RE: [-empyre-] aLe --> Jorge Luiz Antonio

["Jim Andrews" <jim@vispo.com>]

> Dear Jim
> Another possible meaning to concrete - in the sense the term concrete
> poetry has been coined in Brazil - is stated in the mouvement manifestoes
> and conceives the task of poetry to look for the essence of the
> word. Kind
> of economic principle. Assuming that abstraction is the normal
> procedure of
> signifcation in words ("lamp" "is" a lamp, no matter which one)
> in Western
> civilization, concrete poetry tries to encompass the Eastern traditions,
> where words are connected visually and formally to its meanings. It is a
> "verbivocovisual" unity, to use Joyce's idea which is very akin to Campos
> and Pignatari arguments.
> The poet and composer Caetano Veloso has a song about Sao Paulo where he
> speaks about "a dura poesia concreta de tuas esquinas"(something
> like: "the
> heavy concrete poetry of your corners") where corners are the ones of the
> city of SP and "concrete" explores the ambiguity between the construction
> material and the poetry itself.
> So, you are pretty right when you say, quoting Jorge:
> "What Jorge says, above, reminds
> me that concrete was also about looking at language as
> multi-dimensioned or
> "pluridimensional," as Jorge says."
>
> Best
> Lucio Agra

Hi Lucio,

Yes, that sounds right. I remember reading, perhaps in 'From Religion to
Philosophy' by F.M. Cornford, that the basis of 'sympathetic magic' is
'confusion' of 'the thing' and its symbolic representation. Even as in the
western esoteric 'tradition', in which writing into the neoplatonic
'empyrean' is thought to have the power to 'make it so' in this world, our
world, as in the thought of Giordano Bruno, etc. Or as in voodoo, where
change of the doll, the representation, is supposed to cause corresponding
change in the person whom the doll stands for, ie, in both cases there is a
supposed 'essence' and to manipulate or change the 'essence' is supposed to
change the corporeal manifestation, which is a shadow of the 'more real,
more existant' essence. Of course, the 'incantation' or 'spell' in 'magic',
often a verbal or written thing, is associated with 'magic', often
associated with poetry; concrete does not deal so much in that sort of
'magical' written or spoken 'incantation' as in this other sort of
'essentialist' 'magic' that nonetheless also involves a blurring between the
thing and the representation of the thing via contact with or invocation of
a supposed 'essence' that transcends and supercedes the quotidian in its
existence.

I get confused just thinking about it, of course.

But yes, there's a kind of poetical ambition to fuse the abstract and the
concrete, isn't there, to see the infinite going on before our eyes, as it
were, and I presume that is part of the ambition of concrete as it is, in
some sense, an ambition of most illusionistic art, and most art is
illusionistic.

Or are you referring to something else, Lucio? You refer to an "economic
principle".

By the way, as you probably know,
http://search.freefind.com/find.html?id=17493&pageid=r&mode=ALL&query=concre
te has all sorts of historical material on concrete, including manifestos,
in English--well you would probably instead have links to many of these
documents in Portuguese, or have them on your shelf additionally.

People generally associate 'magic' and 'mumbo jumbo', and there's a lot of
that, for sure, in heavy duty essentialism of any kind, whether it's Bruno's
neoplatonism or whatever, but I sense that it is a peripheral, um, component
of concrete, an inessential component, as it were. I mean concrete can also
be approached as a synthesis of the visual and the written, or as a literary
movement with significant political ramifications concerning powerful mass
communication, or as a movement toward sense and clarity and focus in
writing, towards simplicity and elegance in communication, however
deceptively simple the simplicity, as in interface design. And also, to me,
or us, involved in the digital as we are, where the word and image and sound
and action become transformed into each other, or are in different relations
with one another than previously was common, we see concrete as an important
'precursor' to our own experimentation with materials and cursors.

Still, it is quite common these days for people to profess a rationalism in
which confusion of the thing and its representation supposedly has no place,
in which such confusion is relegated to superstition, but I wonder how
thorough-going that rationalism is. We are not very rational creatures, it
seems to me, and mumbo jumbo almost inevitably enters through the back door
of our rationalizations to ourselves. It doesn't help that there is a kind
of essentialism almost built into language itself, whereby we are very
nearly forced to suppose that words have meaning apart from any meaning we
might assign them, independent of what anybody thinks. never medium message
raven, as you say in http://www.geocities.com/agraryk/agrippseng.htm , which
I enjoyed very much!

That page has very interesting remarks such as "If Ezra Pound sometime
insisted that poetry had to do more with music and plastic arts, instead of
literature, from now on, these predictions are confirmed by the facts."

Also, you say

"A certain Brazilian artist called Helio Oiticica, now progressively getting
an international renown, years after his death, once made an statement about
the singular reality that is lived by countries like mine, where technology
is always something seen in a future horizon. He used to say: "We live from
the adversity" Seems to be a very contradictional affirmation, but it
reflects very accurately the reality which surrounds us in countries like
Brazil. The creativity is something that derives precisely from the limits
imposed to it. And it is just because these limits are exactly what pushes
this same creativity forward."

This is quite remarkable, and I agree wholeheartedly. I have thought
something similar but different, ie, that whatever makes art so improbable
in a particular place usually is in strong relation to what makes it
possible there. Where I live, what makes it so improbable, in part, is the
peripheral nature of art to the society, so that the consequence of art in
the society seems like it could only be, at most, minute, small. And, more
particularly, in the sort of digital poetry I make, where there is a
synthesis of writing and visual and sound and interaction for the Web, this
is not even recognized as poetry among my peers. But, as you and Oiticica
say, "we live from the adversity", ie, the energy of the edges we traverse
give us life or reward. As Clemente and Blake said earlier, "Expect nothing
but poison from stagnant waters." The energies of language seem currently
involved strongly in the transformations of the sign we experience in the
digital brew.

So it is different and the same in Brazil as in Canada this way, it seems,
Lucio.

It is exciting to hear from you and Clemente and Jorge, Regina, and aLe on
digital poetry, Lucio. I look forward to hearing more from you and the
others on this, our exploration of 'the phenomenological and fantastic in
Brazilian new media'.

ja