On the Creation of my Dadaist Poem "The Last Words of a Los Angeles Pimp..."

A brief word on my method--I chose to use the stage play as my form, and generated the lines in the following way: I went to the online music station Pandora (www.pandora.com) and set all of my music stations to shuffle. The first line of the first song played became the first line of my first block of dialogue (in its unaltered state; alterations will be discussed shortly), the second line of the second song that shuffled up became the second line of my first block, etc. When I either ran out of lyrics (a song had less lines than the song that preceded it) or came upon an instrumental song, that marked the end of that block. I would then repeat the process for the second block, third block and so on. Because I was using Pandora, commercials often popped up in between songs. I integrated lines from the commercials into the monologue as well, dividing the advertisement into lines where it seemed most logical.

As far as the randomization of the text goes I used a fascinating website called TranslationParty (www.translationparty.com) which takes blocks of English text, converts them into Japanese, converts the Japanese translation into English, converts that new translation back to Japanese and so on until the text reached an “equilibrium” in which no words are still able to be changed and the statement is exactly the same in English and Japanese. I did this translation line by line for each poem, taking one lyric at a time, and ran the result through the n+7 machine (www.spoonbill.org/n+7/) plucking various lines from various iterations. With the results I trimmed excess/unnecessary words or parts of words that impeded upon the message I was trying to attain, and altered punctuation where it felt necessary.

In editing I applied both the “cut and paste” technique with the mashing up of different lyrics from wildly different songs and I also used two algorithmic text generators as forms of word association, as well as heavily refining the drafts repeatedly to sharpen my focus. It became clear quite early--even before I ran the lines through the translator--that the lyrics were already eerily revolving around the central theme of isolation and detachment from one’s self and one’s feelings. I chose to pursue this in my editing, believing that this sense of loneliness would make itself apparent through careful editing. The coming about of Man-eater and Backhander was merely serendipitous--they grew from the text as I edited it--but quite welcome and entertaining.

In the 'Comments' section of this post is the original collection of lyrics and the musicians who wrote them. Poetic entirely on its own, and eerily cohesive in its message, this served as my starting point and it is these lines (sans bracketed information) that were run through both TranslationParty and n+7.

The Last Words of a Los Angeles Pimp to Backhander and Man-eater, The Two Who Would Take Him to the Afterlife, While They Speak to Each Other

*Note to the text: The pimp speaks in traditional Times New Roman, while Man-eater speaks in bold. Backhander speaks in bold and underlined. Stage directions are in brackets*

[Friezes, La, La, La, single-decker in LA]

I could not exceed their weird?

I horde

what I want to be someone else. I would be huge!

I feel very lonely.

I now need to believe in love,

I wear it on your failing.

Please see the superstition in your lunatic--

I have to improve one of the royalties of sandpaper,

zone nationalism.

Truth is I fall in housemaids.

You are good, please check whether you or someone else

are spoken by mimics of peregrination, believed to be collected

plenipotentiary and pal of the moonlight.

Blackguard singing in the dead of nightmare,

he had last seen his friendship

(sometimes not recognized)

in Brownie Trespasser, the bishop’s siphon.

She is such a good thrash I’ve seen here…

Backhander, put your aromas around me!

I was born in a crossfire hustler;

Time is fleeting.

[They go away for a long tinderbox,

Fatality Cymbal 2, streamered handout.]

I was wrong about the worship.

And Jupiter aligns with Mars.

When you audition to run, tried to, highwayman

has bread, can not survive.

To plan a pimp,

listen to the ribbon of my heartache exactly.

I see you.

Put me down.

He’s a real Nowhere, Man-eater.

[Later, still around the mortuary]

You hoard him happy,

All this just slipping away!

I figured out that Satan is bound in some.

Analyzing Apollinaire's "Landscape"

The most intriguing aspect of Apollinaire's work is the visual dynamism of his poetry. Looking at the four individual pieces in the larger aptly-titled "Landscape" each poem exists as its own small entirely self-contained piece and as a fragment in the larger work. There is a whimsy in the writing that one could argue is inherent in such visual poetry; the "lovers lying together" poem is a human body with its arms and legs splayed in exuberance, which betrays the dark tone of the piece itself where the narrator claims the lovers he sees "will separate my members" (Apollinaire, "Landscape").

The house-shaped poem that discusses mansions, stars and divinities has its own self-referential air, and there is a delightful irony in the fact that a poem discussing stars (inherently boundless and infinite) and divinities (vague, ephemeral entities with no shape or form) are so rigidly constricted by the form of the poem. Though it is difficult to see how the poem is supposed to be read--up-down or left-right--this is part of the point. It is a poem to be read with a certain degree of ambiguity because the content of the poem is ambiguity; a mansion which, while grandiose, is still bound in its size and dimensions, serves as a place to create the limitless.

The tree-shaped poem is rather straightforward and its shape reflects the content in a direct way. Frankly I find it the least interesting of the four, though it serves a purpose in "Landscape" by acting as the second nature-based piece in which something from nature is discussed (the mansion piece discusses stars and is the first nature-based piece.).

Finally "A lighted cigarette smokes" reflects idleness and contemplation. The letters rise away from a straight and formal line and drift off like cigarette smoke would be expected to do. It is very eastern in its succinct and concise nature, reflecting the Japanese haiku in its simple yet timeless essence.

New Blog

This will be the blog I use for English 515: Dada to the Web.