I heard some comment to the effect that one had to realize the relationship between geometry and grammar to be able to write a cubist poem.. It finally dawned on me as I read, half-asleep, a WC Williams essay on Stein. What Stein arguably does is to ‘skirt’ around an idea grammatically, thus creating a kind of multiple perspective a la Cubism. Take this example from my favorite complete Stein poem “If I told him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso” If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him. Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it. If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him. I liked the sound of this so much I never took the time to think about it in the terms I should have! I do not think Stein took a scientific approach to this though, I am sure sound dictated the structure to no insignificant end. The argument with which I have still to take issue, or even look at, is that poetry exists on a different plane to the plastic arts and it is therefore more essential for the words to create an emotional or stylistic parallel.. To say another way, poetry is processed intellectually, and should therefore create a kind of intellectual plane.. I guess similar to the Stein example above. She could have simply described an object from multiple perspectives, like describing a Picasso painting, the argument may run, but instead she addresses Cubism on a level more appropriate to the medium, grammar being the parallel to geometry. This argument works in this case, I think. Using a descriptive method for Cubist poetry would have been boring for a start! I think the problematic comes when we think about the present day. Artists doing anything interesting or worth considering these days are not concerned with taboos (directly) – and those that are interested in taboo breaking we consider adolescent (Tracy Emin) or living in a society that still requires this type of expression (many of the works at the recent Under Construction rightfully fall under this category) -- but are dealing with “the future.” The future is science and the rethinking of what it is to be human. Nietzsche again demonstrated his prescience when he proclaimed that due to the death of god, we would have to make our morality anew. He predicted it would take 200 years before we could work ourselves out.. It will probably take much longer. I digress! Ermm. The problem is how does poetry approach science? The answer lies in how art has approached science. Artist use experiments, though not experiments in form (the visual arts have been there) but in communication and in environment.. What will happen to the viewer if I place this here? Very basically. Poetry now needs to be more conscious of it’s environment and words in the environment.. for a start. If many phonemes have a morphemic quality, sound itself is not just music, but meaning…I am out of time.. Later.