Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm 124
| Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm | |
| author | Loss Pequeno Glazier |
| pages | 100 |
| publisher | Salt |
| rating | bloody good if you like the stuff |
| reviewer | Dylan Harris |
| ISBN | 1844710017 |
| summary | Computer infected modern poetry |
I can get put off by a lot of avant-garde poetry's excess use of strange words. Take Glazier's newly published first collection Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm. He's succumbed to the usual academic habit of filling his poems with obscure incomprehensibility, like http, chmod, EMACS ... hang on a second, I know these words. They're not literary jargon, they're software babble, the words I work with. If there isn't a schadenfreude sense of humour behind this chap's use of computer terminology in his poetry, there damn well ought to be. I love the image I get of poetry literati, finding poems stuffed with precision from a different kind of language professional, muttering "what the &hellip?"
Look, don't get me wrong, this collection isn't easy. The poems, mostly prose poems, are impressions, sequences of events, themed associations, riddled with puns (sharper than that), observation and humour. Imagine yourself a tourist, walking down a Mexican / Cuban / Texan / Costa Rican town's main street, staring at the activity, the buildings, the air, everything a slap of newness. Now realise I was snug in an English pub on a cold November night drinking some rather good warm beer, reading "Semilla de Calabaza (Pumpkin Seed)," the central sequence of this collection. I'm guided by Glazier, I'm the gawping tourist, I'm hit by his local knowledge, I'm a stranger but I know this town, I'm the visitor and I've lived here forever.
I'd better give you some samples of his work. It's not so easy, each poem is a long whole; chopping bits out destroys the context, much of the expression. Remember, too, I enjoy new ways of saying old things. Perhaps you'll see this collection's appeal to me from this chunk of the fifth "White-Faced Bromeliards on 20 Hectares (An Iteration)":
Finding a pumpkin seed in your vocabulary. A dead tree becomes
a bromeliad alter. Policia Rural. Brahmin cattle. Los Angeles,
Costa Rica's fresh furrows against smoky ridge. Banana chips on
the bus. Una casada, comida tipica lava gushing glowing twilight
plumes & sputters. Before sunset, bathing in a river heated by
lava's flow.
So why on earth am I reviewing a collection of poetry for /. ? As you've probably already sussed, Glazier's a computer chap. He's professor and Director of The Electronic Poetry Center at New York, Buffalo. He knows our not-Unix / Windows wars; they're here in the poetic armoury. It's like having your own private antagonism codified into opera, suddenly there's an aria about DLLs, or caches, and the damn thing works a treat and it damn well shouldn't. It's still his flow of impressions, but now he's taking tourists around our home town, our systems, our neighbourly rows, our familiar world is slapping them with strangeness, they're asking tourist questions, they're got tourist awe, tourist doubts.
From "One Server, One Tablet, and a Diskless Sun":
And what
kind of bugs? Lorca's mystical crickets?
H.D.'s butterflies? Though I think they
must--if the mind does have an eye--be
cockroaches fat, brightly lit, and mightily
glowing. Flying through the mind shaft to
assault any mental indiscretion. Perhaps a
relative of Burroughs introduced this
term. (Stick that in your machine and
add it up!) What vision of mainframe!
What robust modems! What processor
speed!
Some of my worst bugs have embarrassingly been "cockroaches fat, brightly lit, and mightily glowing." I'd better change the subject. It's probably obvious I believe poetry and programming share something vital. As Glazier says, in "Windows 95" (Ironic? You tell me.):
"In a sense code
resembles classical poetry. The requirements of meter (poetry)
and syntax (code) pose both limitations and challenges for the
good poet / programmer to adhere to and overcome in the
process of writing a great poem / program."
The one weakness of this collection, perhaps, cannot be avoided; Glazier's an electronic poet, a web poet; for all his care, the hyperlinks feel like they're still there, hidden and used; the slide-show web pages are unflowing still on paper. Don't get me wrong; these poems work well, but I just get the feeling, which I cannot properly justify, that they're butterflies killed, pinned and collected, fascinating, very beautiful, but their essence is the flittering movement you can never see in a book. But that's not such a problem; you could always browse The Electronic Poetry Center for Glazier's pages.
I didn't know Glazier's work when I bought this collection. It's published by the print-on-demand Australian/UK publisher Salt. I tend to buy their collections simply because they publish them; they seem to have developed the habit of excellence.
You can also purchase Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit a review for consideration, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
yikes (Score:5, Funny)
I love writing software, and I enjoy reading other people's source
You need to get out more.
Re:yikes (Score:1, Funny)
Re:yikes (Score:1, Funny)
I have a better chance of being the starting center for the Los Angeles Lakers next season.
Re:yikes (Score:1, Funny)
Re:yikes (Score:5, Funny)
No, this is just another way of saying he doesn't use Perl.
Get this man to Nevada... (Score:5, Funny)
Book title in the form of a Slashback headline (Score:5, Funny)
The title of this book is in the form of a Slashback headline. I was confused for a moment.
Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese (Score:2, Interesting)
People around here sometimes say: Anat at the end of their sentences, short for and that. Which is the same as: and stuff.
Whatcha do?
I went down to Primani Bros, Ride Aid, anat.
Yinz definately need to learn a new language if you come in our neck of the woods.
Re:Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it's the Sanskrit name for the Buddhist doctrine of no-self or no-soul. Atman is the self/soul, and An is the negation of that.
Disclaimer: IANAB (I am not a Buddhist).
Different Pronounciation. (Score:2)
The Pittsburghese 'anat' probably rhymes with 'a rat', and 'man' is pronounced as, well, man.
The Sanskrit 'anatman', rightfully written as 'anAtman~' or 'anaatman~' under the Rice Transliteration Scheme, has a stress for the 'a' before
Re:That's right (Score:2)
Re:Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese (Score:2)
The "at" in "anat" is pronouced to rhyme with "hat," for example.
The "at" in "anatman" is pronounced to rhyme with the "ot" in "hot." - ahn-OT-mahn
Re:Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese (Score:1)
Re:Anatman? Sounds like Pittsburghese (Score:1)
um... (Score:2, Insightful)
This sounds like a Geocities homepage to me...
Re:um... (Score:2)
While I can relate to the topic ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:While I can relate to the topic ... (Score:1)
With apologies to Ogden Nash (Score:5, Funny)
A program as lovely as a tree.
In fact, without a program call
I'll never see a tree at all.
Wrong apologee... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Wrong apologee... (Score:1)
Re:Wrong apologee... (Score:1)
Re:Wrong apologee... (Score:1)
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks to God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
Ogden Nash, Song of the Open Road:
"I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, un
Re:Wrong apologee... (Score:1)
Re:Wrong apologee... (Score:2)
~Berj
Had to be done (Score:2)
Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz:
Oh freddled codebuggly
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabble/BASHits on a lurgid BSD.
GroopID I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously compile me with thunkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will ^H^H^H^H thee in the gobberwarts with my numbercruncheon,
See if I don't!
What makes UNIX users are so smart (Score:5, Interesting)
The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature
by Thomas Scoville
http://www.insecure.org/stf/scoville_unix_as_lite
Re:What makes UNIX users are so smart (Score:1)
Re:What makes UNIX users are so smart (Score:2)
Microsoft Worms
Re:What makes UNIX users are so smart (Score:2)
"IYou" ---> "You"
"wordsmything" ---> "wordsmithing" (actually "wordsmithing" isn't really a word).
"Why in the hell" ---> "Why the hell" or "Why in hell"
"There goal" ---> "Their goal"
"its to" ---> "it's to"
"noncomunicative" ---> "non-communicative"
Re:What makes UNIX users are so smart (Score:2)
Hmmmm, seems to explain why "Unix hacker" is so right a terminology.
It has more in common with a screenwriter hacking a script for a sit-com.
No wonder the media "doesn't get it."
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess the submitter coded too much in his life, because now he is mixing things up.
Coding is about structuring, and poetry too has structures, indeed. This is a shallow comparison. For the whole thing, pardoxically, in poetry, is to give the reader enough freedom to free him(her)self of the structure.
In poetry, structure is a mean, an assurance you take to get free quicker ; in computing, structure is *everything*. Poetry and computing are so different. Computing looks like more architectural works. Definitely coders are not poets ; in that case, they *would* be poets.
Regards,
jdif
Commercial interests limit poetry in code (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)
No no no, poetry has nothing to do with freedom. Poetry predates free verse, and even free verse is not about freedom as much as it is about a newer, more flexible use of older forms (in this sense, free verse is not unlike python).
What makes poetry different from prose is precisely the degree to which structure matters. In poetry, we appreciate accidental bits of syntactic elegance as well as large scale architecture. Loving poetry is precisely about loving the nuance of structure -- loving the way a sonn
I guess we don't read the same poetry (Score:3, Insightful)
this is fun that you are speaking of poetry as represented by the sonnet, because the sonnet was used at a very precise time in history (mainly during the 16th century, with the European Baroques), and then criticizing my post because it is historicized.
I guess that we really didn't understand each other. I'm not saying structure doesn't matter in a poem, but at the contrary, this is useful to get rid of it. Have you ever try to read some kind of experimental poetry, sublime in the words, but lacking
Re:Wow (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if he'd actually said that, he would have been making a shallow comparison. What he said was, he gets similar pleasure from reading code and poetry. Well, each to his own.
As for your own notions: For the whole thing, pardoxically, in poetry, is to give the reader enough freedom to free him(her)self of the structure.
Well, implying that you know the intent of all poets is a shallow comment too, is it not? Laying aside for a moment tha
Re:Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
The second argument is that i think both code and poetry more directly reflect the thought of the creator than othe
Re:Wow (Score:2)
even if we disagree, I thank you for presenting arguments instead of insults.
However, let me discuss your two arguments. First, programming is far less extensible than poetry. With poetry you dont have to put that ; that at each end of your line. With computing you can't do what I just did with words (so crappy, whatever) in my last sentence.
I agree with your second argument. Code obviously reflects the personnality of the one who wrote it. But still this is not enough, in my opinion. Have you ever tried
Re:Wow (Score:3, Funny)
C is heroic couplets. Java is blank verse. Perl is rhymed couplets. LISP is a haiku. Assembly is free verse. COBOL, of course, is a disaster.
similar, not analogous (Score:2)
The poster remarked the similarity of poetry to code, particularly that both are formalisms. New forms of poetry are akin to new languages, new works in old forms are like new ideas in familiar contexts.
The distinctions rely on differing relationships to syntactic rigor. What you unfortunately term *extensible* is really a matter of greater freedom: the only interpreter a poem will face is the reader; your code must pass muster with an interpreter whose concern for syntactic and structural d
Ugh, poetry (Score:2)
Re:Ugh, poetry (Score:3, Funny)
Which I'm not (still self-learning,ouch).
Regards,
jdif
Re:Ugh, poetry (Score:3, Interesting)
If you try hard enough, you can interpret a poem however you want. For instance, part of a robert frost(I think) poem goes "good fences make good neighbors." At first it seems that this line is saying that keeping people separate
Re:Ugh, poetry (Score:2)
It can be helpful or even useful to communicate something that has no well defined meaning. Human emotions tend to fall into that category. Love means different things to different people; my love poem is going to seem vague and abstra
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Coding, on the other hand, appears to be trying to express complicated things in a simplified (universally structured and explained using a small set of concepts) way in order to have them understood even by automatons.
Clarity is sought in coding while confusion is sought with poetry. I would almost say that coding and p
Re:Wow (Score:2)
What I mean is - good poetry strives on association, connotation, and ambiguity. First, with linguistic surface features. We can bring about feeling or imagery by only hinting at it. Sometimes we don't even need to hint, but merely picking the right sounds. [1] And this requires an extraordinary amount of intuition about how we read.
And then there are higher-level ambig
Re:Wow (Score:2)
I would argue that abstraction is coding's answer to poetic metaphor and ambiguity. By choosing the right abstractions, you can have a large and complex program suddenly snap into place as a smaller, more understandable, and sometimes faster (due to cache locality) replacement. It's like prose becoming poetry by finding the right metaphor.
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Some of us are poets, in the literary sense, even. I write both code and poems, and there really are similarities.
First and foremost, all computer programs require metaphor and imagery. We call them "files" -- the word now has a new meaning because of decades of our usage, but somebody, somewhere, originally sat down and thought "How should I organize all of these bits?" and the answer came as a metaphor -- "Oh I'll store them i
Re:Wow (Score:2)
Both coding and poetry are about creating an expression with certain structural limitations.
Both coding and poetry implicitly define those structural limitations. By following them.
Both coding and poetry will suffer from too many words and too little poetry.
Both coding and poetry are much better if the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Both coding and poetry have meaning on multiple levels.
An ode to Glazier (Score:3, Interesting)
anti clock wise.
Penetrating poetry pokes my peripheral vision
like a fully charged capacitor on a hot summer day
My eyes glaze over Glazier's prose
His profound instructions verbose
in machine language, almost
optimized for O(1) execution on a fast Althon
crippled by the superslow multitasking windows OS,
Yet, continue to register their keys,
in my hashtable of memories.
Smooth Jive, Daddio (Score:5, Funny)
Programmer's Solitude
by illuminata
Cold, snow
winter breeze blow
at home desk, sorrow.
No love comes to the programmer
no matter how good his code.
Internally crumbling
about to implode.
Couples happy
streets alive.
Not the programmer
dead inside.
The right hand is warm
but dangerous.
For that hand prevents love.
But in return, gives instant gratification.
Why not?
Never very attractive
no female attention
only apprehension.
On a lonely winter's day
do not approach the programmer.
You know where that hand has been.
And the programmer never works all day.
Helpful, if circular ratings=helpful, if circular (Score:2, Insightful)
So your evaluation is "only you can evaluate it?" My enjoyment of the book will be proportional to my enjoyment of the book! Thanks!
Re:Helpful, if circular ratings=helpful, if circul (Score:1)
If Like_this_genre=TRUE
Then
Like_this_book:=TRUE
Like_this_book:=FALSE
Not
If Like_this_book=TRUE
Then
Like_this_book:=TRUE
End
"The stuff" is used as a colloquialism in place of "the genre." It was not used to mean "this book."
Interesting title... (Score:2)
Vogon vibe (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh freddled gruntbuggly
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
See if I don't!
Honestly, if you, in the spirit of semirandom recombination that seems to characterize a good deal of Glazier's work, take the nonsense words and add in random techno-jargon, you'd get a very Glazier-y and equally unsatisfying verse. Jargon-wielding for what appears to be its own sake doesn't make for nerd-digestible poetry. So yes, while I applaud the experimental nature of some of his stuff, I don't much like it.
Re:Vogon vibe (Score:1)
right (Score:2)
Lewis Carroll:
Jabberwocky
' Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogoves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jub-jub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch.
He took his vorpal sword in han
Re:right (Score:1)
Eh? (Score:2)
Ahhh, home!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ode to SCO (Score:5, Funny)
main(once, was)
{
a = unix_owner;
who(pulled, a, PR_BONER) {
they->staked_out[some_claims && called(ppl_names)];
}
but_everyone_knew(darl, was, a, stoner);
}
Poetry is Like Code? (Score:2)
IDEA!!! (Score:1, Funny)
More poetry... (Score:4, Interesting)
<>!*''#
^@`$$-
*!'$_
%*<>#4
&)../
{~|**SYSTEM HALTED
waka waka bang splat tick tick hash
carat at back-tick dollar dollar dash
splat bang tick dollar underscore
percent splat waka waka number four
ampersand right-paren dot dot slash
curly bracket tilde pipe splat splat crash
Taken from the 1337/poetry [berkeley.edu] section of william wu's site [berkeley.edu]
read it out loud (Score:1, Insightful)
While I'm not familiar with 'Anatman, Pumpkin Seed, Algorithm', I have read much of Glazier's work. His writing can be difficult to parse, but to see/hear Loss read from his own work is quite inspiring.
Often the text he performs will be projected on a screen behind him. In 'Bromeliads' or 'Vis Etudes' for example, where the text modulates mid-sentence, or where there is no established syntax for sequencing each node, the activity of reading becomes obvious - even a little exciting.
It's great to see
mmm (Score:2)
Man I could sure go for a fat glowing roach right now.
Re:mmm (Score:2)
At the risk of sounding obvious... (Score:1)
Avant-Guard poetry? (Score:1)
Only author knows their meaning:
A shiny toaster, cherry tree,
IBM 360, PIC, my little sister's doll house.
Perhaps too stupid, me.
But perhaps words beyond comprehension,
certainly beyond communication.
code poetry (Score:4, Funny)
Wait, that was Dylan Thomas. Nevermind.
Fruitcake (Score:1)
code poetry in abundance (Score:1)
"[Tr-s]
Hut=0-Ignamb=So\OGSTARY\832T
R-0-r-io = ID
_RSH.wap=Y
[S]ID=10dB=f
Nve Scie=i
E=0,100=,
[01]InfoI=n
MPOn=e
5=Bl=se
= [Yes]ID==2
Ud.t+P=el=
Item4=BO=St-
M.cesIt=Rig
==Pla
D=te"
have a look at this lill' overview of this genre with links to more...
http://socialfiction.org/als_daneng.html
Some favorite technology poems: (Score:2)
from You Get So Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense, 1986, p 103
16-Bit Intel 8088 Chip
with an Apple Macintosh
you can't run Radio Shack programs
in its disc drive.
nor can a Commodore 64
drive read a file
you have created on an
IBM Personal Computer.
both Kaypro and Osborne computers use
the CP/M operating system
but can't read each other's
handwriting
for they format (write
on) discs in different
ways.
the Tandy 2000 runs MS-DOS but
can't use most programs produced for
the IBM Personal Computer
unless
Ah, sonnets (Score:1)
(...stand by for the code nazis...)
Kurbis Kernol (Score:2)
Ode to QuickSort (Score:1)
Um ... this goes only so far ... (Score:2)
I make a living as a coder, though, and I've noticed many similarities between code and poetry, especially between code and the poetry of the so-called "language" poets whose poetry depends on visual appreciation of the physical layout of the words on the page in order to be understood.
There are some significant differences, however, betw
Re:Short poem (Score:2)
fuck(you);
else
pub_crawl();