We Never Leave Reality

So the 5 AM writing time continues.



I've often heard advice to wake up with not fully formed critical apparatus or coffee stimulant and write without censoring.



Doesn't this assume the critical/creative split?



For me, the early morning writing requires a bit of coffee.



It's more about not worrying about day to day concerns at 5 AM.



I decided to read some of Bernstein's A Poetics before beginning a poem and it opened me up much more than the more typical "poetic" text.



All sorts of thoughts bum rushing me.



Concerning captivity narratives:



"Once captured, by what seemed from outside/ as everything to be feared, all that is / destructive, one may never be able to return / or may not wish to."



Over and over I've heard my former friends (many years ago) explain why I should not leave the Mormon church. There's nothing out there they said. The world is scary without Mormonism.



Is escape different from freedom?



My drive toward poetry is for freedom, not escape.



"The problem/ with escapist literature is that it offers no escape, / narratively reinforcing our captivity" (Bernstein 75).



I am really fascinated by the erotics of the text (as Bernstein says, "When was your first textual encounter"). Never really read Bataille but according to Bernstein:



"In Bataille's analysis, disgust and nausea / are necessary preconditions for the most intense / feelings of sexual pleasure that result from / transgressing the inhibitions that create / repellence."



So poetry using antiabsorptive strategies (socially disruptive, anticonventional) for absorptive/erotic ends.



If a text is fully antiaborptive then it repels the reader if it is fully absorptive the reader does not have a participatory role (as said by Ron Silliman via Bernstein).



So the claim of the poet for the common person (Billy Collins etc.) is the claim of absorption as participatory democracy. Yet, a text that relies mainly on absorption is anything but partcipatory. The common poet is the poet of domination and captivity.



But hold on. What about "common" poet as lowest "common" denominator. Is it possible to have a popular poet who does not swing for passivity and captivity?



I can think of plenty of movies that rely on absorptive and antiabsorptive techniques and are "popular."



Is it possible for poetry to do the same? Or is the visual appeal of movies

stronger than the appeal of written/spoken language with suggestions of image etc.?



I heard someone say they are more interested in poetry/poetics than poems (maybe Ron Silliman). Maybe that's my beef with those boring academic anthologies for intro to lit. It's all safe, uncontested etc.



I've often wondered why the popular songs goes

"o say can you see."



In other words, is seeing different from saying. Is poetry different than movies?



What strange mixed tapes on my desk. I've been dipping in and out of these various texts:



1) Bernstein A Poetics

2) Mark Wallace Complications from Standing in a Circle

3) Rod Smith Music or Honesty

4) Frank Stanford The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

5) Jack Kerouac Book of Blues



I am in awe of Mark Wallace's Complications from Standing in a Circle.



I'm off to breakfast and the morning show.