new

12/14

The poem descriptions that I viewed all seem to touch on current social and political issues. The authors seem to have a strong voice. They strive to reach a larger audience. From the description alone, the audience can sense that the author wants to raise awareness about controversial issues by using a bold opinion. They give off the impression that they are not afraid of offending their audience in the process of getting their ideas out.

12/14

While reading some of the poems from Goldsmith, I noticed they had a connection to one another. It seemed to me that they each hold a deeper meaning than what is presented, which could come across very differently for each person who reads them. The uncreative aspect of the poems is a little more difficult for me to grasp. I found the poems to be a bit easier to read and find meaning in than some of the previous ones we have read. Maybe that is where the uncreativeness aspect is put forth. Because it isn't so terribly confusing, does that make it uncreative? Goldsmith seems to be a complex person and it shows in his methods and ways of viewing art.

Heretical texts, last class

Thoughts as I read:
Last one - American?
Not just politics, but human rights/activism/equality
Seem to point out fallacies of people as well as the humanness of people
Ironically, a bit of nationalism as well as criticism
"Town" by Kate Schapira is very interesting. All of these texts seems to focus on the idea of places, whether it be entire countries or one small town that doesn't actually exist. How do people live here? What are we going to do about problems we face here? How do we work here? etc. but also, travel, so handling oneself in other places.

These are different from uncreative poetry because they focus on people (not that the uncreative can't focus on people - the important part, to me, seemed to be the analysis of creation rather than the outcome, whereas the outcome in these is clearly important as per the people they are about). They tackle important political concepts and behaviors with poetry that flows more normally, almost (like "regular" vs. avant-garde poetry), rather than focusing entirely on the process and having a more choppy outcome. Like traditional poetry (regardless of genre) there is meaning to be had in the words themselves, rather than just how they are placed or where they came from.

12/13

When reading the Heretical texts I found most of the poems to be alike. They were all extremely sad and actually made sense which surprised me a lot. I feel that all of these poems were uncreative just like goldsmith was talking about and what we talked about on thursday. I feel like this was done of purpose and all written about the hot topics of the world to have a point proven. That is all i really got out of them and i hope to find more in class.

12/14 Response

I took a look a few of the Heretical text descriptions and I found them to all be similar in content because the majority of them were associated with war, death or politics. I thought this was interesting because these are controversial topics to discuss through poems. Reading the end of the article poems I found the articles to be similar to the uncreative style because they seemed systematic and functional and in regards to a more creative style that is free form I thought these poems sounded more structured or thought out in terms of their ideas.

Poetry of the Revolution : Responses to the Avant-Garde: 12/9

I think the most blaring similarities between the heretical texts and the uncreative writing is that it is still primarily rooted in process. The first section at least appears to be a series of the flarf poems that we talked about and watched in class. It seems as though quotes are being mixed and matched to create poetry. However I do also see things that I would associate with spur-of-the-moment "creativity." The placement of some of the words seems random and done for purely visual reasons. I can't really say whether or not these things really had no reason because the exact process wasn't mapped out anywhere that I could find, but it doesn't seem planned out ahead of time. I think in a sense, they are showing stereotypical creativity in the way that they choose which words to leave out. From what I understand about Kenneth Goldsmith's uncreative writing, every step in the process should show dedication or professionalism to a degree. I think the main difference between the uncreative writing and the Heretical texts is that the writers of the Heretical texts at some point gave in to what they felt would be more pleasing to the ear and eye whereas the uncreative writing was wholly unconcerned with this.

12/9

First off I’d like to apologize for such a late posting I have been jammed with homework and studying but figured I should try to get this in before class. I feel as though Kenneth Goldsmith’s ideas about uncreative writing are ridiculous. I really don’t understand even after reading this why it is exactly someone would want to create something so bland. In opposition to what he’s talking about in making an uncreative piece I think that actually takes a fair amount of creativity. Almost everyone is born with in some way, shape or form of creativity and to hold back from using that and creating a piece in itself I guess is a form of creativity. All I truly see of this is a way to create pieces without any sort of confrontation over it, in itself lacks emotion and is more academic. However, I feel like no matter what style of writing you do whether these “uncreative” or creative pieces you are still going to get critics of the work so in that case it doesn’t work.

Uncreative Writing

After reading the previous post, I tend to agree with what Ramsey was saying. It's hard for me to imagine myself "uncreatively" writing something. I can see how one could plan everything out before and write in a mechanized way. but I still feel as if there would be some sort of creative aspect to what their doing. Human beings are not robots. Even if we try to mimic a robot in our writing and cut out all of the subjectivity as possible, there is still a subconscious presence in whatever it is that we are writing. While I think the ideas of uncreative writing make sense in striving to meet that goal of eliminating "the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective", I do not feel as if it could ever completely eradicate some presence of the human element.

12/9

I disagree with Goldsmith's ideas about uncreative writing. I believe that all writing involves some element of creativity. As he states, writing involves a plan. The author decides which direction the text will go which ultimately decides how the text will develop. The author picks the structure and arrangement of the text. Even if the material is simplistic, the arrangement still allows the artist to demonstrate some creativity throughout the writing process.

12/9

Kenneth Goldsmith's article on Uncreative Writing is interesting to say the least. His idea of uncreative writing is basically what we have been discussing the past couple weeks, but instead of actual technology making the art, your mind becomes the machine. It is almost like the automatic writing exercise that we preformed, except for the fact that you plan your writing out before hand. For me it is a very helpful way in which a writer can be free from all conventions and just let ideas flow out of you. It is almost a subconscious form of writing.

12/9

Kenneth Goldsmith’s article talks about how he views his personal writing style as being uncreative. What he means when he says this is that his writing style is planned and that the idea or concept is the central idea behind the work. He explains how this writing style is typically emotionally involved and intuitive. I thought it was interesting when he said that this style of writing “is usually free from the dependence on the skill of the writer as a craftsman.” This gives the reader the idea that they would be able to complete “uncreative” writing pieces as well as the idea that the reader is able to easily comprehend the meaning behind the work.

In Soliloquy, I thought that it was somewhat interesting to read the quips and phrases that the author said. Reading it sounds like listening in on a telephone conversation. This makes the piece feel invasive of the author’s personal space and privacy. Also, looking at it as one large piece of text as a PDF is overwhelming, but it helps to convey the author’s point about “uncreative” writing.

12/9

I just want to start odd my sayin the download took 3 seconds.

The piece that I read was about uncreative writing. I have never heard of such a thing before.
he says "Uncreative writing is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at times, only to be ruined." it is crazy to me how he goes on and on about what uncreative writing is. it take a while to actually see what he is talking about and I think he did that on purpose. No i didnt read the whole thing because it was extremely long, but i feel like he did everything in his power to give us the best visual of what uncreative writing is before we actually see it for ourselves. He is very precise in everything he is saying to make sure he didnt skip a beat of any kind.

12/9 Response

In regards to "Sentences on Conceptual Writing" I was unsure what to think about the uncreative idea but as I was reading the author put a lot of emphasis on the idea of the writing rather than the style. I thought that the idea was where the creativity was, but what made it uncreative could perhaps be that it was just simply thought of beforehand. The author says, "uncreative writing is made to engage the mind of the reader rather than her ear or emotions". I thought that perhaps why anybody would want to create an uncreative literature would be for the idea that comes along with it and to get the reader intellectually involved with the text perhaps. For the second style of writing my group had to read "Gone With the Wind" and I did not enjoy this reading because although the simplicity of it I definitely think this style of writing would be hard to write because it is all written in slang and I know that I was not taught to write exactly how you speak so I definitely thought that it was an interesting piece as well.

12/9

At first I was a little taken back by Kenneth Goldsmiths idea of uncreative writing. However, after reading what he viewed as being "uncreative" I realized that these works are most likely more creative than works which have been through a set process or plan. I strongly agree with Goldsmith's idea that different people are going to perceive the same piece differently, you cannot avoid that. I also find it interesting that he brings up the point about using new materials do not always produce the best work. I agree with this because many times these days, people tend to overlook the simple works of their imagination and the very creative ideas they could put forth. I like that Goldsmith brought this up in his work because it helped me to understand more about the overall point he was making with his idea of uncreative writing.

Giant PDF thoughts

(It didn't really take that long to load.)

The idea of being "uncreative" seems to be more about the process of the work rather than the outcome or understanding, much like everything else we've looked at in this class; it's not so much that the outcome needs to become something specific, but rather that the process to get there is just as important in the 'creative' department. There is a point where Kenneth Goldsmith actually says that (in different wording), and that was really the only part I really understood. The rest made me more confused as to why any author would specifically go for this style of writing rather than just going after something more linear.

As for our second question, the HTML version of soliloquy was annoying at first, but I looked at the PDF second and I was suddenly glad that the webpage is presented in the way it was. The PDF is just one giant block of text that runs on for pages and pages, whereas the HTML allows you to just kind of randomly pick out one thing that was said from the rest, and to literally keep them separate. It's harder to pick out individual lines (or even want to) when you're looking at a giant thing of text, and if you just glaze over the whole thing you don't get the point of it at all. It also, for me, reiterated the fact that this wasn't all one stream of thought - this was many thoughts that were expressed throughout an entire day, in many different situations.

12/8/10

Abbott's work "How to Parse," what I guess one would call conceptual poetry, was an interesting, thought-provoking (in the day it was written) work; reading it was humorous at first, and i think tht was kind of the point, to show that the english language doesn't make much sense in terms of its rules...perhaps because English is more of a compilation of languages than a pure, logical language like Latin.

The work "Sprawl" was easy to understand; the words on the page were organized in respect to the title. For example, "locally unwanted Land Use" was organized in to small areas that probably had to do with the amount of land used in landfills; the words used were the kinds of garbage and the percentage of each were present. The poem, "Starter Castle" used brand names organized in the shape of a castle. Etc...
"Sitcom Suburb" was kind of interesting. The words on the page were all organized in to roughly same sized boxes, like the suburbs, all filled with equally useless commercial garble

The piece on the Indian Mound mall seems to use its layout and concepts to make the happenings inside the mall seem cheap and gaudy compared to the original spiritual purpose the land once served.

nico

The part about Nico Vassilakis' visual poetry that I found most interesting was its ability to transcend language. In Geof Huth's foreword, he points out how some of Vassilakis' visual poems are in English but some are also in Greek. He ephasizes, however, the unimportance of the actual language the visual poem is set in. Since Nico's aim is to tear down the barrier of coherent semiotic understanding of the language, the meaning of what the letters spell out is irrelevant. It could be in German, Spanish, or Italian but it would all work to produce the same effect.
Keeping in mind the irrelevance of the specific language, the reader can better concentrate on the letters as they stand alone in the piece. We become familiarized with a new language that we have never seen before, but somehow are able to understand.

Poetry of the Revolution : Responses to the Avant-Garde: 12/7

GRIND

Commons clergy's bags

YORK Somerset regent lucky ruler

3rd gear synchro

Grind it black cloud

That car things are glass boxes compared to ours

Lucky bone, Lucky stove (or range as in appliance jargon)

My plate wine glass

Julie? Rack of filmy glassware labor water septic system grinding types

Labels black angus chicken

Charlie Dean

Give away glacier glass pendant pictorial magazine rack

Magnolia classic

The daily grind adding vintage pieces to your workday without clouds painted in the center of the ceiling

A certain tranquility

Everyone comes together

Granite and glass

Steely bright Sometimes

At work

12/7

The piece by Nico Vassilakis was rather different. It was almost as if he sat down and wrote a story then went back and drew all over what he wrote. The text inside the bubbles stood out the most to me. I wonder if he was doing this on purpose or if it was just a random selection for words he put in bubbles. His color choices were unique as well. He didn't seem to stick with any set pattern and he changed up shapes, colors, designs, etc.. I don't fully understand the meaning behind doing something like this. Is the story meant to be read or are there just words to help put together the piece as a whole? I think it is a very creative twist to art and something that could either be enjoyed as is or analyzed to find deeper meaning.