Abstract Of The Baskin Lectures

Notes taken by a conscientious third-year student at Pollexfen University during critic and "versifier" Kendrick Baskin's momentous engagement. Further material is forthcoming, pending restoration efforts on a cache of reel-to-reel tape held by the Pollexfen Archives. -ed.

1
"MATTERS OF DICTION"
On calibrations: specifically, how to negotiate, when to elevate vocabulary, and how to navigate between comprehension and elaboration. "The hopeful thought is that a vigored and flowery style--not afraid to aim thorns at its own eyes--should please in any case."
2
"MUSTARD-SEEDING"
Considering the proposition that verses are grown from single words, not born from thematic matrices. "A verse often expands from the word as though defining it; whereupon it proceeds to use this word in context...Thereafter, the seed is seen hanging from a minor branch of the plant--it is not yet suspected that this is the second generation." Awareness, perhaps in order to curtail revision, that the aforementioned original associations of words--as in Roussel--best dictate genetic sequence and syntax of composition.
3
"THE ONE AIM"
Work specifically intended for multiplicity, tending towards a refusal of unities. That "any god that could be postulated must needs be as much of a patchwork as Dr. Schreber’s."
4
"THE MEASURE OF SEPARATE CHARMS"
Further, that superimpositions exist even in what are intended as the most singular meanings. "Artwork is true insofar as it contradicts itself—this is the hallmark of souled truth".
5
"DOING YOUR COLORS"
Proposition that ideological, syntactical, logical contrasts work for verse as "color-juxes" do in visual design. Slides provided.
6
"DOTTY"
The conscious preservation of "the dainty and precious, the effeminate prerogatives of verse". Being that it is a universal expectation, the best practice is to seize it and turn it back against (...?)
7
"...THAT SAID..."
An excoriation of reflexive verse, of the exaltation of verse and the versifier, of verse such as it is (or is not). Also: any named colors, most places, most trees, and "all but the most select scatology, slang, and 'plain speech'”.
8
"DOGGEREL DOGGEDLY"
"The versifier sits in a study, looks at the rest of it, and labors at how to say it—oh no, that approach is too direct. 'How do I do this place in pleasing words?'" Instead, intuit something pleasing out from the span of several years. "Don't think in subjects; think and think around them as though they were very tall formations."
9
"I HARDLY KNOW"
"...what’s to be written when I start." Be like an atrium, "incessantly poured through and walked", like a reverberating machine. "I don’t know the best way to proceed; I can, at the least, be the exemplar of what’s naive. If I can but promote new forms of sense: extend the tongue by natural degrees, rather than by dictate." Movement towards a greater faith, in terms of turning metaphor towards the literal--seeing as there’s been no faith in the tissue-integrity of posited relations.
10
"CLOCK-TIME"
Regular meter can only be countenanced when the ideas and vocal contours of the individual lines are "rocky" and not at level; i.e., Coleridge composing on uneven ground and Wordsworth on a straight walk. "...You ease your way, mindful, down the slope—some skree, some spar, some pack-dry, some slide." Let rhyme and ready measure lie with popular music.
11
"NOW, WRITE FOR MASS TRANSIT"
Promulgation of a "crass poetics against crassness". "...When your reader may need to cross the same ground three times, it’s not such work, but such charm, and firm collar-leading."
12
"I DON'T BANK"
There exists a lack of credence in any particular polemic, but some have more allure, and more charm. That charm and allure are known compounds, "as sure as the fragrances that are known to abet them".
13
"CONCERNING ARTICLES"
"To cite 'the pots' is sorely different than citing 'pots'." The deifications or other 'cations introduced by "a" and "the" dramatically narrow the spectral width of a word, until only a scant received idea is left. For example, "pots" stands for any possible or pleasing association for the reader with such vessels, while "the pots" forces a reach for the most proper set--encouraging in this case "a tissue of the rustic, the quaint, and the earthen".
14
"JUMPING TRACKS"
"...as our current-day authorities would have it. It's irritating, since it takes such a lot of switchman's-work to get to writing at all." If the versifier cannot write so as to dislocate her-or-himself from accepted notions of "what a rain is, what it looks like, where it may licitly appear", the verse will eternally remain composed on its page, and never perform its own particular function of pleasured re-routing. How to achieve this? "Make a knotted switchyard", and draw all lines so as to connect by some slight remove. As a rule, write quickly and with little regard, and then knock any disparates into a shared path.
15
"ORGANELLES"
No verse need be essential in of itself. "If we're all so keen for a verse to be a flower, then: some as orchids, self-complete, rare, nigh-unique; some the whites of Queen-Anne's-lace, insignificant in atom, but the prime constituents of a heavenly-milky disk." The individual verse as a working organelle in the cell of a larger work. The goal is more for a single Dickinsonian proposition than "a suite of carved masterworks".
16
"BIND TOGETHER SUCH SPARKS INTO THE ONE OPAL!"
Summary and review.

Urbanism (Not Urbanism)--Concluded

ST. LUCIA URBANISM
All public light fixtures are replaced with agglomerations of candle-holders. Citizens pay a yearlong "wax tax", compelled to continually donate candles to neighborhood distribution centers in order to keep the streets lit. Local children (ages 6-14) are gainfully employed in maintaining the candles; girls march in processions of ten, carefully lighting them, while boys stand by in formation, water-pails at the ready.

TULIPOMANIACAL URBANISM
Portable shelters are issued by the government, offered to anyone who might want them. There are forty-something distinct lines available, each containing between seven and ten cosmetic variations on a basic model (something like jockey silks). Outside of this readily available array, there are any number of special editions, offered either for a limited time through rehabilitated warehouse/storefronts--or as rewards for secretly witnessed meritorious acts--or as rewards for any chosen random action (28th person through door X on 28th Street on the 28th of March.) The scarcity and variability of these items propels a furor: citizens constantly exchange shelters, barter for one another's shelters, pull around their own shelters (now to display them, now to obscure them). Permanent dwellings are largely abandoned; seen from above, colorful shells constantly shuffle themselves in the streets and open spaces.

COCKTAIL-DRUM URBANISM
Mixed-use planning is taken to its logical conclusion; separate rooms within buildings are apportioned in order to create microcosmic neighborhoods inter mures. To reach a hotel room, the enterprising sleeper must first get through a laundry, a teahouse, and a tax-preparation service.

BILLINGSGATE URBANISM
All public statuary is removed and replaced with identically-scaled foam copies. Citizens can visit their scorn upon the simulacra: easily gouging in graffiti, sawing off heads, or removing riders from their horses. Moreover, they may post notes of mockery upon the foam--attacking their their neighbors, their elected officials, and their fellow man in terms of foul contempt.

TOBACCO URBANISM
The timetable of the built environment is altered so that buildings may be conjured in a matter of days out of a fixed vocabulary of prefabricated parts, and then disassembled slowly and methodically over a standard course of time. Whereas the constructors worked in haste and obscurity, the destroyers will work in daylight under the terms of a scrupulous choreography. Crowds will gather outside to cheer these ritual demolitions. In addition to being thrilled and edified, the public will also be given a visible index of the passage of time.

CYPRESS URBANISM
Lines of settlement rake across the country in fixed channels. Immense brooding shells begin at the coast, progressively half-sheltering slightly smaller iterations of the same forms, terminating at the opposite border in a scattering of rounded sukkahs. Humans are dispersed throughout this array based on the results of an extensive written questionaire concerning their space preferences.

NARCOLEPTIC URRBANISM
Ready access to sleeping facilities is taken to be the greatest possible good; whereby entryways, benches, and window-ledges are optimized for the comfort of the weary passerby, with leather cushions and coils of bedsheet rolled up like garden hoses. As a last resort for the exhausted, pavements and grates are rubberized, with reams of newspaper set out in neat bales.

Wherein I Solve The White Mystery

It seems that the only necessary element for the creation of a mystery is application of the label "mystery"; that is, that any simple act classed outside of conventional norms can lend its setting more than its ostensible share of scrutiny. So, our modern-day mystery novel can add interest to any period, any geographic region, through the shortest possible expedient: a murder. A murder, being horrible enough to hold attention but not abominable enough to deflect it, seems an ideal light to hold to the otherwise dim outlines of any prosaic landscape or society. In other words: the ignoble can take the opportunity to march into view close on the heels of the parading return-of-the-repressed.

Scaling the observation down, a mere ambiguity of trait or motive may attract such interest on a smaller, less official scale. Certain simple products become fathomless confusions of elusive taste and racial unease. Such insertions of the inexplicable not only beguile the young, but tend to inculcate a taste for ambiguity for its own sake (and, one suspects, unpleasantness for its own sake).

Speaking of confections, elusive taste and racial unease: an nth generation laughingstock.