Jim Leftwich
An engagement with a new book by Crank Sturgeon and Marcel Herms
Crank Sturgeon & Marcel Herms Have Made A Book From Which They Invite Us To Think Along With Them As We Play
first of all i should say this is a fantastic book, get a copy and read it yourself, otherwise you will miss out on all the fun and all of the little peak enlightenment experiences and the head-scratching joyful meanderings back and forth from text to image to textimage to poem to visual poem to textimagepoem to collage, to and through the many glimpses of avant garde traditions going back at least to Borel, Bertrand, O'Neddy and the rest of the frenetic romanticists who lived on Hell Street in Paris around 1830 and were called the Bouzingos. from there you might remember many things: punk flyers & zines, the plastic exploding inevitable, the Diggers, house shows, DIY fluxus noise, micro-tours, Dubuffet & Phillip Guston, cave paintings at Lascaux & Altamira. remember: you are at least partially responsible for your own memories.
The blurb on the back cover tells us that "I woke up unflappably
counterfeited is a foray into visual & cut-up poetry, search engine
prose, and impossible theatrical scenarios. The present work is the
result of an intensive cooperation in which Crank Sturgeon and Marcel
Herms reprocessed each other’s creations. In a series of email and
physical exchanges, they lifted the other’s words and art from the
page and responded to it, building off echoes, regurgitating, and
squeezing meaning out of something that came from pure spam."
I am reminded once again of advice from Aleister Crowley, in his LIBER O:
"These rituals need not be slavishly imitated; on the contrary the
student should do nothing the object of which he does not understand;
also, if he have any capacity whatever, he will find his own crude
rituals more effective than the highly polished ones of other people."
Crowley's message is crystal clear: yes, dear reader, by all means, Do
Try This At Home.
i will carry on from there by defining and detuning a few terms:
"I woke up" should speak for itself and/or go without saying. Think of
enlightenment as in what did you do before, pounded rice, and what
after, the same, pounding rice. Also: how to be an ally without being
utterly useless and unbearable. There is an old saying, from some
obscure sect of zen anarchists: Everybody wants a revolution, but
nobody wants to wash the dishes. Those of us who make books want to
wash the dishes.
"unflappably"
here are some synonyms for the noun "flap": agitation, deliriousness,
delirium, distraction, fever, feverishness, frenzy, furor, furore,
fury, hysteria, rage, rampage, uproar.
flappable might mean subject to frenzy & distraction, or subject to
agitation & rampage. unflappably, then, might mean not inclined
towards delirium & fever.
so: clear-headed, lucid, under no illusions about where we are, where
we stand, and where we sometimes seem to stand.
"counterfeited"
the best way to think about the idea of "counterfeit" as a way of
being in the world is to think of the etymology of the word: Middle
English (as a verb): from Anglo-Norman French countrefeter, from Old
French contrefait, past participle of contrefaire, from Latin contra-
‘in opposition’ + facere ‘make’.
remember: we aren't interested in imitating anyone, not even the ones we love.
all imitation is fake, faked, copied, forged, feigned, simulated,
sham, spurious, bogus, substitute, dummy, ersatz; knockoff, pirate,
pirated, phoney, and/or pseudo.
living as we sometimes must in the post- & postpost modern world(s) we
will encounter some among the multitudes of selves we contain who are
pirated or feigned. it is so to speak an occupational hazard of the
21st century human multiself.
we will make and remake our myriad selves in opposition to our own
counterfeits, many of which have been externally imposed upon us.
Things to Remember:
1. corewrecked spellling is xfukkingstremely emportant!
2. five (5) is THE magick number. if you don't know about that, you
should find out about that. the process of finding out will bring you
many pleasures. that's my only certain claim about this kind of
magick.
3. if you are looking for knowledge you will find knowledge. if you
are not looking for knowledge you will find some other stuff.
4. life will teach you patience. and, if you are patient, life will
teach you persistence.
5. "Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the
language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving
information." —Ludwig Wittgenstein
a poem
a reading as a writing (cf. Barthes, lexeography)
beginning on page 5,
and continuing with the following 5s
(14, 23, 32, 41, 50, 59, & 68):
America is puking
Life? You started
it
Experience the difference, (next up to bat, far flung
instincts)
wherefore this naught, net gain
Burl
First Crop
Postga
Art
prattle held no
front helped none
Safe Home like 5 % this
The dictation-taking elvish-like people begin to translate
General's statement
PLEASE ENDORSE ALL CHE
Czech one > []
I am reminded once again of a statement by Charles Olson: The
distinction here is between language as the act of the instant and
language as the act of thought about the instant. —from Human
Universe (1951)
The section beginning on page 4 and ending on page 33 is entitled
POEMS. It contains 16 visual poems, textimagepoems, or collages,
depending on the art historical/literary angle from which they are
primarily viewed & read.
A mutated head over scribbled eyes barely above too many teeth perched
upon the x-ray of a small skeleton.
The poem entitled America is puking, left-aligned, radically
disjunctive with syntax & grammar intact. Thin, with syllable-counts
less than 10 per line (mostly in the 1 to 5 per line range), visually
reminiscent of poems in the Williams & Creeley tradition.
page 8.
pareidolia, a face in the cloud. the body a scribbled antitext. maybe
a scrap of paper torn from a memo book blowing away in the wind. a
strip of text unevenly cut-out leaving the words "way to die". below
that, a strip of paper torn from an advertisement, discolored
apparently from getting wet, originally reading "COMING SOON" but
modified to "BOMING SOOM." beware, be very scared, be on the lookout,
be careful what you wish for, you might just see it in the clouds. be
all that you can be — and more.
consider Flarf: for example the following, by Joyelle McSweeney,
written in 2006 about Petroleum Hat, by Drew Gardner:
"On the one hand, Flarf is an nth generation Dadaist method in which
text is collected by some random technique and then arranged according
to the poet’s eye or ear. Flarfists are reported to use Google and
other search engines, spam, or word processing features such as spell
check and search-and-replace to arrive at first versions of their
texts.
The jangly, cut-up textures, speediness, and bizarre trajectories of
the Flarf poem, while fetching, are not the source of Flarf’s
originality. Folks, it’s just a species of collage."
is every form of parataxis always a kind of collage? from Greek
parataxis, from para- ‘beside’ + taxis ‘arrangement’ (from tassein
‘arrange’). here is Clark Coolidge, from "Arrangement", a talk he gave
at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in 1977: "I also
want to say that there are no rules. At least not at first there
aren't. If you start with rules, you've really got a tough road. What
I think is that you start with materials. You start with matter, not
with rules. The rules appear, the limitations appear, and those are
your limitations and the limitations of the material."
Crank Sturgeon & Marcel Herms are not interested in telling us what
to do — that would be too easy, and it would take all the fun out of
our experience of reading their book. They are inviting us into their
world(s), from which they ask us to think along with them as we play.
may 2019 roanoke
Jim Leftwich is a poet and essayist who lives in Roanoke, VA, USA. He is the author of Six Months Aint No Sentence Books 1 -187 (Differx Hosting@Box, 2011 - 2016), three volumes of essays entitled Rascible & Kempt Vols. 1 - 3 (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016-2017), and i reMEmber petrOLeum (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019).
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An engagement with a new book by Crank Sturgeon and Marcel Herms
I woke up unflappably counterfeited
Crank Sturgeon and Marcel Herms
Alien Buddha Press
Available through Amazon
Crank Sturgeon and Marcel Herms
Alien Buddha Press
Available through Amazon
Crank Sturgeon & Marcel Herms Have Made A Book From Which They Invite Us To Think Along With Them As We Play
first of all i should say this is a fantastic book, get a copy and read it yourself, otherwise you will miss out on all the fun and all of the little peak enlightenment experiences and the head-scratching joyful meanderings back and forth from text to image to textimage to poem to visual poem to textimagepoem to collage, to and through the many glimpses of avant garde traditions going back at least to Borel, Bertrand, O'Neddy and the rest of the frenetic romanticists who lived on Hell Street in Paris around 1830 and were called the Bouzingos. from there you might remember many things: punk flyers & zines, the plastic exploding inevitable, the Diggers, house shows, DIY fluxus noise, micro-tours, Dubuffet & Phillip Guston, cave paintings at Lascaux & Altamira. remember: you are at least partially responsible for your own memories.
The blurb on the back cover tells us that "I woke up unflappably
counterfeited is a foray into visual & cut-up poetry, search engine
prose, and impossible theatrical scenarios. The present work is the
result of an intensive cooperation in which Crank Sturgeon and Marcel
Herms reprocessed each other’s creations. In a series of email and
physical exchanges, they lifted the other’s words and art from the
page and responded to it, building off echoes, regurgitating, and
squeezing meaning out of something that came from pure spam."
I am reminded once again of advice from Aleister Crowley, in his LIBER O:
"These rituals need not be slavishly imitated; on the contrary the
student should do nothing the object of which he does not understand;
also, if he have any capacity whatever, he will find his own crude
rituals more effective than the highly polished ones of other people."
Crowley's message is crystal clear: yes, dear reader, by all means, Do
Try This At Home.
i will carry on from there by defining and detuning a few terms:
"I woke up" should speak for itself and/or go without saying. Think of
enlightenment as in what did you do before, pounded rice, and what
after, the same, pounding rice. Also: how to be an ally without being
utterly useless and unbearable. There is an old saying, from some
obscure sect of zen anarchists: Everybody wants a revolution, but
nobody wants to wash the dishes. Those of us who make books want to
wash the dishes.
"unflappably"
here are some synonyms for the noun "flap": agitation, deliriousness,
delirium, distraction, fever, feverishness, frenzy, furor, furore,
fury, hysteria, rage, rampage, uproar.
flappable might mean subject to frenzy & distraction, or subject to
agitation & rampage. unflappably, then, might mean not inclined
towards delirium & fever.
so: clear-headed, lucid, under no illusions about where we are, where
we stand, and where we sometimes seem to stand.
"counterfeited"
the best way to think about the idea of "counterfeit" as a way of
being in the world is to think of the etymology of the word: Middle
English (as a verb): from Anglo-Norman French countrefeter, from Old
French contrefait, past participle of contrefaire, from Latin contra-
‘in opposition’ + facere ‘make’.
remember: we aren't interested in imitating anyone, not even the ones we love.
all imitation is fake, faked, copied, forged, feigned, simulated,
sham, spurious, bogus, substitute, dummy, ersatz; knockoff, pirate,
pirated, phoney, and/or pseudo.
living as we sometimes must in the post- & postpost modern world(s) we
will encounter some among the multitudes of selves we contain who are
pirated or feigned. it is so to speak an occupational hazard of the
21st century human multiself.
we will make and remake our myriad selves in opposition to our own
counterfeits, many of which have been externally imposed upon us.
Things to Remember:
1. corewrecked spellling is xfukkingstremely emportant!
2. five (5) is THE magick number. if you don't know about that, you
should find out about that. the process of finding out will bring you
many pleasures. that's my only certain claim about this kind of
magick.
3. if you are looking for knowledge you will find knowledge. if you
are not looking for knowledge you will find some other stuff.
4. life will teach you patience. and, if you are patient, life will
teach you persistence.
5. "Do not forget that a poem, even though it is composed in the
language of information, is not used in the language-game of giving
information." —Ludwig Wittgenstein
a poem
a reading as a writing (cf. Barthes, lexeography)
beginning on page 5,
and continuing with the following 5s
(14, 23, 32, 41, 50, 59, & 68):
America is puking
Life? You started
it
Experience the difference, (next up to bat, far flung
instincts)
wherefore this naught, net gain
Burl
First Crop
Postga
Art
prattle held no
front helped none
Safe Home like 5 % this
The dictation-taking elvish-like people begin to translate
General's statement
PLEASE ENDORSE ALL CHE
Czech one > []
I am reminded once again of a statement by Charles Olson: The
distinction here is between language as the act of the instant and
language as the act of thought about the instant. —from Human
Universe (1951)
The section beginning on page 4 and ending on page 33 is entitled
POEMS. It contains 16 visual poems, textimagepoems, or collages,
depending on the art historical/literary angle from which they are
primarily viewed & read.
A mutated head over scribbled eyes barely above too many teeth perched
upon the x-ray of a small skeleton.
The poem entitled America is puking, left-aligned, radically
disjunctive with syntax & grammar intact. Thin, with syllable-counts
less than 10 per line (mostly in the 1 to 5 per line range), visually
reminiscent of poems in the Williams & Creeley tradition.
page 8.
pareidolia, a face in the cloud. the body a scribbled antitext. maybe
a scrap of paper torn from a memo book blowing away in the wind. a
strip of text unevenly cut-out leaving the words "way to die". below
that, a strip of paper torn from an advertisement, discolored
apparently from getting wet, originally reading "COMING SOON" but
modified to "BOMING SOOM." beware, be very scared, be on the lookout,
be careful what you wish for, you might just see it in the clouds. be
all that you can be — and more.
consider Flarf: for example the following, by Joyelle McSweeney,
written in 2006 about Petroleum Hat, by Drew Gardner:
"On the one hand, Flarf is an nth generation Dadaist method in which
text is collected by some random technique and then arranged according
to the poet’s eye or ear. Flarfists are reported to use Google and
other search engines, spam, or word processing features such as spell
check and search-and-replace to arrive at first versions of their
texts.
The jangly, cut-up textures, speediness, and bizarre trajectories of
the Flarf poem, while fetching, are not the source of Flarf’s
originality. Folks, it’s just a species of collage."
is every form of parataxis always a kind of collage? from Greek
parataxis, from para- ‘beside’ + taxis ‘arrangement’ (from tassein
‘arrange’). here is Clark Coolidge, from "Arrangement", a talk he gave
at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in 1977: "I also
want to say that there are no rules. At least not at first there
aren't. If you start with rules, you've really got a tough road. What
I think is that you start with materials. You start with matter, not
with rules. The rules appear, the limitations appear, and those are
your limitations and the limitations of the material."
Crank Sturgeon & Marcel Herms are not interested in telling us what
to do — that would be too easy, and it would take all the fun out of
our experience of reading their book. They are inviting us into their
world(s), from which they ask us to think along with them as we play.
may 2019 roanoke
Jim Leftwich is a poet and essayist who lives in Roanoke, VA, USA. He is the author of Six Months Aint No Sentence Books 1 -187 (Differx Hosting@Box, 2011 - 2016), three volumes of essays entitled Rascible & Kempt Vols. 1 - 3 (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2016-2017), and i reMEmber petrOLeum (Luna Bisonte Prods, 2019).
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