PoemoftheWeek

He compared his memory to a piece of rapidly cooling igneous rock and sentences from television shows are the slender scars on it...Hm

So this must have happened just after a volcano. The salamander surely is the TV, who somehow turns lava to rock (hence, life into memory?) with TV shows, and in the process leaves on the rocks sentence-scars.

Igneous rock, salamander: sex life?!? So TV ruins his sex life? Or maybe it ruins his passionate marriage! ...? Yeah, I know, I'm way off.

Anyway, we all know that television isn't good for our health. At least I'm right about that :p

Here are some of the things that I pondered when first encountering the poem. I’ll try not to give my own answers to the questions I asked as I think the questions themselves should help everyone formulate their own responses and it was by working through such questions that I arrived at my own ‘reading’.

1. Why is the title so long? Why is it written in that way? The language of the title is very different from the body of the poem. Is the title meant as an endorsement of or a challenge to what follows?

2. Why are there seven sentences? At first, they all appear to be unrelated – are they?

3. How can we identify/characterise each of the seven sentences? I don’t know ‘The Newlywed Game’ but I’m sufficiently familiar with this type of inane game show to be able to identify the kind of host speaking the lines here as well as the kind of show he’s hosting. He begins with ‘Gentlemen’ and then asks a question that hardly seems consistent with the host’s supposed perception of the contestants as ‘gentlemen’. Why is there a full stop rather than a question mark at the end of this first sentence?

4. What is the context of the second sentence? Who would speak like this and in what circumstances?

5. What is the difference between 48 degrees and 48 WABC degrees? I assume that WABC is a radio station.

6. In the next sentence, who is ‘we’? The line comes from the opening credits of The Outer Limits TV show – a bit like The Twilight Zone.

7. The next sentence returns us to game shows – in the UK there was a similar show called ‘Blind Date’. Is the poem itself like a session of channel hopping? Are we flicking between different aspects of our culture as represented through the banality of the media industry? The title says “Seven Sentences Which Have / Entered My Memory Via Hearing Them / or Reading Them”, so they aren’t all TV moments. What is the significance of the fact that bachelor number three collects Disney memorabilia?

8. Is the next sentence a newspaper headline? It could also be the onscreen text during a news item. Why is the word ‘coed’ used rather than say, ‘student’?

9. Is the list of things in Encyclopedia Britannica III simply random or carefully chosen?

10. Why does the poem end with ‘…’?

11. How can we group particular ideas in all of this? For example, there are a number of mentions of cold temperatures – ‘turning blue’, ‘48 WABC degrees’, ‘Abominable Snowman’.

12. What is the cumulative effect of these seven chosen sentences?

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Originally Posted by tn2743

The salamander surely is the TV,

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I think the sentences themselves are the salamanders.

[QUOTE=The Unnamable]Here are some of the things that I pondered when first encountering the poem. I’ll try not to give my own answers to the questions I asked as I think the questions themselves should help everyone formulate their own responses and it was by working through such questions that I arrived at my own ‘reading’.[QUOTE]

I looked at the poem asking myself this question: Whats missing/present in each of the thought expressed in each of the several sentences? Over the next few days hopefully my understanding will become more refined.

Boy, do you know which line is haunts me? 'We control the horizontal.'

Why does the title not have punctuation but the several sentences are filled with it? I think there is something important in this.

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Is the list of things in Encyclopedia Britannica III simply random or carefully chosen?

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Thanks, Unnamable! The above lead to my thoughts below.

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Why does the title not have punctuation but the several sentences are filled with it? I think there is something important in this.

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Boy, do you know which line is haunts me? 'We control the horizontal.'

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This is very telling to me for some reason. A sentence is the expression of a complete thought; and yet there are several complete thoughts expressed below the title, Some DO, to me, seem unrelated and somehow my mind is reconfiguring, trying, to produce a connection between all several sentences. Does our mind need to try to find a connection between unrelated things?

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Originally Posted by tn2743

So this must have happened just after a volcano.

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I really like this!

The Newlywed Game Show made Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Newlywed_Game

And here's their web site:

http://timstvshowcase.com/newlywed.html

Inane is the perfect word to describe it.

I believe that Ktd222 hit the nail on the head.

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Does our mind need to try to find a connection between unrelated things?

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This is precisely what our brains always do and what they are especially good at doing, finding connections. Whole religions have grown up out of the perceived connections spotted by our ever questing brains.

To me this poem(?) is nothing more than what the title proclaims it to be, a cluster of phrases that have stuck in the author's mind run together into a paragraph. It is the reader that imbues these phrases with anything other than randomness and Mr Wachtel was quite aware of this when he prepared this piece. I imagine that he would be quite amused to read this thread or any of the reviews and analyses of this work that must exist.

That doesn't mean that I don't quite like it, but I won't be wasting any of my time looking for hidden meanings.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Why is there a full stop rather than a question mark at the end of this first sentence?

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I was going to ask this on my first post on this poem. But then I thought that it was because the author was simply quoting back. He's describing the scar on his igneous rock and reporting its shape and size, but he's not actually asking the question. He doesn't want to ask the question. Am I right?

As I was reading the seven sentences, the word 'scar' keeps entering my mind. These sentences all have different lengths and depths, and shapes too, like scars.

I agree that the salamanders are the lines themselves. This changes my perspective completely. Well then, as the title has informed us, each sentence has at least one thing in common: they all have left a scar each on the author's memory in a way that a salamander would on an igneous rock. This relationship is still unclear to me. I keep thinking that I must understand this key of the title before I can understand fully the seven sentences.

I also thought that the seven sentences might not have been written in a completely different style from the title's. The difference is that the author had to use sentences already written. So the only thing he could do was to arrange them. He did not even choose them, because it was the sentences who left scars on him, not him who chose to remember the sentences. So, in a way, he's painting (or building) rather than writing. And the way that he has arranged them might not be all that different from the way he writes. Am I making sense?

'...': this one is a long and undefined scar?

I have a question: could he have read, or heard these sentences all from the TV? I read many things on TV...

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Originally Posted by Grumbleguts

It is the reader that imbues these phrases with anything other than randomness and Mr Wachtel was quite aware of this when he prepared this piece. I imagine that he would be quite amused to read this thread or any of the reviews and analyses of this work that must exist.

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You might be right. But what if he did have other meanings? Out of respect for poetry, we can't take the risk of missing them. I wouldn't mind being laughed at by the author, but to dismiss a piece of writing without consideration is to be disrespectful to the author. And I think he might respect us for respecting him, in any case, don't you think?

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Originally Posted by tn2743

You might be right. But what if he did have other meanings? Out of respect for poetry, we can't take the risk of missing them. I wouldn't mind being laughed at by the author, but to dismiss a piece of writing without consideration is to be disrespectful to the author. And I think he might respect us for respecting him, in any case, don't you think?

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I believe it has a meaning, a moral message, and GrumbleGuts is correct to not read more into the seven, other than there are seven. These are typical 20th century footprints, that end up being genetic footprints because they shape humankind. He could have picked other footprints, even bootprints, but he picked these because they are kind of random, but inside the same media packet. As a distraction, I just happen to think there are seven because his car radio has seven buttons on it, which is strange because usually modern cars come with even numbers, so maybe its an old Mustang, and he is being kinda nostalgic. Seven could be, he is feeling lucky. I'll go one further, The Magnificent Seven.

I didn't use 'meanings' only to address moral messages, I meant also the use of words and the skills of a poet that he might have employed. But Grumbleguts refused this, or at least that's what I think he did by saying that they are simply a list of random things.

They are just random? So you are dismissing all the questions as to the relationship between or the arragnement of these sentences? It's a risky assumption to make unless the author has instructed us in this direction; I don't recall reading the word 'random' anywhere in the poem. In fact, he stated clearly that this is a paragraph made up of setences which have significant structural meanings to his memory.

Well, aren't we here to answer the questions that this poem raised? I'd go along with the questions that Unnamable raised to start with. I think that there are relations between the sentences, and there is a deeper relation between the sentences and the title. And I think that these sentences have been arranged in an order of some kind (at least of time or something as basic as that). There must be more to a poem than just moral messages.

How could he have 'read' these lines from a radio?

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Originally Posted by “ktd222”

This is very telling to me for some reason. A sentence is the expression of a complete thought; and yet there are several complete thoughts expressed below the title, Some DO, to me, seem unrelated and somehow my mind is reconfiguring, trying, to produce a connection between all several sentences. Does our mind need to try to find a connection between unrelated things?

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I don’t think there is a direct connection – they strike me as things that the poet could easily have actually heard or read. I think the significant connection is that they all tell us something about the nature of the world we’ve constructed for ourselves through the discourses of modern media. I said earlier that they have a cumulative effect but this isn’t quite right – it’s more that they interact with one another and cumulatively produce a rather disturbing picture of the modern, media-saturated world.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

I was going to ask this on my first post on this poem. But then I thought that it was because the author was simply quoting back. He's describing the scar on his igneous rock and reporting its shape and size, but he's not actually asking the question. He doesn't want to ask the question. Am I right?

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Possibly, I don’t really know. I would agree that the punctuation is used to comment on the lines rather than simply to transcribe them in a grammatically correct way. Look at the subject matter of the sentence. It’s supposed to be funny in a rather juvenile way but it’s about the loss of sexual vitality. Examine the diction –“part of their anatomy” (nearly always used as a suggestive reference to genitals in this context), “sag” (need I say more?) and “wedding night” (when the desire was fresh and the apparatus was willing :lol: ).
It isn’t a question because that process actually is happening with the passing of time – their physical deterioration is not a mere possibility but a fact. This is the kind of observation that we would be unlikely to stop to think about in the context of the show itself but here it is.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

So the only thing he could do was to arrange them. He did not even choose them, because it was the sentences who left scars on him, not him who chose to remember the sentences. So, in a way, he's painting (or building) rather than writing. And the way that he has arranged them might not be all that different from the way he writes. Am I making sense?

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Yes, I think so. I agree that the sentences aren’t intended to be lines composed by Wachtel himself but something he’s stumbled across. I don’t know if they really are verbatim transcripts that Wachtel has read or heard but I can accept that they are for the sake of the understanding his purpose in including them. As you say, he arranges them. Isn’t that what artists do? They take the materials of everyday life (the kinds of materials we seldom think about in a way that is beyond their immediate purpose), and make us look at them with a fresh eye, from a different perspective. What I meant by asking question number 1 above was that the title seems rather grand and overblown compared to the very ‘ordinary’ and everyday nature of the seven sentences.
There is an amusing Billy Collins poem with the title, Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles. The Collins poem includes a great example –

"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

Wachtel’s extremely long title reminds me of these sorts of poems as well as of the kinds of chapter prefaces you find in Swift and other eighteenth century novelists. Is Wachtel therefore suggesting that there are two linguistic realms – that of the past world of elevated literary expression and the rather debased and inane expression that saturates the world around us today? Even here in Thailand where I am immersed in a different culture, the same synthetic images of kodachrome perfection and eternal youth still ambush me around every corner. It seems that the topics of a lot if not all of the sentences are of the same stuff that poets have always written about – love, death, decay, relationships and so on. This is why I prefer to think of the sentences as actual transcripts – they then serve as a comment on the difference between the world as it is described through Art and the one in which we live.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

I have a question: could he have read, or heard these sentences all from the TV? I read many things on TV...

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I think they probably could, with the exception of “It's forty-eight WABC degrees” (that must be a radio announcement, surely?) and the last bit which reads more like a print advertisement to me.

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Originally Posted by “Grumbleguts”

To me this poem(?) is nothing more than what the title proclaims it to be, a cluster of phrases that have stuck in the author's mind run together into a paragraph. It is the reader that imbues these phrases with anything other than randomness and Mr Wachtel was quite aware of this when he prepared this piece. I imagine that he would be quite amused to read this thread or any of the reviews and analyses of this work that must exist.

That doesn't mean that I don't quite like it, but I won't be wasting any of my time looking for hidden meanings.

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I have to disagree with you here, GG. I think there is far more conscious crafting going on than you suggest. I don’t think of this poem as having ‘hidden’ meanings, just meanings. It seems perfectly coherent to me and this coherence has, as tn2743 said, been arranged. I’d be interested to see if you change your opinion as the discussion progresses.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

You might be right. But what if he did have other meanings? Out of respect for poetry, we can't take the risk of missing them. I wouldn't mind being laughed at by the author, but to dismiss a piece of writing without consideration is to be disrespectful to the author. And I think he might respect us for respecting him, in any case, don't you think?

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I like this attitude. Good on ya.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

How could he have 'read' these lines from a radio?

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And then you go and let me down! Only joking. But if you look at the title, he does say “Via Hearing Them / or Reading Them.”

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

And then you go and let me down! Only joking. But if you look at the title, he does say “Via Hearing Them / or Reading Them.”

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Thanks :)

I said this because I thought Jackyyy suggested, by mentioning the 7 buttons on a car radio, that all seven sentences were taken from different radio stations.

I want to join in to this discussion since its still monday. But I just want to say in advance Im not great at poetry and Im really joining in to find out more so please bare with me.

Its a bit like what you'd get if you were flicking through channels isnt it? I mean game show, news (or possible crime drama?) , weather umm whats WABC? Something else, reality game show, news, adverts.
A scar is just the remnants a trace of something right? So what sort of like being haunted by words after you hear them on tele or read them and how they can appear to mean one thing out of context but in context they make sense?

Not making any sense am I ? :)

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Originally Posted by “Nightshade”

Its a bit like what you'd get if you were flicking through channels isnt it?

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I agree and funnily enough I’ve just watched Billy Wilder’s The Apartment again and there is a short scene with a disgruntled Jack Lemmon flicking through the TV channels trying to find something worth watching. Most of it is battle scenes or advertising so he gives up.

WABC must be a radio station.

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Originally Posted by “Nightshade”

and how they can appear to mean one thing out of context but in context they make sense?

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By including them in the poem (or as the poem), hasn’t he taken them out of context so that we can look at them differently from how we would if we encountered them in their actual context?

An auto-search finds a station, stops for about one sentence, then hunts the next. When it hits the band limit, it starts over again. After a while, you memorize certain sentences, maybe because they mean something to you. WABC is NYC, and there are too many channels, a cacophony of life, you've heard it all before, so you would rather listen to the auto-search, and maybe something new will pop up. I agree, Wachtel picked these seven to stick to his stone. I hazard we are being offered the protagonist's situation, personality, job, and the next paragraph.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night. There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue. It's forty-eight WABC degrees. We control the horizontal. Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia. Missing coed found slain. All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More…

CHUCK WACHTEL

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Since these are mostly from American media allusions I can help with two more:
WABC - Yes, is a rado station in many cities in the US. Sounds like a voice from WABC in New York in the 1970s.

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Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.

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Another American game show, The Dating Game, also from the 1970s. Three bachelors are secluded away while a young lady asks them questions and she picks one for a date based soley on their responses. Stupid questions, stupid responses. More inane. 1970s seems to correlate.

Any idea when the poem was written?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

By including them in the poem (or as the poem), hasn’t he taken them out of context so that we can look at them differently from how we would if we encountered them in their actual context?

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I agree with that. But in addition, the dislocation from one sentence to another provides the only real poetic charge to the language in that section of poem, other than in the title.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable
By including them in the poem (or as the poem), hasn’t he taken them out of context so that we can look at them differently from how we would if we encountered them in their actual context?

Virgil:

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I agree with that. But in addition, the dislocation from one sentence to another provides the only real poetic charge to the language in that section of poem, other than in the title.

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You know what, after looking at the poem as a 'flipping back and forth through channels or pages', I dont know that these several sentences are ever taken out of context. He is creating a mode of action where the reader is also able to sense this 'flipping' happening as its happened to him. The context of the several sentences, I think, is secondary because of this line: 'we control the horizontal.' The thoughts expressed in the several sentences seem to be what interest the author, but obviously when I flip through the channels the main ones which interest me are not the ones listed by the author. So then this gets back to 'we control the horizontal' which gets more at us individuals controlling what enters into our mind.

Does anyone want to talk about this line further: 'we control the horizontal.' I'd be very interested to read other peoples opinions. The line seems to imply a specific angle that we control(the horizontal). Then what happens to all the other angles? Are these other angles under our control? Or is this horizontal the only angle we can control? What is this horizontal?

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Originally Posted by ktd222

'we control the horizontal.' I'd be very interested to read other peoples opinions. The line seems to imply a specific angle that we control(the horizontal). Then what happens to all the other angles? Are these other angles under our control? Or is this horizontal the only angle we can control? What is this horizontal?

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I think you mentioned it in your first post re this poem, 'we control the horizontal'. Its stands out in the crowd, stays in your head, its profound. I want to correct myself earlier, its a 'scan' button, not an auto-search, and he does write 'hearing' or 'reading', so I will not add, roadside Billboards. These seven sentences/messages (which I am assuming is an arbitrary number), out of 100s, were impressive enough to stick. Some of the best literature is sitting on the side of our roads, repeated to us via media-pushers, in a surreptitious attempt to brain wash us into buying something:

Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night.
There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue.
It's forty-eight WABC degrees.
We control the horizontal.
Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.
Missing coed found slain.
All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More…

I'll stab a guess: He's middleaged, wife/childs(s), worries about their health and security. Its 48 Fahrenheiht (8-9C), cool to cold - depending on what you are used to, could be Mar/Apr or Oct/Nov. He's thinking about promotion/money and freedom (we control the horizontal).

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Originally Posted by “ktd222”

You know what, after looking at the poem as a 'flipping back and forth through channels or pages', I dont know that these several sentences are ever taken out of context.

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They are literally taken out of context and placed in a new context – that of Wachtel’s poem. This makes me look at them in a way I wouldn’t if I was just channel hopping.

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Originally Posted by “ktd222”

Does anyone want to talk about this line further: 'we control the horizontal.' I'd be very interested to read other peoples opinions. The line seems to imply a specific angle that we control(the horizontal). Then what happens to all the other angles? Are these other angles under our control? Or is this horizontal the only angle we can control? What is this horizontal?

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As I said above, it’s from The Outer Limits; each episode begins:

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits”

Old televisions used to have control knobs known as a ‘vertical hold’ and a ‘horizontal hold’’. You fiddled around with them in order to stop the picture from rolling. The statement has overtones of Big Brother but the important thing is what we think is meant by ‘We’. Is it the corporate ‘we’? The media? Could it even be a reference to the battle of the sexes as a statement made by feminists (the horizontal being the realm of sexual activity – no doubt XC will have other ideas/positions)? In the context of The Outer Limits, it could be aliens. In the context of the paragraph, it has an unsettling effect. I don’t take it as fundamentally different from the other sentences – this one also is another of the ubiquitous, encroaching assertions of a media industry that claims ownership of our souls. Something similar is going on with “It's forty-eight WABC degrees”. – They appear to own the weather.

I'd like to clarify my position a little if I may. I said that I quite liked the poem first and foremost. I also said that I found no deep significance in the lines chosen and I still maintain that position. To me thay are chosen to be a cross section of the kinds of lines seen and heard in American media. I had no intention of being dismissive of the poems worth, I just don't see the choice of phrases as particularly meaningful in themselves.

Of course Wachtel is inviting us to examine these sentences out of context as it were, this is self evident, but that is the extent of his construction as far as I see it, he could easily have chosen other similar sentences and achieved the same effect. He is holding up a mirror to the day to day bombardments of media slogans and formulaic phrases but it is not necessarily a carefully directed mirroir. These particular words stuck in his mind, as he says in the title, that is why they were chosen and not, "Two tyres, that's right TWO tyres for the price of one all day Sunday, every Sunday at big Ed's Tyres!" or "A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse of course." Either of these could have slotted in seemlessly

Interestingly enough, what do you think of the title of the poem? Isn't it as formulaicly 'poetic' as the other phrases are formulaicly 'mediaspeak'? Do you think that he is asking questions here too? I think he might be. It's interesting that no one has really questioned the layout and language of the title in this thread, seeing as it is almost as long as the poem itself. Surely the contrast between the two sections is more interesting than where he found the 7 sentences?

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Originally Posted by Grumbleguts

Interestingly enough, what do you think of the title of the poem? Isn't it as formulaicly 'poetic' as the other phrases are formulaicly 'mediaspeak'? Do you think that he is asking questions here too? I think he might be. It's interesting that no one has really questioned the layout and language of the title in this thread, seeing as it is almost as long as the poem itself. Surely the contrast between the two sections is more interesting than where he found the 7 sentences?

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Acknowledged. The title does a larger job than expected, it could be the para. At first I thought he was putting the cart before the horse, then realized, the would not want to 'do it' any other way. He used the title space to reduce space/wordage, as in, why not make a long title, who says a title can only have x words. The sequence is important,,, and Unnamable asked in one of his questions,,, whey the '...' at the end of the Encycl. advert. Well, I thought at first, the Encycl. Britannica bit could have gone on forever, or simply its part of an advertisement, else.. its the preface to the next para. Why do I think this is a clip out of a book and not a poem?

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Originally Posted by Grumbleguts

he could easily have chosen other similar sentences and achieved the same effect.

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This is where we disagree. Even if the sentences are actual snippets reproduced verbatim, the subtle interplay between them would be lost if you simply swapped some of them with your suggestions. For example, say we swapped the first of yours for “Missing coed found slain” and the second for “Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia”, would there really be no difference? Wouldn’t we then lose something vital to the poem? “Missing coed found slain” is a news item; either it’s the text accompanying a TV news story or a newspaper headline. It is written in the shorthand style of a news headline (I’ll come to style of writing in a moment). But look beyond that – why might Wachtel have chosen to include this particular sentence and what is its purpose in its original context? Isn’t it to entice us into learning more salacious details about a murder? Why is the victim identified (in the sense of given an identity) as a ‘coed’ – the headline could have said simply ‘woman’, ‘female’, ‘student’, and so on. So the very fact that the victim has been given an identity as a young female (by a typically prurient media) introduces a sexual element to it. Doesn’t the word ‘coed’ carry some suggestion of young adult female encountering the world of independence and sexuality? When you see a headline like that don’t you assume that the murder was sexually motivated (and you’d be right most of the time)? Sexual tensions appear throughout the poem (even in the sagging vegetables bit). I can’t see it in your examples. Also, ‘bachelor’ is an interesting label. It serves to identify someone as available in the marriage market. This man collects Disney memorabilia. Why? When I think of Disney, I think of a world of sanitised and syrupy childhood. Does this man wish to remain a child? Is he sexually repressed? I can hear the objections now that I am ‘reading too much into it.’ I’m not saying that the man is sexually repressed but I think the lines invite the reader to take part in exploring the interplay between the different sentences (and these two sentences come next to each other). The world reported by the media includes acts of sexual violence, presumably caused by aberrant sexuality. In what we call ‘Literature’, problematic human experiences are explored in depth – in the modern world they just serve as media bytes. The language in which they are expressed now is the debased language of tabloid journalism or advertising slogans. This is why I think the language of the title is so different from the paragraph of seven sentences. The title belongs to the old world; the paragraph is what’s become of it.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

11. How can we group particular ideas in all of this? For example, there are a number of mentions of cold temperatures – ‘turning blue’, ‘48 WABC degrees’, ‘Abominable Snowman’.

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I think I can identify another idea that came up several times: time and its progress, or timing. In the first sentence the vegetables are listed in order, I think, of sagginess (in order of length of time after the wedding). The tomato is the firmest and shiniest, the pumpkin looks older and drier though still rounded, and the squash is clearly long a saggy (I'm trying my best to be respectful with these descriptions). So in this sense, the longer it has been since one's wedding night, the further to the right his option would be, and the further he is from the burning 'volcanic' passion that the igneous rock that is his memory used to experience. And in the second sentence "when I got there" and "blue" suggests that who ever got there got there too late. His timing was terrible. There's a pattern here, kind of.

And then the temperature connects this sentence with the third. And the third sentence is connected with the fourth by the arrogance of commercials.

I fail to see the connection between the fourth and fifth. The fifth and the sixth, however, is connected by another idea that you have pointed out above: sex. Perhaps it is the "sexually repressed" man and his 'childish', perhaps ignorant, ideas of the world that are behind these violent sex crimes. Is there something unhealthy about a sales manager being single and collect children's toys?

The idea of death, or a lack of life, is also repeated.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

10. Why does the poem end with ‘…’?

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Is the '...' the end of the poem or of the last sentence?

I think that the last sentence might be, possibly, a summary of the greed of the nowaday commerce, which tries to summarise everything regardless of their significance or meanings and stuffs them into bite size information. It ignores the horrific depths of the events that are capable of scarring the author and with great ease and ruthlessness. I mean, finding "the circus" and the "snowman" in the same sentence as "Napoleon" or "Atomic enerygy" is unfitting to say the least; it is almost a mockery. Race, Music, food, history, sex, etc; everything is a subject of this terrible mockery. And this ignorance, in itself, leaves another and longest scar...

I think the '...' might be part of the last sentence to express the endlessness of the list of things, or the author's amazement or ponderousness at this, maybe even his pain..

Please correct

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

I think I can identify another idea that came up several times: time and its progress, or timing. In the first sentence the vegetables are listed in order, I think, of sagginess (in order of length of time after the wedding). The tomato is the firmest and shiniest, the pumpkin looks older and drier though still rounded, and the squash is clearly long a saggy (I'm trying my best to be respectful with these descriptions).

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Are you talking about people or vegetables? Okay, I admit – I’m at the pumpkin stage. :D

The passing of time is a popular theme for artists. I’m not convinced by the timing idea, though.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

So in this sense, the longer it has been since one's wedding night, the further to the right his option would be,

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So young and so cynical! :lol:

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

and the further he is from the burning 'volcanic' passion that the igneous rock that is his memory used to experience. And in the second sentence "when I got there" and "blue" suggests that who ever got there got there too late. His timing was terrible. There's a pattern here, kind of.

And then the temperature connects this sentence with the third. And the third sentence is connected with the fourth by the arrogance of commercials. I fail to see the connection between the fourth and fifth.

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Okay, but be careful – I don’t think anyone has suggested that there is a linked progression – I referred to the interplay between them. In other words, just because you have established for yourself some pattern, don’t then make the poem fit that pattern. Perhaps there is no connection here but perhaps you were wrong to assume that there should be. Perhaps there is a connection, however. If ‘We control the horizontal’ is some kind of feminist slogan then the sexual repression of Mr. Disney could be the result of his inability to cope with female sexuality. Or perhaps ‘We control the horizontal’ is a Big Brother/Media boast – our perceptions are controlled to the extent that our identity only exists in terms of how we are seen on television or as television. The Dating Game that Virgil mentioned is, I think, the show that spawned Blind Date (UK). When huge media corporations control what we see and what we hear on the basis of maximising profits, this is the kind of garbage we end up with – but it’s all on the surface – the real nature of human sexuality involves slain coeds.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

The fifth and the sixth, however, is connected by another idea that you have pointed out above: sex. Perhaps it is the "sexually repressed" man and his 'childish', perhaps ignorant, ideas of the world that are behind these violent sex crimes. Is there something unhealthy about a sales manager being single and collect children's toys?

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Obviously I don’t think there always is – but the possibility of what you suggest is there in the interplay again.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

Is the '...' the end of the poem or of the last sentence?

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Good question – have they merged? Initially it can be seen simply to imply that the encyclopedia has more to offer but, as you say, it’s possible that it refers to the whole of the paragraph rather than just that one sentence. To me, it suggests that life goes on – to be continued next episode.

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

I think that the last sentence might be, possibly, a summary of the greed of the nowaday commerce, which tries to summarise everything regardless of their significance or meanings and stuffs them into bite size information. It ignores the horrific depths of the events that are capable of scarring the author and with great ease and ruthlessness. I mean, finding "the circus" and the "snowman" in the same sentence as "Napoleon" or "Atomic enerygy" is unfitting to say the least;

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Again, I’d say that in this context it’s unsettling rather than incongruous. The capabilities given to us by Atomic Energy combined with the image of the world as a Circus. Now there’s a thought!

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Originally Posted by “tn2743”

it is almost a mockery. Race, Music, food, history, sex, etc; everything is a subject of this terrible mockery. And this ignorance, in itself, leaves another and longest scar...

I think the '...' might be part of the last sentence to express the endlessness of the list of things, or the author's amazement or ponderousness at this, maybe even his pain..

Please correct

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What do you mean by ‘Please correct’? It’s a poem not a quadratic equation. There are things I don’t see myself but I’d agree with a lot of what you say and like the way you go about it – with the assumption that someone else had made the effort to think about it. As I say, good on ya.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Are you talking about people or vegetables?

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I was following the comparison that the contestants were supposed to make about their wives' "anatomy". I assume it's a female ...thingIES :)

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

So young and so cynical! :lol:

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Sorry, I forgot about plastic surgery :D

Inspector Unnamable wrote up his top of mind, so if I go along with that:

Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night.
He is thinking about the condition of the coed's body, after it was found.

There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue.
He is thinking about an alibi.

It's forty-eight WABC degrees.
Its the public mood, they are hunting him.

We control the horizontal.
He is trying to outthink the police - road blocks.

Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.
What to do with the coed's stuff, and did he leave fingerprints?

Missing coed found slain.
Confirmation, she has been found, and they have identified the body.

All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More…
He is desperate for ideas.

jackyyyy,
I have no idea what you are on (about).

At first I thought they were random, like some of the early discussion. However, I don't think so any more. These two are definitely linked:

Gentlemen, which of these three vegetables: tomatoes, pumpkins, or squash, will your wives say most represents the part of their anatomy that has come to sag the most since your wedding night.
and
Bachelor number three is a sales manager who collects Disney memorabilia.To have two of seven game show quotes from an infinite possibility of media quotes is too much of a coincidence. Notice too that one is a bachelor's and the other is a newlywed's show.

These two also seem to be linked in that they are apparently referring to a crime:
There was no blood or anything but when I got there she was turning blue.
and
Missing coed found slain.

Has anyone been able to track down whether these are actual quotes from a show, a crime show for instance? Otherwise we will probably have to assume they are news blurbs and may or may not be referring to the same crime, if the first one is a crime at all. The first one may be just a medical emergency.

The last one of the encyclopedia seems out of place. It's listings mirror the listings of the poem body, but there I see complete randomness in its selection. Actually this is the third time a listing is made in the poem: (1) the vegetable listing, (2) the body of the poem as an assembling of media quotes and (3) the encyclopedia listing.

Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes. All apparently from radio or TV programs.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes. All apparently from radio or TV programs.

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He could have listened to the tv, but don't they play some tv shows on the radio?

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

jackyyyy,
I have no idea what you are on (about).

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I'm on (about) paint.

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Originally Posted by jackyyyy

He could have listened to the tv, but don't they play some tv shows on the radio?

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I guess so. But is there a point to why it would/should only be radio?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

I guess so. But is there a point to why it would/should only be radio?

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They can all be picked up from a radio, plus the WABC. Billboards might write WABC, but tv, no.

Just checked it, WABC is on tv.

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Originally Posted by Virgil

Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes. All apparently from radio or TV programs.

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Quote:

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All this in Encyclopedia Britannica III: American Indians, Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong, The Reproductive System, Poisonous Animals and Plants, Atomic Energy, The Circus, Abominable Snowman, Napoleon and More…

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This is advertising to me. What else could it be?

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Originally Posted by Virgil

The last one of the encyclopedia seems out of place. It's listings mirror the listings of the poem body, but there I see complete randomness in its selection.

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"A world standard in reference since 1768" - is the slogan of the Encyclopedia Britannica website. "Standard"? and "world standard"? Isn't that arrogance or what?

If you are right Virgil (and I think you are) then I think this is a list of the things that have been standardised by commerce. Each of them have depths of meaning that are unexplored or ignored in this kind of referencing. And because this has actually become close to a "world standard" (because most people have no time to read more than 20 words about something), their true meanings are at risk of being lost forever. '...' means either 'the list goes on', or, as Unnamable suggested, life goes on - what can we do? - What do you think?

I was just wondering, when I searched for things about "we control the horizontal", almost everything that came up had "we control the horizontal; we control the vertical" going together. So why only "horizontal" here?

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Originally Posted by “Virgil”

At first I thought they were random, like some of the early discussion.

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:D Do you mean that some of the early discussion was random or that some of the early discussion supposed that the poem was random?

These emerging linked themes are not simply those associated with game shows – aren’t they also the recurrent themes of Literature (Love and Death?)? Is Wachtel suggesting that the language of these media bytes has replaced the language of his title?

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Originally Posted by “Virgil”

The first one may be just a medical emergency.

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Interesting in the context – someone is turning blue but it’s just a medical emergency. Nothing to see here – it’s not as if it’s a murder or anything really exciting like that. :lol:

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Originally Posted by “Virgil”

The last one of the encyclopedia seems out of place.

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Napoleon? Didn’t he think that he controlled the horizontal and vertical for a while? Wasn’t he finally defeated by the coldness of the Russian winter? Many of his men turned blue. :nod:

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Originally Posted by “Virgil”

Another observation is that none of the listings are advertising quotes.

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First of all, I agree with jackyyyy that the last sentence is an ad. and secondly, none of the listings are hairy umbrellas, either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tn2743

So why only "horizontal" here?

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I'd say simply that he doesn't need both and by using only the first part, Wachtel encourages us to think about it as more than simply a line from a TV show. Don't you like my suggestion that it could refer to the sexual realm of the horizontal?

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Originally Posted by tn2743

as Unnamable suggested, life goes on - what can we do? - What do you think?

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I also think it suggests the story will be continued, for the very reason that you address in your next question – what can we do? Neither Literature nor life offers any answers to that question. I have no idea what we should do – but it’s a step in the right direction simply to be aware of who’s telling us what and why and with what effect on our lives.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Wachtel encourages us to think about it as more than simply a line from a TV show.

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Ah! I think this makes sense now, though since he has taken all sentences out of context by putting them into the poem, I thought that might be enough encouragement.

Sorry, I forgot about your idea of the horizontal sexual realm. That would definitely link it with the next sentence. I was only wondering: why not vertical? But it makes sense now.

Though I have to say, being young and all, the sexual realm can be 'vertical' for a lot of the time :lol: (I hope this joke's not too rude for this thread)

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Originally Posted by tn2743

Though I have to say, being young and all, the sexual realm can be 'vertical' for a lot of the time :lol: (I hope this joke's not too rude for this thread)

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I am deeply shocked!!!

Excuse me :D

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

They are literally taken out of context and placed in a new context – that of Wachtel’s poem. This makes me look at them in a way I wouldn’t if I was just channel hopping.

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They may literally be, but the context of each sentence does not change in meaning. The thought expressed in each sentence is the same in the poem as it is wherever Wachtel got the sentences from.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

“There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We can reduce the focus to a soft blur, or sharpen it to crystal clarity. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to... The Outer Limits”

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

Old televisions used to have control knobs known as a ‘vertical hold’ and a ‘horizontal hold’’. You fiddled around with them in order to stop the picture from rolling. The statement has overtones of Big Brother but the important thing is what we think is meant by ‘We’. Is it the corporate ‘we’? The media?

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I can see your point, but its 'we control the horizontal' not vertical. Nothing ever mentioned about vertical. I think this means we(we individuals) have control over everything except the horizontal.

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Originally Posted by The Unnamable

I don’t take it as fundamentally different from the other sentences – this one also is another of the ubiquitous, encroaching assertions of a media industry that claims ownership of our souls. Something similar is going on with “It's forty-eight WABC degrees”. – They appear to own the weather.

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I like your idea that 'they appear to own the weather,' but isn't it going too far to say that they seem to 'claim ownership of our souls.'

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Originally Posted by ktd222

They may literally be, but the context of each sentence does not change in meaning. The thought expressed in each sentence is the same in the poem as it is wherever Wachtel got the sentences from.

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I'm sorry ktd222 but I don't really understand what you are saying here. Surely the author had taken these sentences out of their original context in order to put more focus on them. Their meanings may not have changed, but the context in which they are has changed. Isn't the fact that we read them in this poem rather than on the TV a change of context? Their environment and their purpose have changed, among other things. The most obvious example, I think, is the first sentence which has lost its question mark. It used to be a question, and now it is not.

Furthermore, even if the author had not intended for their original meanings to be changed, the fact that he used them for a different purpose and in a different way must have changed them. Relativity right? :)

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Originally Posted by “ktd222”

They may literally be, but the context of each sentence does not change in meaning. The thought expressed in each sentence is the same in the poem as it is wherever Wachtel got the sentences from.

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No, it isn’t. The meaning does change. Meanings are always dependent on context. Look at this sentence:

“I enjoyed having my neighbour for lunch.”

Does it only mean one thing, regardless of context? What if the context is that it’s a cannibal who makes the statement? Now it means something very different. Poetry isn’t literal and denotative – it depends on connotations. As tn2743 says, “Their environment and their purpose have changed”. It’s not that Wachtel has replaced the meanings with wholly different ones but that he has invited us to generate meanings other than the ones intended by the original context. I assume that ‘turning blue’ in the original context refers to someone not getting enough oxygen – within the context of a poem that uses coldness as a sort of motif, it also suggests a less literal coldness.

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Originally Posted by “ktd222”

I think this means we(we individuals) have control over everything except the horizontal.

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Okay – and what does that mean? Given that the context is a series of comments about TV and media, is it so unlikely that the sentence could relate to televisions?

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Originally Posted by “ktd222”

I like your idea that 'they appear to own the weather,' but isn't it going too far to say that they seem to 'claim ownership of our souls.'

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It would be if I based it entirely upon that one phrase in this particular poem. The ‘claim ownership of our souls’ bit is the way I see it but it is consistent with the Media as represented in the poem.

Goodness, get sick for a few days and I've missed this whole discussion about sagging vegetables and frustrated serial killers collecting Disney memorabilia or something. :lol: .

Well, I've only just gotten a chance to look at the contribution for this week. My first thought, like others who have commented, was that it sounds like channel surfing. I think the idea of the form (or lack thereof, depending on how you see it) is an interesting one, a media inspired stream of conciousness commenting on the way fragments of ads and tv and radio seep into our minds and sort of settle there in a plastic soup. I wonder though, if others find that it's a poem that they still find it as interesting on the second read, or if, like the quickly shifting, disposable soundbytes it's made of, it fails to keep our attention in any meaningful way? I wonder, because I've run across similar ideas before, and while I've found it the sort of thing that momentarily makes you stop and think about the connections between the random phrases etc., it's seldom anything that I feel compelled to come back to and read over again. After all, much of the allure really lies in its uniqueness. I don't know that the work itself is as interesting as much as the idea behind it of stringing random phrases together. If many poets started using the same form and it lost its originality I feel as though such a poem would also lose most of its edge. I'd be interested to hear if there are differences of opinion though. I'm not trying to claim it's "bad" poetry, just trying to see if people find it to be poetry of lasting interest. Maybe I just need to read through it again and see if it speaks to me more. ;)

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Originally Posted by jackyyyy

They can all be picked up from a radio, plus the WABC. Billboards might write WABC, but tv, no.

Just checked it, WABC is on tv.

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Yes, WABC is a television station as well. It's the particular locution that suggested radio to me. But I guess it doesn't have to be.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jackyyyy

This is advertising to me. What else could it be?

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Ok, I stand corrected.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Unnamable

These emerging linked themes are not simply those associated with game shows – aren’t they also the recurrent themes of Literature (Love and Death?)? Is Wachtel suggesting that the language of these media bytes has replaced the language of his title?

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Good points. I can buy into both.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Unnamable

Napoleon? Didn’t he think that he controlled the horizontal and vertical for a while? Wasn’t he finally defeated by the coldness of the Russian winter? Many of his men turned blue.

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This I don't buy into. Way too tenuous a connection. What about the other things he lists?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tn2743

If you are right Virgil (and I think you are) then I think this is a list of the things that have been standardised by commerce. Each of them have depths of meaning that are unexplored or ignored in this kind of referencing. And because this has actually become close to a "world standard" (because most people have no time to read more than 20 words about something), their true meanings are at risk of being lost forever. '...' means either 'the list goes on', or, as Unnamable suggested, life goes on - what can we do? - What do you think?

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I don't know if lost forever, but it certainly trivializes serious topics.

Here's a thought: Horizontal, euphemism for death as well as love.