Poetry on Pearl: 7/26

 Sponsored by Blue Velvet Review + Too Gyroz

Katreena Dayacap

Nicholas Syrianus Katsafanas

Self-Similarity in the Extended Line

There’s measurement and division; there’s self-similarity and syllabic interval.

There are two crucial elements that, at this point, it’s imperative for us to define if we’re going to continue to write poems. The first is the syllable, which is a simple unit; the syllable is unitary, a simple mathematical unit. But the second element is the echo. The echo is relational, something that exists only as a derivative of the unitary syllable. The echo is a mist, a notable participation in Likeness across two or more of these units, separated by a reasonable spatial distance, connected temporally via speech.

The echoes, in aggregate, become a measurement of self-similarity.

The line or block of text is composed of syllables and the echoes are the measurements of likeness between these fundamental elements. This will be the case for either in an individual line or a block of text that’s then either left as a block or then diced up into set intervals after the fact. 

The canto itself is a self-similar line, and the (epic) poem is a self-similar wave, both of which come into being via measurement.

These blocks of text could be called macrotones in a sense, and by that I mean they have a measured quotient of self-similarity (which expresses itself via sound) that defines the unit, that can’t be divided without changing essentially. A macrotone of .754 even if divided equally into two will change essentially, it will no longer be .754. Whereas a microtone takes a tone and divides it - a macrotone is an aggregation of sound. 

Echoes don’t tether the poet to ideas like end-rhymes, or stress patterns, or syllabic exactness. One of the best examples of self-similarity won’t be found in Ashbery or Whitman or Ginsberg or Pound. It’s the last line of the first verse of Big Pun’s “Twinz.”

Dead in the middle of Little Italy little did we know

that we riddled some middleman who didn't do diddily

[D]ead [i]n the m[i][d]dle of [L][i]ttle [I]t[a][l][y] [l][i]ttle [d][i]d we know

that we r[i][d]dled some [m][i][d]dle[m]an who [d][i][d]n't [d]o [d][i][d]d[i][l][y]

30:31 .968

The macrotone .968. There are no fixed syllables per line here, and there’s no fixed pattern of stressed syllables, and there’s no end-rhyme, because although “Italy” and “diddily” might technically rhyme, in the incessant referencing back upon itself of the line, this outright rhyme is diluted by various the D’s, soft I’s, and L’s that richochet violently across the line, engaging in fraction portions of alliteration and assonance, the echoing. 

But this is an extreme example, as you probably wouldn’t write an extended poem with this type of extremity sustaining itself, because the language itself would be so limited the content would become insipid. Split the tone into two and it changes essentially.

Line 1

[D]ead [i]n the m[i][d]dle of [L][i]ttle [I]t[a][l][y] [l][i]ttle [d][i]d we know

14:16 .875

 

Line 2

that we r[i][d]dled some [m][i][d]dle[m]an who [d][i][d]n't [d]o [d][i][d]d[i][l][y]

15:15 1.00

Even in this excessively lyrical example, if we split Pun’s macrotone equally into two, the value changes essentially, from .968 into .875 and 1.00. This concludes this section on self-similarity in the extended line.

Tapas is Actually Enjoyable

In absolutely no way shape or form do I regret expressing my vicious disgust with modern photography among young mothers who dedicate their Instagrams to infants 

It’s essential in my mind that we question the intrinsic value of the frozen image in fact of anything we note to be quote-unquote frozen in time 

Laotian hookah bar on Douglas Avenue abandoned basketball court on Douglas Avenue recalling my own decade old imagined images also on Douglas Avenue 

Have you been by any chance to that new Tapas place off Wickendon ‘suck my penis’ I said I haven’t had exceptional sushi since Tokyo closed 

Apparently Parmenides believed a divine being of some sort informed him of a certain indivisible oneness which moved him to write a poem 

Falling in Love is Such a Bore

Blowing a shit on a city street outside a JWU dorm and then benignly driving up a big hill to buy a bean burrito at Baja’s I fucked up my brand new white vans stepping in a big puddle on New Year’s Eve 

I wish we’d known one another at another time unfortunately now you’re just a memory I’ve recalled like a thousand rewritten rough drafts 

Sometimes the people who fight for just causes are complete pieces of shit possibly because linearity has always been a pipedream for us collectively 

The Madness of a Cloud: Canto I

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Canto I: .730

"The Nice Man with His Wife's Last Name's Form of Annihilation"

1859:2546

Cloud was sitting at Seventh Heaven drinking a Fernet on the rocks engaging in light conversation with a cocksucker he’d never even met about a Queen’s Blood play-in game that he’d,

this particular cocksucker, requested to be put on the TV at the bar. Well, actually Cloud corrected, for the record, that he’d actually been reading a few pages of Timaeus prior to all this,

making a few disparate notes, finding himself puzzled at the sensory information that continued to be relayed into his brain. Cloud basically alleged he was flummoxed

about the sensory information that became, in some way, relayed to what he guessed was his brain? - how any of that was corroborated, but more so Cloud contemplated the static nature

of said images, that’s what he was specifically contemplating when a guy with a round-ass face leaned onto the bar, seeking to close his tab, obviously excited to tell the bartender

that he may need to show her his ID, just because he took his wife’s last name and hadn’t had a chance to change his license yet? The patron with the round-ass face noted how nice

the bartender was (Tifa!), but what was her name again? He could definitely display his ID if she really needed, just because, again, his last name was different now,

taking his wife’s name and all! Of course, Cloud noted, that it was clear that no one gave a fuck about the printed name on a credit card in that bar, and Tifa, for her part,

didn’t exactly seem like she was ramping up to suck this dude off just because he was a radical feminist. For Cloud’s part he was still, you know, attempting to get behind

the blunt sensations being smuggled relentlessly into his so-called conscious existence. Everything was an image to some extent, right Aerith? Touch itself was a fucking sensory image.

It was a quaint Spring evening where Cloud felt more or less destined to philosophize, having started drinking wine in preparation for a Friday night dinner, only to have Tifa bail last minute,

because she needed to pick up a bar shift, leaving him completely free to continue this wine drinking in a ritualistic way that would be conducive to philosophical ideas.

Yes, Cloud continued to Aerith, it was basically only via drinking alone, but in a ritualistic fashion, that he’d achieved any sort of philosophical inquiry.

You couldn’t just sit at a desk and become philosophical, at least not for Cloud! Maybe some people could! But, no, not Cloud. He’d imagine that there were probably a litany of possible ways

of becoming philosophical - like, for instance, for the round-faced albino chap, perhaps telling Tifa that he’d taken his wife’s last name, maybe that could be seen as possibly ritualistic in a way,

a gateway to some sort of becoming philosophical. This was actually science, Cloud told her he thought at the bar, successfully avoiding making any eye contact with the round-faced man.

Was it necessarily strange at all that once the Greeks went extinct philosophy went more or less completely and utterly downhill and never looked back in the least, that the last group to really reach

much of any philosophical success made a sincere effort to conjoin getting fucked up with contemplating intelligible phenomena? - that these Greeks attempted to marry inebriation

and rigorous dialectic? That all thought since, to paraphrase Northhead, had been a minor footnote to Plato or whatever? The thing was, according to Cloud, you just couldn’t willy nilly

delve into metaphysics completely sober! But that wasn’t to say a person should necessarily become some degenerate alcoholic either, because a degenerate drunk would in no way

make a great meta-physicist either, that was basically impossible, because, like Cloud said, the solo mode of inebriation should be done ritualistically, in spurts, at certain times.

You couldn’t just be like hitting the bottle as soon as you woke from a slumber! - after said inebriation sessions you’d require sobriety to parse through whatever it was that came to you

via said contemplation, no? In fact, the actual science was nothing beyond this parsing through of inebriation sessions of rigorous contemplation! That was it, what laid behind logic

and metaphysics, in Cloud’s mind at least! But inebriation could be anything really, Cloud could enter a state of inebriation in a car alone on a Tuesday AM,

without consuming a damn thing. Aerith more or less agreed, adding that on the one hand a philosophical mind should be able to analyze, interpret, extrapolate, all of that scientific stuff -

but, on the other, if you fail to place yourself in a position to receive anything to analyze, interpret, or extrapolate then you were basically screwed! Cloud more or less agreed

but added that, sans this type of “inspiration,” so to speak, they’d be stuck sitting at a table just noodling around nonsensically, vacillating back and forth between two types

of nothingness, and then just probably knocking off someone else’s work by accident. But none of this was new! It wasn’t like Cloud was breaking news in any way.

At this point Aerith asked, you know, was this albino douche bag, he was an element of this analysis? No, not really, according to Cloud,

maybe the guy was trying a tad too hard? - to present himself as a specific archetype to the general public, as a guy who decided to spit in the face

of his own chromosome count, which was something Cloud personally endorsed! Granted Cloud probably wouldn’t do it by taking his wife’s last name, because Cloud personally

was obviously more prone to a type of isolated and overly dramatic self-annihilation than a subservient and disingenuously muted feminist annihilation,

but he wasn’t ipso facto opposed to either! Aerith agreed one hundred percent! But Cloud still would go a little further, noting that in the intelligible sphere, as someone like, say,

Proclus would note, that so-called forms were somehow able to participate in one another without mixing, whereas within the sensible realm they participated in things

and subsequently got dirty. But Cloud thought that it was worth going one step further, since they were discussing annihilation and stuff anyway,

that the perceived mixing between forms that took place in the sensible arena was itself just a projection of mixture but not actual mixture.

The intelligible sphere, being purely emanated, participated within itself without mixing itself, while in the sensible sphere it didn’t seem like that was possible,

that by participating within sensible things they became essentially mixed with them, assuming they were categorically sensible. Essentially nature was tainted,

which of course Cloud and Aerith knew all too well! Way too well! Hence their shared acquiescence toward occasional annihilation! But even this sensible filth, so to speak,

Cloud thought, this perceived mixing up in the participation of sensible things, wasn’t it also a projection? - an emanation, just as the participation of the intelligible sphere

was also an emanation of the primary unity of all things? Which, yeah, brought Cloud back to that albino round-faced fuck at the bar, taking his wife’s last name,

because ultimately the albino’s vantage point wasn’t remarkably divergent from Cloud’s or Aerith’s, Cloud thought. This albino was promoting a certain type of annihilation

of their cultural-sensible realm, thinking that the patriarchal lineage of their society was basically something objectionable, something essentially tainted,

that should be annihilated in the service of something more pure. Okay, well, Cloud thought that made a modicum of sense! Maybe taking his wife’s last name

was in a sense a greater form of purity than locking a woman in a kitchen and expecting a blowjob every other evening, Cloud thought.

Just as Proclus and Socrates sensed that the intelligible sphere participated with itself yet not in a way where it mixed with itself, that this was distinct from our further descended,

sensible sphere where things participated with one another but got mixed up in the process - well, maybe this albino man was noting that the patriarchy was a participatory mixing

that left unseemly cum stains - for lack of a better phrase! - on human experience. Patriarchy, in the albino man’s mind, should be annihilated because of this sensible mixing up,

this putrid tainting of what would be better off pure. And taking your nice wife’s name was a proper mode of annihilation in response.

Aerith remarked that she knew Cloud would inevitably bring the discourse back to this poor chap closing his tab, but, just to be clear, what Cloud was saying was that

this mixing that occurred in the sensible realm was itself just a separate projection, just a lesser mode of projecting! So while the material world may have disgusted them,

perhaps moving the two toward some sort of all-encompassing conceptual annihilation, and as much as the patriarchy might have seemed putrid to the albino husband at the bar

who looked to annihilate himself by taking his nice wife’s last name, it could be wise to consider that these disgusting aggregates were themselves simply derivative projections,

that they weren’t actual mixtures, that they were just derivative emanations as opposed to tattoos of what they thought they despised. Aerith was aware. She wasn’t distressed about it,

but she knew this poor albino guy would in time take the brunt of it from Cloud. Cloud questioned whether he didn’t deserve it? Plus like they’d already implied, they must to proceed from the immanent to the transcendent, no?

Inscrutable Myths: Prelude + 1st Canto

(Prelude) With a fair amount of ambivalence, knowing as well as anyone that Nikos typically spends the hours of 3PM through 7PM, Monday through Friday, verifying the European origin of his dietary tract, I approached Mr Kazantzakis at 6:59 PM, ambling toward the screened-in patio of his modest row house located spitting distance from Garden City, and began as such:

01 (.748)

Well Mr Kazantzakis, if I’m being honest with you, completely honest with you, if I’m holding back next to no honesty whatsoever, I should note that, yes, it’s indubitably true that of late I’ve found myself 

gluttonously chewing four to seven slices of gum in simultaneity, for a variety of reasons - in fact, it was just yesterday afternoon, prior to leaving our apartment to go grab a coffee 

that I indiscriminately shoved an entire pack of gum into my mouth and exuberantly chewed this large ball of gum, wondered if chewing gum was actually good for your teeth, 

when the thought occurred to me: Is emo the highest form of classical music America is historically responsible for? When discussing American music, 

I thought while chewing an entire pack of gum, a litany of genres, from post-bop jazz, to experimental rock, to avant-metal to the so-called classically trained composers 

of American descent, are discussed as ‘the truly classical music of America.’ ‘But what if emo is the truly classical American music?’ I thought to myself, chewing an entire pack of gum, 

preparing myself to pay full-price for a coffee out somewhere, despite the fact I had an entire pot of coffee at my apartment, waiting to be imbibed for free. 

The primary conceit of emo music is that its creators are young and white and male, and that they originate from neighborhoods that are safe if not opulent and utterly hate their lives. 

Nothing, it should be noted, is ever proceeding well for the emo band, as the slightest deviation from the emo band’s best case scenario is always apocalyptic, despite the fact that, 

sociopolitically at least, they have everything going for them. The emo participant exists at the apex of the American totem pole, and despite this fact everything remains

essentially objectionable to them. Nothing is going well! The emo song is, in practice, the antithesis of the virtue signal. And it occurred to me, as I left my apartment to pay

four dollars for a coffee that would inevitably be co-opted by an art school professor, with no regard to socially acceptable decibel levels. pontificating about people as brands

to a foreign exchange student, that this type of wide-eyed narcissism, that this unironic ignorance of sociopolitical totem poles, this obsession with direct, 

lived experience at the expense of everything conceptual - is perhaps the apex of what should comprise American classical music? 

And I nodded my head at this notion as we entered the Honda asking Tina if she’d be willing to play ‘One-Eighty by Summer’ on our way to the coffee shop. 

My Oil Paintings

You said something deep and no one gave a shit my oil paintings looked like cunt fucked up at the Greek fest who said buying a subsequent bottle of Retsina is ill-advised? 

I’m ninety nine percent Pine Sol this is ritualistic writing erotic poems for Russian whores and signing my name χριστός ανέστη you can drown in a glass of water 

Philosophy still can’t save us people no longer chew wrapped pieces of gum no the industry has transitioned to free floating mini buckets of gumballs

How can I possibly concentrate on nuclear holocausts with all these big bad booty bitches around the mountain has better ears for bullshit I’ve never been a fan of camping

I’ve always found things somewhat preposterous I suppose two hookahs twist the little knob there you go I apologize for forgetting the meaning of cuando

Put some clothes on for Christ sake before you ball your eyes out I never lied about wanting to kill myself if anything the opposite! mountains have better ears for bullshit

Trees - some of them are old as fuck that’s why we built cities our fictions play better surrounded by buildings a Burmese python ate a forty four year old woman alive

It’s just like a snug little sleeping bag who doesn’t like to take a little nap four or five milligrams of melatonin why would you lie about wanting to drive yourself into a tree?