After the conference and all the jawing on about poetics I want you to think about the conversations you found memorable. The inspiring and the insipid, the boasting and the boring, the gut busting guffaws and the disheartening gaffs. If you remember it, it is important.
What if the brain uses the same regions to create a character’s drawl as it does to bombard someone with paranoid ranting? The key difference between the auditory hallucinations of reading and schizophrenia would be in the ability to differentiate the source and reality of the voices. Schizophrenic hallucinations with their paranoia, fear, and derision may be coming from another part of the brain and passing through the synaptic voice box. Malfunctioning parts of the brain may be pumping the unfiltered chemicals and electricity like a fire hose through the same region or regions used to create voice from writing. So when someone with schizophrenia reads are they occupying the part of the brain that gives voice to the paranoia and using it to create the written voice?
Got this email from Writer's Digest selling critique services with the heading "Polish Your Writing with a Professional Critique from Writer's Digest!" I thought they had mispelled "Publish" or that it was making fun of the Poles. I sent them an email asking if the Polish joke was intentional. This was while I still thought it was a mistake. Laura from customer service wrote back, "Are you kidding?" Here is Laura's phone message on my voicemail. The greeting for my phone says "Hello you've reached David Cooke The Lawn Guy..."
David Cooke starts the discussion which will continue at The Last Monday Reading Series. It begins at 7pm at Influence Music Hall 134 SE 3rd Street in Hillsboro. Using the analogy of a Necker’s Cube Cooke illuminates the dynamic use of language by poets. Readers are often turned off to poetry because of the perception that poets are creating a code that needs to be broken. That poets load their poems up with obscurity and ambiguity to make it a poem. Poems are cryptic, dense, and obtuse on purpose to confound readers and make the poet seem more intelligent. Cooke posits that some of this confusion is a result of attempts to harness the ambiguity of language. Ambiguity being the primary and defining characteristic of poetry. “Often poetry is like Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. I believe poets do not do this on purpose. They don’t write poetry as if it is a page out of Where’s Waldo or the hidden pictures of Highlights Magazine.”
With the advent of niche marketing, localvore dining, targeted missile strikes it is nice to see the universal can still find a haven. This haven is a tight spot to maneuver especially within the confines of a poem but the strange breed of writers known as poets relish this confinement. It is also surprising to see a movement that prides itself on striking emotional chords through a strict elimination of specific time, place, brand come out of Portland. Portlanders are a people who treasure the boutique, the weird, the personal, the excessively local. Portland’s allegiance to Stumptown over Starbucks, to food carts over McDonalds, Jumblelaya vintage dresses over Anthropologie, Powell’s over Borders, even Les Schwab over BF Goodrich, or HUB over Bud is rooted in the adage: Think globally act locally. The poetic movement Inflectionism takes up the thinking end of this saying.
Again. Yes again! The Guttery reads at Blackbird Wine Shop again. The sequel that reaffirms the rich, heart wrenching, thought provoking, vivid writing read by the very authors of the very words. Words published, words awarded, words paid for, words you get to hear for free while enjoying some of the world's finest wines. Come see The Guttery writers at the reading that started it all. David Cooke, Bruce Greene, John Milliken , and A. Molotkov will read from their work.
After a very flattering introduction by Joan Maiers, David Cooke read to a capacity crowd at Moonstruck Chocolates in Lake Oswego. The reading with Christopher Wicks, Nathan Warner, and Dan Raphael, and music by guitarist Debra Giannini wowed the crowd of enthusiasts.
Looks are more powerful than words. Looking is primal, and primary and without the Male Gaze generations of children would not have been born. It is central to bridging the distance between sexual partners.
