mute column

Mic check

By Benedict Seymour, 14 December 2011

the decision about what to do next is being mic checked:

some people

just can't break

down their sentences

efficiently

to be echoed

up the chain

and

keep saying

too few words

or too many and have to make with the

enjambement.

this seems

particularly hard

for those schooled

in the oratorical

habits

of the organised

left

their expressive

contours

are shattered

the rhetoric

halted

is this

reification

reified

(broken up)

(broken down)

or

reification

dereified?

retrogression/non

reproduction

and/or

the end of the line

for the socialist

movement?

the use of new

collective techniques

(low tech)

to extend

the range

of limited

technical

resources?

resources?

resources?

l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e

poetry like

ron silliman's

had already introduced

the autonomised line

which seemed to float

apart from the previous

and following line

quite some time

before 1989

a negation

of continuity

in response to the 60s

revolt against the

production line

extending revolt

into the line

of verse

[c.f. Joel Duncan

who argues this well

in a forthcoming

paper]

and now

it's back

by grace of

mic check

practiced on

an industrial

scale

subject to a hypotaxis

that he shunned

but which he

no doubt

wd love.

there is a total

abstraction

to where the line break falls

to what is said

with mic

check

but could there

should there

be some way

to make

it fun?

to make the words

repeated

break and spread?

to make the break to flow?

howard slater's

reading last week

at his Mute

book launch

was the first

instance i

have encountered

of someone

feeding their

poetry to the mic check

and it was

also great.

but has anyone

written any

mic check

poetry yet?

and should it

rhyme?

with mic check

every line

is a double A rhyme

standard

or poor

unless it's double mic check

or doubledowned

dodecadoubleddown

like CDS bets

on TBFs

afar

from Oakland