Here's My Entry into the Avant-Garde Poetry Contest
Quote:
Originally Posted by
YesNo
Do you consider yourself a writer of "avant=garde" poetry?
The reason I ask is there's a poetry contest here:
http://www.online-literature.com/for...=1#post1263754
I'm trying to get some examples of "narrative" poetry that is also "avant-garde". If you win, you get to run the next contest.
I read the thread.
There was somebody on the thread posting an avant-garde poem which was supposed to be a mockery of avant-garde poetry – and ironically it was the best poem of his I've ever seen! Reminds me of a certain pop-artist whose name escapes me at the moment, anyway this artist made some works mocking high art and those turned out to be his best artworks ever!
Here's my entry:
A Poem with 4 Different Titles
A word-orgasm by Wolf Larsen
First title of poem: My Favorite Intergalactic Dildo – alternative title for this poem: 6,184 Planets Running around the Pinball Machine – second alternative title for this poem: How I Lost My Virginity to a Buzzing Inanimate Object – third alternative title for this poem: Going on a Date with Charles Manson's Clone During World War 3
DING-DONG-CRAAAAASH!!
Ka-DOOPLE!! Circus sireeeens! Eloquent fish-fiiiish-fiiiiish!!
BING-BANG-BONG! Where's my bonging words to invent??
Mustard!
Sky WOW! Neon-vagina-soup!! Where's my zero gravity???
Help! Penis!
Dip! Pong! 0000000ppeeeeee!! Lost my winking!!
Strawberry! Help!
Shakespearean-fast-food-yoga! Yugoslavia! Dok piiiiing! Lucifer winking!
Penis! Anus! Penis! Anus! Penis!
harrrooooo0000! ! !
Tomorrow? Tomorrow!! Tomorrow? Tomorrow!!
SLAM! Boom! CRASH! Boom!
Hairpins! Charles Manson imagination factory!
Boom! BANG! Boom! BANG!
Ha Ha Ha he heee heeeeeee!
Big vagina! Orgasm! Coca-Cola!
Hello! BOOM! Bang! Hello! BOOM! bang!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
?/*(!), BANG! Marijuana-caffeine-roller-coaster! Magical-Toaster ovens of Scilly-do-bop!!
Where's tomorrow? I'm swallowed by too many verbs-verbs-verbs!!!
CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASH
Where's my penis?
Penis-my pen is-pe N iS-(pen)is-peNis-pEniS-peNis! (!,/Okay? Okay! CRASH
CRASH!
C R A S H !
Where?
W h e r e ?
Copyright 2014 by Wolf Larsen
There is no formula for avant-garde poetry
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cacian
Ok I see.....LOL how do I begin
so it is a string of words?? F narrative.
Basically, I feel that avant-garde poetry is that you do whatever you want. You don't worry about grammar or tradition or convention. You SMASH any boundaries they get in the way of your individual expression. To me, avant-garde poetry is about INDIVIDUALISM and SELF-EXPRESSION. There is no right way to write avant-garde poetry – except that avant-garde is different than conventional poetry. Avant-garde poetry is like dancing to disco music or house music – there is no correct way to do it – and no two people dance exactly alike. Conventional poetry – on the other hand – is like the waltz or the jitterbug – there are established norms and everybody is pretty much dancing the same or writing in the same style.
There are those who will argue that there is a certain formula to avant-garde poetry. They are entitled to their opinion. But I disagree. I say do whatever you want. Throw boundaries away. Think outside the box.
I feel that the moment you get some kind of formula for avant-garde poetry then you defeat the purpose. Of course, you will find opposing opinions if you Google avant-garde poetry.
Long Live Individualism! Long Live Creativity! Down with the Literary World!
Why should literature be confined to the four squares of the page? Why not write literature on walls? Why not write literature on bathroom walls? Why not write literature on the sky?
Why shouldn't literature dash from one part of the world to the other as it's being spontaneously created by people on every continent all working together to create a poem/novel/play/whatever?
Envision an earthquake as a poem, envision a hurricane as a poem, envision a black hole in outer space as a poem – and then try to create such a poem! Why shouldn't the poem have the emotions of 7 billion people inside of it? Why not? Why shouldn't a play have the dialogue of 7 billion people in it? Why not? Why shouldn't there be 7 million people as characters in a novel? Why not? Why not write a novel/play/movie/poem/painting/sculpture/modern dance/architecture? I have! If I can do it why can't you?
I wish I could be nicer in this essay, but I must speak my mind. Why do you (you meaning most writers) hide behind your conventional stories and your conventional grammar? Is your mind incapable of imagining anything else? Or are you just too lazy to push yourself into doing something different? Or maybe you're content with writing like 10,000 other people. Good for you!
Anyway, why should letters be confined to their present form? (I'm speaking of letters like ABC, not the letters you send by mail.) Look at the letters of some of the pre-Colombian "Indians" in the New World, whose letters were beautiful. And look at Arabic calligraphy, Chinese characters, and graffiti murals to see how beautiful/creative letters & words & phrases can be. What if we could make our computers make letters like that? What if our books were more beautiful – more Baroque – more everything – than the wonderfully beautiful manuscripts illustrated by the medieval monks? You've seen how beautiful those medieval Bibles are. Why couldn't we write orgies with such beautiful engravings of words?
And why shouldn't we write orgies? What's wrong with orgies? We are told that pornography is bad. No it's not! Pornography is wonderful! Why not write wonderful Baroque-Rococo works of pornography? Why not prove that pornography can be artistic? Why not prove that pornography can be the greatest works of literature ever created by mankind?! In fact, I have a book of poetry named Pornography! (It has no pictures.) Look at how popular pornography is! The problem is, there's too much bad pornography! What we need is to create wonderful pornography! Creative pornography! The best works of literature should be positively pornographic!
Moving on: why not think of the entire city as one poem? Why not think of poems as living breathing things? Why shouldn't a novel be a living breathing thing? Why do novels need characters? Why do novels and short stories need plots? I'm serious – what for?? Maybe one novel can have 7 billion characters, and the next novel can have no characters, and in the novel after that all the characters could be animals & insects. Oh, wait a minute, I'm an animal, and so are you! I'm a member of the primate family – and chances are so are you!
That's another part of your problem. You forget that you're an intelligent primate. Cultural influences are good, but when you forget that you're an animal (a primate) then you're missing something. You're missing something that will help you create better literature and better art. Don't ever forget that you're an animal! It will help keep your work from becoming boring, dry, and brittle. Be an intellectual, but be an intellectual animal, so that you get the best of both worlds!
In addition, you're not made in the image of some god. There is no god. So why submit yourself to some invisible god that does not exist? Submit to nothing! Do not submit to any god that does not exist, and do not submit to any publishing corporation that thinks it's god! (Well, if you wrote some airport novel that you don't care about, let them do with it as they will if the price is right. But protect your masterpieces from those editors that will rewrite your book!)
The more strong and powerful and omnipresent you are the greater your literature will be! Dream to be great! We intelligent primates are destined for great things! So why do you arbitrarily impose limits upon yourself? (Although some of those limits are the limitations of your resources, your free time, and the limitations of the historical epic you live in). However, 500 years from now literature may have an infinite variety of forms that we can scarcely even imagine today. And the four squares of a page or a computer may be just one form of a "book" amongst thousands of forms!
Why should literature be confined to traditional grammar? Why not make up your own grammar? If 20th century classical musicians could invent the 12 tone scale why can't you do the same with grammar? Why couldn't you invent something called 12 tone grammar? Why shouldn't each one of your works have a different form of grammar? Why not?
You should have mastered basic grammar back in grammar school. I did, and I went to a mediocre grammar school, and I'm not that smart either. I can write perfect grammar when I want to, and I can **** perfect grammar up the *** when I want to. If I can be versatile – why can't you? Anyway, if you haven't mastered grammar by now you probably never will. So just write whatever you want to write – and don't worry about grammar! And if you've already mastered basic grammar then why not invent new forms of grammar – and constantly change them at will! Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!! Why not?
The only limit to the greatness of literature are the limits imposed on it by the lack of imagination of writers. Be great! Be imaginative! Stretch literature beyond its boundaries! Smash all boundaries!
Some people whine about "obscenity". Perhaps these are the same kinds of people that helped get endless works of literature censored and banned in the recent past. Perhaps Puritanism and the obstruction of our natural sex drives is one of the leading causes of so-called "writers block". You block out everything that others may have an objection to – even your own so-called "morality" is perhaps blocking you from writing the great literature you're destined to write! Don't expect to write great literature if you're all repressed! You don't think there's a connection between being repressed and "writers block"? Just write what comes into your head! To hell with what everybody else thinks! I'll tell you one thing: literature is not served by censorship, whether that censorship is from others or from yourself. Stop practicing self-censorship!
Creative writing therefore is a form of confrontation. When you write what you want to write without self-censorship you are confronting all of the ignorance that's holding literature back. The social values of any time in history are merely the social values of that political/economic structure and its ruling class. (The ruling class themselves rarely live according to these "values" – but they expect everybody else to live according to these "values" – especially writers – because writers can be dangerous to the status quo.) Many of these "values" are merely a form of trying to induce conformity, so that the masses are under control and do not threaten the ruling class and its political/economic structure. There is nothing natural about the "values" of the societies of the sick world of today. To hell with these hypocritical "moral values". You have to fight to write what you want to write! And if you don't have to fight to write would you want to write than maybe you're doing something wrong.
Again, I must say something impolite, my apologies. But why do normal people even bother writing? What do normal people have to contribute to literature? If there's nothing unusual about you, if you don't have anything original to say, then why do you bother? I think the best literature comes from those who are unique – or have some unique experiences – or have something unique to say – or have some new unique literature to give to the reading public.
If you're only writing to prove what a well-adjusted normal person you are – whatever normal is in these crazy times we live in – then who the hell cares about what you have to write unless I'm suffering from insomnia and your book helps to put me asleep!
In addition, perhaps "normal" writing about "normal" people helps to maintain the status quo. Perhaps the ruling class that owns the publishing conglomerates does not want too much stuff published that threatens its interests. Reform is one thing, but revolution is quite another. Books can be powerful! The written word can be dangerous.
Honestly, are the thoughts in your head, are the images in your imagination, anything resembling what we are told is a "normal"? Don't lie! Don't lie to me, and most of all don't lie to yourself! You know damn well the most imaginative stuff in your head is not "normal".
Why shouldn't you write all those imaginative things in your head that others won't approve of? (Well, within reason, keep the racist garbage in your head to yourself.) And why should you worry whether it takes the form of good grammar when you write them down?
If we don't use most of our brains (which we don't) then think how much we are not doing with literature! Literature is tied down in a million ways. It's tied down by our lack of imagination. Literature is tied down by the profit motive to publishing conglomerates that could care less about literature, because they could only care about profits. Literature is tied down by your own personal sexual Puritanism. Did you know that studies show that creative people have more sexual partners? Perhaps there is a relationship between creativity and sex? Or perhaps there is a relationship between not being repressed and being more creative? I feel that people who are so close minded that they find virtually everything to be "obscene" are less likely to write great creative literature. Maybe, they would make good grammar school teachers, or good editors for medical books. Medical books should have correct grammar. Most definitely. Convention has its place.
If your conventional stories are VERY INTERESTING than by all means write it down! But if you don't have any interesting conventional stories to tell, then why not reach into your imagination and create something unique and amazing? Or why not write some interesting conventional literature, and some other literature totally unlike anything ever written? Why be only a one trick pony?
If you're different – or if you do something different – people will say you're crazy. But there's good crazy and there's bad crazy. So go ahead and get good and crazy!
It is the "crazy" people that help the human race advance. (I mean the good "crazy" people.) While the conventional people stand by like a bunch of sheep, it is the "crazy" people that show that there is a better way.
Long live INDIVIDUALISM! Long live creativity!
Islands of Creativity Amongst a Sea of Airport Novelists
Man, St. Luke's Guild is one smart poster. This guy knows his shipped. (Funny thing is, the voice recognition software I use doesn't want to say shipped, it always says shipped.) This voice recognition software doesn't say any of the best words in English language – another example of the Puritanism I've been talking about. Apparently, St. Luke's Guild and I have at least some agreement in that area.
We don't agree about Schoenburg & Weben. I love them! I still have about 100 CDs of 20 century classical music. (Yes, CDs! Maybe books will go the way of the CD. Maybe.)
St. Luke's Guild talks about some creative writers, some which I was familiar with and others not. When St. Luke's Guild talks about examples of creative writers I usually go check them out as soon as I have time. St. Luke's Guild knows a lot of stuff!
However, the fact remains these creative writers are exceptions to the rule. Mostly, what the literary world is good for is turning out endless airport novels. Airport novels and more airport novels and more airport novels... And then there's endless aspiring airport novelists. They're a dime a dozen. Most of them are very talented at putting the commas and periods in the right place. But if they have an exciting story to tell well why not read it? But there's still no creativity there.
There'll always be exceptions. There'll always be creative people doing something unique. St. Luke's Guild gave us some examples.
Another problem is creative people who write creative stuff that's dry and boring. There's no shortage of that either. Yawn!
I looked up St. Luke's Guild on the Internet. Pretty cool.
