Week 4: Acrostic Chance

Week 4 and I'm now fully immersed in "experimental" writing. These exercises were more constrained than usual, or at least it felt like that when I was getting the end result, but I wonder if that's just because of the mediums I chose.

§ Acrostic chance:  Pick a book at random and use title as acrostic key phrase.  For each letter of key phrase go to page number in book that corresponds (a=1, z=26) and copy as first line of poem from the first word that begins with that letter to end of line or sentence.  Continue through all key letters, leaving stanza breaks to mark each new key word.  Variations include using author's name as code for reading through her or his work, using your own or friend's name, picking different kinds of books for this process, devising alternative acrostic procedures.Or use the web Mac Low diastic engine.
My commentary at the time:


"These exercises were very fun, especially the acrostic chance. It just seemed to work out really well, and I was happy with it. I was skeptical that it would work out at all because I doubted such a heavy theory book (Film Theory and Criticism) would have anything remotely poetic (whatever that is) in it. However, this section of the book is about "film language," so most of the sentences/topics relate in some way to expression and visual interpretation and the feelings that are brought up. For the first exercise I was determined to get different sentences out of each sentence on the dictionary page, so it lacked coherency. I decided to work against that and put in a few sentences as a refrain ("It is its basic method") to ground it a bit."

One of the things I have been working at these days is fooling around with refrains. I like how they work at their best, and throughout the rest of the semester's work you will see this come back.

Here we go:

Book=Film Theory and Criticism
(6, 9, 12, 13-->FILM
20, 8, 5, 15, 18, 25-->THEORY
1,14, 4-->AND
3, 15, 9, 20, 9, 3, 9, 19-->CRITICISM

Poem:
“The traces of the narrator’s action may seem to be effaced by the system as the suture theorists suggest but, in Browne’s opinion, such an effort can only be the result of a more general rhetoric.” (6=F)
“Its object is the showing of the development of the scene in relief, as it were, by guiding the attention of the spectator now to one, now to the other separate element.” (9=I)
“Leit-motif (reiteration of theme). Often it is interesting for the scenarit especially to emphasize the basic theme of the scenario.” (12=L)
“It is a weird and wonderful feeling to write a booklet about something that does not in fact exist.” (13=M)
“That corresponds to Pudovkin’s view.” (20=T)
“His action is recorded separately.” (8=H)
“Essential to Dayan’s system, which relates to classical narrative cinema as verbal langue does to literature, is ideologically charged.” (5=E)
[could not find anything with “O” or anything close to it.” (15=0)
“[this] representation of an object in the actual (absolute) proportions proper to it is, of course, merely a tribute to orthodox formal logic, a subordination to the inviolable order of things.” (18=R)
[two pictures with no corresponding letters] (25=Y)
“And, more generally, by what procedures does film generate meaning?” (1=A)
“Nevertheless the principle of montage may be considered to be an element of Japanese representational culture.”(14=N)
“Harman, however, criticizes the basic concept of the code, which Metz and Wollen share.” (4=D)
“Cinema is a two-dimensional art that creates the illusion of a third dimension through its “walk around” capability.” (3=C)
[long list of phrases that start with “a” or “t.” Nothing related to “r.” (15=R)
“It is its basic method.” (9=I)
“That corresponds to Pudovkin’s view.”
(20=T)“It is its basic method.” (9=I)
“Cinema lacks the double articulation characteristic of natural language.”
(3=C)“It is its basic method.” (9=I)“So it is in this instance.” (19=S)
[Nothing close to “m” anywhere] (13=M)