The odd thing about the latest blab movement, which they're calling Conceptual Poetics, is that it seems to be made by poets who have no ideas. There are no themes, no topics, & no artistic concepts about how to shape & present same. The only idea in play seems to be the same one that underwrites the making of processed cheese (although processed cheese is more substantial). Take a prior artefact and run it through a processor, or homogenizer. This will get a laugh & win you a place in the Conceptual Poetry Movement (or Process). It's sort of like Flarf with a straight(er) face, a more determined (prosaic) pose. I don't know why I'm bothering to talk about it. I guess it's part of my Friday-at-work process.

"Knowledge is Power". & there is a kind of will-to-power on display in the foregrounding of conceptualization for its own sake. It's the fascination with finding the magic algorithm, the inner overlap structure, the handle-grip of the machine, the key. Like starting a lawn mower : sudden burst of control over all that grass. Then to pretend that it's not about power, that it's simply (un)artistic (unvalued, unoriginal, uncreative) free play : classic move of every intellectual game & ideology.

John Latta's post today, on the other hand, is classic Latta. Here the self-consciousness of the writer - the knowledge-overlap, reflexivity - becomes a useful gauge of limits, a rebuke to hubris & self-delusion. Humility as realism - the still-human comedy.

I was in the midst of writing my 17th epic poem this morning (while brushing my tooth, incidentally), when this guy in a hat with a Fuller Brush Brush in both hands appeared at the door with these questions. I tried to be as concise as possible.

1. What is your conception of the tradition of cheese in contemporary poetry?

I began writing cheese poetry when I was quite young (3 days old, actually - before I got my first tooth!). Since then, I have evolved (moldered, actually) into a type of free-verse gorgonzola; unusual, I think among my Kraft American contemporaries. I smell special.

2. Who is your favorite cheese poet?

Loopy LeGouda, a Belgian softie, quite flavorful with a bland Pinot. (Not a relative, by the way.)

3. How would you catalog yourself in relation to those cheese statues over there, in the Community Archive Memorial Waste Disposal Unit Area District of Literature?

Go catalog yourself, Caesar! Salaud! All the world shall be taxed! [makes typical cheese-poetic Gallic gesture with third thumb]

Many hundreds of thousands of delighted & delightful hgpoetics Readers over the centuries have queried your obedient Servant privately as to his background, provenance, auspices, etc. with respect to Le Poetique de Fromage, as the rock-solid Cheese Poetics Movement (or the New Moldyism) is known in parts French. Well, I wrote wryly, rocking back in my Ancestral Rocking Chair (handed down by hand through the family for generations since the days of its handsome progenitor & chair-maker Reginald Golde, 1543 - & still rockin'), & leaning into my new-fangled Compooter Writing Utensil, I-He continued to write:

"Cheese. The very word evokes a fume of memories. I was born in the small village of Odeur-de-la-Cesse, in southern Burgundia: a place famed for its local "sheddeur" (a type of Gallic cheddar, known for the special "pop" sound it makes when vigorously engaged or overexcited), where my family (the Gilles-Fichette line, direct descendants of Gethoff Ufh MaHatte, first Lout of Burgundia) controlled & officially manipulated the "Wheeling of the Cheese Order" (as the trucking industry was called in those far-off days). The Wheeling of the Cheese has always been a Gilles-Fichette monopoly (monopoly - the word itself rolls off the tongue like a mighty 6-ft. cercle de sheddeur!), and my father, Conte Louise Louise de Gilles-Fichette (Quant ou Wont), always assumed I would assume the assumption of his role (rolle, roule, whatever) in the same fashion as he did in his time, and as his father had, and as his fatter grandfather had, and as his fattest greatest great-grandfather had, and so on; however, in 1657, while on a visite to Paris, I was struck by a mangy cur of a cheval in the left knee, and have been cursed by the black curse of a severe limp since that time, which unfortunate mishap confined me strictly to leisure activities, such as cheese sniffing, cheese tasting, cheese engorgement, reading, meditating, vegetating, and the composition of verse.

In my spare time, as well, I have occupied my giddy mind in the pursuit of foreign quarrels, as my Uncle Henri IV advised me (in the famous English (Albion perfidieuse!!) play of the same name, by Guillaume Slacksweare, I believe). Wait just a darn minute! That's not what I was going to write here. This dang compooter's gittin' away from me. Start agin. In my spare time, I have spent my sparest time working out a complex Theory of Cheese Poetics. Now Cheese Poetics cannot be reduced to a sound bite (no pun intended!): yet I feel it can fairly be said that the substance, the core, the essence, the saveur essentiale, of the Theory, may be packaged and rolled into the following apothegm:

There is a poetry of life and there is a poetry of poetry, and these two are one. And they meet in cheese.

This is a direct quote from Wallace Stevens, who was no mean connoisseur de fromage.

- Now if you will excuse me, dear excusive Reader - my Uncle Henri is calling me from the Jerusalem Chamber. I believe he left his crown on a pillow there, with some cheese, and I must fetch them immediately, there is a tide in the affairs of cheese and there is no time to lose. Farewell & au revoir & for the BBC News Hour, this is Robin Lustig saying: Goodby.

It's been a quiet day in blogland, but I couldn't resist furthering the knowledge and love of cheese among poets & poetry/cheese lovers everywhere, with this quote from today's AP wire services, courtesy NY Times:

Back in Connecticut at the Abbey of Regina Laudis, 
nuns raise sheep, work the fields and sing Gregorian chants 
eight times a day. Marcellino, who is also an accomplished 
vocalist, was assigned to make cheese. The scientific interest 
came later.

 
In the 1990s, Marcellino won a Fulbright scholarship 
to study in France. She eventually spent four years 
here studying cheese fungus, going from farm to farm 
collecting samples. Her fame grew, and she was profiled 
in a documentary that coined her nickname: ``The Cheese Nun.''

The complete article can be found at the Times site (for which you might have to register), here.

Jordan keeping up on cheese situation. There appears to have been a drop in interest in cheese poetics of late, both here and in Limburg. I attribute this to the recent focus on V-neck sweaters (I mean in the archival sense, of course : the V-shape being an ancient symbol of many things, including early "holding & lifting" tools, such as the Akkadian steamshovel). Prof. Hinkel's recent study, Molten Hermeneutics : Melted Cheese Metaphors in the Life & Work of Amalia Lamia (Left Overbie Univ. Press, 2004) should bring the recent dropsic malaise or aphasic lassitude in cheese poetics to an abrupt (top-broiled) end. Happy Holidays, Prof. Hinkel!

HGPoetics has been a blog for 10 months. The world has changed much since I began; new hairdos have appeared; people are predicting things which happened, as well as the obverse (things have happened which people will predict), otherwise, things have been pretty much going along as per. I have reported dutifully on everything I noticed along the way, including the high proportion, in comparison with previous decads of months, according to the Julian calendar, of poems about cheese which made their presence felt in the spectacular and mind-goggling literary whirl which is our fate. Thank you, merci beaucoup, dear readers, for accompanying me on our journey of change and growth; I hope to be with you for many more decads of months in the coming days & years.

I myself have always considered Duluth cheese superior.

Since I have nothing better to do than juggle 45 boxes of cheese-flavored cheerios with my feet while translating Mandelstam into pig Latin, I thought I'd paste in here a portion of a letter written many many years ago to Agatha Trillenta, who was living at the time over a bicycle shop run by a collective of Italian film-makers (the year was 1947) in Rome:

Cara Agatha,

You ask about my poetics. Well, this is a subject dear (as in "expensive") to my heart, as I spent many years during World War 2 fighting a certain amalgam of abstract flotillae ranged against me in that epistemological episteme, or steam-pit, as it were, then.

Generally, or "kernelly", as we say in midwestern corn country, I think it may be said, and I think it has been said, by several thinkers in the range of nations between the 15th and 17th Parallels, and not only by myself, I might add (sorry for the prolixity here), that my approach, or, as it were, technique, in poetry, involves treading a narrow middle path between fromagitude on the one bank, and the avant-gouda on the rocks t'other side o'me. To begin with, I think it is fairly obvious, I never, at least to my knowledge, and I should know, I think, if anyone should, that, in the main, in my writing, I never, for the most part, or should I say, ever, in fact, use, usually, commas, or, to put it plainly, in laymen's terms, but perhaps more precisely, I, that is, me, here, now, and also then, whenever, tend, most often, to, at least most of the time, anyway, avoid, you know, cara amica, subordinate, as they are called, phrases, if, and this is a very, in fact, huge, large, if, possible, that is, if, in other words, it, what I say, is, duh duh ain't it obvious, can, like, be, y'know, done.

This kind of writing, this avoidance of the necessary along with the unnecessary foci of syntactical abrasion, has gotten me in lots of trouble with the gatekeepers of literary decorum, I mean, the slop-happy statisticians of the jail yard, like, I mean all of Boston, most of Buffalo, 99 percent of San Francisco, and NY faggeddabaddit. Rhode Island is a wee very tiny small state; and why, you ask? my dear & extremely radiant charisma-saturated poet of Italia? Why, well, because we have no GATES here; all the stuffing of Rhode-Island goes runnin' through the sluices, skippin' trew the rye, hoppin' down the bunny path, smack into the Gates of dem other States, whammo!! That's why we is small and that's why we is an island that is no island, that's why, I tell you that's why [sing to tune of "Well Drop My Rrrrrs Blues"].

Agatha, my pet, molte molte grazie for sending the Lambrusco-soaked pettini; I will return the favor as soon as my corn bread rises and the cheese is duly somnolent. Until then, arriv', baby!!!

This letter arrived yesterday in the midst of a torrential downpour (I gave the poor mailwoman a slice of provolone) from Agatha Trillenta, the exiled poet of Istria. I publish here with her distinct permission.

"Caro Enrico,

It is a matter of indifference to me, now, after so many long months living in solitude here in the quaint, depopulated, and fundamentally desolate town of Ciopinnara, on the island of Istria, in the middle of the Mediterranean, on the tragic planet now known as Earth (in the Universe commonly understood as, "the Universe"). It is a matter of indifference that my public no longer asks of me, no longer remembers my name, the name of the most beautiful and intelligent poet of the Western World. It is a matter of indifference to me that my books have fallen into the seventh circle of the Second Hand Book Stores throughout Europe, and needless to say have never even been published in America (despite your gallant & tireless efforts, amico - I know, I know!!!).

It is a matter of indifference. And why, you may ask? Because I know that in the depths of the cosmos, where the shades of Michelangelo, David & Monticelli share vino e pane with Dante Alighieri (if he's in a good mood, you never know - & how well I know this, amico!!), I assert that there, in that eternity promised to the way-farer faring forth, my dear "W.H." - there, there, indeed, the lasting & eternal odor of Fromagitude reeks in its beloved nest, among the fervent flock (ever fit, ever few)!

Remember me with lilacs & muenster - as I, in turn, behold your image in the ancient cheese tray, mio companero!

- Fragrantly,
your Agatha T.

I want to apologize to my faithful hip-booted blogsloggers for neglecting the important issue in poetics lately : the differing notions of metonymy/metophany held by the School of Fromagitude on the one hand, and the Avant-Gouda on the other hand (or in the other hand, I should say). Considering the avalanche of commentary - a veritable landslide of cheese - which accompanied my last foray into that aromatic arena, I look forward to another big helping of the same.

Now today's lecture will consist of an in-depth consideration of metophany from the perspective of goat cheese aesthetics. Metophany, as we all know (or we all should know, if we have read our Johann Schlimmen carefully, and I mean you, Gertrude, friend of Louise in Scottsdale), as we all know, is a blend of metonymy & catachresis (the rhetorical manuever involving the use of very thin slices of provolone in a frisbee-like mimetic "toss" motion). [More info on catachresis can be found at the Schlimmen memorial website, http://meinminnyminyyminischulekittykittykatistzookute.com] Catachresis is not limited to poetry about the moon, cats, or cheese; far from it! The trope shows up all over the joint, as the old Bogart line has it. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of Fromagitude poets (and my comment is not mere fly-swatting, but is based on the statistical work of the Cheez Whiz Commune, a group of avant-gouda poet-statisticians based in Madison, Wissenschaftsconsin) apply catachresis solely in their works about cheese, reflecting a preternatural bias toward established dairy vendors centered in the Chicago trucking distribution poetry scene.

More later : I must run to the kitchen for a moment.

I'm a little embarrassed to tell this personal story, but what are blogs for, anyway? When I read something enjoyable or compelling, I hold a little awards ceremony for the book or blog or whatever. I have a special bronze, silver, or gold medallion (cast in the form of a Havarti Moon surmounted by twin leaping Guernseys) fashioned by my friend and personal sculptor Guido Lunasco, who lives in a little hilltop studio overlooking the Arnosuch River in Tuscany; then I invite a few select companions (apologies to anyone accidentally left out) to my own study here in Luigilottodusto, and over a few bottles of choice champagne, we toast the winning volume (url site, whatever) and, suspending the medallion directly over the center of the award-winning object from a length of gold chain, by oscillating it slowly back and forth, I hypnotize everyone present and throw the award-winning volume about 10 feet in the air, whereupon my assistant, Fianciuletta Fellini, catches it in mid-air and places upon its surface a ceremonial baccio (kiss). Immediately afterward, with a snap of the fingers, I awaken the assembled entourage, and, strange as it may seem, the hypnotic spell convinces each and every participant that he or she has actually read the award-winning work in question.

Congratulations, award-winners !

Shanna Compton, whose endearing blog is new to me, and who must be deeply caught up in the incredibly rich and flavorful ongoing debate between the School of Fromagitude and the Avant-Gouda, forwarded me this important poem:

Ode on the Mammoth Cheese
   Weighing over 7,000 pounds

 
We have seen the, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

 
All gaily dressed soon you’ll go
To the great Provincial show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

 
Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

 
May you not receive a scare as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great world’s show at Paris.

 
Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.

 
We’rt thou suspended from balloon,
You’d case a shade even at noon
Folks would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.

                                        
                   James McIntyre (1827-1906)

Somehow I feel the soft texture & delicate aroma of this poem will have an appetizing effect on the whole prix fixe perplexity.

I'm startled to find how much interest & controversy the mere listing of the Limburger Biennale finalists has provoked. We live in a terribly competitive culture; I long for the era of the potlatch, when communities of poets sat around the bubbling fondue kettle & shared their epic & romantic adventures with milk & other dairy products.

I am not going to post the list of finalists for the National Book Award in Poetry here. You can find this information at several blogs & news outlets. I can't cover everything in the world of What Is Poetry!! I try my best. Okay, I will list the finalists in the Limburger Biennale Selecte for Poesie (held every odd year in Limburg, CS):

Celeste Jaquin, for The Moon : Reflections in a Cheese Shredder

Barry Berry, for I Am Saying Cheese, Mother

Blythe Sparrow, for Cheese Wheel Dreams

Bob LeBoeuf, for Letting You Know Beforehand : Cheese Poems and Odors

Memo to China : Moon Made of Cheese

[Washington, DC] NASA official Don Cheddar, in a speech here to the National Council of Space Cheese Specialists (NCSCS), offered what he described as "a timely warning, a little friendly advice" to China's burgeoning space exploration program, noting that recent analysis of moon samples have verified earlier claims that Earth's sole orbiting companion, "our pale goddess of the night sky, that familiar yet-so-mysterious round lamp in the murk known to us simply as 'the Moon'", is, indeed, a primitive form of gorgonzola.

"Stubborn Grew is the most important American poem published since 2000. Also, the moon is made of cheese."

- Bishop George Berkeley, Esq. LLd., Phd., PDQ.

Update : Experts Report Moon Made of Cheese

The moon : made of cheese, definitely. It now remains for science to determine age, flavor, consistency.

There may be cheese on the moon, after all.