#poetics problem set 1

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Photo Solution to Poetics Problem Set #1 by Shana Nys Dambrot

"they are images about the perfect structure cohering the chaos of life downtown into something beautiful"

1. In Camera

2. Main Street DTLA

3. Expo Line

4. Five o'clock Shadows

5. Metro Rabbi

6. Love

7. Daylight Savings

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Our Happy Hour by Trista Hurley-Waxali

Unquantified passionate afternoons,

toxic levels of expectations.

Kissing me before he leaves,

as he heads home to his wife.

Even as I am hooked, it's 

blankets of shame I sleep with.

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Stable's Globe by Connor Scott

Keep seas of light aflame and flowing inside

What a trickling river down my spine

The cracks in the walls, dripping water like hot gold

And it’s burning you; the air is burning you

And it must be burdening you; a bothersome bit in your head

And storms are coming

They’re burning the clouds

They’re always burdening the clouds

But it must be sweet when it cools

Like honey with the air of rain on it

There’s a taste of dust in the air

Buts it’s new and it’s fresh and it’s falling form your hair

And when wars declared on her mind

And when its sounds ensue

And the bombs go off in your head

Do you know where they land?

Do you know what they see when their explosions light their way?

Like cannon fire in space, relentless moving forward

And landmarks they never go by.

             -We’re all made of this dust that could have come from her-

  At her horse of hot gold and lead

Spots and gentle bursts of light

But they were still so bright

She watched brawls of war go by

They would have raised anyone’s hair so high 

On her charger by globes of such bright light

In that space it’s all them

No. Why? No, it’s not a dawn

No there’s no dawn

Because she’s past that now

You could map out yourself

Insulting it would be to yourself

And your mind

The terrains always crashing, going wherever

Giving out the floor whenever it wants

Somewhere is always where it’s going

It’s getting too much heat

See that necklace in your hands

It’s getting too hot for it to be composed

Its losing its composure, because its hot gold

It’s melting, hot gold.

  Timing, her arts timing

She’s all timing, and it’s startling because timing can’t be anywhere

It’s startling to watch

It’s startling to imagine her mind

It’s like a night, it’s all night where you can see clear through fields

And everything’s washed over like stones

They’re white and they’re black

And everything’s still grey

Subtext and reality get all mixed when I’m talking with her; I’m talking with you

And she knows everyone she meets so well

I can see the gold in the mist and fog

It’s on the city walls

It’s steaming up the windows it’s so hot

The gold is burning

              And I have a better chance of shooting a cannon into the Indian Ocean from where I stand and hitting a wild flower held in the mouth of a horse than I do of striking some remnant of a semblance of reality.

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“You loom, blushing” by Bill Friday

You loom,

blushing,

like the full moon

that rises

red,

through the clouds

at sunset.

  c 2013 Bill Friday

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I Drink Coffee

by Bill Friday

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Untitled I by Gregory

Character is structured, much like the shape of a triangle. A two dimensional figure that gives rise to a fundamental 3-D object. 

Each side can change as written, alter accordingly to each angle given. 

The configuration of character can be viewed through a multitude of angles, one being change. 

Change is difficult, but necessary. In order to take on change, one must merge the fine lines of love and might for compassion and  determination.

The development of character is dependent on the interaction of these components, much like the functions of a right triangle. 

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8:12AM DAYNA'S SOLUTION TO SIN(CHANGE)=LOVE/MIGHT

by Dayna Dunne

4:53AM

Car Stereo Guy woke me from a dream where I was in Julia Roberts' new house––which was a small paneled bedroom. She had to move. She didn't tell me why. It was dusty and had these closets built flush against the walls, no doors. She asked me what I thought about her place. I told her it wasn't that bad, and started figuring square footage, about 220 I thought. She was getting ready to go out. I was going with her. We were double-dating. I didn't know who our dates were. She made me wear a flowered dress with a high neck––an excessive amount of neck––fabric was spilling all over the place. I tried to tie it all up in a bow. It was blue. I remember thinking: why can't I wear my own clothes, but it was Julia Roberts so, I went with it. That's when Car Stereo Guy woke me up blaring his Mexican Polka music. I was disappointed. I wanted to know who she set me up with.

I laid in bed thinking I'd throw on my bathrobe and pink slippers, the ones losing their stuffing, and march right outside, into the pool of his headlights and stand there with something pointy in my hand, like the curtain rod, or the plunger, a microphone––not a gun––and just stare at him until he turned off his music and dimmed his lights. I was dreaming, I'd tell him. And then I'd walk away.

I didn't do it, and I couldn't fall back to sleep, so I got dressed, made some Pu-erh tea cloudy with organic sprouted soy milk, put my sunglasses on my head, slid my feet into my flip flops and headed to Griffith Park. It was 5:31AM.

Griffith Park is a couple miles away and since it was still dark I decided to drive, park by the tennis courts, visit the community cat if he was still sleeping above the picnic tables, and say hello to my favorite trees––I should have thrown something at that fucking Stereo Guy, something round and hard, not just laid in my bed. It didn't matter. The park was quiet. My car was the only one in the lot. Darkness was lifting quietly off my skin. My hands looked aqueous.

I cannot believe we are starting our hike at the same time. I'd heard a car coming up the road, but I thought it was one of the Parks and Rec guys on his way to work, not Sham, my ex. He pulled his car right up beside me. I was stunned; I stopped walking, looked at him smiling at me. I thought to keep walking, but it was nice to see him smiling, and I don't believe in coincidences, especially at 6AM. Where's your nametag? I said. He shook his head, and told me he'd catch up.

I decided to wait.

Doesn't look like you're going very far, he said, looking down at my flip flops. I hadn't planned to go far, but the sun was rising. He gave me a long, slow swipe down the length of my back and we set out.

In thinking about the equation: sine of x equal to the opposite divided by the hypotenuse, the sine sin sign of change equal to love divided by might, I wonder about the condition of change, and how particular "integers" in the set of change relate to love/might or––put another way––might under love.

I might underlove.

We walked under the trees, around the golf course, and up the hill by the Tiny Forest. He carried a plastic bottle of water, and I carried a child's red thermos painted with green dinosaurs, filled with tea. (I still have the tyrannosaurus action toys that topped one of his birthday cakes––2007, I think. They're in my kitchen window squared off to fight, next to Buddha, a hawk feather, and my turquoise ring.) Birds and squirrels were waking up and cheery. There was dew on the ground; the air smelled like pine. We hadn't seen each other in over a year, except that time at Trader Joe's when he came bolting up the chip aisle yelling my name, telling me I had a feeling I'd see you today. I felt my musculature drop away from my bones that day, and start to writhe in a squiffy heap at my feet. He told me I made him feel vulnerable. I wouldn't tell him how he affected me.

On the way up the hill he talked about Pilates and his body, bodies in general, pain, the alleviation of pain, the sacrum (he touched mine) and the coccyx (he touched mine). For once we weren't opposing forces. We were friends. Easy. Sleepy. He had to say coccyx again, and giggle.

To not change would mean stasis, stuck-yuck, a burden, complete collapse. There has to be change. x = change. Change is the effect. (I'm working out the cause.) Might equals will times strength––it seems so––heavy-bodied strength, impossible to defeat, something to run from, horny, pupil-less, snorting. Might doesn't solve the problem. The cause does. Might gives me the denominator, the longest side of a right angle; what's the longest side of right? To never falter. To always believe––not in the other, without the self.

Might could be indecision.

He underloved when he let my cat go without food for three days when I was in Seattle, decorating the War Room for Blonde Redhead to play; when he refused to take me in after I'd lost everything and was having a hard time lifting my head, because, he said, I wasn't fun anymore; when he interrupted my story about my first day living in the "neighborhood of joyobstruction vis-a-vis the nine Latino ministerios who wouldn't stop screaming, and panting for Jesus" to unzip his pants, pull out his dick and say, Here, while he tried to force feed it to me; and when he refused to destroy the sex tape we made because, he said, I'm not done with you yet.

His particular "integer" in the set of conditions causing our change was: asshole, punk, forgetter, and dropper of dreams.

I underloved the day he came to my house bright-eyed and looking a little crazy. He'd been out of work for a long time. The money he got from blackmailing his old bosses was running out. He thought he could hook it and crook it for a few months, but after that he needed to be solid. Legit. He walked in my house with his hands behind his back, hiding something like a child. I've got a surprise, he said. I thought it had something to do with our dream. "Our dream" that makes it sound so big. We had a non-specific going green plan where we would have something to do with the green economy and something to do with the planet––how to help and all that. He was thinking intensive recycling or solar. I didn't know what I was thinking except I wanted to move north, live in a farmhouse (if there were farmhouses close to the city), get off the grid, have a garden, sell our cars and use public transportation––wouldn't it be fun––we'd learn to ski, save money, revolutionize something, ski around the farmhouse, do something for the planet, save it.

I fantasized about catching the bus that would take us to art openings. I fantasized about baking bread. We'd drink coffee. We'd trudge through forests bundled up and a little damp––especially the forest that leads to Short Sand Beach where the trees open up like an iris, and the great, gray Pacific comes into view. I'd spent a lot of time in that ocean. It was dashing, handsome, warrior-like, holding no prisoners just the lives that depended on it, and for some reason, my life depended on always having it near.

Is it the dream? I asked him, tugging at his arms to show me what he was hiding.

I got a job. You aren't gonna believe it. You gotta trust me. It'll be okay.

I was suddenly scared I didn't trust him. He was wearing the tie I gave him for father's day (not because he was a father, because it was the first holiday that came up after we got together). He got down on his knees. I put my hands on my face to erase my suspicion. He told me to shut my eyes. I did. He told me to open my eyes. I did. And there he was smiling over a laminated Denny's menu.

All that garish red and yellow lamination––stops and cautions––Don't Eat Here. And the Slams. Slam this, Slam that. Lumberjacks and skillets and Moons Over Everyone's fucking Hammy. He wanted me to take the menu, like an offering. It was smooth and cool to the touch. He wanted me to really look at it. It was ridiculous. I whined. There were salads of flesh and fat and American Dream Build Your Own meals offered for the tiniest fraction of what food really costs. He looked worried. I must have looked worried. He was a stakeholder in our dream and he was selling out. I didn't want him to be associated with a corporate purveyor of factory-farmed oozing antibiotic genetically modified, entire lifetime-horrified animals, vegetables, and probably minerals. Not to mention their documented racism and bigotry. My particular "integer" was: judgment and duh.

No, I said, giving him the menu. You can't.

They want me.

Fuck Denny's.

His reaction to my "integers" was to walk away.

He wasn't a pioneer. No matter how many impromptu interpretive dance numbers he performed in his long johns in my living room, he would never actually leap. 

(You will note, I have kept my reaction to his "integers" private in this proof.)

Might is not an aliquant part of love, and change is too general. Trigonometrically, the remedy, the solution to the problem presented is to love more, or quell the denominating forces of will and indecision (by loving more). St. Augustine wrote, "Numbers are the universal language offered by the deity to humans as confirmation of the truth." Pre-Nicaea, numbers were used as tools of the divine. Pythagoras, King of The Right Angle, was a numerologist as well as a mathematician. Thus, I will take the alphabet (as Pythagoras did) and assign each letter a number (one through nine) and add them together.

Change = 29.

29 reduces to 2 + 9.

2 + 9 = 11.

Eleven is the first master number and defined by Hans Decoz as "The combination of Zeus and Hera, the most powerful warrior with the most intuitive, conniving goddess. It is the link between mortal and immortal, man and spirit, dark and light, ignorance and enlightenment."

So, the value of change is the result of a relationship between opposing forces. Change is opposition, and it is often described as divine. Seeing 11 as merely two ones shows a doubled "individualistic or selfish" tendency depending on whether the energies are expressed in the positive or the negative. So, change is the relationship between opposing forces, sometimes intensely individualistic, sometimes intensely selfish. If loving more is the solution, we must look at the numerical value of Love, which is 9, and we find that any change positive or negative in love occurs with the 9th letter of the alphabet. The "I".

When we reached the top of the mountain, we leaned against the green wall of Pumphouse 114, and watched the sky blue, and the hawks overhead. He asked if I was happy. How can we never falter? I looked away from him and out toward the ocean. The morning was clear, we could see far into the Pacific. We talked about life in the ocean, the times we'd spent there together, apart, Fukushima, what we knew, what we hoped for, about cancerous lesions on sea mammals and the birds disappearing, soon the fish would die, and the kelp we imagined. I wasn't happy.

Probably good we didn't go north, he said.

Why?

We'd be skiing on Cesium. Powder cancer.

I really like snow.

Me, too. It'll be raining cancer, too.

Snow makes everything so quiet.

He took his hat off and kneeled and held onto my legs. I wondered if he had to pee. He said his biggest fear was being alone, and asked about mine. Being swallowed by a whale, I said, not wanting to tell him my real fear: that he is, in fact, the only one. He thanked me for taking care of him, which left me slightly dislodged--still grounded like the cactus ears flopping over the sandy hill behind us, but odd feeling. I never wanted to take care of him. I felt guilty. Years before––remember the words: My heart is full of you––we were in my room, wrapped in my sheets, comforted. He sat up in bed and backed away from me, and answered, I can't give you what you need.

Tsch, I said, then ran downstairs and out the door and sat on the splintery adirondack chair while he went back to sleep. He was telling the truth. I should have listened; let him be. I would have avoided confirming what he knew to be true, not a good thing when it's something he's not proud of.

I love you Skeets Magee, he said, walking away from me and up the path.

I said, I love you, Sham, and headed down the wide fire road wondering if my going down meant I was "going down", and why I said I love you, when what was true was that I had loved him, and it wasn't enough. No matter. The change is in the "I". My morning showed me that love was the lucre, the bonus of being, and it doesn't go away.

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An Email Trying To Clarify What the Poetics Problem Set is All About

A teacher:

I'm trying to get kids to submit but the poster is confusing for them.

Response:

Hi xxxxx,

No worries! The next prompt will be out Friday with a little more clarity in the flyer.

The big idea is...

1. a prompt using elements of math, for fun, and to break out of the languages we use in each arts discipline by using a totally different language. Also having a little fun with "problem solving" in art making.

2. All submissions get published. There is no editing process. It doesn't matter the format. It doesn't matter the skill of the artist. It doesn't matter how in depth they think about the prompt. I'm not looking for a particular theme.

3. All submissions get published. This is not a contest.

4. All submissions get published. SOME will be published on our blog (which I'm currently re-vamping, but a version of it is up now). We will have 10-12 rounds of prompts. After that we will have a publication party where all participants can make their own custom book (you can check the blog for some of the ways that went down in NY), and eventually we will publish all entries in one volume that will be printed and distributed through our typical avenues.

Eventually we'll offer some free writing and bookmaking workshops by professional artists to those who have submitted work, but I haven't worked out the scheduling yet.

If the prompt doesn't speak to them, it's ok. They'll be a new one next week. Thank you for trying to spread the word and this opportunity to your students! I do sincerely appreciate it.

best,

judy