i'd like to now present a different way of thinking of a poem.
normally, whether it's a text or a video or whatever, we read it or view it
and there it is, entire.
instead, consider a poem, or a type of poem, as a combinatorium of
possibilities only some of which we will actually read or view.
and while we will only read or view a few of the possibilities, we are asked
to conceive of the poem not as those few we read or view, but are asked to
conceive of the poem as the entire space of possibilities the form of the
poem supports.
i'm thinking of the stir fry poems at http://vispo.com/StirFryTexts . this
project has been ongoing since 1999.
i don't make a habit of dredging up work from the past, but i just finished
watching a show from closertotruth.com on string theory and multiple
universes. as is noted in the show, in a sense, the term 'multiple
universes' is contradictory in that, normally, we think of the 'universe' as
'the entirety of all that is', so that the notion precludes the possibility
of 'multiple universes'.
the idea of considering a stir fry as the entirety of possibilities it
supports, rather than just the part you observe directly, is simply to call
the poem the whole thing, the whole space of possibilities it can generate.
one does not have to read all the possibilities to get a sense of that
space.
ja
http://vispo.com
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