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Please Read This Only Once, or Preferably, Not At All.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
-East Coker, T.S. Eliot
Please read this only once, or preferably, not at all. Only harm can come from repeated readings. Life is a series of new moments, not of old moments repeated. Likewise, the mind should move constantly to new ideas, finding pleasure in words only for the emotional response they provoke, and not for any ideas the words might attempt to carry with them. The same basic ideas are contained in everything that has been written, just as the same fundamental components of life are present in all life. To concentrate all of one’s energies on one poem, will decrease both the depth and rate of one’s learning by distracting from the universality of the ideas, just as focusing entirely on one facet of life will divert the mind from understanding it's surroundings. Concentration on one device, such as a poem, creates an illusion of content. Words contain nothing; they are only temporal representations of ideas. Words work as tools that can stimulate a response from the mind, but as any tool, a word can be mishandled and cause destruction rather than creation. The mishandling of words is one of the most common ailments of the modern world. People read them and listen to them repeatedly, from the media, from politicians, from their friends, their lovers, and their parents. The more people concentrate on the words themselves, the more they believe that they understand what is being said, when in fact, the nail has already been driven, and the hammer is only denting the wood. The mind has forgotten itself. The mind’s most powerful tool is itself. Words can be used to access the resources of the mind, but the words should not become the actual resources, because they are only representations. It is similar to the young boy who watches shadows and believes them to be ghosts. The young boy avoids falling into a shadow at all costs, and bumps into trees constantly. Everything must be understood intuitively, with the mind and the mind alone, for that is how we began to learn, and that is how one’s perceptions become one’s personal reality. The mind ought to be allowed to move through shadows and feel the relaxation that is brought by the shade, rather than trying to feel the shade itself. The notion that shade can be felt is an illusion, caused by the mind which has forgotten itself. Shade, like words, can only be perceived by the effect produced upon the one who perceives. The perception is of the effect, rather than of the source.
Because life changes with every moment, words change also with every moment. At each progressive moment, the words spoken by a person mean something different, because the speaker is a different person in every moment. Not only is the speaker constantly shifting and changing, but the world in which the words exist is changing as well. To add to the confusion, the listener is changing from moment to moment also, which means that the words are formed by inefficient means, and are also received by inefficient means.
The poems in this collection are not just temporal representations, but extend the idea of temporality by representing temporal ideas, attempting to be only humourous, exaggerating the ridiculous. These poems attempt to confuse the reader and help the reader feel comfortable with confusion, to laugh at their own confusion. Once the enlightened mind begins to strip words of the exaggerated importance that has been attributed to them, confusion will be a recurring experience, one that must be accepted if the mind is to ever understand any experience intuitively, or through reliance upon the mind, as opposed to reliance upon the surrounding stimuli. These poems are a celebration of the humourous confusion that comes with the understanding that words are illusory. Never has poetry tried so hard to defy the basic idea of poetry. In fact, it makes no sense for any of these poems to exist, for their ultimate purpose is to make poetry completely unnecessary. If any poetry has ever gone further into anti-poetry than this poetry, no one would know it because there would be no way to write it down. This poetry seeks to defy the limitations of anti-poetry by begging the reader to read the poems only once, or preferably not at all. It is a blatantly contradictory way to pretend to communicate the futile delusion of communication which can not possibly be communicated. The only excuses for attempted communication are contradiction and hypocrisy.
Humour is the crowning achievement of language. It is simple, magical, and demonstrates perfectly the temporality of words. A joke is only funny for a limited time. No one laughs at a joke the twenty-third time. It's not funny anymore. The words have outlived their usefulness, and in reality, all words outlive their usefulness as soon as they are heard or read.
The poems in this collection are intending to contain all the above ideas in a form that will be funny, but only once. The humour involved in these poems is abstract at times, even nonsensical. A large portion of the present day population may in fact see no humour at all. The types of readers most likely to enjoy these poems are young, observant, wearied, wired, mtv viewers with some experience with the absurd. Most of this audience will not enjoy reading this long-winded introduction because it drags out some issues that are terribly obvious and instinctual in the minds of those who were born with silver remote controls in their mouths. These are people who, before the age of 12, had witnessed 10,000 murders on television, and twice as many gimmicky adverts. These people know what absurd is, because they grew up with it radiating into their eyes. To these readers, this introduction is stupid, transparent, and just another slick piece of gloss.
“This doesn't mean anything, show me the poems and let me feel something.”
-TheSilenceOfOne
Now that the purpose of these anti-poems has been explained away, the remainder of this introduction will show how these anti-poems do not fit into any historical context, poetic or otherwise. First of all, this collection will never be published, so it has no chance of becoming a historical document, major or minor. To publish such destructive anti-poetry, no matter how much pleasure it would bring to the author personally, would be utterly foolish. If that doesn't make sense to the reader, then don't worry, neither will the rest of this.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with
Nothing to be so little reached as with criticism.
Only love can grasp and hold and fairly judge them.
“Letters to a Young Poet”
Rainer Maria Rilke
(as quoted by e.e. cummings)
In the 1920s, two of the most talked-about poets of the twentieth century emerged with their most talked-about books. T.S. Eliot came out with The Wasteland and Other Poems, and e.e. cummings came out with Is 5 (referring to 2 x 2). In both of these astonishing books (Is 5 being astonishingly boring) the poet has tried to push his personal attitude toward life into the mind of the reader. Whether it is highly individualistic, or highly idealised, the agenda is clearly present. However, the anti-poetry of TheSilenceOfOne would prefer not to exist. It has been forced to exist by outside influences and is unfortunately not able to commit suicide, as it is not a living creature, but merely in existence. All that this anti-poetry poetry can do is beg not to be read. The late 20th century Western world is a world of individuals, and the only unforgivable crime is to make an impression on someone else, which one invariably does by existing nearby others. TheSilenceOfOne, through this anti-poetry, seeks to avoid this most horrible crime, as no poet has yet had the fortitude to do.
The Wasteland not only offers clear opinions on every issue that critics label significant, it attempts to define it's own place in historical context. The extent to which Eliot implies the concreteness of his opinions knows no bounds. His poetry commands powerful images to set down distinct absolutes, ties every passage to it's predecessor, and rounds out every set of ideas with tidy endings. What a terrible illusion! A reader could come away thinking that the world was orderly, or that carefully understood opinions are capable of setting a person right with the world. What could be more devious?
e.e. cummings is experimental enough to jumble syntax and confuse the reader a little, but like Eliot, e.e. has a set of opinions to relate. He is in favour of individualism and a purely creative way of viewing the world. He has no hesitations in endorsing this singular platform. The anti-poetry of this collection makes no demands on the reader, and once again, would prefer that the reader make something of him/herself in life beyond the passive and humble occupation of reading.
…most people are perfectly afraid of silence
great men burn bridges before they come to them…
Jottings, e.e. cummings
Certainly I, TheSilenceOfOne, can not be the sole instigator of so complex and devout a system of dismissal of convention, so into what tradition does this poetry fall? The poems here are preceded by all those who have dared not to write. For the young man in 19th century France who became a lawyer because his father wished it, and who watched his father with bitter eyes as he withered away inside, this is poetry for his futility. For all who have discovered some great force, and left it hidden at the bottom of a lake, this is poetry for their bravery. For those who have loved from afar, full of doubt and sorrow, this is poetry for their vexation. This is the anti-poetry of the unfulfilled, and it shall not become anything.
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? …
In order to posses what you do not possess
You must go the by the way of dispossession.
-East Coker, T.S. Eliot
I shall say it again. The anti-poems collected here are funny. If the reader does not see anything funny about these poems, the poems are worse than useless, they are unappreciated – all the more reason to burn all existing copies. Humour is a phenomenon which the reader must either feel or not feel. It is the most inane of criticism books that attempts to analyse humour. It is either funny, or it is not, and there is nothing else involved. The question of funny or not funny is decided entirely in the actual state of the reader’s mind in the moment after reading the humour. Is the mind of the reader in a state of amusement or not? It is the simplest thing on the planet. No humour has ever amused absolutely everyone, so if the reader doesn't get it, the reader should cheer up and DO something instead of wasting all of his/her time reading – it's passive and inefficient. This poetry does nothing, it does not try to be something, as all poetry, even experimental poetry tries. Experimental poetry tries to experiment. This is anti-poetry. It seeks nothing, yet by it's own inane existence, reduces poetry-poetry to a pile of rubbish. It even eliminates itself, which is why it can be paradoxically referred to as anti-poetry or just poetry.
A common question is “Why the typos?” The answer is that typos are funny and that finding the disconcert between what would be conventionally “meant” and what is actually said is also funny. The character names are developed by a form of meditation, at the end of which the author decides that certain names are indeed funny. Funniness, and just plain fun are incorporated into every aspect of these poems. Any question the reader might entertain while reading these poems should answer that question with the following answer :
“Someone probably thinks that's funny.”
It is most likely that if the reader is entertaining a question on any part of these poems, the reader is unamused. This is a cue for the reader to move on and stop draining his/her energies with all that idle reading.
More on the differences between anti-poetry and experimental poetry : There is a common misconception that the experimental poet is doing something innovative, or possibly avant-garde. Experimental poetry uses the same techniques as that antiquated old normal poetry, except that the experimental poet experiments with those techniques. The experimental poet mixes up the forms in order to strengthen the message, to put a fresh twist or a “now gloss” on the same forms, with the same messages. By contrast, anti-poetry does not use any techniques, forms, or messages. This is what is meant by anti-poetry. Basically, it's no good. The only reason anti-poetry exists (or anti-exists) is that the author and a few of his/her friends usually think it's a pretty funny trick to pretend that their anti-poetry is somehow poetry. Clearly it is not. (Not poetry or not funny?)
What we have then is a collection of poetry that does not fit into any category, and is not able to fit into a category. In fact, it is not even poetry. It is anti-poetry, which makes it a type of poetry. This poetry that is not poetry only pretends to be poetry in order to pull down the established poetry from it's poetic pedestal. This poetry is not revolutionary, it is only destructive. It destroys the illusion that words are important and meaningful. The best possible effect words can have is to amuse someone. This anti-poetry endorses no opinions, attitudes, or behaviour. It expresses no optimism, pessimism, or sentimentalism. The only reason to read any of these poems is to laugh at them. The only excuses for writing anything down are contradiction, hypocrisy, and 5e5e5email. This poetry is not covered by any of these excuses, and is therefore inexcusable. It is funny, but we aren't laughing. We are throwing it away. It is rubbish. Goodnight.
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