Waking meets Mother Poetry

Five people requested books, and one more after I published this second message. I had more to say, of course, and it was not a "selling" of the free book. I appended the first message with some rewrite and expansion. I sent the message, though, because some of those asking for the book, or thanking me for it, seemed poised to jump into conversation about it. I said it'd be a good idea to do that within the group conversation.
So, here we go again...

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----- Original Message -----

From: "Gene Fowler" <acorioso@earthlink.net>

To: "Mother Poetry" <motherofallpoetrygroups@yahoogroups.com>

Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 3:07 PM

Subject: Follow-up on Waking (or Walking) mailing

> Copies of "Waking the Poet" are in the mail....
>
> If you're getting one, there's a possibility that, when you read in it,
> you might find questions cascading through your readings.... It's best
> to wrestle with them. That's particularly true of a book on craft,
> because you build your own crafts, anyway. Sometimes, though, we
> want to ask the author who wrote this darned opaque thing. I've
> written even dead authors (hoping for chaneling?). That worked pretty
> well, because there was nobody but me to handle the whole dialog.
> Call it polyphonic wrestling. But I'm alive and at Mother Poetry's
> round table, here.
>
> Anyway, you few have my email address and you know how easy it
> is to pull over a keyboard while you're still "deep" in thought.... So,
> messages could escape into the phone lines....
>
> A suggestion. Send the message through Mother Poetry's digest. (I
> don't get to the forum itself, because Yahoo groups are behind a
> toll-gate where a profile is collected and, about a year ago, Yahoo
> fuzzed up their opt-out on "mailings". I don't go in there.) We might
> as well all watch what might turn out to be a really weird FAQ grow.
> And anybody else can follow along ...if curious.
>
> You don't have to start from a question, just from a moment in which
> you switched from reading to thinking and imagining.... And it
> won't stay a bundle of two-ways, either. Or we c'n hope. People
> who've no idea what we're talking about, but see something to kick
> off from can weave fibers into the thread....
>
> After I sign this, I'll repeat the closet-cleaning maneuver (book
> offer)
> message I sent to the Digest a few days ago. Anybody who'd like to see
> the book can just send me an address I can mail it to. If you'd like to
> look over, or even read, the book but don't want engagement (and to be,
> then, a masked stranger in any talk here), you will find (in the
> notice) the links to an online copy you can read and a zip copy you can

> download for your personal library. These copies are for a browser and

> there is even a link to a little help in putting highlighting, underlining, boldface
> and pop-up "marginalia" (and live cross-referencing) into that downloaded

> copy...,
>
> Gene
> (April of ret. @ddress is m'wyf)
> Gene Fowler
> acorioso@earthlink.net
> Poetry, Archives:
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/fires.htm
> 21st century e-typewriter (homemade):
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/ew_main.htm
> _____________________________________
> April of the ret. @ddress is my wife...
>
> ...and this is husband Gene Fowler rescuing (maybe) the last 150
> or so copies of the 1000 printed in 1980 or 81 not so much from
> our closet as from (later) the Berkeley landfill. Or maybe, in this
> new century, from the recycle (paper, not books) bin....
>
> The book is titled "Waking the Poet" and I'll get to what and why
> in a moment. Somebody, possibly a reviewer, though I know of
> only the title he or she gave the book: "Walking the poet". I'm
> sure it was intended as a put-down. But I like it....
>
> It's a poet musing about poetics ("the makings") up by a blackboard,
> so it's presumably a lecture series and the book falls into "hours"
> rather than "chapters". The blackboard is used. And it's all a how-to,
> sort of, for poets.... Not scanning, metrics and rhyme (schemes)....
> It has to do with underlying crafts. These lie somewhere between
> the usually looked at crafts and your sensibilities down in your
> cognitive innards.
>
> How do you get a copy? Email me a mule-mail address I can
> send it to. Yup, it's free. Not even postage and handling. I'm not
> collecting addresses. I'll address the envelope for it and burn the
> address. I'm doing nothing but scattering books.
>
> I'll enclose a brochure about the book that was for selling it, but
> I include it now because it includes some mini-essays that will help
> you into the book, stairs up to the porch-so to speak. If somebody
> sends the old cover price, in a sleepy moment, I'll drop it into the
> envelopes-and-stamps basket, but there's enough in there.
>
> I'll talk about how it's a how-to in a minute. First, here's the Table
> of Contents...
>
> FOREWORD
>    The Nature of the "Deeper Crafts"
>
> FIRST SESSION
>    Introduction to the Course
>
> FIRST HOUR
>    Waking the Poet: What it Means
>
> SECOND HOUR
>    Tale of the Experience-Maker
>
> SECOND SESSION
>    MELOPOEIA or melody making
>
> THIRD HOUR
>    The Eye Assists the Ear: reading music
>
> FOURTH HOUR
>    A Poet's Third Lyre: The Phonemic Instrument
>
> THIRD SESSION
>    PHANOPOEIA or Sense-Making
>
> FIFTH HOUR
>    The Art of Sense-Making
>
> SIXTH HOUR
>    A Poet's Fourth Lyre: The Sensemic Instrument
>
> FOURTH SESSION
>    LOGOPOEIA or Revelation-Making
>
> SEVENTH HOUR
>    The Tapestry of Words
>
> EIGHTH HOUR
>    A Poet's Fifth Lyre: The Revelemic Instrument
>
> FIFTH SESSION
>    ONOMATOPOEIA or Gname-Making
>
> NINTH HOUR
>    The Art of Phrasing
>
> TENTH HOUR
>    A Poet's Sixth Lyre: The Rhythmemic Instrument
>
> AFTERWORD
>    The Mastery of the Deeper Crafts
>
> From the early sixties, my favorite how-to book (from my taken-on
> poet's viewpoint) was Kimon Nicolaides "The Natural Way to Draw".
> This was partly because all the best sources I was finding and digging
> live mind out of tended not to be from poets. Nicoleides, Sergei
> Eisenstein, a scatter of people who, essentially, went deeper than
> their own craft.... I guess the book I obtained was the 1941, though

> there was a 1969 printing I didn't know about. The 1975 paperback I
> came across in 1979, about the time I was dreaming up what I'd
> say to *listening* poets, if asked, had on the cover, from the
> Whole Earth Catalog, "...not only the best how-to book on
> drawing, it is the best how-to book we've seen on any subject.".
> Amen.
>
> What made this my top-of-the-list, and what likely influenced first me
> and then "Waking" (or "Walking"), was this sort of thing, said again
> and again throughout the book. "Learning how to draw is really a

> matter of learning to see - to see correctly - and that means a good

> deal more than merely looking with the eye. The sort of 'seeing' I

> mean is an observation that utilizes as many of the five senses as can

> reach through the eye at one time." He goes on into a paragraph with
> fragments like "...you know sandpaper by the way it feels when you
> touch it..." and, so, on into the how-to that seems to have blow away
> more minds than mine.
>
> So, maybe, in paraphrase, I can say, "learning to write poetry is
> really a matter of learning to hear...". And, of course, we don't close it
> down to the five "extracted" senses, or six or eight, taking the proprietary
> senses into that model. We deal with the complex intertwining senses,
> such as the sense of time and the companion sense of timing, the dozen
> or more senses for handling spatial goings-on. But the point to be made
> is the same.
>
> I wrote in that brochure, "The subtlety of these crafts is apparent if
> you think about how poets even became aware of them. Take

> melopoeia, or melody-making. A master poet, one of the naturals,

> doesn't just jury-rig a rhyme scheme, but controls the whole texture

> of sound in a passage that is, indeed, poetry. And the human ear

> responds to this control and the impacts it causes. We can hear it in

> operation. Poets heard it and looked for a term to apply to the poet

> who produced it. And the poets recognized that the craft wasn't in

> the master's voice, wasn't something originating in the poet's speech,

> but was from farther back, originating in the poet's hearing ... so they

> said of this fortunate poet that he or she 'has a good ear.' It's a craft

> of hearing that, then, reappears in the poet's speaking or singing."
>
> You don't have to wait for the book to arrive to read it. I have it in
> a hyperperfect-bound edition in my archive. You can read it there or
> download a copy. You can print a copy to carry around, of course,
> since it exists in your browser. But, the paper copy has "look and
> feel" qualities that matter. I restrained myself from changing anything
> twenty-three years later. You'll sense why as you read. Here's the
> link:
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/Waking_TOC.htm
>
> The download copy is on the page from which you get that TOC:
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/fires.htm#waking
>
> Oh, in that brochure I have pictures of a couple pages I've marked up
> as somebody with a copy for his or her personal reading might. In these
> two instances the marking up is pretty much to pull out and label
> mini-essays within the flow of speech....
>
> I do write in books, mark them up, overlay whole systems of
> highlighting in multiple readings. And I've worked on being able to

> do that with the hyperperfect bound books (the binding is a system

> of links, without glue and wraparound of the perfect-bound paper

> books). On the table in my archive with my hyperperfect-bound

> books of poems, I have a sample page with these markings. Above

> the page I explain what's going on. Below it, I have a how-to "getting

> started" essay. The page is fun. Highlighting, underlining, pop-up

> marginalia. To see the "naked" page, hit "previous page" (or "next

> page") then on that page hit "next page" (or "previous page"). Then

> two clicks of [Back] and you're at the marked up one. If you

> download "Waking the Poet" , you can mark it up, insert your notes
> or links.... Coffee stains, you can't do. Or you could insert an image,
> of course ...of a coffee stain?
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~acorioso/persLibSample.htm
>
> Well, that's the whole pitch, or two pitches.
>
> Gene
>
>