So now we turn to Bob Perelman's poem Chronic Meanings. And it is a pre-elegy for Lee Hickman, an editor. Los Angeles based. Whom Bob didn't know, very well but he felt he needed to talk to Lee about the information that Bob had received, that Lee was dying of AIDS. So he writes this as pre-eulogy. So what's, how's, how's it written? What's the structure of it? Amaris? >> Well upon first glance it looks like a series of Silliman-like new sentences, but the fact that it's organized in quatrains of each line with five words each and it's ended by a period just creates a very sort of severe impression of this life being cut off. >> Okay, you went right to the big thing about the way the form works with the content. We'll, we'll definitely get back to that. So you've said, in the most basic way you've said. Five words, no more, no less. What do we call that? Is there a word for that? >> Constraint. >> A constraint. So he imposed upon himself a constraint. Why in the face of someone's death, would you insist, would you, it just strikes me, on being a little. You know, devil's advocate here. But, it might strike me, it might strike one that the way to memorialize someone would be to be full and free, and not constrained. Why constraint? Why does constraint work? Dave? >> In some sense being force to express oneself with, within this constraint is a loss of control. He's unable to have the control over the expressions of those feelings. >> How does he loose control? >> By not being able to express the full thought. The constraint stops him, leaves him. >> So by forcing yourself, and I recommend that you try this. You know, try to speak sentences for a whole day in which you only speak three word sentences. And you will drive people crazy. How will it drive them crazy? >> Probably, by waiting for me to construct a three word sentence. [laugh] ... >> At three its really a, really a constraint. Molly, what, what would it do to somebody if we spoke in this kind of, spoke of road in kind of this kind of constrained way, whats missing? Whats, whats annoying? >> Well you're leaving something out and you don't know where the sentence was going so you have to fill in the blanks yourself. >> Who doesn't know where the sentence is going? >> The reader the listener. >> The reader and listener but you know its also possible that Bob Perelman in many cases as he's said himself didn't know where a lot of these sentences were going. When he, once he got into the rhythm of writing five word sentences, some of the sentences such as, economics is not my strong. Well, clearly he meant economics is not my strong suit, that's a six word sentence, and everybody thinks suit when you hear that. >> But the, the clock face in the, we have no idea where he was going and he probably doesn't either. Anna, what were you gonna say? >> Well it's just. I mean I think that creates such a kind of interesting tension and sort of dynamic that, that there some that you almost auto-fill. Like midnight the pain is almost, you know. People you, you might. It's, it's almost easy to fill it in with, and then the pain is almost unbearable. >> Almost unbearable. >> And there's others like. >> Right. Can we stop there now? >> Yeah. >> Meanwhile, the pain is almost unbearable. >> So what does it say about us that we can auto fill, as you put it in this iPhone age? >> Well, sure. I mean, I think there's certain kind of words and phrases that just sort of go together. >> Mm-hm. >> And I. >> Auto fill. >> Plays with that a lot. >> So, what's the word that we auto fill there? >> In midnight? >> Unbearable. >> Unbearable. >> Is there any irony in that? That we go around auto-filling a word like unbearable to describe pain? I think that Bob is pointing out, and his colleagues they're pointing out that every word potentially does work. And acts work and we should not auto fill. >> Meaning? >> The fact that we auto fill is meaningful. >> You could say I mean like the pain is almost last. >> Yes it is true but. >> You could. >> I mean I was going along with the auto fill. >> Well, yeah. >> There, there are some others here. >> But I think that is what he is saying. >> In which we auto fill. >> I think he is saying like we shouldn't be auto filling. >> Right. >> Again, let's go. Before we look at some lines that will really allow us to do some reading of this. Say that again, that thing that you said at the very end of your brilliant first intro comment. >> Well, when I first read it, I was thinking, Oh, why aren't these, why isn't it organized like a prose poem? And then it seemed to have sort of more of a Dickinsonian form. But in her poems, she use dashes, which seems to imply some sort of continuity or a sense of frame. >> Openness. >> An openness. And here, I mean, I think that same openness exists, but the punctuation of a period just makes it. >> So much more heart-wrenching. >> Mm-hm. >> There is really that sense of finality and, or, well, sense of in-completion. >> As I said. >> The full finality of the period right? >> Yes. >> So somebody want to say about the way in which form and content work here? >> Well cutting off a line. Cutting off a sentence and cutting off someone's life, that seemed to say a lot about eachother. >> Is there a better way to memorialize someone who dies, early, young of age, than to do it, using an expression that doesn't finish. That is cut off. Okay so that's the, I almost wanna say trick but that's wrong. Because this is very, this in a way a sincere, sincere version of this avant-gardism. So we have to do the work of filling in and we feel terribly guilty when we auto fill. And we are at our, at our best are participating in making the meaning and really trying to understand what that cut off life means. So let's look at some lines. Okay. So. Okay, what do we have? What's, what's a favorite line of your's, Kristen? >> I like this is the, fourth, the fourth stanza, stanza up from the end of the poem. >> Mm-hm. >> You think people would have, or that, that they would invent. >> Mm-hm. >> And. >> Why do you like that? >> Especially in the way that Bob reads this. It seems to me that he's, you know I am talking to, to Lee like you'd think that people would have come up with a way to fight this disease or that they would invent some medicine. >> Or that this would be a priority. >> Yeah. And I think that's very evocative. >> And that we don't know what is to be invented is exactly the point. >> Uh-huh. >> Alright. Who's got another one? A, a line that's worth mentioning, Max? >> I like in the middle a few stanzas above, from where Kristen just pointed us to. The impossibility of the simplest so shut the fucking thing. Now I've gone and put that makes the world. This is this moment of, of frustration. The impossibility of the simplest. It could be anything. But we all know, we all know how frustrating it is when we confront with impossibilities in a simplest blank. Whether the simplest the simplest to say the simplest little task. The simplest anything is just frustrating, and you know, we just want to, we just want to shut the fucking thing whatever it is. Just like that's the that's all you have to do so just do it but and yet you can't it's frustrating and, and now I've gone and put it could be it could be a number of things. I've gone and put you off or now I've gone and put a, I don't know. It's seems almost apologetic there. Like, now I've gone and done this, and I've lost my cool. And, and yet, it's also like, it's also caught in there, like a little chunk. It's so good. >> With respect to that line, so shut the fucking thing, Bob Perelman says something about meter, and the way in which this kind of writing is different from. The metrical writing that would complete the line because of meter. Does anybody want to say anything about that or the transition that's being made here? What's he saying there? He's talking about iambic pentameter there. And he's saying, I vote against it. I'm not, yes, I read the romantics. Yes, I'm interested in, in, he's referring to the, you know Wordsworthian ballad, and getting all the stresses done, right? So that the complete line there would necessarily do the whole metrical thing to the end. And that is an arbitrary way of doing it too. But rather than do that he wants to take five words not five stresses but five words. >> And cut that off. It's a new kind of meter. Does this. >> When you say we should have new sounds and new meters for all new ears. But it doesn't work to have iambic pentameter to describe, like, in that kind of ordered iambic pentameter, or any other classical meter you might have. Those types of meters don't work in a world that has this kind of discontinuity and discord existing in it. And I think also the iambic pentameter, when you get to the end of the phrase you have to sense you have the sense of arrival. That oh, like you were feeling that stress come, anticipating it. But here the poem seems to express That these words don't arrive at their destination, because Lee Hickman dies at this point. And to me a lot of those phrases even the one that Kristen selected sort of resonates with that idea of the inability to describe or invoke loss, or to say it adequately. So saying, like a physical mouth without speech so shut the fucking thing. So, what Perelman's doing is elaborating further the innovation of Silliman's new sentence. The rough ratio would go like this, I think. The, the, the line, the poetic line is to the new sentence. As the iambic pentameter, meter is to this constraint of five words and nothing more. Let's count words, let's not count feet, metrical feet. Alright, so that allows us to. Enable this foreign content harmonizing or dis-harmonizing that you're talking about. And it's an alternative to me or, this is, this is what advant-garde poetry does. Alright, a couple more lines that you particularly think help us. >> One that's always. >> Understand this. >> The one that's always stood out to me and that, the many times I've read this poem is the coffee sounds intriguing, but because there's, there's so much like regret. >> Can you tell us the story? >> You know maybe Lee said to Bob, or you know. >> Or anyone says to anyone. >> Anyone. That's because I recall things. I mean, that sounds great, but I can't. I'm busy. I'm. >> And then, you know, maybe, maybe tomorrow that person is not there anymore to get coffee with you. You know, this, this stuff happens. >> And it, and it almost doesn't matter what the flimsy excuse was. >> It doesn't matter. >> So that's the openings here? Dave? >> My favorite line is about half way through, It's the last line, maybe the thirteenth, fourteen stanza. And it's simply, now put down your pencils. And it's not cut off it's a complete sentence but to me it just communicates that, that. >> What's the reference? >> All the control. It's the standardized test. >> What's the reference? It is absolutely a reference. I tis the only, I think there might be some school exams where someone would say that but, particularly associated with standardized tests. It is the most, the most, what do we say? Socially enforced thing you could be doing with a pencil. Go ahead, Dave. >> And, I view this as being in the middle of an answer. In the middle of some type of control. And being told, no, stop, take, you're done. Whatever you are, put your pencil down. You're done. >> Yeah. >> And of course, Amaris could also read it metapoetically. >> Maybe that I do that, even these words are not enough. So, stop. Put down your pencil at the point where you want to complete the meter. >> Mm-hm. >> That's why I like five words only cuz that really sets up what he's. >> Another metapoetic line. >> Yeah, what he's about to do in the entire poem and that's cut off because five words can't say it all. >> It's interesting to think about only as, almost the thing that five words can say. >> Mm. Only as a noun, forced into being a noun. The point I am trying but did that really mean? I remember the look in. It was the first time, that's the one that when I'm teaching this poem if, you know in front of a large group I get, that gets me all, emotional. It was the first time, I mean I'm not even thinking about Bob, I'm not thinking about Lee Hickman when he says that line, I'm thinking about any of those first time when you're reflecting. Come what may, it can't. Who wants to do something with that? Come what may it can't. >> Well it's just incredibly, because that's trying to express a certainty. And even though a doubtful certainty, or, come what may it can't possibly be that bad. By not being able to make that declarative statement that it can't be something means it can be whatever you're fearing it. It means that there is no certainty of any kind. >> So what do we say to a doubter and detractor who says yeah, yeah this is all, this avant-gardism has been fun. It's kind of a trick. But this man is dying or died and don't you think you should say something about his life. >> Any doubt, what, what? >> This does say something about his life. >> How do you respond, it does? >> It says a lot about his life, it doesn't say he way born in this year, he was born in this place, he lived here, he did this, his friends were these people. But it, it says a lot about, what happened to him. >> And in the way that Frank O'Hara's The Day Lady Died, we talked about a more effective way of eulogizing someone is to talk about the human experience of loss and what that person meant to you. So here Perelman expresses that sense of feeling cut off the way that O'Hara expressed how much the artistic performance. >> He gets to feel in a minor way, a linguistic way, the pain of having to. >> Not finish, of being cut off. He actually has to do it. Yeah. Kristen, what were you going to say? >> The other thing I think is, you know, the title of this poem is Chronic Meanings, and I think that a typical elegy or a typical obituary when you're trying to eulogize someone tries to make a meaning out of their death and tries to make it make sense. >> And this one doesn't. >> And this one doesn't. And this one, you're, we're, we're participating the meaninglessness of it because we're, you know, you, as you're reading this poem, you're trying to figure out what, Bob would have said if he had, had a couple of more words in each sentence. But having it be so senseless I think works perfectly. >> Perelman once said of his poem if one expects a poem to be more or less narrative, focusing sharply or softly on spots of time, then Chronic Meanings might feel evasive. What do you think he means, and yeah, what do you think he means by that and what is the response to the person who would accuse us of being evasive? He's referring to spots of time. That's a very specific reference maybe I need to help you with that one. Okay, that so that's Wordsworth right? That's, that's the romantic notion that a poem. Focuses on a particular, intensely or maybe emotional, or visually stimulating moment and then it does its work in a spot of time, okay? It's a, a, and, if you're expecting a poem to do that, to focus sharply or softly on spots of time, chronic meanings will feel evasive. What would be meant by evasive there? Maybe can you sum it up by his lying memorized experience can't be completely the idea that memory is never enough and a poem that takes one image and sort of, I don't want to say romanticizes it, but sort of dramatizes it and creates into this symbolic moment of no life is art and artifice and knd of does diservice. >> An imposition of narrative on really something that verges on non-narrative. Okay so let me just add a kind of fact that's associated with this poem and you can react to it as our final words here, okay? So it's not only that Pearlman finds that Hickman is dying of AIDS. But, he writes the poem, and Lee Hickman, typeset the poem, himself, for an issue of Temblor before he, before he dies. What do you make of that? What is, how is that, how does that tell us something about what's important to the language poets that particulars of really a perfect instance of this, but, say anything you'd like about that. What do you get from that? >> Max. >> It's, well it's, it's sort of destabilizing that the poet's or the author's authority in a way in that, in that Perelman writes these lines. But then there's this whole sort of. Physical act, that Hickman has to go through, of, of, of recreating the lines, and that's participating in, in the sort of creation of this language. >> Yeah, you got it. Your emotions suggests that he's hand setting, you know it's letter pressed. I'm not sure about. I mean I like that, that's even better, but. >> Right, right, right. It wasn't [inaudible] it would have been better. I think there's something beautiful. The word. >> He had to type. He typed these incomplete sentences. >> Sure. >> I mean if, if the language poets are interested in creating these relationships between writers and readers. And in this case of course readers must do the work of finishing the thought or at least of resisting the natural temptation to finish the thought. This poem actually celebrates a relationship between writer and editor and typesetter or writer, and in this case, reader, or elegist and subject of the elegy, all that gets put into one and you realize that the, that especially at a time when AIDS was devastating the artistic community. This is a communal statement about what language needs to do. How inventive language needs to be. If it's going to respond to this crisis by teaching us how hard it is to resist the temptation to complete everything. And to fill everything out. >> Alright, I'm gonna ask for one final word on this. Maybe just how it feels to, I mean avant-garde poets not known for sentimentality. You do feel sentiment here? What do you feel? Does it make you want to run out and join the forces of avant garde poets because they're so moving? Dave, your thought on this? >> It's funny because when you read an elegy, it's, afterwards you're reconstructing the life of somebody trying to pay homage to them, and here as a reader you're basically put into that situation in real time. And the fact that Lee Hickman typeset this, he read it before he passed, I think is pretty interesting because he wrote an eulogy, to him that he could actually read. That doesn't usually happen. >> Yeah. That is unusual. Anybody else want to react? To the way this feels, Emily? >> Yeah, to return to the line you mentioned earlier. Midnight the pain is almost, and there's something deeply sad and, and amazing at the same time that we all know what comes after that which is at midnight the pain is almost unbearable, and it makes you think, well why do I know how to finish this sentence? It's because all of us have. >> Been in unbearable pain, or seeing someone in unbearable pain. And by reflecting on that process, their ability to sort of auto fill, auto correct certain language. We end up mourning ourselves, mourning all the people we've mourned before. It becomes a kind of universal elegy in a way that a closed or traditional poem probably couldn't. >> So, the rejection of closure in this instance becomes both personal and. I guess I'm going to use the word universal.
