1) If architecture is merely sculpture that bodies can enter, then is poetry
merely prose into which certain tunnelings and orifices have been chiseled?
If this definition is valid, would you qualify it as an effective
materialist definition of poetry? Write your answer in block letters.
2) Assuming that there is something to the above definiton, consider the
following: Recent research into Egyptian pyramids has found that the famous
and heretofore puzzling secret passageways that rise from the burial
chambers toward openings at the outer walls are in fact precisely pointed
(when the movement of the heavens through time is factored into astronomical
calculations) at key constellations, especially Orion. What seems clear is
that these tunnels were intended as a sort of launching ramp through which
to shoot the mummy-spirit to the stars. Without losing the materialist
definiton we have set forth above, would you say that poetry has a like
purpose, in any way? If not, would you say that there are particular
objective historical forces (beginning with 17th century English copyright
laws) that have progressively accreted to seal over the launch-openings with
a kind of viscous substance? Reflect, please, avoiding vagueness.
3) If architectural theory has any utility for innovative poets today
(careful: this is still an open question! [see, for example, Peter Riley's
book _Architectural Analogies in Poetry: Comparing Apples and Oranges in
Elysium_ ]), then what happens when Steve McCaffery, for example, writes a
poem under the influence of Vitruvius and Alberti, both of whom insist that
the ordering and structure of their respective theoretical treatises
perfectly match that which they prescribe for building ("theory as art
work")? Does the poem then take shape *around* the ideological Poet-space
from which it is secreted, or does the poem instantiate itself as a kind of
discrete space or chamber, like a hexagonal cell in a honeycomb, built by a
bee who is, for all intents and purposes, blissfully blind to his Queen?
Answer, please, in 300 words, via the technique of Automatic Writing..
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