I’m having trouble relating to the readings for this week. Sound poetry just doesn’t make much sense to me. What are we supposed to get out of sound poetry? I first believed it to be complete nonsense (as Higgins very briefly suggested) then I began thinking of it as very intentional. Sound poetry as a way of making various, not necessarily related sounds, into a meaningful work—just as written (perhaps traditional?) poetry is really nothing more than a bunch of words with no singular distinction, worked together to make a meaning. Written poetry asks the reader to think about certain words/meaning in certain and defined terms. Sound poetry asks the listener to think about certain sounds/meaning in certain and defined terms, not necessarily dependant on the individual sound—but the whole compilation. Sound poetry does not depend on rules of language to be effective—but what then, is the point? The listenings for the week did not exactly agree with my assumptions based on the readings. These listenings, even the ones with people speaking in tongues, seem not so much about the single or compiled sounds. This really seems completely intentional and put together in a way to have a very distinct (though maybe undiscernable) message or purpose. These don’t seem to be necessarily free from “semantic function” (McCaffery). The sound poetry, as I heard it, functions as noise moreso than poetry.
Also, Minarelli left me with questions regarding electronic media and the mouth. If the “exploitation of sound has no limits [and] It must be carried beyond the border of pure noise, a signifying noise: linguistic and oral ambiguity has a sense only if it completely uses the instrument of the mouth,” why is electronic media so essential (Minareli)? Why does it link so heavily to musicality, mimcry, dance, movement, image, etc… Why can it not be just sound, in and of itself, with no other interference? And why must sound poetry rid itself of the Word to be so effective? I happen to like the Word. The Word does not make me feel dead, the Word does not seem so destructive and ruinous to life. I’m sorry, Mr. Chopin, I’ve either completely missed your meaning, or I completely disagree. I have yet to see how sound—of any kind—can free us “slaves of rhetoric, prisoners of explanation that explains nothing.” What can sound poetry do that the Word cannot? What have I missed in the readings/listenings that has left me completely unconvinced of the effectiveness of sound poetry in changing the world?
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Hi Sabrina. Well, isn't it a question as to whether poetry works towards a meaning? (You assert this a couple of times.) Certainly, poetry doesn't state the meaning straight - this is a basic claim of poetry (figurative language, allusion, etc.) and a critique of it (hard to understand, not direct). Is communication the point at all? Certainly it is one point we get from it, but since the communication appears to be multiple and heterogeneous, its hard to say that any particular communication is the point of poetry... or at least, this is not a simple to resolve question.
ReplyDeleteI like your point about the Minarelli essay. On the one hand, there's an implicit technological determinism, as if the technology will "solve" or determine everything; on the other hand, since the point is the poetry, why use the technology? Now, surely this points to an uncomfortable meeting of poetry as an ahistorical and aesthetic medium and technology as an instrumental medium with historical claims!