Monday, October 4, 2010

A new way of counting as I watch the moon

When I first read the poem, "Counting" I thought it was just another cheap way along with other experimental poems to try and gain recognition from nonsensical pairings of words without any deep poetic meditation on life, and pass it of as art.   As I read it several times, I got to thinking, a poem doesn't need to have a stanza form with long lines expressing life.  It can be a clever new way to look at words as well.  What I think Alastair Reed was trying to do with his poem "counting" was to display words with similar endings in a list to represent counting.  When I read it, it was as if I was counting myself.  It was as if I was counting in another language like French or Spanish. "Ounce, Dice, Trice" has a similar ring to it, reminding me of Un, Deux, Trois.  It was interesting how various words that semantically don't make sense together work well in syntax.  When you read the beginning, the words sound simple with one syllable, but when you get towards the end it works its way to three syllables, becoming more complex.  The words he chose flowed very nicely like how counting or the alphabet flows well.  The main reason why this poem works well is the form of having it be in a list.  In this way, it not only sounds more like counting without being rushed, and it visually looks like how numbers or letters should be displayed like in the numerical system or alphabet.  I feel like this poem would have more of an effect if the words in the poem all made sense together semantically as well.  Tell me what you think.
               I really love how "Ask Me for the Moon ::  Working Nights in Waikiki" was presented.  After the title, the poem starts with darkness, and fades into what I see as a horizon of ocean and red lights flashing back and forth resembling towers.  The words flow into each other, reading, "step out to look at the moon, this is what you see".  At that moment it flows into the Waikiki skyline, showing a horizon of buildings at night.  The poem then unravels, words fading out and connecting into new lines of words, expressing life in a city of exhaustion.  As we get deeper into the poem, the buildings fade out and leave us with a small turquoise box with what resembles a person in it, and then it fades to a sign that reads "Waikiki", a palm tree background, and words at the bottom of the screen that you can click on.  This poem is completely interactive, taking you into new worlds with each click on the screen.  Each part of "Waikiki" has something you can click on, bring you into new realms of information about parts of the poem or reveals new parts of the poem itself.  The words flow so beautifully together and express working the night shifts in Waikiki as well as how sad he is that his homeland is being exploited by corporate tourism and capital wealth.   I think the reason why John Zuern presented this poem in this interactive way is to bring you into the world that he is in while meditating on this poem.  It makes the poem so much more emotional presented in this way rather than just words on a document.  Also, he is able to explain why he used some of the lines or words that he did while citing other sources or people in the process.  I would really like to hold onto the sort of visual way he presents his work to you, making the reader, not the author, choose the navigation through his poem.

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