Friday, December 19, 2008

Hello, my name is Mud.

Sorry for the rambling and redundant goings on of the previous post. I have a lot of academia juice backed up in my brain with no proper outlet for me to just let it spill. I am sorely in need of a PhD program. For the betterment of everyone, I think.

Stella is on MyDamnChannel now, by the way: http://www.mydamnchannel.com/
That damn channel has good funny stuff. A turd in a punch bowl, for instance. Quite disruptive.

a bit of everything

I started this blog after I became interested in the poetry blog craze spurred by Ron Silliman's blog. I read K. Silem Mohammad's blog Lime Tree and figured I may as well join the fray. But then the pet project got lost in the back of my mind, and now I suppose I'm digging a bit behind the hairline to try to resurrect it. I haven't been writing lately, so maybe this can be an outlet or a conduit or conductor (the train kind) of sorts.

Don't expect high discourse here. Do expect fake mustaches to be worn at times behind the scenes.

Like I said before I'm interested in puns. It's a major highway intersection of my primary interests: poetry, experimentation, comedy, constantly going above the heads of friends and acquaintances. I think you're either into puns or you aren't. I think something happens as you develop as a young child that puts you in this weird state of constant observation of interactions, specifically those that remind us of the self-other binary. Like how dough interacts with doe. It's the same, but it's different. I'm the same as you, but I'm different. You know? That's what the pun is for me. Punning is the lingual practice of othering.

But it's also at the heart of comedy. Look at my comedic heroes Stella, for example. They're three guys wearing suits that make them appear very professional, but their comedy is very childlike. They're known to burst into a long, slow "Yaaaaaaaaayyy!!" at even the smallest accomplishment. They wear fake mustaches and skunk tails. They are masters of disrupting even the simplest of expectations (using a realistic dildo as a source of heat, for example). Stella is a pun in the most concrete sense. They wouldn't exist without embodying the concept of punning, without disrupting expectations at every turn. I promise that if you start to take notice of every joke you encounter, a good percentage of them (if not all of them) will either involve punning directly or else disrupt expectation in the style of a pun.

It is, AND it isn't.

Experimental poetry is nothing if it is not disrupting traditional ideas of poetry. It is punning with a serious and very sharp blade. It's poetry, but it isn't. It's saying something, but it isn't. Let me throw out a definition of poetry to consider: Poetry is the art of saying "It is AND it isn't." Think of that old Gerard Manley Hopkins poem where the little girl Margaret sees the leaves falling and cries. "It is Margaret you mourn for." She's crying about the leaves, AND she isn't. She's crying for her own mortality, AND she isn't. If she was just crying for the leaves, it wouldn't be a very good poem at all. It would be melodrama, and melodrama is not poetry. Nor is it very interesting. Or funny (unless it's over the top or else disrupting some other expectation).

A panda bear is cute, AND it isn't. This is redundant, AND it isn't. You know?

Friday, June 27, 2008

Shut up, Beavis

I realize I still haven't written my Panda Bear Manifesto, but the following clip is an excellent starting point for this blog, as it disrupts expectation through absurdist practice.

Because that's what it's all about: disruption of expectation. Without it, the Panda Bear Poet is a Black Bear Poet at best, and a Sleepy Kitten Poet at worst. You can set up a serious expectation, like a black bear being dangerous, or like Bruce Andrews and his L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poetry. Likewise, you can set up the expectation of silliness, like a cute sleepy kitten being harmless, or like a bathroom limerick. This is the heart of the Panda Bear Manifesto, which continues the tradition of the pun, of the double-speak, of the Shakespearean fool. More will be said of this eventually, nuncle.

Watch the video below for a Panda Bear-esque response to the L-A-N-G-U-A-G-E poets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viO4VecyJAE

Beavis is an idiot jazzed on caffeine, but all the audience can see is a poet experimenting with sound in a very performative way. For all they know, he could be Bruce Andrews' bastard son. That serious expectation is set, unfortunately, due to the poetry reading atmosphere, and so all of a sudden Beavis becomes an avante-garde poet.

This is not pure Panda Bear, but it is Panda Bear-esque. The difference is that Beavis is not trying to disrupt any expectation--if anything, he is trying to meet it. You can see this especially when he his coffee buzz wears off and he consciously tries to create poetry. He has submitted to the expectation.

While there is no Panda Bear intention on Beavis's part, his avante-garde moments are quite successful in disrupting expectation through humor. This is the most obvious thing that could be said about the clip, so I won't linger on it, but his reading is funny. We know it's terrible, but these guys in the audience, blinded by expectation, assume the performance must be some work of genius. So while Beavis has unintentionally disrupted expectations of poetry for the VIEWER, these two guys are stuck in poetic expectation and are unable to recognize the idiocy at play. They are King Lear and Beavis is the Fool, though lacking the essential self-awareness and intention of the Panda Bear.

I want to close by saying that this is the greatest fictionalized portrayal of a poetry reading I have ever seen. Bravo, Mike Judge.

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Hello, and welcome to The Panda Bear Blog.

Let me first say that I am not a panda bear capable of typing human language into a blog format. Second, let me say I have a short-term memory problem and a poor attention span, neither of which have to do with the panda bear theme, but I feel I should be up front with you. Rather, I am a soon-to-be-former student of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. And several more potential prepositions.



This blog will address both poetics and pedagogy in the panda bear aesthetic. The Panda Bear Manifesto will be forthcoming in the near future, but for now consider this:



If a panda bear is angry, you must remember that it is a bear, and it will kill you. Do not mistake a cute face for a safe face. Neither should you mistake a playful approach to poetry or pedagogy for a lackadaisical attempt at humor.
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It is a bear, and it will kill you.