From Ted Greenwald's Word of Mouth toward Con Dot
One can play Semiotic Pinball within any of the stanzas of Ted Greenwald's Word of Mouth (Sun & Moon, 1986) –
– because each stanza holds the language inside the letters even when words are broken up.
Let me count the ways: the letters hold the language whether words are broken up (in the case of the stanza above) by:
- line break and capitalization (“di- / Rects”),
- spacing (“combin a / Tion”),
- homophony (“Tion” for shun),
- homography (“Tion” for tie on),
- sound-slur (“Rects” for wrecks; “combin” for French combien, amount, which comes up in next line).
The language holds inside the letters despite syntactic shifts as well, such as by reversal ("World word" for "Word world"), and despite semantic contrasts by way of differentiation ("combin a" instead of "combina-" to differ from "conversa-").
As one would (hope to) expect.
All this enhances the binding power of letters.
In the stanza above, sound-similarity structures the beginnings, not the ends, of the lines. Furthermore, ends of lines emphasize difference: long /i/ in "di-", short in "cubicle"; long /a/ in "conversa-" and short in "a". There is but one end repetition: /er/ ("together" "former"). But there're two, plus there's an additional echo of one of them, at the beginning of lines (the double "Tion" and the short /e/ sound in "Request" and "Rects" that is echoed in "Get") and repetition as such is emphasized in the last line of the stanza in the beginning word-phrase "World word".
Finally, the last line differentiates between poetic stanza and office cubicle and asserts both as existing with comparable social ontologies (art and business on the same footing). The stanzaic form (i.e., Poetry) is affirmed as being one with the World (it's "World word", not "Word world") and as not therefore being a mere "cubicle" that reinstitutes the division of labour – the cubicle as the "word world" that separates from the world.
The repetition in the last line is the "re-" of "Repulse" that contrastively returns to the opening word, "Request".
How many points have I racked up so far on this go at Semiotic Pinball? Some lights seem to blink but do they twitch?
Thing is, you can’t play Semiotic Pinball as well with his Con Dot (Cuneiform Press, 2014). You can still play, of course (start with title: "con dot" turns "dot com"), but something else is going on as well.
The letters cannot hold.
Hypothesis: Language has a cognitive "shape" to it, pre-articulation.
Prior to syntax, language has an existence "there" as well.
This cognitive space was once rhythm?
Here I've pointed to some of the phonetics organizing one stanza of Word of Mouth.
"We can't be content with just the phonetic criteria of the first formalists, excluding all conceptual content; but we can't ignore them either, as starting point" (Henri Meschonnic, Pour la poétique, p. 93, my trans.).
Request how the mind di-(52)
Rects animated conversa-
Tion beautifully together
Get over a bad combin a
Tion Amount to a former
World word Repulse cubicle
– because each stanza holds the language inside the letters even when words are broken up.
Let me count the ways: the letters hold the language whether words are broken up (in the case of the stanza above) by:
- line break and capitalization (“di- / Rects”),
- spacing (“combin a / Tion”),
- homophony (“Tion” for shun),
- homography (“Tion” for tie on),
- sound-slur (“Rects” for wrecks; “combin” for French combien, amount, which comes up in next line).
The language holds inside the letters despite syntactic shifts as well, such as by reversal ("World word" for "Word world"), and despite semantic contrasts by way of differentiation ("combin a" instead of "combina-" to differ from "conversa-").
As one would (hope to) expect.
All this enhances the binding power of letters.
In the stanza above, sound-similarity structures the beginnings, not the ends, of the lines. Furthermore, ends of lines emphasize difference: long /i/ in "di-", short in "cubicle"; long /a/ in "conversa-" and short in "a". There is but one end repetition: /er/ ("together" "former"). But there're two, plus there's an additional echo of one of them, at the beginning of lines (the double "Tion" and the short /e/ sound in "Request" and "Rects" that is echoed in "Get") and repetition as such is emphasized in the last line of the stanza in the beginning word-phrase "World word".
Finally, the last line differentiates between poetic stanza and office cubicle and asserts both as existing with comparable social ontologies (art and business on the same footing). The stanzaic form (i.e., Poetry) is affirmed as being one with the World (it's "World word", not "Word world") and as not therefore being a mere "cubicle" that reinstitutes the division of labour – the cubicle as the "word world" that separates from the world.
The repetition in the last line is the "re-" of "Repulse" that contrastively returns to the opening word, "Request".
How many points have I racked up so far on this go at Semiotic Pinball? Some lights seem to blink but do they twitch?
Thing is, you can’t play Semiotic Pinball as well with his Con Dot (Cuneiform Press, 2014). You can still play, of course (start with title: "con dot" turns "dot com"), but something else is going on as well.
The letters cannot hold.
Hypothesis: Language has a cognitive "shape" to it, pre-articulation.
Prior to syntax, language has an existence "there" as well.
This cognitive space was once rhythm?
Here I've pointed to some of the phonetics organizing one stanza of Word of Mouth.
"We can't be content with just the phonetic criteria of the first formalists, excluding all conceptual content; but we can't ignore them either, as starting point" (Henri Meschonnic, Pour la poétique, p. 93, my trans.).
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