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?