Thunderation!

So, I know what you're going to say, that I've been holding out on you. And it's true. I have. It's been almost four months now that my first book of poetry was published. 

I do have a little bit of an excuse, though. You see, when it first came out, back in March, Amazon took a week or two to make it available through their site, and much longer to get the book cover up there, along with other information. Something about playing hard ball with small presses that don't work directly through Amazon, I'm told. Has to be something, because over on Barnes and Noble's site, it was up there much, much earlier.

So anyway, by the time it all got sorted out, the thrill of fresh publication was gone, I got caught up with other things, and so on and so forth. But enough of that. Better late than never, so let's hear it for:

Thunder at Darwin Station

Published by NeoPoiesis Press, no less! And with the coolest cover. Here, take a look:

And here's some basic info about it:

Thunder at Darwin Station
Lance Strate
NeoPoiesis Press/March 4, 2015
5.5”x8.5” perfect bound, paper/ $14.95/ 82 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9892018-7-2

And hey, blurbs, blurbs, blurbs, gotta have some blurbs. And here they are:

Thunderation! Open up this post-atomic cocktail of poems by Lance Strate and let it shake you up! Thunder at Darwin Station, blends Huxleys with Darwins, evolves with jolts of Joyce and a double DNA dose of Wells and Watsons, spins the reverberations of a blues apocalypse with a green sprig of enlightenment, and delivers you a Galloping Galapagos. Drink up, it will serve you right!

David Ossman author, actor, member of Firesign Theatre

"Rhetorically poignant...witty charm mixed with story-telling prose come to mind when reading this lovely ensemble from New York poet, Lance Strate. I particularly enjoyed the Sixth Thunder."

Alannah Myles, singer, songwriter

a serious entrtainment a theologikul teleologikul ontologikul evolushyunaree whethr by design by who thrust n all our charaktrs th trains endlesslee run like giraffes gazells elegaik rhythmic funkee n elegant langwage heer from th erth n sky watr n fire we all ar sew changing n oftn sew maladaptiv variaysyuns thers not much time 2 wait 4 th train 2 cum in we ar alredee on wun n manee n thers brillyant sharp n profound writing a great reed how far wev cum whats next can we know ourselvs our "specious" specees r we th missing links ths book asks evreething abt thees issews a wundrful xperiens reeding thunder at darwin staysyun

bill bissett, poet, painter, mystic

So, no doubt at this point you are absolutely convinced that this is a must-have, so here's the link to order a copy, and such a bargain too! So go ahead, I'll wait...

Now then, let me take a moment to thank my friends at NeoPoiesis Press, Dale Winslow, Stephen Roxborough, and Erin Badough, and to acknowledge Sheffield Abella for the marvelous cover illustration, and Milo Duffin along with Stephen Roxborough again for the art direction—speaking of which, here's the back, front and spine for you to see:

And you know, I had to do an About the Author blurb, and they insisted on me making it one that was creatively oriented, as opposed to my usual academic fare, so here's what I came up with:

Lance Strate is a native New Yorker, having been born in Manhattan, and moved out to Queens two weeks later, and now working in the Bronx and living in New Jersey, just across the Hudson in SopranoLand. His poetry has been published in Poetica Magazine, KronoScope, Anekaant, ETC, Explorations in Media Ecology, General Semantics Bulletin, and several anthologies, including Candy, and The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan. He has a few books of the intellectual sort to his credit, Echoes and Reflections is one, On the Binding Biases of Time is another, and Amazing Ourselves to Death is his most recent. He is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, and he also teaches in the graduate program in Media and Professional Communication at Fairleigh Dickinson University. He is often identified as a media ecologist, and quite happy to be known as such, having been the founder and first president of the Media Ecology Association. Lance hopes someday to find the time...

So, anyway, I do want to acknowledge that this cycle of ten poems originally appeared on my poetry blog over on the old MySpace social networking site, which all vanished into thin air a few years ago, and the book is dedicated to our old MySpace poetry community.

Anyway, NeoPoiesis Press was born out of that community as well, and you can see my book's page on their website by clicking here.

And, for more information about Thunder at Darwin Station, please visit www.neopoiesispress.com or contact Dale Winslow at info at neopoiesispress.com.

And if you're interested in ordering a signed copy, just let me know, although I imagine marking it up in that way might depreciate its resale value on eBay...

Abuse on Twitter

Back on February 7th, I was quoted in a Tech Times article entitled, Three Immediate Things Twitter Must Do To Curb Online Abuse And Win Back Users, written by Christian de Looper. I had been asked to comment on the problem of abusive tweets and the general issue of online abuse, and on what Twitter needs to do to address the problem, so let me begin by providing you with my full response to the query:

Twitter is not the only social media platform that has a problem with online abuse on the part of its users—YouTube, for example, is notorious for the problem. The fact that it has become a public relations concern for Twitter reflects the fact that it is second only to Facebook when in comes to communication and social interaction on the internet. 

Twitter ought to be concerned, and can learn a lesson from the fall of MySpace, where a sense of "lawlessness" and "anything goes" contributed to the mass migration to Facebook, where controls over user behavior are more stringent, creating a very safe, you might say suburban, white bread kind of environment. First and foremost, to follow Facebook's lead, Twitter would have to become much more responsive to user complaints, essentially issuing warnings and shutting accounts down whenever any user is accused of abusive behavior. 

The problem they face is that Twitter has gained much from its wide open atmosphere, not so much an open frontier like the old MySpace, but more like an urban and urbane melting pot of myriad voices. Crack down too much on offensive tweets, and you lose the open atmosphere that makes Twitter so attractive, and you alienate users who view that sort of activity as censorship. Twitter will need to engage in a very tricky balancing act between the need to provide a safe and attractive environment and otherwise show users they are in control and care about abusive behavior, while maintaining their status as an open and democratic platform. The problem they face in the virtual world is exactly the same problem we face in open societies in real life, between security and freedom, between the needs of the community and the rights of the individual.

Long time readers of Blog Time Passing may find my comparison of Twitter, Facebook, and the old MySpace familiar, expressed for example in my post of March 1, 2009, About Face(book).

Be that as it may, let's turn now to de Looper's recent article about Twitter, which begins with the following introduction:

A memo written by Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been leaked, with Costolo admitting that Twitter "sucks at dealing with trolls."

The memo also resolved that Twitter needs to fight online abuse head-on. But what exactly can Twitter do to put an end to harassment on Twitter?

Now comes those three things Twitter can do to curb online abuse, and the first one is where my quotes, taken out of the larger commentary I provided, comes in:

1. Twitter Needs To Get Ruthless

Twitter has been very passive about its online abuse problem. The company has not made real efforts to combat the issue.

"To follow Facebook's lead, Twitter would have to become much more responsive to user complaints, essentially issuing warnings and shutting accounts down whenever any user is accused of abusive behavior," said Lance Strate, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, in an email with Tech Times.

Twitter, however, is in the middle of a balancing act. The service currently has a very "open" vibe about it, and cracking down too hard on users could take away from this.

"The problem they face in the virtual world is exactly the same problem we face in open societies in real life, between security and freedom, the needs of the community and the rights of the individual," continued Strate.

So, now, that's it for me, but let's get the other two bits of advice, shall we?

2. Twitter Needs to Be Public About Its Abuse Battle

Online abuse is not a problem unique to Twitter. YouTube is notorious for Internet trolls that comment on videos with the idea of wanting to take people down a peg. Often comments aren't even related to the videos being posted.

The problem for Twitter, however, is a little different because of the public relations issues involved. If Twitter is going to successfully put an end to abuse on its platform, it needs to be public about it. The issues surrounding public abuse on Twitter could end tomorrow, but that doesn't mean that users will think that it has. Twitter's reputation is important when it comes to gaining users. In fact, many users have left Twitter because of its online abuse problem, and it's likely that they won't come back until Twitter is able to successfully deal with the problem.

3. Twitter Needs To Do It In-House

In the past, Twitter has rather famously left dealing with online abuse to third parties, most notably Women, Action and the Media (WAM!).

The fact that Twitter has not dealt with the problem internally shows a lack of caring from the company. It seems, however, as though the company will finally be stepping up.

Twitter must deal with the problem in-house, and must hire people to deal with it. The tools for the company to be able to combat online abuse have been put in place -- there is a "blocked accounts" page where users can see who has been blocked from their feed, for example, and users can more easily report issues. Now Twitter needs to have employees that deal with those problems.

The conflict between safety and growth lies at the heart of Abraham Maslow's humanistic psychology of motivation,  as famously represented by his Hierarchy of Needs diagram

So, once again, it comes down to a fundamental conflict. Openness is democratic, and facilitates originality, creativity, and growth, but brings with it risk and danger, in this instance the possibility of abuse, as well as scams and spam, and various forms of cybercrime. Closing things off provides more of a margin of safety and security, but at the cost of the ferment that made the platform, group, or society interesting and vibrant in the first place. How to find the balance, to avoid being boring as well as to curb abuse, that is the question. 

Tumbling for Yahoo!

So, back on May 20th, I was one of the folks quoted on the adotas.com site to answer Mike Daly's Today's Burning Question feature, on the implication's of Yahoo's acquisition of Tumblr.  Yup, there I was, smack in the middle of all those CEOs, VPs, and other business types, one lone academic.  So how do I stack up? Well, you can go over there and compare: Today’s Burning Question: Implications of Yahoo’s Tumblr Acquisition?  Or you can stay right here and just read what I have to say.

And let me just preface this by saying that I have never used Tumblr as a blogging platform. As longtime readers of Blog Time Passing know, I'm a longtime user of Blogger or Blogspot—I wish they'd just make up their minds, or just call it BloGoogle, or Bloogle.  

But I have come across some Tumblr blogs, and having taught classes about blogging, I've had students whose prior experience is with Tumblr. And when it comes to the great, honorable tradition of blogging, well, Tumblr strikes me as appealing to folks who are not so much interested in writing blog posts as they are in posting images and links. 

Now link logs or blogs, or filter blogs, go back a long way, but to some extent Twitter took over that function, and status updates on social media more generally, while Pinterest has taken over in the image reposting department.  But Tumblr still isn't bad as an entry level blogging platform before moving on to more serious blogging over here, or via WordPress.

And then there's Yahoo! Good old Yahoo! I remember back in the 90s when theirs was the primary search engine I'd turn to, and they took over GeoCities which was a kind of proto-social medium. Yahoo! was cool once upon a time, and heck, I still have a Yahoo! backpack that I got as a gift, complete with padding for shlepping around my laptop. I still have it, but I don't use it anymore. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I just got a really nice Targus computer bag as a gift, and been using that instead. Although it is getting a little old now, might be due for a replacement one of these days...

Anyway, I do remember when Yahoo pretty much displaced AOL as the center of the online universe, a position it held on to for a few years before being pushed aside by the twin forces of Google and social media.  But they have held on better than AOL did, and better than MySpace and Friendster, not the least through the acquisition of Flickr in 2005, a site they recently revamped. And it sure is interesting to watch this industry go through its ups and downs, the volatility is amazing.

So anyway, without further ado, let me present to you:  

ADOTAS – Today we’ve solicited comments from industry leaders in response to the following Burning Question: 

“What will be the implications of Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr?”

And my response:

“Like AOL and MySpace, Yahoo was once a dominant force in the new media landscape, but was unable to adapt to the fast-changing media environment, falling behind and being displaced by other sites and services, Google in particular.  As a consequence, Yahoo also lost its cachet, its coolness factor, and became old hat, albeit one that retained a significant following, and a good amount of resources.  The comeback game is not an easy one, however, as MySpace is discovering, and rather than trying to relaunch itself, Yahoo seems to be following AOL’s lead, as AOL’s acquisition of The Huffington Post arrested AOL’s decline, and started to turn its fortunes around.  Of course, picking up Twitter would be the ultimate prize, but if Google and Facebook failed to acquire that microblogging platform, Yahoo certainly wouldn’t have any luck in doing so.  But Tumblr is most definitely a valuable asset, and a good fit for Yahoo as it provides a blogging platform and a service for personal expression that has been missing from Yahoo since they eliminated GeoCities in the US. While not as popular as Google’s Blogger or WordPress, Tumblr bloggers are notable for not being as “writerly” or text-oriented as other bloggers, so it does resemble Twitter to some degree, and is certainly more accessible and less intimidating than the other types of blogs. Tumblr blogs tend to be more image-oriented as well, making it a precursor to Pinterest, the platform that quickly rose to the number three spot in social media behind Facebook and Twitter.  And as bandwidth has become less and less of an issue, the emphasis in new media has shifted from text to pictures and audiovisual formats, which has much to do with Tumblr’s popularity. So while Tumblr won’t rocket Yahoo to the top of the heap, it will make the service current and relevant once again, not just an interface offered such “old-fashioned” services as email, discussion groups, news feeds, and the ubiquitous advertising.  The latter is key, because Yahoo desperately needs to attract eyeballs, and its failure to hop onto the social media bandwagon meant that it missed out on the bonanza of user-generated content that brings in big audiences.  Tumblr will change all that, and may be the start of a reversal of fortunes, but it will take the acquisition of a video service such as Vimeo to really turn things around.”  – Dr. Lance Strate, Professor of Communication and Media Studies and Director of the Professional Studies in New Media program at Fordham University.

And there you have it, my 2¢, nothing to do tumblesaults over, or shout yahoo, but maybe of some mild interest to a few of you out there.

Machine Gun Moloch

In a post back in June, Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex, I wrote about my friend Robert Priest, a poet and musician, and shared an essay I wrote about him for the online poetry and creative writing journal/magazine, Big Bridge, which was also entitled, "Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex". And in the essay, I included some discussion of his meme splices or meme switches, a technique he employs where he switches out similar sounding words in a series of familiar phrases and sayings, so that substituting splice for spice yields, "the splice of life," "the splice garden," and "the splice trade," for example. It's a great technique for poetry, humor, and also what in general semantics is referred to as consciousness of abstracting—in this instance by substituting one word for another, it makes us more aware and more critical of the meanings we attribute to the words we use.

And readers of Blog Time Passing are no doubt quite familiar with my views on gun violence and the second amendment by now. If not, or if you're in need of a refresher course, you can go back and read the following posts: You can start with What to Blame for the Colorado Shooting? from this past July, in response the Aurora movie theater shooting. And I shared a poem on the topic the following month, Second Amen Dementia. And then, in December, reacting to the unspeakable horror of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, I posted On Guns and More, followed by Human Sacrifice and the False Idol of Firearms.  And in that last post, I included commentary from Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie on how gun worship is blasphemy, and from a leading Roman Catholic intellectual, on how guns have become the new, American Moloch (Moloch being the most despised of false gods in the bible, because his worshipers required that children be thrown into the fire as sacrifices to him).

And so, it occurred to me to apply Robert Priest's technique to the terms gun and god, as another way to express the idea that idolatry and blasphemy is alive and well in America, in the form of gun worship.  I posted the result on my poetry blog over on MySpace last month, and I thought I would share it here as well. I will leave you with this poem, rather than try to add some final concluding words to this post, as I feel that at the end of this piece, there really is nothing more to be said.

Machine Gun Moloch (A Meme Splice)

I am the Lord, thy Gun
I, the Lord thy Gun, am a jealous Gun
Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy Gun in vain
There is no Gun but Gun
To the greater glory of Gun!
In Gun we trust
Gun bless you
Gun is everywhere
You cannot hide from Gun
Do you believe in Gun?
Have faith in Gun
Praise be to Gun
Gun's will be done
Have you found Gun?
Pray to the almighty Gun
Our Gun and Gun of our fathers
May Gun bless you and keep you
May the face of Gun smile upon you
As Gun is my witness
It was an act of Gun
Gun damn you!
We are assured of victory for we have Gun on our side
He just thinks he's Gun's gift to us
Oh my Gun!
Have you heard Gun's voice?
Gun is our help and our savior
The law of Gun
Gun does not give you anything you cannot handle
Your arm's too short to box with Gun
Gun speaks to us
Gun wants us to worship Him
Gun demands our obedience
Give thanks to Gun
Can you feel the presence of Gun?
Walk with Gun
There but for the grace of Gun go I
Submit to Gun's judgment
Stand before Gun
Kneel before Gun
Approach Gun's altar
Know Gun's peace
Gun is just
Gun is love
Swear to Gun
So help me Gun!
It's in the hands of Gun
Await the kingdom of Gun
Gun willing!
For Gun's sake!
Honest to Gun!
Dear Gun!
Gun is a circle whose center is everywhere
If Gun did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him
I believe in Gun even when He is silent
Man plans, Gun laughs
Oh for the love of Gun!
You must fight for your Gun-given rights
This will put the fear of Gun into you!
Why Gun? Why me?
One nation, under Gun

Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex

 So, here's something else that I'd like to call you attention to.  A while back, I was asked if I'd write something about the Canadian poet, songwriter, musician, and writer, Robert Priest, for the online poetry and creative writing journal/magazine, Big Bridge.   And I was very happy to do so, because I like his work a great deal, and I also consider Robert to be a friend.

So, my essay was included as part of a feature on Robert Priest, and that link will take you to the main page, with links to his books, and to my own and three other essays and reviews of Robert's work.  I recommend reading them all, and especially "Robert Priest: Poet/Minstrel in Utter Space" by Sheree Fitch. her piece is great, especially for those of us with an academic orientation!  

There are also links to his viral video, One Crumb,





and to a 2007 public reading of some of his lyrics in the Ontario legislature,





And there's also a link to his bio entry on Big Bridge, where it states

Son of a navy officer and a member of the Wrens, Robert Priest was born in Walton-on-Thames England on July 10 1951 and emigrated to Toronto Canada at the age of 4. Growing up in Scarborough, Priest developed his love of literature from the fanciful stories his mother often told him before bedtime. By the age of 8, Priest had already begun to dream of becoming a writer. In 1970, he entered the University of Waterloo to study mathematics but soon dropped out so that he could put all his energies towards poetry. He released his first book of poetry in 1979 entitled The Visible Man. He has since published 9 more books of poetry, four plays, a children's novel, and a hit song. He is also a rock singer of note, having released several albums and videos which came to prominence in the l980's and 90's. He has also performed his children's songs for Sesame Street. Currently he is preparing his second young-adult fantasy novel The Paper Sword for publication in 2014 by Dundurn Press. A new book of children's poems: Rosa Rose is scheduled for a 2013 publication date with Wolsak & Wynn. He has just released his fourth CD of songs: Feeling the Pinch. He lives in Toronto with Marsha Kirzner and is a regular contributor to Toronto's weekly magazine Now.

The author of ten books of poetry, he won the Milton Acorn Memorial People's Poetry Award for The Mad Hand (1988). In his alias as Dr. Poetry he wrote and performed thirteen segments for CBC radio's spoken-word show Wordbeat. As a songwriter, he co-wrote the SOCAN airplay award-winning number one hit, "Song Instead of a Kiss" for Alannah Myles. His aphorisms have already appeared in The Farmer's Almanac and Colombo's Canadian Quotations. He is the author of four plays, including The Coming, which was co-written with Leon Rooke. Priest's musical play Minibugs and Microchips received a Chalmer's Award. His novel, Knights of the Endless Day (1993) received an Our Choice Award from the Canadian Children's Book Centre. And as for his children's poetry, Daysongs Nightsongs and The Secret Invasion of Bananas and Other Poems (2002) are on the CBC's recommended reading list.

And in case you were wondering, there's a bio entry for me as well, which I won't reproduced here because, well, after all, you know me.  But I will note that it contains a link to Blog Time Passing, of course, of course.  And you can see my essay in all of its natural born glory over on Big Bridge via the following link:  "Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex" by Lance Strate.  But I might as well share it with you here—you knew I would, didn't you?

So, here we go:

Robert Priest, Dr. Poetry, and the Viral Verbal Vortex

Robert Priest is also known as Dr. Poetry, which begs the question, if a medical doctor cures diseases of the body, what does a poetical doctor cure? The answer comes readily to mind: He heals the maladies of the word. The symptoms of such sickness include dull and lifeless language, eminently forgettable phraseology, swollen tongues and feverishly belabored sentences that no human ear was ever meant to hear. In response, the good doctor provides medication to counteract the sclerotic hardening of the categories, loosening linguistic arteries so that the verbal flow may bring much needed oxygen to the brain. His poetry is credited with halting an epidemic of influency, and it serves as vaccination against the spread of many orally communicated ailments afflicting creativity. Indeed, it is rumored that Dr. Poetry has discovered nothing less than the cure for the common prose.

I will return to the topic of contagion in due course, but in the interests of full disclosure let me note that I first encountered Robert Priest online, on MySpace back when it was the social network and Facebook was still a gated campus community. My first impression of Robert was that he captured a unique mix of Elvis and the Beatles, with a touch of Monty Python, and a bit of the shaman thrown in for good measure. I should add that his MySpace profile and blog pages were modest, and his interactions with others congenial, in contrast to the heavy self-promotion, competitiveness, and conflicts that characterized many others in this online writing community, amateur and accomplished poet alike. His approach was consistent with Canadian culture, as distinct from that of us noisy, nosy, nervy Americans. But I don't want to discount the individual, personal qualities of a poet who is confident in his ability, content with his success, and convivial in his outlook. Simply put, Robert is a mensch. I would also add that I consider him a friend, by which I mean much more than someone who accepted an online friend request. And we did eventually get to meet offline, when he came down to New York City to participate in a conference I had organized, and his poetry reading met with an extremely enthusiastic response from a gathering of media ecologists.

My first impression, upon encountering Robert's work online, is that he was engaged in the kind of wordplay that would have delighted Marshall McLuhan. In addition to being a media guru and Canada's intellectual comet, McLuhan was a master of the aphorism, with sayings such as, invention is the mother of necessities, the future of the book is the blurb, art is anything you can get away with, and of course, his famous maxim, the medium is the message. McLuhan no doubt would have appreciated Robert Priest's pithy and poetic aphorisms, some of which are collected in Time Release Poems (Ekstasis Editions, 1997), including

Sometimes it is the book that opens you.

Too much time is wasted in the making of clocks.

The teacher is the lesson.

These sayings are excellent examples of formal causality, as discussed in the recently published McLuhan collection, Media and Formal Cause (NeoPoiesis Press, 2011). Robert's ability to reverse figure and ground serves to create new perspectives and understandings for the reader, illustrating McLuhan's argument that poesis can function as an organ of perception. Moreover, one of McLuhan's laws of media is that of reversal, that anything pushed to its extreme will flip into its opposite. Robert's experiments with reversal, published as Reading the Bible Backwards (ECW Press, 2008) were very much in keeping with this principle. In general, his work exhibits a sensitivity to the fact that time and space are relative, human beings can only exist in relationship to one another, and everything exists in the context of interdependent systems or ecologies. Consider, for example, several more of his aphorisms:

Good lovers come in pairs.

If you would see a parent, look in the eyes of a child.

If you change either, you change the other.

Robert's method is entertaining, aesthetically pleasing, and intellectually stimulating, but it also provides keen insights into the human condition. One aphorism that I find especially moving is: People begin as dreams and end as memories. These profound metaphors for infancy and old age can be taken to mean that we begin as inspiration, and end as poetry. Before Freud introduced the notion of the unconscious mind, dreams were believed to come from outside of us, i.e., a supernatural source, and inspiration is very much about breathing life into inert material. And in ancient Greece, Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory, was the mother of the muses, and the source of all eloquence. Poetry was understood to be the art of memorable speech, of thinking memorable thoughts to use Walter Ong's happy phrase, and I would suggest that it remains a viable way to define (and evaluate) poetry to this day. From this point of view, Robert Priest is truly favored by Mnemosyne and her daughters.

In the ancient world, aphorisms were part of a continuum that, on the far end, included epic poetry, the classic example being the Iliad and the Odyssey, otherwise known as the songs of Homer because they were, in fact, folk songs; by the same token, poets like Homer were known as singers of tales. It is not surprising, then, that in ancient Greece, the term they used to describe someone as educated and cultured was not literate or urbane, but musical. And in this sense, Robert Priest is truly musical, as a singer of tales, a writer of lyrics, a musician and recording artist. His poetry resonates, it strikes a responsive chord, it echoes throughout the inner landscape of the mind, while tickling the tongue and dancing across the page.

Glimpses of the old, oral tradition can be found in the culture of children, who have yet to have their senses and sensibilities altered by literacy, and the musical quality of language is most readily apparent in children's poems. The mark of a complete poet, I would suggest, is the ability to compose poems and songs for children, and here too Robert Priest distinguishes himself. For example, the poetry published in The Secret Invasion of Bananas (Ekstasis Editions, 2002) invites the reader to sing along. Consider the first stanza and chorus of "Space Spaghetti":

From Aldabran came noodle man
In a saucer on a trip
He went to boiling water
And there he took a dip.
He married noodle lady
In parmesan confetti—
They had a hundred noodle kids
And called them space spaghetti.

Space spaghetti space spaghetti
Look up in the sky
Space spaghetti, space spaghetti,
You'll see some fly by.

There is the requisite fun with food, nature, and science fiction and fantasy themes in this volume, as well as some play with popular culture, such as the poem, "Darth Orange", as you can see from the second stanza:

Darth orange, darth orange
He was such a bad fruit
He came here to conquer
In his orange space suit
But when he saw luke banana
He knew it was no use
Now there's no more darth orange
Just darth orange juice

There is more to Robert's poems for kids then just silliness, however, as he also summons images of beauty and mystery, for example in this last stanza of "Stargirl":

There was no beginning
There will be no end
To other lands
This message send
There is nothing
That can bring delight
Like a silvery ship
That can ride on light

And there is also a conscience in evidence in this collection, in poems like, "In the Next War" which begins

In the next war don't drop the bomb
drop the excess wheat
Drop the sacks of grain and powdered milk
we have too much of
Send our best men over in daring flights
their bombers full
of fish eggs huge cheeses
and birthday cake icings

In medieval Europe, theologians argued that God communicated to humanity through two different books, the book of scripture and the book of nature. This view is wonderfully expressed by the author of Reading the Bible Backwards in a poem entitled "Wild Books":

A dove book it came down
and landed in my hand
and there it sang its song to me
at last upon the sand

A fish book it swam by
I saw upon its scales
memories of treasures
from long forgotten tales

The water book its waves they roared
and carried vessels high
It lifted oars from shore to shore
and fell down from the sky

The sand book it came to me
I turned its many pages
The wind blew and the desert moved
my mind across the ages

I opened up the book of souls
it sang in my hand like thunder
I looked at last in the book of stars
and I stared all night in wonder

Dr. Poetry is quite the pediatrician, but he is also on the cutting edge when it comes to working with viral infections. The metaphor of going viral on the internet is a popularization of a neologism introduced by the biologist Richard Dawkins, and widely adopted within cyberculture, the meme. Dawkins had argued that genes, as self-replicating bits of DNA, are the true units of evolution, and that organisms are just devices genes use to reproduce themselves—talk about reversals! Dawkins also speculated that ideas, phrases, and the like are also self-replicators, using human brains to propagate, and he called these basic units memes. This notion did not get much attention until the popularization of the internet in the 90s, when people could actually see the spread and reproduction of messages through email, bulletin boards, and social media such as MySpace. Doug Rushkoff gave the term meme a more familiar nickname in his popular book, Media Virus! (Ballantine, 1994), and our Dr. Poetry has been working on a series of innoculations that he calls meme switches, and that will be made available in published form in the near future with the title of Splice Mix. This includes, under the heading of "The Spice/Splice Meme Splice" sequences such as

The splice of life
The splice garden
The splice trade
Herbs and splices
Sugar and splice
A splice box of earth
Splice girls
Old splice
Splice it up a little

Some recombinations are quite incisive, as can be seen in this excerpt from his critique of organized religion via the "God/Gold Meme Splice":

There is no gold but gold
Gold is perfect
Jews Muslims and Christians
All worship the same gold
The church is the house of gold

Other memetic edits are delightfully ribald, for example these first few lines from the "Arts/Arse meme splice":

Of late we have seen a decline of the arse
If we as a society cannot support our arse then we are in grave danger
People need arse
A thriving arse scene is a measure of a country's soul

I am a master of the dark arse
I got a fine arse award
I love the arse
I dedicated my life to the arse

These manipulations have an uncanny way of uncovering hidden truths, as when Robert reveals, in "Big Bother is Watching You" that, "all men are bothers, in the eyes of god" or, in his "Iron/Irony Meme Splice" that, "the hull of the titanic was made of solid irony."

I have not emphasized the fact that his switches are reciprocal, so that he gives us "The Poetry/Poverty Meme Splice" that includes "epic poverty," "slam poverty," and the observation that "performance poverty is very popular these days," and also a reversal in the form of "The Poverty/Poetry Meme Splice" that includes remarks like, "as long as there is poetry in the world, I will not rest," and references to "the rising poetry rate amongst people of colour." Clearly if a new goddess has joined the pantheon in recent years, one called Memesyne, then she too favors Robert like no other.

It has been a great pleasure to get to know Robert Priest over the past several years, to interact with him, trade quips, and provide feedback. As a doctor of the poetic, he has cured me of the blues and the doldrums on many occasions, and for that I am grateful. But I must be honest here, and warn you that his medications are quite habit-forming, resulting in an addiction that is almost impossible to shake. And as for his recombinant wordplay, reversals of sequence and meme splicing, they are downright contagious. Robert Priest's poetry represents the kind of epidemic the world could really use. Catch it, if you can.

 And there you have it.  I'm looking forward to listening to his latest feeling the pinch CD, which I'm told is somewhere in transit between Toronto and New York City.  In the meantime, one of his new songs can be heard online, it's got a great, Beatlesish sound to it, but I do have to warn you that it makes liberal use of a four-letter word, in case you are offended by such language.  If not, check it out.

Social Media Goes to the Movies

I haven't had the chance to see the Facebook movie just yet, have you?  I know I should, and I'll get to it eventually, but in the meantime, I just had to share this YouTube parody video that a friend on MySpace brought to my attention:

A Twitter movie, why not?  Here's what it says over on the YouTube page, courtesy of indymogul:

If Hollywood can make an overly dramatic film about the early years of Facebook, why can't we make an overly dramatic movie about Twitter? Or at least the trailer to that movie! Check out the exclusive (parody) trailer for "The Twit Network" right here on Rated Awesome!

Seriously, though, there is something distinctive in all of this about social media and the cultural industry they represent emerging out of a college-age population. This phenomenon parallels in an interesting way how the motion picture industry in the United States emerged out of an immigrant, largely Jewish population.  According to Harold Innis, as James W. Carey has explained, monopolies of knowledge (media) lead to marginalized, excluded groups pioneering and embracing alternate modes of communication that can break the monopoly.  That's an economic metaphor, true, but it's pure media ecology.

...shoe

So, here's a little poem I posted over on my MySpace poetry blog not too long ago. Hope you like it.

...shoe.

Red ants

in Brownian motion

clouding about

a bit of white bread

as shadows strain to escape

the sinking sun, and

there is no end to labor, but...

No Remorse

So, media ecologists often point to the invention of the telegraph by Samuel F. B. Morse in 1844 as the birth of the electronic, or electric age, the origin of the electronic media environment (which is the media environment, albeit somewhat modified and evolved, that we currently inhabit).  Here's what he looked like:

By the way, in addition to being an inventor, Morse was also a renowned painter, a member of the New York University faculty (in arts and design), a proponent of slavery, an anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant activist, and a failed candidate for mayor of New York City.  Perhaps, then, it's for the best that he is not remembered as a vivid personality or well rounded historical figure in the manner of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, or even Alexander Graham Bell.

So, let's just stick with the telegraph, shall we?  That's enough to earn you a statue in Central Park, right?

Yes, the telegraph, which Morse actually developed by 1837, 1844 being its public introduction.  And actually, there were earlier inventions of the telegraph as well (see the Wikipedia entry on Telegraphy) , but let's not muddy the waters, shall we?  If nothing else, Samuel Morse did invent the Morse telegraph, after all.

And the story of why he was motivated to do so is certainly poignant.  Here's how Wikipedia tells it:

In 1825, the city of New York commissioned Morse for $1,000 to paint a portrait of Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette, in Washington. In the midst of painting, a horse messenger delivered a letter from his father that read one line, "Your dear wife is convalescent". Morse immediately left Washington for his home at New Haven, leaving the portrait of Lafayette unfinished. By the time he arrived she had already been buried. Heartbroken in the knowledge that for days he was unaware of his wife's failing health and her lonely death, he moved on from painting to pursue a means of rapid long distance communication.

The thing about the telegraph, though, is that it could transmit sounds (yes it was an acoustic medium, and the first step in reversing the visualism associated with literate and especially typographic culture, and restoring a sense of acoustic space, to use the term favored by Marshall McLuhan, Edmund Carpenter, and others), but could not produce a wide range of sound, certainly not speech.  So there needed to be a signal system or symbol system to go with the technology, a bit of software to make the hardware worth using.

And that, of course, was what became known as Morse code.  The funny thing is that Morse code wasn't actually invented by Morse, or at least, not fully.  Morse just did the numerals, and planned on having a code book with words coded by number.  It was his assistant, Alfred Vail, who came up with all of the codes for the letters of the alphabet, which is what makes the Morse code truly useful.  So I guess it should have been called Vail code, or at least Morse-Vail code, but that's the way things go here in the United States of Columbia, or is it the United States of Leifland?

Anyway, the Wikipedia entry on Morse code describes it as 

a type of character encoding that transmits telegraphic information using rhythm. Morse code uses a standardized sequence of short and long elements to represent the letters, numerals, punctuation and special characters of a given message. The short and long elements can be formed by sounds, marks, or pulses, in on off keying and are commonly known as "dots" and "dashes" or "dits" and "dahs".

On that last bit, when spoken or sometimes when written, the dot is represented by "dit" when it's by itself or appears at the end of a word, or by a "di" when it appears at the beginning of a word, or somewhere in the middle.  And the dash is represented by a "dah" for all cases.  And here's a chart, to help visualize it all:

International Morse code is a modified form of the code that was developed by Morse and Vail, but the basic principles remain the same.

So, once upon a time, telegraph and wireless telegraph operators were part of the first internet, Tom Standage referred to it as the Victorian internet, and it was basic knowledge for anyone dealing with ships and airplanes, and for amateur radio operators.  And everyone knew that S.O.S. was signaled by three dots, followed by three dashes, followed by three dots.

And no, I never learned Morse code myself, but I was a bit taken aback a few years ago when I heard that the FCC was no longer requiring knowledge of Morse code for amateur radio licenses.  It signaled the end of an era.

Does it matter?  Perhaps not, not with the internet itself providing such ease of communication, along with mobile phones and satellite phones.  It's quite possible that Morse code's time has come and gone.  But somehow it does seem to be part and parcel of the passing of an era, a lost skill not unlike reading the clockface, or a newspaper, or tying your shoes, albeit a skill that was much more specialized and limited to a minority of operators.

Anyway, it gave me an idea for a poem, albeit one that was a bit gimmicky, but it actually took me a couple of years to get past the first two lines, and figure out a way to pull it off.  I finally got it all together this past spring, and posted it over on my MySpace poetry blog earlier this month.  So, I thought I'd share it with you here on Blog Time Passing as well.

No Remorse

     There was an age
          when the wires sang
          with buzzes and beeps
               both short and long!

dah-di-dit dah-dah-dah dah di-di-dit

-••        ---         -   •••


     Back and forth the electric
          alphabet rang
          like church bells playing
               a mighty song!

dah-di-dit di-dah di-di-dit di-di-di-dit dit di-di-dit

-••        •-     •••       ••••         •   •••


     There was an age
          when the airwaves hummed
          the spectrum filled
               with unearthly tones!

dah-dah dah-dah-dah di-dah-dit di-di-dit dit

--      ---         •-•        •••       •


     Through the skies above
          the rhythms thummed
          with ethereal
               ghostly moans!

dah-di-dah-dit dah-dah-dah dah-di-dit dit

-•-•           ---         -••        •


     Operators played
          their magnetic keys
          keeping the beat
               with style and flair!

dah dit di-dah-di-dit dit

-   •   •-••          •  

dah-dah-dit di-dah-dit di-dah di-dah-dah-dit di-di-di-dit

--•         •-•        •-     •--•           ••••


     Across the continent
          and overseas
          sending their messages
               with skill and care!

di-dah-dah di-dit di-dah-dit dit

•--        ••     •-•        •

di-dah-di-dit dit di-di-dit di-di-dit

•-••          •   •••       •••


     From Maine to Texas
          and beyond
          great distances bridged
               at a speed sublime!

dit di-dit dah-dah-dit di-di-di-dit

•   ••     --•         ••••

dah dit dit dah-dit

-   •   •   -•


     Uniting us all
          in a common bond
          one neighborhood
               out of space and time!

di-di-dah-dit dah-dah-dah di-dah-dit dah dah-di-dah-dah

••-•          ---         •-•        -   -•--

di-di-dah-dit dah-dah-dah di-di-dah di-dah-dit

••-•          ---         ••-       •-•


     And now new songs
          fill the atmosphere
          and travel along wires
               that encircle the Earth!

di-di-dit di-dah dah-dah di-di-dah dit di-dah-di-dit

•••       •-     --      ••-       •   •-••


     But listening hard
          you still can hear
          the binary tune
               from that moment of birth!

dah-dah dah-dah-dah di-dah-dit di-di-dit dit

--      ---         •-•        •••       •

And here is a video illustrating the Morse code alphabet, for your listening pleasure:

And this Morse code music video is very cool indeed:

But perhaps the most dramatic use of Morse code, and one I remember seeing on television when I was a kid, was the case of Jeremiah Denton--here's an excerpt from his Wikipedia entry:

While serving as Naval Aviator during the Vietnam War, Denton was Commanding Officer (CO) of Attack Squadron SEVENTY-FIVE (VA-75) aboard the aircraft carrier USS Independence (CVA 62). On 18 July 1965, then-Commander Denton was flying an A-6A Intruder, Bureau Number 151577, from the Independence with his bombardier/navigator, Lieutenant, junior grade Bill Tschudy, to participate in a bombing mission over the Vietnamese city of Thanh Hoa. Their plane was shot down and the two men were captured by hostile forces.  Denton and Tschudy were both held as prisoners of war for almost eight years, four of which were spent in solitary confinement. Denton is best known for the 1966 North Vietnamesemorse code to spell out the word "T-O-R-T-U-R-E" to communicate that his captors were torturing him and his fellow POWs.  television interview he was forced to give as a prisoner, in which he ingeniously used the opportunity to communicate to American Intelligence. During the interview Denton blinked his eyes in

And courtesy of YouTube, here's the actual clip:

From the young David Sarnoff relaying messages about the sinking of the Titannic via wireless, to Jeremiah Denton's courageous defiance of his captors, there is something romantic and heroic about Morse code that's worthy of note, as we witness its passing into the long night of obsolescence.

And di-di-di-di-di-di-dat's all, folks!