Abstract Piercings

[ink_ling]

I remember my maternal great-grandfather slipping into Alzheimer's. He only nodded through family reunions. He forgot his own children. My grandfather -- his son -- had to hold his penis for him when he needed to take a piss

Comments

[slumberjack]

My mom's dad died a few months before I was born. The rest of my grandparents *all* went with Alzheimer's. It was very sad to watch. I tried to avoid seeing any of them in the last few years because I wanted to keep my good memories.

This past weekend I saw a TV ad pushing memory-aid meds being marketed towards a younger (30s-40s) set.

[ink_ling]

Yeah ... Watching my great-grandfather in this position was really painful, especially when his wife had to eventually live separate from him and when she maintained a very sharp mind right up until her death. The contrast and the dissolution of the relationship was horrible.

I think I had heard about those meds some time ago. I guess I'd be more inclined to go an herbal route for that kind of thing, but really I much more believe in a regular exercise of the mind's functions. You know how they advise working crosswords and learning a foreign language? That's where I'm at: trying to restore a regular and deep use of the noggin so that it doesn't slip into dis-use.

memory in present tense

[shawnsyms]

I hope crossword puzzles help; Jeff and I do them together every night anyway.

My grandmother has Alzheimer's. It's been hard for our family, especially my mom, who's taken on a strong support role for her.

I worry a lot about memory loss. I experience minor memory problems pretty regularly; it's hard for me to know how much of it is residual drug damage from my addicted past, and how much of it might be portent of more serious things to come.

Re: memory in present tense

[ink_ling]

Yeah, I wonder about the same sorts of things in regard to simple drinking-gorging. I think the crosswords DO help, though; I can feel the difference when I've been doing any kind of sustained thought for awhile.

God, it's so very rare for me. :)

[davomatic]

I tried to block easy consumption of the poem by breaking everything up into small, discrete pieces, hopefully forcing the reader to slow in order to piece everything back together again.

I think it will work, people who read poetry tend to savor every word and let it sit on their tongues. If you decide to share some, count me in.

[ink_ling]

Thanks, Fella. The poetry writing has nearly dried up of late ... mostly due to this mind-sloth I'm in right now and the fact that I've found myself cyclically more drawn to essays lately.

I have an all-but-complete collection, though, with quite a few of the poems of this sort in them. I may post one of the shorter ones here in the next few days.

Hmm ... thanks! That may actually be a good way to jump-start my curiosities in this arena! (Middle five! I'm short.) :)

[shawnsyms]

>>If you decide to share some, count me in.

Me too!

:-)

[ink_ling]

Will do, soon!

[rootedfool]

well, of course I think that approach to the poem as composite of discrete materials CAN work. I wonder what you mean by work? My first impulse is to think work as meaning relevant to what other poets are doing, and so much of this work by younger poets seems geared around fooling the reader and hitting her over the head with just more media static. alassss, I am partially jaded by the scene.

my friend Fran Ryan has talked about his own work in much the same way as you have. there are some parallels. he doesn't publish his stuff, otherwise I'd suggest you read it... Very Taggart and Oppen, with his own big twist (his obsession with the image of an audio casette tape unspooled in the limbs of a tree -- something about that: voice, and memory, the suspension of it, in and of the world, etc.)

anyway, I feel blessed to have beautiful friends like you!

[ink_ling]

I mean "work" more simply, in terms of the probable communication to the reader. I think the discrete parts may come off in this culture as a series of little soundbytes, something fit for the mass-produced attention span, something easily consumable ... unless the bits themselves tend to resist immediate sense, in which case I would have a "no-sell"; the reader puts the poem down like an out-of-fashion hot potato

[rootedfool]

I echo yr Arghh!

But my work doesn't echo it -- and I've tried to, to address that "tightening spiral" of media soundbyte info flood, or to write within it as a confrontation, with no luck. I get down on myself, sometimes considering my work as a kind of escape -- who wants to be an escapist! -- but then I think again, and it's not an escape...more like a concentrated effort to address the present world. So maybe I do echo the frustration you're talking about, by using the immediate world around me (the light that always comes into the poems) to deflect the static.

Caveat: I am out of my mind on caffeine, but I hope I addressed your question -- or came close.

[ink_ling]

I have to say -- having looked at some of your poems -- that they're definitely not escapist. The ones I've seen use a sort of painterly demand for attention, and a use of white space on the page to create a sense of hush, respect, around the words themselves. I think these sorts of secular-sacred stresses on different sorts of attention directly combat the influences I was talking about.

Like Niedecker does.

The light to deflect the static, exactly!