Kenneth Goldsmith transcribes everyday language into a book of poetry known as Seven American Deaths and Disasters. This book concentrates on the everyday language of reporters, phone calls, and the daily news. He uses transcriptions in order to get a direct way in which someone speaks when a tragedy occurs. This not only presents emotion but it also engages the reader because we can feel what the speaker feels in that time. The different time frames also make the reader realize the difference in the way language has changed overtime. Some things reporters said in the John F. Kennedy 1963 chapter, would not have said in the 2009 Michael Jackson chapter. Not only do we need to consider the time difference but we also need to consider the different style someone discusses the tragedy of the president and the tragedy of a pop icon. Two people that are important in many different ways creates a distinct tone and mood in America, and you can see this through the reports. Obviously the chapter that is very different than these two is the Columbine 1999 chapter. This chapter is a transcribed phone call made by one of the women that was actually witnessing the murders, and the shooting. The John F Kennedy, Columbine, and Michael Jackson chapters demonstrates the poetics of everyday language that Goldsmith is attempting to exhibit. This not only creates emotion but also has a set structure from transcribing that makes it poetry. A historian or investigator would not use this because it is not directly from the source. Goldsmith uses these pieces to investigate the difference of language over time and in different circumstances.
I argue that several poets use constraint to challenge the idea of creative writing and create a focus more on the writing itself. I feel that many people write for the audience that they are trying to please. So, rather than writing for the sake of writing they are writing to be noticed. It is a similar idea to that of Kenneth Goldsmith’s uncreative writing. The writing can be using constraints such as using someone else’s written pieces only to create something new. Goldsmith argues that creative writing is no longer creative so one must be uncreative in order to create something new. Writing with constraint does just that. It gives the writer a chance to create something from something else. Goldsmith shows how to write uncreatively in his book, Seven American Deaths and Disasters uses a constraint of only using transcriptions from radio shows from the time surrounding the event. Another author could have written a historical report on these events, or a fictional story about that event, but Goldsmith takes the uncreative route and uses something that is already made and compiles it with others making it something new. One may see this as plagiarism, but that is something that Goldsmith describes in his article on uncreative writing.
Writing with constraint is an interesting way to challenge a writer, but also create freedom within the writing process. A constraint is different from a rule because it is a restriction that the writer puts on themselves, while a rule is a restriction or regulation that is already established and regularly accepted as the normal in everyday writing. When a writer uses a constraint, it shifts the way the readers looks at the literary work because they are forced to analyze it differently within the new context and genre that the constraint creates. In A Humument, Tom Phillips uses the constraint of making poetry out of only the words that already existed on the page. This type of constraint Phillips puts on himself and the addition of a visual artistic element shape his work by taking it from simple poetry into a work of clever word picking and visual mastery.
This isn't finished or edited, but it's more or less my thesis statement:
In the conventional sense, creative writing is typically described as the act of putting into words an entirely new idea from the the ‘creative’ part of the writer’s mind. That is, an aspiring author is to think of something no one else has done before and turn that idea into a literary work. However, what if we considered the possibility that there might be another form of creative writing; one that doesn’t rely on some mysterious, muse-inspired portion of the brain, but instead reinterprets what’s already been written in new, creative ways. This bring me to the philosophy of Kenneth Goldsmith. In his book Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Goldsmith demonstrates the fairly new concept of ‘uncreative writing’ and in the process unearths an entirely new angle of historical analysis. Rather than describing historical events by compiling first hand accounts, reading contemporary materials, or any of that sort of thing, Goldsmith merely transcribed existing material into text form. In this case, all his materials came from audio recordings of persons either witnessing or experiencing the seven disastrous events included in the book. There is no input from Goldsmith himself. We never hear him interject a comment, give his own interpretation, or even translate a poorly worded sentence. We are instead thrust directly into the thoughts of those who watched these events unfold and left to ponder our own interpretations. The idea is radical, fairly unique, and yet entirely uncreative from a conventional point of view. After all, Goldsmith certainly did no ‘work’, if by work we mean assembling, word by word, a picture of events for us. Rather, he let the transcriptions speak for themselves. The only real ‘work’ that Goldsmith did was to think to do this in the first place. That, Goldsmith argues, is the idea behind uncreative writing and it brings up the question of what, then, does it mean to ‘write creatively’?
Kenneth Goldsmith in his book "Seven American Deaths and Disasters" transcribes reports as disasters have hit and opened our ears to language in its very raw form.The news reporters, and civilians have ditched there scripts and as they talk we are feeling the lament, the emotion and the pain in there voices. In the different chapters, different tones and reactions pull through as we read the phone call In the chapter about Columbine versus the news reporters reporting the shooting of John F Kennedy. In the Columbine chapter, the lady is staring death in the eye as she witnesses the loss of lives, so we literally feel the terror in her voice and the duress in her langague and sympathize with her while the news reporters on John F Kennedy are not first hand witnessing the situation, they do not want to stir a panic, and are more reserved with what they say. Neither is filtered, but the emotions, setting and tone are completely different. I argue that the tool of transcribing is very different than a historian or reporter would write because it is unbiased and raw, as we read we feel the emotion and picture the scenario in our head. It is everyday conversation and language we can relate to.
One of the best places to receive news and information is The Colbert Report. Although Stephen Colbert is witty and satirical beyond compare, he brings up topics and points that most people would over look. He makes guests the best they can be on his show and brings out a great debate without even meaning to. This was very apparent in the interview that he held with Kenneth Goldsmith on July 23, 2013 edition of his show. Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet laureate that takes poetry to realms that are unheralded. Goldsmith truly is one in a million. He is creative and simple all at once. Goldsmith was on the Colbert Report promoting his new book Seven American Deaths and Disasters, book he transcribed and edited real accounts of Deaths and Disasters since America in the 1960’s. Seven American Deaths and Disasters touched on moments that shook America. These massive events that Goldsmith chose to transcribe, were words from morning talk show hosts. He described the talk show hosts as “shock jocks” who are ill-equipped to be delivering such monumental news to the masses in America during that era. By transcribing the “shock jocks”, he takes everyday language and emotion of the tragedies and puts it down for others to experience. The emotion and feel of each story is real, like a first hand experience when reading the book. In the passages about John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and September 11 the emotions feel like it is hearing the news for the first time. This is different from what an investigative reporter or historian would do because it is play with emotions and isn’t for the information about the events that just happened. It is about pure reaction and emotion.
Outside you hear the wind rap at the window and the thunder strike the earth, but what if a poem can attempt to encapsulate this storm? Weather not only is present in the environment of our earth, but a reader can analyze how it plays within our language. through readings of several poets such as Jackson Maclow and Robert Greiner, Joan Rettaltack creates a double meaning to "weather". By a use of this weather that permeates language in a selection of poems, we can see how the surroundings add a dimension to a "complex realism"
Gerald Bruns' argument regarding sound vs. sight acknowledges the fact that with sight, our attention is pivotal, we can choose not to see something by closing our eyes, turning our head, or otherwise re-positioning our body. Sound is different from sight, in that we are assaulted by it, and have very little means to disregard sound. Responsiveness and its reliance on sight vs sound is another point of Bruns'. Sight responsiveness is immediate and obvious, often a physical reaction, or one which others can observe through sight. Sound responsiveness is more often an internal acknowledgement and understanding, making sound poems a more internal affair.
(This is a rough draft, not meant to be taken as anything more than a vague semblance of what the full paragraph will hopefully be)
I argue that Christian Bök uses constraint in order to demonstrate that “the choice of a linguistic constraint allows one to skirt, or to ignore, all these other constraints which do not belong to language and which escape from our emprise” (Benabou, 42). His book of poetry, entitled Eunoia, is a model of writing with constraint, containing five chapters of poetry. Each chapter is written in perfect English, with each chapter containing only one vowel, like so: “Awkward grammar appalls a craftsman. A Dada bard/ as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an/ alpha” (Bök, 1). This is an example of constraint because he has set himself an extra parameter, to write only a-vowel exclusive words in this chapter, e-vowel exclusive words in the next, on through the the five vowels of the English language. In the English language, in the last Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr post you read, on the last flyer that you saw as you entered the room, there is a very high probability that more than one of the five vowels was present, perhaps even within the same word. To take on this aspect when there is no prior expectation that says it must be so, is to take on a constraint. By voluntarily subjugating himself to the constraint as he did, the focus of his writing was focused not upon a set subject matter, nor was it aimed at making sure his writing made perfect grammatical sense, but on the act of following that one goal. By writing in such a manner, by ignoring all the rules to fixate on his chosen constraint, he is liberated from the need to focus on all other points besides his chosen one.
Susan Sontag is "against interpretation" because the culture that expects interpretation devalues other forms of interacting with art, inhibiting what the art actually does; reducing a piece of art to an analysis of the piece limits the piece to what can be expressed in a rhetorical, verbal argument. If all that is gleaned from the piece is its interpretation, the art piece might as well not have been published-- instead, a short essay may be hung on the wall, or passed around in a theatre, in its place. Sontag further notes that, unfortunately, it has became culturally acceptable for authors to include interpretations with their own work-- and to those artists who don't, an international assortment of critics and professors will happily supply interpretation. In Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Kenneth Goldsmith defies the reduction of the radio and television broadcasts he incorporated into the text into consumable, historical, anthological data-- he instead intends for the whole of those broadcasts to be experienced. Kenneth Goldsmith leaves the text open for the reader to come along and experience the decontextualized events for themselves.
As the wolf pack went on the hunt all their prey's' senses heightened, the prey's' sense of sight and sound were ready and active before the wolves were in front of them. The prey's' eyes darted every which way and their ears were as high and low as possible to hear the attackers, but sight was no help to them for the wolves were behind them, but as the non-suspecting prey were about to be killed one wolf stepped on a branch and all the prey heard and scattered away from the noise, so fast that a few got away. If I was for their hearing they all might be dead and just another source of nutrients for the wolves and the tundra, which leads to another interesting topic, Sound Poetry. Sound Poetry is just another type of poetry like lyric, epic, narrative, sonnet, couplet, and free verse, but unlike those normally known types there are other types like digital poetry, where you can use technology and computer coding to sow the poem, constrained type poetry like in the book EUNOIA by Christian Bök, where one vowel is used to produce a whole poem, and concrete poetry which is just poetry where the text is arranged to form an object normally relating to the subject or topic of the poem. This is this way because poetry is literally just writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm as the online Merriam-Webster dictionary put it. And as Gerald L. Bruns said in his second chapter, “The Transendence of Words: A Short Defense of (Sound) Poetry” in his book called The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a philosophical Poetics that as a reader we should have a sort of responsibility and responsiveness with it and that sound is better than sight for many different reasons including sounds transcendence from words and its principles. This is because of the existence of Sound Poetry and the fact that there is a difference between sound and sight, the responsiveness of the reader, and sound poets like Christian Bök. I will now explain Gerald L. Bruns two arguments defending Sound Poetry in The Transcendence of Words: A Short Defense of (Sound) Poetry article we read in and for class and then build a reading about Steve McCaffery and his work as a sound poet.
Kenneth Goldsmith transcribes everyday language into a book of poetry known as Seven American Deaths and Disasters. This book concentrates on the everyday language of reporters, phone calls, and the daily news. He uses transcriptions in order to get a direct way in which someone speaks when a tragedy occurs. This not only presents emotion but it also engages the reader because we can feel what the speaker feels in that time. The different time frames also make the reader realize the difference in the way language has changed overtime. Some things reporters said in the John F. Kennedy 1963 chapter, would not have said in the 2009 Michael Jackson chapter. Not only do we need to consider the time difference but we also need to consider the different style someone discusses the tragedy of the president and the tragedy of a pop icon. Two people that are important in many different ways creates a distinct tone and mood in America, and you can see this through the reports. Obviously the chapter that is very different than these two is the Columbine 1999 chapter. This chapter is a transcribed phone call made by one of the women that was actually witnessing the murders, and the shooting. The John F Kennedy, Columbine, and Michael Jackson chapters demonstrates the poetics of everyday language that Goldsmith is attempting to exhibit. This not only creates emotion but also has a set structure from transcribing that makes it poetry. A historian or investigator would not use this because it is not directly from the source. Goldsmith uses these pieces to investigate the difference of language over time and in different circumstances.
ReplyDeleteI argue that several poets use constraint to challenge the idea of creative writing and create a focus more on the writing itself. I feel that many people write for the audience that they are trying to please. So, rather than writing for the sake of writing they are writing to be noticed. It is a similar idea to that of Kenneth Goldsmith’s uncreative writing. The writing can be using constraints such as using someone else’s written pieces only to create something new. Goldsmith argues that creative writing is no longer creative so one must be uncreative in order to create something new. Writing with constraint does just that. It gives the writer a chance to create something from something else. Goldsmith shows how to write uncreatively in his book, Seven American Deaths and Disasters uses a constraint of only using transcriptions from radio shows from the time surrounding the event. Another author could have written a historical report on these events, or a fictional story about that event, but Goldsmith takes the uncreative route and uses something that is already made and compiles it with others making it something new. One may see this as plagiarism, but that is something that Goldsmith describes in his article on uncreative writing.
ReplyDeleteThis is Jodie on Chelsea May's account.
ReplyDeleteWriting with constraint is an interesting way to challenge a writer, but also create freedom within the writing process. A constraint is different from a rule because it is a restriction that the writer puts on themselves, while a rule is a restriction or regulation that is already established and regularly accepted as the normal in everyday writing. When a writer uses a constraint, it shifts the way the readers looks at the literary work because they are forced to analyze it differently within the new context and genre that the constraint creates. In A Humument, Tom Phillips uses the constraint of making poetry out of only the words that already existed on the page. This type of constraint Phillips puts on himself and the addition of a visual artistic element shape his work by taking it from simple poetry into a work of clever word picking and visual mastery.
This isn't finished or edited, but it's more or less my thesis statement:
ReplyDeleteIn the conventional sense, creative writing is typically described as the act of putting into words an entirely new idea from the the ‘creative’ part of the writer’s mind. That is, an aspiring author is to think of something no one else has done before and turn that idea into a literary work. However, what if we considered the possibility that there might be another form of creative writing; one that doesn’t rely on some mysterious, muse-inspired portion of the brain, but instead reinterprets what’s already been written in new, creative ways. This bring me to the philosophy of Kenneth Goldsmith. In his book Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Goldsmith demonstrates the fairly new concept of ‘uncreative writing’ and in the process unearths an entirely new angle of historical analysis. Rather than describing historical events by compiling first hand accounts, reading contemporary materials, or any of that sort of thing, Goldsmith merely transcribed existing material into text form. In this case, all his materials came from audio recordings of persons either witnessing or experiencing the seven disastrous events included in the book. There is no input from Goldsmith himself. We never hear him interject a comment, give his own interpretation, or even translate a poorly worded sentence. We are instead thrust directly into the thoughts of those who watched these events unfold and left to ponder our own interpretations. The idea is radical, fairly unique, and yet entirely uncreative from a conventional point of view. After all, Goldsmith certainly did no ‘work’, if by work we mean assembling, word by word, a picture of events for us. Rather, he let the transcriptions speak for themselves. The only real ‘work’ that Goldsmith did was to think to do this in the first place. That, Goldsmith argues, is the idea behind uncreative writing and it brings up the question of what, then, does it mean to ‘write creatively’?
Kenneth Goldsmith in his book "Seven American Deaths and Disasters" transcribes reports as disasters have hit and opened our ears to language in its very raw form.The news reporters, and civilians have ditched there scripts and as they talk we are feeling the lament, the emotion and the pain in there voices. In the different chapters, different tones and reactions pull through as we read the phone call In the chapter about Columbine versus the news reporters reporting the shooting of John F Kennedy. In the Columbine chapter, the lady is staring death in the eye as she witnesses the loss of lives, so we literally feel the terror in her voice and the duress in her langague and sympathize with her while the news reporters on John F Kennedy are not first hand witnessing the situation, they do not want to stir a panic, and are more reserved with what they say. Neither is filtered, but the emotions, setting and tone are completely different. I argue that the tool of transcribing is very different than a historian or reporter would write because it is unbiased and raw, as we read we feel the emotion and picture the scenario in our head. It is everyday conversation and language we can relate to.
ReplyDeleteOne of the best places to receive news and information is The Colbert Report. Although Stephen Colbert is witty and satirical beyond compare, he brings up topics and points that most people would over look. He makes guests the best they can be on his show and brings out a great debate without even meaning to. This was very apparent in the interview that he held with Kenneth Goldsmith on July 23, 2013 edition of his show. Kenneth Goldsmith is a poet laureate that takes poetry to realms that are unheralded. Goldsmith truly is one in a million. He is creative and simple all at once. Goldsmith was on the Colbert Report promoting his new book Seven American Deaths and Disasters, book he transcribed and edited real accounts of Deaths and Disasters since America in the 1960’s.
ReplyDeleteSeven American Deaths and Disasters touched on moments that shook America. These massive events that Goldsmith chose to transcribe, were words from morning talk show hosts. He described the talk show hosts as “shock jocks” who are ill-equipped to be delivering such monumental news to the masses in America during that era. By transcribing the “shock jocks”, he takes everyday language and emotion of the tragedies and puts it down for others to experience. The emotion and feel of each story is real, like a first hand experience when reading the book. In the passages about John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy, and September 11 the emotions feel like it is hearing the news for the first time. This is different from what an investigative reporter or historian would do because it is play with emotions and isn’t for the information about the events that just happened. It is about pure reaction and emotion.
Outside you hear the wind rap at the window and the thunder strike the earth, but what if a poem can attempt to encapsulate this storm? Weather not only is present in the environment of our earth, but a reader can analyze how it plays within our language. through readings of several poets such as Jackson Maclow and Robert Greiner, Joan Rettaltack creates a double meaning to "weather". By a use of this weather that permeates language in a selection of poems, we can see how the surroundings add a dimension to a "complex realism"
ReplyDeleteGerald Bruns' argument regarding sound vs. sight acknowledges the fact that with sight, our attention is pivotal, we can choose not to see something by closing our eyes, turning our head, or otherwise re-positioning our body. Sound is different from sight, in that we are assaulted by it, and have very little means to disregard sound. Responsiveness and its reliance on sight vs sound is another point of Bruns'. Sight responsiveness is immediate and obvious, often a physical reaction, or one which others can observe through sight. Sound responsiveness is more often an internal acknowledgement and understanding, making sound poems a more internal affair.
ReplyDelete(This is a rough draft, not meant to be taken as anything more than a vague semblance of what the full paragraph will hopefully be)
ReplyDeleteI argue that Christian Bök uses constraint in order to demonstrate that “the choice of a linguistic constraint allows one to skirt, or to ignore, all these other constraints which do not belong to language and which escape from our emprise” (Benabou, 42). His book of poetry, entitled Eunoia, is a model of writing with constraint, containing five chapters of poetry. Each chapter is written in perfect English, with each chapter containing only one vowel, like so: “Awkward grammar appalls a craftsman. A Dada bard/ as daft as Tzara damns stagnant art and scrawls an/ alpha” (Bök, 1). This is an example of constraint because he has set himself an extra parameter, to write only a-vowel exclusive words in this chapter, e-vowel exclusive words in the next, on through the the five vowels of the English language. In the English language, in the last Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr post you read, on the last flyer that you saw as you entered the room, there is a very high probability that more than one of the five vowels was present, perhaps even within the same word. To take on this aspect when there is no prior expectation that says it must be so, is to take on a constraint. By voluntarily subjugating himself to the constraint as he did, the focus of his writing was focused not upon a set subject matter, nor was it aimed at making sure his writing made perfect grammatical sense, but on the act of following that one goal. By writing in such a manner, by ignoring all the rules to fixate on his chosen constraint, he is liberated from the need to focus on all other points besides his chosen one.
Susan Sontag is "against interpretation" because the culture that expects interpretation devalues other forms of interacting with art, inhibiting what the art actually does; reducing a piece of art to an analysis of the piece limits the piece to what can be expressed in a rhetorical, verbal argument. If all that is gleaned from the piece is its interpretation, the art piece might as well not have been published-- instead, a short essay may be hung on the wall, or passed around in a theatre, in its place. Sontag further notes that, unfortunately, it has became culturally acceptable for authors to include interpretations with their own work-- and to those artists who don't, an international assortment of critics and professors will happily supply interpretation.
ReplyDeleteIn Seven American Deaths and Disasters, Kenneth Goldsmith defies the reduction of the radio and television broadcasts he incorporated into the text into consumable, historical, anthological data-- he instead intends for the whole of those broadcasts to be experienced. Kenneth Goldsmith leaves the text open for the reader to come along and experience the decontextualized events for themselves.
The View and Acceptance
ReplyDeleteAs the wolf pack went on the hunt all their prey's' senses heightened, the prey's' sense of sight and sound were ready and active before the wolves were in front of them. The prey's' eyes darted every which way and their ears were as high and low as possible to hear the attackers, but sight was no help to them for the wolves were behind them, but as the non-suspecting prey were about to be killed one wolf stepped on a branch and all the prey heard and scattered away from the noise, so fast that a few got away. If I was for their hearing they all might be dead and just another source of nutrients for the wolves and the tundra, which leads to another interesting topic, Sound Poetry. Sound Poetry is just another type of poetry like lyric, epic, narrative, sonnet, couplet, and free verse, but unlike those normally known types there are other types like digital poetry, where you can use technology and computer coding to sow the poem, constrained type poetry like in the book EUNOIA by Christian Bök, where one vowel is used to produce a whole poem, and concrete poetry which is just poetry where the text is arranged to form an object normally relating to the subject or topic of the poem. This is this way because poetry is literally just writing that formulates a concentrated imaginative awareness of experience in language chosen and arranged to create a specific emotional response through meaning, sound, and rhythm as the online Merriam-Webster dictionary put it. And as Gerald L. Bruns said in his second chapter, “The Transendence of Words: A Short Defense of (Sound) Poetry” in his book called The Material of Poetry: Sketches for a philosophical Poetics that as a reader we should have a sort of responsibility and responsiveness with it and that sound is better than sight for many different reasons including sounds transcendence from words and its principles. This is because of the existence of Sound Poetry and the fact that there is a difference between sound and sight, the responsiveness of the reader, and sound poets like Christian Bök. I will now explain Gerald L. Bruns two arguments defending Sound Poetry in The Transcendence of Words: A Short Defense of (Sound) Poetry article we read in and for class and then build a reading about Steve McCaffery and his work as a sound poet.