Discussion → Minimalism & irreality

• 
  Ann Bogle

  Sep 12, 03:15pm

  
  

  I like minimalism. I read that minimalists themselves don't like that term for it. I like whatever-it-is partly because it represents a school. I like associative schools. Black Mountain. New York. L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E. Objectivists. Imagists. Then there's that little school: was it named? whose members were Robert Graves and Laura Riding Jackson.

  On the other hand, I used the word "irreality," not in a literary context, at the bluegrass festival and turned a head. I like that now, reading at Fictionaut while listening to bluegrass music.

  I submitted three dreams to Annandale Dream Gazette. I submitted two dreams about actual poets and one about the W.A.S.P.s. My dreams are at least basically realist. The three dreams were instantly published. Then (to be somewhat minimalist about it) I didn't want to submit more dreams until Lynn Behrendt, who publishes the Gazette, visited my blog and asked me to submit this dream:

  "I dreamt that Ron Silliman ended an entry at his blog with the words: 'my weird.'" It was his, like "my bad."

  Is "image-drenched" at the edge? Do you mean images provided by the writer or spawned by the context? What about aural?

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• 
  Carol Novack

  Sep 12, 07:50pm

  
  

  now really, ann, you know that mhr's about metaphor and maximalism and shuns what people normally refer to as "realism." leave that to other journals, particularly popular online reviews that publish lots of (or exclusively) flash fiction. they're proliferating like orderly beds of wildflowers. flash and minimalism, usual flying united, adopt easily to the online medium.

  image-drenched ... yeah, on the edge, spawned by the writing process, the vision of the author in a trance. well, something like that. and yes, the aural is so important - musical, poetical, rhythmical. does flow/rhythm dictate content or vice verse? what do you think?

  please don't all hit me with hard hats! i'm re-constructing. :-)

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• 
  Ann Bogle

  Sep 12, 09:56pm

  
  

  In answer to your question: "does flow/rhythm dictate content or vice versa?" Sometimes I hear the sound I'd like in a part of a sentence then search for a word like it and put it in then fix the sentence to see if the word belongs and if it changes anything larger and if it works, but I wouldn't say sound "dictates" so much as suggests. In XAM, I wrote purely for sound. The images came from sounds not based on rhythm and not at all revised except one passage. It was one of those experiences: the source wasn't my thinking mind, though I was living normal days.

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• 
  Rich Haber

  Sep 12, 10:27pm

  
  

  when irregardless entered the dictionary, i stopped paying attention. then, i found this gem, in a speech by Eugene Debs:

  Well, for myself, I never had much faith in leaders. I am willing to be charged with almost anything, rather than to be charged with being a leader. I am suspicious of leaders, especially of the intellectual variety. Give me the rank and file every day in the week. If you go to the city of Washington, and you examine the pages of the Congressional Directory, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of Congress, and misrepresentatives of the masses--you will find that almost all of them claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

  there's this wondrous sci-fi novelette by... um, fritz lieber, i think, More Than Human, in which a kid is adopted by a tough-guy prize fighter, and one of the things the tough guy does, to stay tough, is write. like working out at the gym for the mind.

  while "does flow/rhythm dictate content or vice verse?" is an interesting question, i'm glad to be free irregardless of the answer. ants or. and sir. ann sur, go south, young woman. i'm donne.

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• 
  Ann Bogle

  Sep 13, 10:32am

  
  

  I was south then back then south then back. Had I married M.S. and taken his last name my name would have been Ann Semora. We didn't get married, though, because the hard work was already over: why bother? I think that's how he looked at it: his mother buried (a good woman). He set out for Wichita. Then K.C. Then Oklahoma. Then Ventura. Now Oregon. The redhaired green-eyed young mother he married was 18 years younger and wouldn't settle down or in, and he was dubbed "the stable one." Then the divorce. Then the phonecall to explain all this. The call came in the day, the week, the month, the year that I was to marry someone else, who was standing in the kitchen when the phone rang, in town to meet my mother. That didn't happen the hard work upon us service better un. Next Semora married a British gal his age. They are happy living in Oregon. Jane, I think: a better name for him than Ann or Ann Semora. Funny for a writer, it might not have worked as well as Shepard has for Karen in the end.

  I have his express permission to write about it.

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