Code Poems

by Hannah Weiner

“I am interested in exploring methods of communication that will be understood face to face or at any distance, regardless of language, country or planet or origin, by all sending and receiving.

For three years I have used the international code of signals to make poems and poetry events, because this code makes available and possible the translation of simultaneous equivalents:

Flashing light (by Morse): abstract visual,
Sound signaling (by Morse): abstact aural,
Live semaphore: motion,
Fixed semaphore: motion,
Flag hoists: concrete visual,
Radio: electronic,
Words (including equivalent translations in seven different languages.
[..] The amount of information available has more than doubled since WW2. In the next ten years it will double again. How do we deal with it?

Do we use more than the 5% of the brain now in use?
Do we process quicker?
Do we decode information more and put it in another form (not language) so that the present brain can handle it?
Is there a change in the neural circuits of the brain?
[..] At the moment I am interested in exploring methods of communication through space; considering space as space fields or space solids; through great distances of space; through small distances, such as the space between the nucleus and the electrons of an atom; through distances not ordinarily related to the form of communication used. I am interested in doing this so that we may develop methods of communication that will be understood face to face, or at any distance, regardless of language, country, or planet of origin, by all sending and receiving. For me this implies an understanding of four, five, (and six?) dimensional space; of how what can be transmitted through this space; of how these special dimensions relate to different “states of consciousness” and to different neurological patterns (if any).”

Quoted from Weiner’s “Trans-Space Communication” statement (published in July 1969) written to accompany her performances of Code Poems.

Publisher Open Book Publications, Barrytown/New York, 1982
ISBN 0940170035

Genres: Poetry, Art

32 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1982

About the author

Hannah Adelle Weiner (née Finegold) (November 4, 1928 – September 11, 1997) was an American poet who is often grouped with the Language poets because of the prominent place she assumed in the poetics of that group.

Weiner was born in Providence, Rhode Island and attended Classical High School, until 1946, and then Radcliffe College. She graduated with a B.A. in 1950, with a dissertation on Graham Greene. Working in publishing and then in Bloomingdale's department store, she was married and then divorced after four years. Weiner started writing poetry in 1963 though her first chapbook, The Magritte Poems after René Magritte, was published in 1970. It is not indicative of her latter work, being "basically a New York School attempt to write verse in response to the paintings of René Magritte". During the 1960s she also organized and participated in a number of happenings with other members of the New York City art scene, where she had been living for some time. These included 'Hannah Weiner at Her Job', "a sort of open house hosted by her employer, A.H. Schreiber Co., Inc."and 'Fashion Show Poetry Event' with Eduardo Costa, John Perreault, Andy Warhol and others in a "collaborative and innovative enterprise that incorporated conceptual art, design, poetry and performance." In the early 1970s, Weiner began writing a series of journals that were partly the result of her experiments with automatic writing and partly a result of her schizophrenia. Judith Goldman claims that politics and ethics were central to a mode of writing she developed and called "clair-style," which used "words and phrases clairvoyantly seen" and that Weiner arrived at a method of composing that employed "these seen elements exclusively." Goldman also provides the insight that "Weiner let no representation of herself circulate that did not take her status as a clairvoyant into account." She influenced a number of the language poets and was included in the In the American Tree anthology of Language poetry (edited by Ron Silliman). Beginning with Little Books/Indians (1980) and Spoke (1984).

Reviews

[Jared Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Romeo: Stern way. Going astern
Juliet: Go astern easy. Easy astern
Romeo: I am going full speed
Juliet: It is not safe to go so fast
Romeo: It is difficult to extricate
Juliet: Is anything the matter

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was fascinating and wonderful to read. I had a lot of fun with this.

[João Pinho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a funny short collection of poems, you should try to read it loud.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Don’t fly a foreign courtesy ensign after you have returned to

U.S. waters. It may show that you have 'been there,' but it is not proper flag etiquette."

--http://www.boatsafe.com/nauticalknowh...