LIMITED FORKing for pros, cons, newbies, oldies, transformers, givers, builders, networkers, makers: Interactions Are Us. LIMITED FORK is the study of interacting language systems: visual, sonic, olfactory, and tactile systems on all scales. In Limited Fork 101, we also lol --and are better for that step-down from the unnecessary weight (and barrier) of self-importance
Coming Soon
more details about this scheduled pitstop
(as the tethers blossom)
The (systems of) ladders that you will ride will be of (at least) two generalized forms, existing (to some degree) and (systems of) laddders that you construct.
Part of a purpose for these systems of ladders is to generate and operate methods of (attempts) to hold something together (such as investigations of poam systems) for some period (or periods) of time. The methods of tethering (a form also of stitching) may be (very generalized forms) coherent, incoherent, (shifting) composites.
Validity will be established via a companion vehicle to the pursuit of HIERARCHIES OF TETHERING: articulations of your rationale(s) (that shape, provide context and focus for the ride(s), journey(s).
The riding of (at least 3) systems of ladders may be parallel, curved, skewed, warped, looping, multi-dimensional, linear, folded, bent, stable, unstable —select from the gamut of possibilities (shaped by consequences of the initial gestures you make).
The 3 rides will include (you must provide, according to some rationale, the shape[s] and structure[s]) attempts to board and navigate investigative ladder systems that embrace these very generalized categories:
**Note that the personal is not necessarily excluded from any of these categories. Nor should it be assumed that the categories themselves do not/cannot overlap, interact (in any of the possible [you define and articulate the rationale you —attempt to— use in determining what is/isn't possible] ways that interactions do/have/will/can/used to occur.**
(My) eyes have been collecting information throughout my life; that activity has not been discontinued although myopia has increasingly prevailed
(my need for corrective lenses emerged in trigonometry; click on The Magnificent Culture of Myopia to experience forms of blossoming in a poam's powers of ten systems rooted in poor eyesight. The Magnificent Culture of Myopia is also available in print form in Tokyo Butter)
and myopia continues to reconfigure visual perception (and through the visual, the myopia influences other sensory processing that tends to be, when the visual is available, subordinate to vision, secondary to visual cues).
There is another reconfiguration at work. Within a context of visual domination, the reconfiguration of poetry as a complex system, a reconfiguration whose outcome is an evolving (or blossoming) Limited Fork Poetics: the study of interacting language systems (which includes all visual, sonic, olfactory and tactile systems on all scales)
has reconfigured the shape/structure/context of my visual domination.
I seek evidence of interaction.
I collect evidence of visual, sonic, and tactile interaction, with the bulk of the collection visually dominated. The olfactory is so far included as an intention to collect smells, a mandate of the Limited Fork theory itself.
Which sensory tethers does the word collection evoke/activate in you?
I was interviewed by Richard Siken for a series of articles about poets who collect; most collected objects, all interviewed collected things with visual aspects though mine were all representations of interactions, images of reflections and shadows. The items in my collection were not directly tactile although the printed image is an object —it's just that none of mine were printed. The SD card was tactile enough, however. Even so, the images tetherered to the card did not have three dimensionality and maintain presence through the document record. (More about poam duration on other occasions).
To read the interview Shadows, Boxes, Forks, and “POAMs”, click here.
Examples of evidence of interactions collection images accompany the interview.
You'll find links to Siken's other interviews at the site.
The system of rotating ladders that can be a generalized template for some of the interior and exterior activity of a poem (which is a subsystem of a more generalized Poam scheme)
can be configured a a system of gears.
As gears turn, other gears are activated (—the rate of the turning need not be the same —nor necessarily the direction —is that true?), and the motion of the system can become more apparent.
The gears may operate on multiple scales, the journey may be outward or inward, and may occur concurrently.
Some gears may not function optimally. There may be multiple systems of gears, each system moving in addition to movement of the member gears of each system.
Also composite gears, a gear comprises n sub-gears
(presumably down to some irreducible boundary unit where for being irreducible boundary, the rules might be different).
You can approach the parts —including the larger periphery, for instance, of the setting of The Red Wheelbarrow all (oops!) the way to cosmic and/or all the way to the nano
—either all may be considered a form of focus, gestures that attempt to bound some aspect of making, representaion, expressiing, interpreting, understanding (some area of inquiry that the inquirer is defining for some reason that can be articulated to some degree, perhaps as a consequence of involvement in [the act of] inquiring.
The Red Wheelbarrow as a gear offers a location that can act as context for a journey to any other location, those locations influenced by the shaping of experience (dare I risk a synonym of all here, a word I don't make myself resist: universe?), or, in some way, the shaping of a universe in which a gear focus is the center.
This center is not necessarily fixed.
This center is a gear of context.
Intial encounters (a sensitivity to initial conditions (initial as in some focus on a moment/location as activation of an encounter) do shape what occurs next, guides, funnels, directs —colors interpretation of subsequent events. Word by word,m line by line, stanza by stanza, the poem unfolds.
As we continue pattern exploration, and metaphor as a frequently used pattern, let's think about metaphor as a source of roundness, as a device that can help an idea swell, expand (and/or perhaps also helps compress.
Not that an idea must expand and/or compress
But in exploiring an intimacy with existence, in attempts to identify meanings, in efforts to locate the self and both ineriors and exteriors, some shaping perhaps is to be expected.
Consider Gilgamesh, the roundness of the first lines from tablet 1:
He who has seen everything, I will make known (?) to the lands.
I will teach (?) about him who experienced all things
and comment on the progression of an idea or an image; do you consider the progression more generally linear or nonlinear?
Melissa's reference in "maxell's blog Eng 240" to "gestures is another huge non-spoken human language that remains as a huge technique in poetry. When we recite poetry, our body naturally moves and gestures to how we feel when we say certain parts of the poem. To show emotions of sadness when reciting a poem, ones body gestures in a way much differently than if we were to show excitement and happiness. Already, in early history were gestures a huge part in non-spoken communication and language. And til now, we use it to convey our emotions through language and poetry"
brings sign language to mind...
One accomplishment of metaphor is to establish comparisons, often comnparisons that may be unanticipated in certain contexts of consideration. In establishing metaphor, an opportunity to explore the elements (including logic) of the comparison is also established. Metaphor is then (also) a vehicle of comparison, a means of navigation, of a shift from one location to another, some quality of each location becoming relevant to the other for the duration of travel.
So the sun may be(come) an appleblossom for a desinated instance of travel without the sun being an apple blossom permanently.
For some moment, the interaction of sun and appleblossom occurs. Do note that this is an interaction that assumes some existing influence from (prior) interaction with either "sun" or "apple" or "blossom" or "apple blossom" by the perceiver (in this blog encounter, a reader of English).
One outcome of comparison can be to help in expressing something less graspable in terms of something more graspable. Such expression can aid in establishing an understanding of something outside of experience by linking it to something similar (the similarity may need to some rules or limiting factors to help clarify some of the point of the comparison). Both the local and the cosmic may be both expanded and compressed through such linking.
Two videos that offer journey through an unfolding, or blossoming, of some of what is navigated between a starting point (apple blossom, sun --depending on direction) and a stopping point (sun, apple blossom --depending on direction) are:
and
Some questions that other parts of this metaphor post set will likely consider are:
What happens when a metaphor is reversed?
what is the relationship between a metaphor where (some form of) validity may be assigned (through some set of criteria) in one direction and a metaphor that reverses that direction?
In which circumstances, if any, may a given metaphor be reversed?
How many elements can the starting location of some metaphor support? Is there a maximum? A minimum?
How many elements can the ending point of some metaphor support? Is there a maximum? A minimum?
What happens when metaphor is translated?
(Perhaps) COMING SOON: (Navigating) The Wormhole as an act of blossom(ing).
Teaser:
More is on the way, including something about (some form[s]) of bird(s).
A function of poetry is a (re)connection to rhythms.
Poetry itself, when made of language, functions as a pulse (of language).
(This statement allows for poetry to exist nor made of language.)
(Implicit in this statement also is a definition of language derived from a definition of Limited Fork Poetics: the study of interacting language systems —visual, textual, sonic, olfactory, tactile systems/subsystems— on all scales.)
The association of poetry to rhythms and cycles of existence can suggest the inevitability of the emergence of poetry and suggests the likelihood that poetry emerge in multiple and diverse cultures.
One outcome of Limited Fork Poetics, a genralized theory of making, is a return of poetry to the source of the word: from the Greek "ποίησις", poiesis, a "making" or "creating"
It is my pleasure to link you right here to The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the oldest written epic (click here for a list of poetic forms).
When rhyme and/or other linquistic patterns are present and obvious, a rhythm, established by the rhyme and/or other linguistic patterns may be discerned. Poerry may, in this way, become an extension of rhytyms that characterize patterns in existence. Linguistic patterns may also help in the memorization of the content of the poems, an aid quite useful in nonwritten trabsmission of information. Content assembled in linguistic patterns also helped link the content to the status of other patterns that seemed to regulate or define patterns of existence such as passage of time as observed through passing of days and related agricultural cycles, gestation periods, seasons, and human aging. Many sacred texts and much cultural history exist in poetic forms where rhythms of existence offer logical locations for examination, contemplation, celebration, and transformation. Patterns may easily suggest evidence of power(s) or combined forces. Rituals, in part, function as patterns that can evoke the manifestation of natural and/or supernatural powers/forces in the human.
Even when spoken, some linguistic patterns suggest and even encpourage singing; a close association between song and poetry remains, and may prove unshakable, given the prominence of pulses (Jazz artist Pharaoh Sanders'2003 album "With a heartbeat" features a bassline built on the heartbeat of Dr. Jean-Louis Zink).
That linguistic patterns may not be apparent in the online version of The Epic of Gilgamesh in the above link may be explained, at least in part, to effects of translation. Still, rhythms of the human body allow for the the pulsed reading of any text.
The use of poetic devices such as line breaks and stanzas or less ordered spatial arrangemnts also regulate the visual movement of print-based poetry.
Sonic forms may further rhythmically punctuate poems and need not adhere to visual rhythms that may not translate well into sonic manifestations which tend not to deliver visual impact well.
"Bubbling" is a video poam (product of an act of making) that applies principles of Limited Fork poetics to themed visual and sonic interactions:
