[-empyre-] A poem is a small (or large) machine

[VANDERBORG, SUSAN VANDERBORG]

The imagery of mechanical efficiency and "perfect economy" is intriguing. How might Charles Bernstein's metaphor of a poetic "engine idling" contrast with that? (I'm thinking of Ming-Qian Ma's discussion of that idling image and Bernstein's poetics as "postmodern counter speed.") What would the machinery of a poetics of inefficiency look like?
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From: empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au [empyre-bounces at lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au] on behalf of Margaret J Rhee [mrhee at uoregon.edu]
Sent: Friday, May 05, 2017 1:22 PM
To: soft_skinned_space
Subject: [-empyre-] A poem is a small (or large) machine

----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
"There's nothing sentimental about a machine, and: A poem is a small
(or large) machine made out of words. When I say there's nothing
sentimental about a poem, I mean that there can be no part that is
redundant. Prose may carry a load of ill-defined matter like a ship.
But poetry is a machine which drives it, pruned to a perfect economy.
As in all machines, its movement is intrinsic, undulant, a physical
more than a literary character."

I'd like to start a thread about this quote by WCW, that Mike raised
here.
A friend the Mexican poet Hugo Martinez, remarked we should replace
machine
with machete.

"There must be something hardwired into its machinery--a heartbeat, a
pulse--that keeps it breathing." -- Ed Hirsch

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