Essays
In addition to poetry, Kayak magazine also generally included one or two essays in each issue. By including literary criticism and essays about writing, the magazine aimed to make its readers think about the ways in which they approached contemporary poetry, and to read the magazine critically rather than casually. The following is an exemplary essay from an early issue of Kayak by John Thomas entitled pocket memo. The essay is notable for its bizarre stream of consciousness style; it appears to be the author's own personal notes on how to improve his own writing (which, in itself draws the attention to the differences between private or personal writing practices and published writing practices in an interesting way) But also provides readers with an iteresting perspective on a lot of the sorts of things they can find in Kayak.
Pocket Memo
Genl Phil Kearny (at the Battle of Seven Pines) : "Go in anywhere, Colonel. You'll find lovely fighting along the whole line."
Perhaps neither "expression" nor "communication" ( tepid concepts at best), but -- a blow of the fist. An intricate timepiece dropped purposely in the desert. Graffiti on a meteorite. The toes of boots peeping from beneath the arras. Invisible fingers at the harpsichord. The reader's attention as sleepy sentry, making a routine challenge and hearing. -- the wrong password ! Or, in the wax museum, one looks away for a moment, then looks back --and Jack the Ripper has changed his pose.
Or to make a poem that is a dance around the idea, a complement to it, and the "subject" not seen, only its shape drawn by the line of the dance of the poem.
The soothing effect of writing words. The act of composition as a self-administered placebo, a gobbling of sugar pills while Death sails the bloodstream, colonizing . .
Paul Klee: "Whenever, during creation, a type outgrows its genesis and I arrive at the goal, intensity disappears and I have to look for something new. In production it is the way that is important; development counts for more than completion."
. ..octopods which, in the presence of the beloved, wave a tentacle the end of which breaks off and swims by itself over to the female who, if willing, enfolds it and if not, eats it. (so, either way, she . . . ) •
. ."reformulating the problem itself and then solving the new problem." One loves the flow -- or rather, the flowing. Afterwards, one is usually struck by the (relative) poverty of the result. What does one find, picking through these alluvia? Some new images, a few interesting breaks, perhaps a flash of (what could pass for) insight. And if one then analyzes these gleanings, the "mystery" of their composition is quickly exposed. A clever hack could mass -produce any of it, just by following the rules. Because if all boils down to -- juxtaposition. The glistening image, the break ("leap" -- which word reveals the act as merely athletic), the "insight", any of these things can be manufactured by the juxtaposition of unnatural partners. (Rocky Graziano's ring style – if you throw two hundred punches in every round, some of them are bound to land!)
To work towards a solution, a synthesis: the value and the density of the product always increasing (through increasing consciousness during the creative episode), without sacrificing the orgasmic joy of the creative flow.
To work out from the living center, Okay. But this assumes essence -- and that one can apprehend essence. Also assumed: that essence is starting point instead of goal.
Turn it around: every point is a starting point and goal, is essence.
The image used to sustain me, but I find that it isn't enough anymore. Images are too easy. And I am not deceived about metaphor: nothing can stand for anything else.
The image as point of departure, as arrow pointing the way to a possible world? Then to shape the new world and set down my thoughts about it? But the latter half of the process need not be willed; the ideas and their articulation should follow naturally and strongly, if the new world is real enough.
The image that is not metaphor, but the first evidence of the new world. (the paddle, curiously carved, which Columbus' men fished from the Atlantic ...)
Change. In any case, try and see if change isn't all I need. As:
1. Write sitting in some other chair, or write standing up, or in a different room; write on the toilet.
2. Write every day; write at unlikely hours.
3. Write while people are here, talking, or with the radio blaring.
4. Write with random tools -- crayon, carpenter's pencil, anything that comes to hand -- and write on random surfaces -- any scrap of paper or cardboard, anything.
5. Write whenever I think of writing, whether the usual impulse is there or not.
6. Always write in a spirit of play.
7. Read nothing, just look at pictures or listen to music. Or --read only the newspaper, or children 's books, anything unlikely and non-literary. Or read only random portions of books.
8. Behave inappropriately. Be difficult.
9. Keep different hours, ridiculous hours.
10. Avoid my friends and at the same time start dropping in on everyone else I know, in alphabetical order.
11. Try to live always in a spirit of play.
Like turning myself upside down and shaking all the change out of my pockets. Learning to play again, renewing my vigor, turning myself on.
He abandoned reality for ail interesting mood.
A geneticist once crossed a tiger with a parrot. When asked about the results of the experiment, he replied: "When it talks, I listen•"
braving the evil eye in penny arcades
asking the circus animals unpleasant questions
throwing a spear in the shooting gallery
a white rat does your portrait in pastels -- price $1
ring the bell and win a cast iron sunbonnet with ear holes for your horse
Little Egypt in boxing gloves, dancing on bloody stumps
a crucifixion in the house of mirrors
and God at the calliope, playing gingerly with burned fingers
Photo on my wall of Papuan boys practicing with toy spears: one boy has just thrown up a crude wooden hoop; the rest are set, arms cocked, and will try to hurl their spears through the hoop.
His autobiography was a barren archipelago of episodes, each one the tip of a drowned mountain.
Paul Klee: "Where the action of the elements is purest, effects of behind and in front are :a) usually inevitable, b) a considerable problem, c) permitted."
The "silent area" of my brain, a most awesome collage: Limbo, and the materia poetica of all my future work.
Al Capone: "With me, grand opera is the berries."
The word “syllepsis”, according the Webster: "1. a figure by which the sense of words is conceived otherwise than the words' import and construed according to the intenttion of the author; 2• the taking of words in two senses at once, the literal and metaphorical; 3. in physiology, conception” (My italics)
THE KEY OF THE FORT MOULTRIE MAGAZINE -- THE MAJOR'S SOUVENIR. "...proved to be outworn."
THE IMAGE
("Simplicissimus…”
bird wing
fish tail
and standing (one webbed foot, one cloven hoof) on
a litter of tragic masks . .
I want a method whereby I can invent continuously, never quite knowing what I'll do next, yet with good prospects of a result that will be alive and highly charged.
An idea: to write many “versions" of the same, poem-idea, one after another, each fresh one containing nothing previously used, and then to compress all these particulars into one poem -- under great pressure the particles might combine and form a new thing, artificial but excellent. A laminated wood, or carborundum . . .
Another idea: to experiment in "natural forms". That is, to appropriate the forms of other, non-literary prose -- recipes, instruction manuals, printed forms, minutes of board meetings, police reports, descriptions of lost articles...
Again, the poem as "order of the day" -- precise instructions laid out for the reader, telling him how to spend some specified period of time. He himself would then be my material, would live the poem. Perhaps an almanac of sorts , with directives for each day of the year and appendices of useful information ("Summary of Surrealist Etiquette", etc.).
Memo to Luis Bunuel: Take care, Don Luis -- some eyes will slice you back!
Photograph of a female nude glued to canvas, which in turn is glued to a piece of masonite; that it has developed