Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Larry Price
Subject: Anachronism
… I’d like to offer a reading of "anachronism." Actually, my take would be that
the ANACHRONE is about as likely as the ANAMORPH (not at all). But I
take my clue by returning to the morph, margin/center. Although I’ll avoid the
hedge implicit in the term "problematic," the fact is that in 9 out of 10 times the
term "center" is used, it probably doesn’t exist. However, this only means that
the "margin" "center" differentially signifies must have a far more complex
relation to group formation than a simple geometric model would allow. And
it’s that fact of the possibility of brownian motion in there that I think needs to
be addressed, as well as the converse aggregate narratives (only one among
them being that of the center) that work as the ideological.
In fact with regard to time (baldly) or history (pathetically) there seems every
bit as much tendency to "vibrate." However, there is also another morph, one
which places language (in any generation) explicitly within the problem. That
is, I’ve thought a great deal about Ed Foster’s introduction of Whitman into the
discussion of, amongst so much else, parts and wholes, as he wrote, "discrete
letters." It occurs that the issue revolves around the diacritical character of the
medium. That and the fact that in the body (or at least in the experience of it)
there is a zone (or at least the illusion of one) that does NOT experience the
problem of open/closed form, a zone for which experience is analogical.
Although the base activity may be digital (this is, of course, borne out by cases
of neural dysfunction: those whose neural bridges cannot be closed (one form
of schizophrenia) vs. those whose neural bridges cannot be opened (causing
severe depression)), the curious twist comes because of the rheostat
phenomenon in most of the experiences in the total sensorium; that is, Emotion
A is not premeasured in its track from 1 to 10, but seems to traverse a
continuum. It may be the simple complication by other emotions, thoughts,
sheer digs from the body/far-flung reaches of the sensorium. Who knows? That
fact is that it has implications concerning language, which, of course, is
diacritical throughout. I’ll set aside the opposition speech/language and say the
divide seems to come between the diacritical system of language and the bodily
generation and/or experience of and/or within that diacritical system. The
collision between (or chafing within) the digital necessity of a system and the
body’s analogical (fact of or) yearning for integration within itself and/or other.
Which is how I then read Ed’s use of Whitman vis-a-vis phonemics and syntax.