There has been increasing debate amongst Bean Newton scholars both here and abroad about the ultimate origins of Newton's experimental poems. The leading notion is that it had to be the result of psychoactive substances of some kind. Most reasoning along this line derives from the fact that Newton had no (or very little--there is evidence of his having attended one undergraduate Creative Writing workshop) formal training in poetry. How, critics reason, could someone produce such remarkable work without the guidance of an established poetic voice guiding him along? How could he have even put two words together without the presence of at least an MFA in Creative Writing sharing the grace of the degree?
These are certainly vexing questions and ones far beyond the reach of a mere introduction like this one. Suffice it to say, though, that his experimental work might provide some insight. It is possible, although not probable, that Newton's constant and heartfelt experimentation might have accidentally caused him to write some actual poems. One runs into problems like the proverbial infinite number of monkeys writing Shakespeare when one postulates this, but The Bard's untutored roughness itself tends to lend credence to the theory presented here. We can only wish that DweeMs such as Shakespeare could have achieved the kind of formalistic perfection of, say, Molly Peacock to help establish some kind of tradition.
At any rate, Newton's methodology, however unorthodox and inadvisable, can be easily seen in the following selections. -- E.W. Wilder
Mertz
- The incessant confabulation of newspaper articles, kitsch. packaging, and glue.
- The uncontrolled growth of sculpture.
- Stuff.
- This includes Mars Bar wrappers, Young Wan Dies, the splinters of a cedar box, stones from low-atmosphere roof-bound chat, hubcaps, daydreams, milk-jug caps, labels from a can of Green Giant cream of corn, porn, squeeze-cheez, elbow greez, bees knees, toiletries, the lumbar support out of a bucket seat from an '84 Volvo 240 DL, nitroglycerin patches, door latches, Ohio Blue-Tip matches, the kitchen sink, the fur from a mink, a meat skewer, pipe from a sewer, a laundro-mat, a full-grown cat, a marital spat, a three-cornered hat, your mother-in-law, a jar o' cole-slaw, an automatic tranny, your gray-haired granny,
That's not an Acorn, Daddy
The Mustard Milueux: we lax the sex,
the happiness to drive dreck down,
the last loadstone of breathed
self. See, your breath(up) here has spasms
(up) (here) in these mountains beholden
to know one. Force Fed ozone
lacks the likes of you-zone, homo-
logation of burnt plastic. Seize
the spastic moment. Become
you are. Denigrate. The devolution
of spray-painted rock into
spray-painted rock (!)
An Answer to a Question Burroughs Never Asked
Because they don't have to be Crab-People, that's why;
think of it this way: Why can't a crab be happy
being a crab? Similar questions have been asked and
answered by machine translation. In other words, you
feed the machine perfectly good albeit raw language
and get back garbage, similar to the human condition.
2.0 My cat is a pinhead.