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bluerthanbluets) wrote2020-12-27 08:18 pm
bluerthanbluets) wrote2020-12-27 08:18 pm
Collaging
(or the thought process or circles I go around in every literarykpop post, an indulgent meditative attempt at an explanation)
Three things prompted this meditation: 1) I've been receiving quite a number of messages over at literarykpop recently (incredible wow), mostly about requests, the occasional sweet little notes of thanks, conversations, and lately a few questions how the tweets come about, where I look for poems; 2) I made this tweet and a mutual in private quoted it with another text (or meme? joke? about immigrant mothers being unable to acknowledge their blunders to their children and offering food in lieu of proper apology, which, okay, True, but, but,); and 3) I flush deeply, gratefully, every time someone dms/replies/qrts with a comment about the "genius" of the post, but really, truly, as my friend C says (who is also running a poetry x BL twitter account), it's labor, it's a labor of love.
So, not sure where this will go (ah, what's new) but I am one beer in and I want to think about and write about how I put the photos and quotes together, or as I like to refer to the process, collaging.
I major in fiction, but I had to take a required three units of poetry course for my masters in CW. It was taught by one of the most up and coming poets-cum-activist assistant professors of the college of arts and letters. I adore her (present tense, so still, still) and have her earliest anthologies (out of print already!!) sitting in my bookshelf even before I had thought of applying for the program. She was known for her "new poetry" and anti-establishment leanings in the topic of publishing (all her books are available for free online in pdf formats). She was very cool, as was our syllabus for the class, which centered around "counterintuitive" poetry. We were un-reading poetry, and un-writing it, huzzah.
I wrote horrible poems in her class but enjoyed all the workshops, discussions and assigned readings. One of our modules was about the ways by which a text can interact with another form - images, videos, voice notes, etc. We read the book When a Map is Folded Cities Come Closer, When Clothes are Unpacked Cities Fall Apart, which is originally a long 20-page poem printed like a book that extends accordion-like. It's two poems stitched/split together with images of the city in black and white in between them in each of the pages.
The photos have a text of their own, too: it reads/appears like a map of the city of Manila. So in essence, it's three texts you're reading as you go page by page: the short lines of an "I" persona on top of the page, the photos, and then the thick, prose beneath the photos. It was an exercise of making sense of the parallels between the three elements: how a text engages with an image, how it accommodates a hybrid practice centered on the organic relationship of image and text.
I think, sort of, this is what I do in every literarykpop post. Okay, of course, at first not really, not deliberately. I simply wanted to echo the beautiful words that had already been written/uttered by poets before me, to express how a certain photo of a certain kpop boy makes me feel. Something like that. But gradually, as I become more aware of how a quote pulled from a book can expand and stretch the meaning of a simple, say, screenshot from an episode of a show, an interview, a photoshoot, I try to make everything intentional.
Once, someone asked how I find the texts to use and I went with the easiest, least embarrassing answer: which is that I teach, which means I read a lot, or at least try, and that I look for texts on the daily. But the real, honest answer is that there is no single place to look for them. I have bookmarks (mostly from my friends who like the same texts I like), I follow a list (of the common MFA-ists folks you find on "poetry twitter"). I used to have a Google docs for the quotes, but it's been left untouched for months now. I usually just find things on Twitter, sometimes on Tumblr, sometimes from Instagram when a friend puts something on their Stories. Often, though, I look at my bookshelf and pull titles out. All the Barthes, the Didions and the de Botton ones, you are free to imagine me leafing through the pages I have marked, looking for a quote that can perhaps capture what it means to just fall into sync with someone right off the bat. Or to wait. Or to forget.
What comes into play then mostly is memory and feeling. Sometimes I see an image and think, that one poem C posted a while ago, that one. I see tl talking about Mingyu and Seungkwan dynamics and remember Badiou. I see someone translating Kai's interview where he refers to himself, jokingly, but also maybe honestly, as god, and remember an Ovid quote in my bookmarks. Jigyu moment happens and isn't there a poem about ears.
Often, though, it's labor. Which means I have an image in my head I need a quote for. And I scour my inventory of mangled quotes and saved messages for one that fits. It didn't feel like a long time, but it took me a while to find this quote when the images of the SVT SG 2020 hands hit the tl. When one of the boys is about to have their birthdays, that's a busy time for literarykpop. During Jihoon's birthday, I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at a bunch of drafts of posts about his song covers, screencaps of his moments in his HTR episode, random quotes from Choi to Mabi David until something fell into place and clicked. As in, of course it has got to be Having a Coke with you.
(and yet, not all images will find a quote in my head. There are bookmarks and saved photos that are still waiting for their right quotes, the right message, it's a long, unending process of collaging)
The best part is when it's easiest and the image and the quote just happen to coincide happily in my head and heart. I was looking for texts to include in my Non-fiction syllabus next semester when I found myself in Helena Fitzgerald's author page at catapult.co where I discovered this essay. And then Gose Carnival episode happened where we witnessed Joshua telling (retelling?) Jeonghan he's one of the reasons he could endure training. I would be rereading Hanif Abdurraqib's essays after he published the recent one on Julien Baker and then Dino's Danceology comes out. It's feeling, it's remembering, and then cut and paste.
It's when that kind of moment happens that it's the most gratifying, when the image grows and stretches and fits right where the pulled quote starts but doesn't end, and continues to resonate with others who also think there is something true in the bigger, expanded, collaged image that is created in the intersection of the screenshot and the poem.
Sometimes though, the audience boos me off stage or takes it a different plane or says they are at my door and will k/ll me and that's when I log out and let the post exist by itself. It's maybe why I don't try hard to lay claim on the account and let others perceive it as literarykpop in and of itself. It's just for fun anyway. It's not like anyone's taking it as seriously as I am. So I let it, let them. It takes me a moment to get over it but ah, it's okay!
After all, the reward lies in the 14k impressions for a Cyril Wong poem. I would just like to imagine that we are all, not just taking a peek at these quotes, but also reading them, by way of the image and the feeling that comes with it. It's all about the feeling. I mean. It's labor, and then feeling.
My heart grows a little fatter and wilder at every dm asking where a poem is from and where they can be read, because while the collective agony, or conversely, the gooey tender feeling we get is delightful in itself, there's also this brief self-important moment where I can think now you know Mark Cayanan because of me.
A informs me about her friend who was inspired by literarykpop they made the account literarykdrama, which is similar to what I do, except its all kdrama screenshots. I tell A this is a bit embarrassing, but then she tells me, no, what do you mean, she tells me, I want you to look back on this year and think about literarykpop as one of your little achievements, like a pet project! It's a good thing! And she sounds so, so sure.
So I'll take her word for it. Now what should we post for Joshua Hong day? His breasts or his guitar?
Three things prompted this meditation: 1) I've been receiving quite a number of messages over at literarykpop recently (incredible wow), mostly about requests, the occasional sweet little notes of thanks, conversations, and lately a few questions how the tweets come about, where I look for poems; 2) I made this tweet and a mutual in private quoted it with another text (or meme? joke? about immigrant mothers being unable to acknowledge their blunders to their children and offering food in lieu of proper apology, which, okay, True, but, but,); and 3) I flush deeply, gratefully, every time someone dms/replies/qrts with a comment about the "genius" of the post, but really, truly, as my friend C says (who is also running a poetry x BL twitter account), it's labor, it's a labor of love.
So, not sure where this will go (ah, what's new) but I am one beer in and I want to think about and write about how I put the photos and quotes together, or as I like to refer to the process, collaging.
I major in fiction, but I had to take a required three units of poetry course for my masters in CW. It was taught by one of the most up and coming poets-cum-activist assistant professors of the college of arts and letters. I adore her (present tense, so still, still) and have her earliest anthologies (out of print already!!) sitting in my bookshelf even before I had thought of applying for the program. She was known for her "new poetry" and anti-establishment leanings in the topic of publishing (all her books are available for free online in pdf formats). She was very cool, as was our syllabus for the class, which centered around "counterintuitive" poetry. We were un-reading poetry, and un-writing it, huzzah.
I wrote horrible poems in her class but enjoyed all the workshops, discussions and assigned readings. One of our modules was about the ways by which a text can interact with another form - images, videos, voice notes, etc. We read the book When a Map is Folded Cities Come Closer, When Clothes are Unpacked Cities Fall Apart, which is originally a long 20-page poem printed like a book that extends accordion-like. It's two poems stitched/split together with images of the city in black and white in between them in each of the pages.
The photos have a text of their own, too: it reads/appears like a map of the city of Manila. So in essence, it's three texts you're reading as you go page by page: the short lines of an "I" persona on top of the page, the photos, and then the thick, prose beneath the photos. It was an exercise of making sense of the parallels between the three elements: how a text engages with an image, how it accommodates a hybrid practice centered on the organic relationship of image and text.
I think, sort of, this is what I do in every literarykpop post. Okay, of course, at first not really, not deliberately. I simply wanted to echo the beautiful words that had already been written/uttered by poets before me, to express how a certain photo of a certain kpop boy makes me feel. Something like that. But gradually, as I become more aware of how a quote pulled from a book can expand and stretch the meaning of a simple, say, screenshot from an episode of a show, an interview, a photoshoot, I try to make everything intentional.
Once, someone asked how I find the texts to use and I went with the easiest, least embarrassing answer: which is that I teach, which means I read a lot, or at least try, and that I look for texts on the daily. But the real, honest answer is that there is no single place to look for them. I have bookmarks (mostly from my friends who like the same texts I like), I follow a list (of the common MFA-ists folks you find on "poetry twitter"). I used to have a Google docs for the quotes, but it's been left untouched for months now. I usually just find things on Twitter, sometimes on Tumblr, sometimes from Instagram when a friend puts something on their Stories. Often, though, I look at my bookshelf and pull titles out. All the Barthes, the Didions and the de Botton ones, you are free to imagine me leafing through the pages I have marked, looking for a quote that can perhaps capture what it means to just fall into sync with someone right off the bat. Or to wait. Or to forget.
What comes into play then mostly is memory and feeling. Sometimes I see an image and think, that one poem C posted a while ago, that one. I see tl talking about Mingyu and Seungkwan dynamics and remember Badiou. I see someone translating Kai's interview where he refers to himself, jokingly, but also maybe honestly, as god, and remember an Ovid quote in my bookmarks. Jigyu moment happens and isn't there a poem about ears.
Often, though, it's labor. Which means I have an image in my head I need a quote for. And I scour my inventory of mangled quotes and saved messages for one that fits. It didn't feel like a long time, but it took me a while to find this quote when the images of the SVT SG 2020 hands hit the tl. When one of the boys is about to have their birthdays, that's a busy time for literarykpop. During Jihoon's birthday, I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking at a bunch of drafts of posts about his song covers, screencaps of his moments in his HTR episode, random quotes from Choi to Mabi David until something fell into place and clicked. As in, of course it has got to be Having a Coke with you.
(and yet, not all images will find a quote in my head. There are bookmarks and saved photos that are still waiting for their right quotes, the right message, it's a long, unending process of collaging)
The best part is when it's easiest and the image and the quote just happen to coincide happily in my head and heart. I was looking for texts to include in my Non-fiction syllabus next semester when I found myself in Helena Fitzgerald's author page at catapult.co where I discovered this essay. And then Gose Carnival episode happened where we witnessed Joshua telling (retelling?) Jeonghan he's one of the reasons he could endure training. I would be rereading Hanif Abdurraqib's essays after he published the recent one on Julien Baker and then Dino's Danceology comes out. It's feeling, it's remembering, and then cut and paste.
It's when that kind of moment happens that it's the most gratifying, when the image grows and stretches and fits right where the pulled quote starts but doesn't end, and continues to resonate with others who also think there is something true in the bigger, expanded, collaged image that is created in the intersection of the screenshot and the poem.
Sometimes though, the audience boos me off stage or takes it a different plane or says they are at my door and will k/ll me and that's when I log out and let the post exist by itself. It's maybe why I don't try hard to lay claim on the account and let others perceive it as literarykpop in and of itself. It's just for fun anyway. It's not like anyone's taking it as seriously as I am. So I let it, let them. It takes me a moment to get over it but ah, it's okay!
After all, the reward lies in the 14k impressions for a Cyril Wong poem. I would just like to imagine that we are all, not just taking a peek at these quotes, but also reading them, by way of the image and the feeling that comes with it. It's all about the feeling. I mean. It's labor, and then feeling.
My heart grows a little fatter and wilder at every dm asking where a poem is from and where they can be read, because while the collective agony, or conversely, the gooey tender feeling we get is delightful in itself, there's also this brief self-important moment where I can think now you know Mark Cayanan because of me.
A informs me about her friend who was inspired by literarykpop they made the account literarykdrama, which is similar to what I do, except its all kdrama screenshots. I tell A this is a bit embarrassing, but then she tells me, no, what do you mean, she tells me, I want you to look back on this year and think about literarykpop as one of your little achievements, like a pet project! It's a good thing! And she sounds so, so sure.
So I'll take her word for it. Now what should we post for Joshua Hong day? His breasts or his guitar?