On the question posed
to me: what do
poetry and video games
share in common...
should I answer:
information? Words,
language forms, as first
informed, the rest,
as Zukofsky notes in his
"A - 12," risk:
"A poetics is informed
and informs -- / Just
informs perhaps --
the rest a risk." What is
the "rest" of "risk"
after informing?
Is it the "recklessness"
(a risk?) of the musician
Zukosfky also speaks of
in Bottom? The master
mastered by music
in virtuosic playing?
To "master"
form form masters you.
We are in-formed,
we are mastered. This is
where "the work,"
the value
of the work comes from.
The work's vitality,
perhaps, also.
To inform: for there
to be "basic" / simple
forms / "structures"
for creation; tendencies of
composition, generation.
"A - 12" is a poem
of generations in touch
or informed of
Stein's own "makings of":
"Or: remember,
G.S. begins / "Making of
Americans" / With
a quote / From Nicomachus'
father -- / With patient
father and Angry son -- /
That she said, 'How can
you know / More than
you do know / And we
are still in the shadow /
Of explanation.'"
From this form, this
in-forming, a lot can happen.
This informing as ultimately
rhythmic, a rhythm
of material, (in)formable
material. A kind of
"tendency" or
"culture" about the poem.
WITHOUT CODE. One
assumes after our
current parlance information
is a code. But what
informs is not
merely binary data; but
the data of what Bergson
may have called
"the intuitive":
the immanence of
composition itself, poetic
or otherwise. Information
makes a form
in which to dwell; it is
this form in which
to dwell and to
extend forms in time.
Being at home - being
"rest"-less - informing in
"rest"-lessness - "reckless-
ness" - "recklessness" re-turning
to basic information -
a kind of "home" or
more familiar (however
alter-able) dwelling:
the real question may then be
how and when
does risk occur?
