Sorry, Paul, to have slightly offended you, it seems. I didn't mean to be
Inquisitorial. It just strikes me as an obvious question, concerning your
fabulous work, that I haven't seen you address.
I wasn't aware of 'Poetics of the Paranormal'; I don't see that online
anywhere. I'd be interested in reading it, if I may.
Some writers, such as yourself and WS Burroughs, introduce paranormal or
magical elements in an interestingly literary way, so that the nature and
significance of the magical element becomes an interesting puzzle in the
piece, and it almost always has an interestingly psychological origin,
rather than being simply inexplicable. Whereas, on the other end of the
spectrum, the paranormal or magical elements in some work, particularly in
TV, just seems like made for TV mysticism and offers an easy way to turn the
plot in any desired direction, a kind of sloppy plot grease. Also, since
electronic and computer media are so pleasantly illusionary--it's so easy to
make people appear/disappear and perform other 'magical' tricks--occultish
dimensions in electronic media provide a kind of eye candy or mind candy or
ectoplasmic candy. The whole medium is imaginary, is as imaginary as is
humanly imaginable; magic 'works well' in it, can easily be made to seem
'normal', not 'paranormal'.
So, yes, 'Poetics of the Paranormal' is a very interesting title.
ja
http://vispo.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Green" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2012 2:31 PM
Subject: Re: Welcome to the Gestaltbunker
"What is your relation with the occult, Paul?" Agent JA slapped the
paperback on the table and turned on the recorder. "This book alludes to
the Qabalah, mediaeval grimoires, Hermetic magick, John Dee, Crowleyan
Thelema , Chaos magick, mediumship, electronic messages from the alleged
undead, spontaneous human combustion.... Now I'm a fairly laidback kind of
guy but there are decent people out there who are getting kinda itchy about
this. What's going on? Are you - a believer?"
"I'm an... agnostic neo-gnostic chaoist... this week, anyway..."
The man from VISPO adjusted the brim of his fedora and stared the
stuttering poet right in the eye.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean? You're coming on like some old
acid-head off 4th Avenue. I've heard junkies on East Hastings talk more
sense..."
"I'm actually moving to Hastings soon."
"I guess that explains a lot."
"It's a sea-side town in England."
"OK, OK...just give us the facts... make it snappy..."
"Well, first we need a definition of terms. 'Occult' means hidden, of
course, and there's a great deal about the space-time Polverse - sorry, I
mean the universe - which is still hidden. And, increasingly what appears to
be be revealed by quantum mechanics and the much maligned science of
parapsychology suggests a world-view which elides with certain aspects of
the magickal tradition, particularly in its modern and post-modern
developments by Crowley, Carroll and others. As for belief, that's just a
tool for focussing attention..."
"Oh yeah? Well, we believe you've been selling illegal Thanatrons. In fact,
we know it. There's a promotional leaflet right here in this book."
"It's a prose poem, as a matter of fact. It illustrates the point I was
making earlier. The persona to whom the piece is addressed believes he can
access the dead via his DIY technology. But the "entities" he contacts are
actually multi-dimensional clones of his selves, whose existence are as
transitory as his own...That's one working hypothesis any way..."
"OK, I've heard enough. Take him back to the Bunker..."
____________________________________________________________
Actually, it's a very good question, Jim, which deserves a proper answer. I
did write an essay 'Poetics of the Paranormal?' a few years ago, but that
only scraped the surface, and now I ought to develop it in much greater
depth. Currently all my books are boxed up to go into storage but later
this year I may attempt to explicate in more detail in some kind of
theoretical statement. I guess my relationship with the occult veers from
passionate romance to divorce on grounds of mental cruelty...
On 3/4/12 01:45, "Jim Andrews" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> I listened to Thanatron, Paul.
>
> I remain sincerely skeptical about the occult. But I appreciate that I do
> not have to be a card carrying occultist to appreciate your work. I can
> interpret it variously, metaphorically.
>
> What is your relation with the occult, Paul? Are you a believer? What's up
> with that?
>
> In my fave work of yours, the occult element is not really crucial. The
> reader can take it or leave it or deal with it variously.
>
> ja
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Green" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 2:16 PM
> Subject: Re: Welcome to the Gestaltbunker
>
>
> Thanks, Jim for your encouraging words. There are some recurrent themes,
> I
> think, in the book overall despite the stylistic changes. The last and
> quite recent piece, 'Thanatron" is certainly a direction to the dead
> end,
> in a different context. Have you heard the audio version at:
>
> http://www.culturecourt.com/Audio/CCaudio20.htm
>
> I recorded the vocal for this at the blind college in Hereford where I
> used
> to work and Lawrence Russell did the soundscaping in his home studio at
> Willis Point.
>
> The UBC station (CYVR as it was then) was actually well equipped for the
> time - better than downtown CBC as it had only just been built. We used to
> record my CBC R&B show there until the CBC technicians objected. CYVR
> also
> recorded a whole series of readings by Canadian poets from the West Coast
> -"Writers in Action" - I don't know what became of the tapes.
>
> Last time I was in Vancouver (2006) I took a brief peek at East Hastings
> and didn't hang about either...
>
> You can get the book via the Book Depository - UK based but they do free
> shipping to Canada:
>
> http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/Gestaltbunker-Paul-Green/9781848611931
>
> or via Amazon.com or .ca or Barnes & Noble, apparently.
>
>
> On 2/4/12 20:15, "Jim Andrews" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> For folks on the list, if you haven't heard Paul's Directions to the Dead
>> End, it's toward the bottom of the page at
>> http://www.culturecourt.com/Audio/PG/PGaudio.htm . Audio poetry from 1971
>> that has aged very well indeed. This is also true of his audio poem The
>> Gestalt Bunker, which is also at the above URL. Truly outstanding work,
>> Paul. The timbres/textures of these works are distinctive. So is the
>> production, for the time, and also Paul's performative voice. But, also,
>> the
>> content is brilliant. In The Gestalt Bunker, also from the early 70's,
>> the
>> speaker's situation in his bunker will be familiar to all experimental
>> writers of what's left of the avant garde. It's also quite prescient as
>> media poetry and in its concentration on the involvement of writing in
>> communications technology. In that piece and also in Directions to the
>> Dead
>> End, the ecological concerns are also, well, solidly futuristic and sound
>> ominously relevant then as now. And, interestingly, these pieces don't
>> actually represent literary or artistic dead ends. Instead, they are
>> landmark works for generations of media poets who follow.
>>
>> I didn't know that the original recordings for those two pieces were done
>> at
>> UBC student radio, Paul. CITR-FM? There's also the community station
>> CFRO-FM. Which, by the way, I saw a couple of weeks ago. My poet friend
>> Kedrick James announced a gig as happening at an address that turned out
>> to
>> be beside CFRO on East Hastings St. Unfortunately, the building at the
>> gig's
>> address had been totally demolished. Quite a while ago. And it's not a
>> corner you want to hang around at, really. It's in the most squalid,
>> drug-addled part of downtown Vancouver. Turns out that while Kedrick gave
>> me
>> the address as 115a East Hastings, it was supposed to be 1115a. These
>> were
>> directions to a dead end, certainly.
>>
>> Pretty amazing that you did those recordings in real time without
>> multi-tracking.
>>
>> The texts in the audio pieces I've linked to are utterly different from
>> the
>> texts in your new book, aren't they? Or at least that's true of
>> 'Directions'. But your below note about the genesis of 'Directions' gives
>> some indication of part of the reason, perhaps, why it has aged quite
>> well.
>>
>> Best wishes with The Gestaltbunker - Selected Poems 1965-2010, Paul. I
>> will
>> try to get myself a copy.
>>
>> ja
>> http://vispo.com
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Paul Green" <[log in to unmask]>
>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Monday, April 02, 2012 10:05 AM
>> Subject: Re: Welcome to the Gestaltbunker
>>
>>
>> Thanks, Jim. I think the connections and inter-textual patterns around
>> 'Directions' have evolved over time, as I've written new work and/or
>> revised earlier work and finally selected and sequenced it for the book.
>>
>> 'Directions' began as a probe into notions of cosmology and expanded
>> consciousness, focussed by a phrase in an review of Kubrick's 2001,
>> which
>> I
>> hadn't even seen at that stage, although I knew the Arthur Clarke story,
>> 'The Sentinel" which was the basis for the film script. I was also
>> heavily
>> immersed in Andre Breton, particularly the Second Manifesto of 1930 where
>> he
>> posits a kind of aleph/omega point where all perceptions fuse, 'a certain
>> point of the mind ... in which the real and imagined, past and future
>> cease
>> to be perceived as contradictions.' So the poem becomes a voyage -
>> sometimes bizarre and absurdist - towards this vanishing point in the
>> void -
>> where the mystery remains unresolved.
>>
>> There's a similar voyage pattern in 'Timeship' whereas Gestaltbunker,
>> which
>> I think is more timely than ever - at least that's what people tell me -
>> relates more explicitly to political and ecological issues, as do
>> 'Oxidised
>> Desert' and 'Destruction of Large Cities'.
>>
>> That's a rather fuzzy answer, I'm afraid. Oddly enough, I made Facebook
>> contact today, after many years, with Gyorgy Porkolab, who was involved
>> in
>> the original 'Directions' and 'Gestaltbunker' recordings in the UBC
>> student
>> radio studios. It was all done without multi-tracking in real time - and
>> in
>> analogue, of course. I think we were inspired to use feedback by the
>> Who...
>>
>> Thanks again for your interest in my work
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> On 2/4/12 11:38, "Jim Andrews" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Paul,
>>>
>>> Fantastic. Congratulations.
>>>
>>> I have listened to your audio poem Directions to the Dead End many many
>>> times. So I'm curious what the relation of that poem/object is to the
>>> chapter of poems in your book with that title.
>>>
>>> ja
>>> http://vispo.com
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Paul Green" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Friday, March 30, 2012 2:56 AM
>>> Subject: Welcome to the Gestaltbunker
>>>
>>>
>>> Brother Paul is happy to announce his latest publication The
>>> Gestaltbunker -
>>> Selected Poems 1965-2010:
>>>
>>> http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/catalog/2012/green.html
>>>
>>> The Gestaltbunker encapsulates the range of Paul A Green's output. His
>>> briefings on nuclear apocalypse, global melt-down and the excesses of
>>> media
>>> landscaping are transmitted through surreal inscapes and an intensifying
>>> torsion of language. He moves from mid-life probes into the basement of
>>> a
>>> psyche to domestic praise-songs and celebrations. The riddles of time
>>> and
>>> consciousness continue to pre-occupy him, whether encountered through
>>> magick, music or the mysteries of the city.
>>>
>>> ³Thrillingly dystopian...² John Goodby
>>>
>>> ³From his cloister, Brother Paul emerges, jazzed & weaponized. As raw as
>>> a
>>> Delta Blues in a sharecropper's shack, yet as sinister as Flash Gordon
>>> playing Faustus on the Mongo fault-line abyss.² Lawrence Russell
>>>
>>> "His interests have coaxed him deep into the occult, surrealism and pop
>>> culture; his investigations meld and come into outstanding idiom...² J.
>>> Michael Yates.
>>>
>>> Available directly from Shearsman, as above, or via Amazon in UK and
>>> North
>>> America.
>>>
>>> A video is in production and there will be launch readings in London and
>>> elsewhere later in the year. Meanwhile, the Bunker is open for
>>> inspection.
>>>
>>> Some of you may have had this information via other channels. If so,
>>> apologies for flyposting your screens
|
