Aram Saroyan and the Art of the One-Word Poem
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
This poetry is not a worthwhile effort, and the analysis of it is even less worthwhile.
Maybe Aram Saroyan can be praised for convincing people that his poetry is meaningful and deep, when in reality he probably just spent 2 minutes writing "crickets" however many times on the page while laughing to himself that people were going to pay money for it.
But a lot of the criticism here seem to think he is somehow cheating the reader with these minimalist word-games. As if he is pretending there is a deeper meaning than there really is and therefore deceiving the reader. If someone enjoys the poetry it must surely be because they have been tricked!
The unstated assumption is that poetry is supposed to be serious, difficult to write, and having many layers of complex meaning, requiring hard work to decipher, and above all, not allowed to be fun.
Another streak is people getting angry at what they think other people might hypothetically think about them if they don't enjoy the poetry.
Where does this come from? I don't know. Possibly bad high-school English teachers. But I can't see how Saroyan is to blame for thees weird notions. Poetry have always been a vehicle for jokes and memes and koans and absurdist humor. Printed poetry opened the possibly of having fun with the visual presentation of the text.
But it is amazing to me that anyone can look at "cricket" and get offended. "There is a joke in the poetry! I have been cheated! I demand my money back!"
One day another of Saroyan’s friends, the poet Ted Berrigan, got a look at his latest one-word poem, eyeye, on a sheet of typewriter paper. “He said, ‘What the fuck is this?’” Saroyan recalls, “which I thought was a promising response.”
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/68913/you-call-tha...
A poem should not mean
But be.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/17168/...
In a world that's meaningless and mostly empty there's time to waste reading and writing and discussing nonsense poetry until it starts to make sense. I think you're right that Saroyan found the responses to his poetry more interesting than the work itself. The Reagan administration went in trying to dismantle the National Endowment for the Arts, citing Saroyan among others, wound up eventually inflating the budget, and was rewarded with Immersion (Piss Christ). I think it's funny too.
https://www.arts.gov/open-government/national-endowment-arts...
So what if he was high and having a laugh? It exists, it's been read, noticed, observed, considered. "You could feel him in a room at his typewriter, like a monkey or a cat with a little extra brainpower." It does not have to be liked, it can be "banal".
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/books/review/Hell-t.html?...
As for the analysis, you may have overlooked some of the more nuanced conclusions. The North American field cricket chirps 33 times a minute. Big Ben, six-o'clock, 1924. Tic-tac (1969). Obviously there's is an oversight in the claim a clock only makes one sound Tick Tick. A pendulum clock swinging to two distinct sides will in fact make two sounds. And extending lighght to L-I-G-H-G-H-T is absurd, this is visual art and it's not the same at all once that's done.
wat *crickets*I think if you care about poetry you would enjoy both Shakespeare and minimalism. Come on, the "crickets" poem is hilarious!
Here is a minimalist poem called "Swans seen through tears" (by S. Grotrian):
0 0
2 0
0 2
0 0
(I'm also fond of the minimalist short story genre. Hemingway wrote a famous one in just six words.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_sale:_baby_shoes,_never_wo...
In return, something almost as short and sad https://theoatmeal.com/comics/oracle
It's like saying we are in a decline because we went from Caspar David Friedrich to Banksy.
It's perfectly valid not to like it even want to understand someone's work, as art is always subjective imho, but it feels weird to try to grade it on a scale.
I generally prefer Greek sculpture as an art form, and will probably walk by 90% of any modern art museum without stopping. But that doesn't mean I won't be moved by some of the exhibitions, possibly even more than by the "Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer" or the "Nike of Samothrake".
Suppose you find a scrap of paper with the text (which I'm sure you haven't seen before):
I withdraw and wait.
This is time that doesn't get lost:
each minute becomes future.
I am an ocean of waiting,
in a waterproof envelope of now. (*)
lighght
(*) Source: Eb (English: Ebb) by M. Vasalis, in a loose translation.
[1] https://cdn8.openculture.com/2018/08/22215450/sciencde-and-c...
[2] https://painting-planet.com/images/9/image293.jpg
Painting [1] demonstrates a mastery of light, shadow, and color. It's complicated. It's full of detail. Anybody who walked by this in an art gallery would surely think, "This person is a great artist" and move on. Painting [2] will most likely be called a great painting by most people, but that's because most people have seen it at some point and know who painted it. This person has a massive reputation as one of the greatest artists of all time. People who walk by this in a museum will stop and snap a picture and take a minute to really look at it because, hey, this guy is super famous, so he must be great.
But [2] is clearly painted much faster than [1] and has far less fine detail. A person who doesn't know anything about painting [2] or the artist behind it will probably say something like "anyone could do this. Even I could do that"--but it was a revolutionary style at the time because people didn't do it. [1] was merely fitting into a more established framework of art and was far less likely to blow minds, even though a typical person without foreknowledge might be more likely to compliment [1] on being a "good" painting than [2].
And many might know this, but [1] was painted by the artist when he was a child. [2] was painted by him as a full-fledged artist as an adult. The reduction in realism and complexity in favor of abstraction was an intentional progression for his work.
These simple poems don't need to be as complex as Shakespeare. They're not trying to be. They serve an entirely different purpose. People are still writing long, epic poems even today, but it's a vastly explored field of art and demand for new material in that style is quite low. Not every one word poem is going to be mind-blowing, but some definitely grab some interest. There are plenty of people, even well-read people, who find Shakespeare tedious. There are people who think a page with nothing but "cricket" is fluff. Both kinds of art can coexist.
But do they? In your typical museum, what kind of art do you find in the post-WWII section? I've been to a few, and to say it doesn't compare to what came before doesn't even begin to describe it.
As for the "mind-blowing" quality - you can only turn a urinal on its side so many times before the trick gets old. Where do you go after that, after you've heroically broken with all the accumulated knowledge of past artists in whatever is the opposite of "standing on the shoulders of giants"?
I've been to museums full of nothing but plain black swabs across a canvas. I've also been to ones with nothing but realistic scenery paintings made within the past 20 years.
Eventually, there'll be another revolutionary trend in art and people will yearn for the minimalist abstract stuff that fills museums today.
I fervently hope so. Call me uncultured, but I prefer art that has aesthetic value.
The natural succession to the classic "Academic" style is not cubism, its Hollywood.
Zdzislaw Beksinski: https://culture.pl/en/gallery/selected-paintings-by-zdzislaw...
Frederic Edwin Church: http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=421
H. R. Giger: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-nightmarish-wo...
Frank Frazetta: http://www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist=693
Hokusai: https://www.wikiart.org/en/katsushika-hokusai/
Would you say photography has replaced any of them? Have you ever seen photographs that look like their work? I have not. There is more to art than a binary choice between photorealism and modern art (or whatever that collection of styles could be called).
An artist, even a realist one, does far more than emulate a camera.
The most prestigious genre in the academic style was the historical painting. My claim is the movie industry and perhaps now computer games are catering to this demand for immersive historical representation and myths.
A realistic illustration style have survived for long in comic books and sf/fantasy book covers. Here realism is an important tool to make the fantastic feel real. But as the capabilities for CGI advances, Hollywood is taking over here: Today marvel movies outsells marvel comics many times. The market speaks clearly, for better or worse.
To be clear, by realism I mean a style which strives for realism in anatomy, perspective, lighting and so on. Hokusai or Bekinski are not realist any more than say van Gogh. But Frazetta clearly is building on a realist style reminiscent of the historical painting, just with more monsters.
James Gillick paints today, using traditional techniques. Does he count? He's been in a few galleries.
https://www.gillick-artist.com/exhibitions/past-exhibitions....
or maybe the genitals of giants, reflecting how sometimes there's a groundbreaking idea, but the following up on that idea looks an awful lot like jerking around in its shadow
I think the problem is forcing the label "poem" onto these utterances, probably because of the historically acquired status that it brings along. As such, I say: it requires a lot of goodwill from the reader.
(the opposite would be an infinite number —easily done via implied cyclicity[1]— of single-grapheme poems, which probably requires an asiatic script)
[1] are there any mobius-strip spin 1/2 fermionic stories? they'd reconnect, but with a twist, so every other reading has a different interpretation...
Regarding your idea of fermionic stories, I think King's Dark Tower series might be close, though I may be misunderstanding the concept...
Meaning that buffalo in Buffalo whom other buffalo in Buffalo do buffalo, also buffalo other buffalo in Buffalo that still other buffalo in Buffalo do buffalo.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Oh hey, I am more talented than I thought! Now let me write a 4000-words column explaining why you obtuse boors cannot even begin to comprehend the depth of this deceptively simple thought.
If this story doesn't gratify your curiosity, there are many others to read. If you run out on the front page, click 'past' at the top to get an endless supply.
And I strongly agree with blackbear_, but I also like this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418408 (I'm assuming the claim about the picture's authors is true, but it has much precedent eg. in L. S. Lowry).
I've raged with ill manners here against fawning over art, accepting it because it is art so the courage to challenge its worth disappears (and silent downvotes appear). I'm not against art, I'm against unthinking conformity. A lot of 'art' just isn't - anyone care to debate? (Also of note https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24418220)
Edit: and within 30 seconds a downvote.