When you look at this what do you see? I know most people see that boring third grade social studies class playing tic-tac-toe, noughts and crosses, Xs and Os or whatever they chose to call it back then with their best friend. Now, all I see is ’26,830 possible combinations[i].’
Traditional tic-tac-toe involves getting your marker (either an X or an O) in a vertical, diagonal or horizontal row to win the game. It is in that same sense that tic-tac-toe poetry[ii] should be written. Possible lines of a poem are arranged in a 3x3 grid and you would select three lines that would make for a winning tic-tac-toe game. So in the course of writing an entire poem, by selecting several combinations for up to 100 grids, there are almost 26,830 possible combinations, making it almost impossible to ever ‘write’ the same poem twice. This type of recontextualization is very similar to Raymond Queneau’s book A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems[iii]. His book is a set of ten sonnets which are printed on card with each line on a separated strip, like a heads-bodies-and-legs book, a type of children's book with which Queneau was familiar. All ten sonnets have not just the same rhyme scheme but the same rhyme sounds, any lines from a sonnet can be combined with any from the nine others, so that there are 1014 (= 100,000,000,000,000) different poems. It would take some 200,000,000 years to read them all, even reading twenty-four hours a day[iv].
But the question here is should these forms of recontextualization be considered poetry?
Firstly, let me elaborate on my thought process. I’ve arranged lines from a poem in a tic-tac-toe grid to form a 3-line stanza and with this one grid alone, 84 different stanzas can be formed.
Technically, because you’re selecting possible lines of a poem just randomly put in a grid, whatever the result is should as well be poetry. But that’s not the point. Poetry is considered a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities. It contains multiple interpretations and therefore resonates differently in each reader[v]. I consider this poetry because it could mean anything. To be precise, 100 grids of possible lines of poems, could end up having 26,830 different meanings depending on how it resonates in each reader. This is also not far from traditional literature, where writers develop their own style of writing.[vi]
I imagine each line of the poem to pop out at the user (because the poem was put together randomly) with each of them carrying its own meaning, but as you progress, the poem in entirety would be given meaning, again depending on how it resonates in each reader. The general assumption is that success is related to organization[vii] so critics may refute that this is a poem on the basis that the poet is never really sure of the order of the lines, the poem is created purely by chance. But that’s the beauty of the poem and it’s precisely what categorizes tic-tac-toe poetry under recontextualized language. According to the book ‘A Perfect Mess’, “Many new discoveries, inventions and creative projects are the result of sheer happenstance or inadvertently veering off in an unexpected direction. If you don't inject a little disorder in your life you mostly likely will miss out on the serendipity of an unplanned success.” Basically, the authors are saying that a little disorder merits unplanned success, in this case, randomly disorganizing lines may give you a great poem and even if that isn’t the case the first time, you still have about 26,829 more tries.
Whenever I think of recontextualized language I ask myself “what would Kenneth Goldsmith do?” And in that case, I see tic-tac-toe poetry as something he would definitely try. I like to think of him saying “The best poets are those who can best repurpose general language, reframing it as poetry,”[viii] after I ask him what he thinks of tic-tac-toe poetry. Critic Marjorie Perloff has written that “Goldsmith works on the borders between ‘poetry’ and ‘prose’ and, more courageously, between poetry and ‘not poetry,' not to mention the borders between ‘literature’ and ‘art’.” Similarly, this is exactly what tic-tac-toe poetry does and it does so in a Goldsmithian manner. You see, conceptual poetry is not based on originality. It is taking what already exists, in this case the possible lines of the poem, and making them into something new in local contexts[ix] and that alone gives the new work meaning. We all know a good poem, isn’t just one that looks good and has a surface meaning but one that has an underlying secondary meaning.[x] This secondary meaning is the purpose of the poem. The actual message the poet wanted to carry across when he wrote the poem. Here it screams the same meaning Soliloquy, one of Kenneth Goldsmith’s works, does: “it leaves the reader with a convinced sense that language, no matter how un-artful (or disorganized), does the heavy lifting in our lives, and has encoded the entire registry our being."[xi] And this is just with the traditional tic-tac-toe.
In recent times, grids have been given the ability to be entered into computers so that after the lines of poem have been entered into the grid, poems can be randomly generated. 3D tic-tac-toe has been created so that even more possibilities are available. Whether tic-tac-toe poetry is the future of poetry is an entirely different argument, but for now, I believe Tic-tac-toe poetry would be a boost to traditional language by giving it infinite possibilities especially with computer generated poems. All this because someone wanted to go farther than just Xs and Os.
References:
[i] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tic-tac-toe
[ii] http://midnightice97.deviantart.com/art/Tic-Tac-Toe-Poems-211447405
[iii] http://www.bevrowe.info/Queneau/QueneauRandom_v4.html
[iv] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Thousand_Billion_Poems
[v] http://code-poems.com/index.html
[vi] http://www.wired.com/2012/02/code-poems/
[vii] http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/Careers/04/30/cb.mess/
[viii] http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/20894/1/kenneth-goldsmiths-manifesto-for-poetry-now
[ix] http://blogs.iac.gatech.edu/j8group1/2015/02/10/the-modernization-of-literature/
[x] http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/05/the-poetics-of-coding/
[xi] http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kenneth-goldsmith
Great post, it is very interesting to think about this specific type of conceptual literature. The process of writing a tic-tac-toe poem reminds me of the constraint aspect of writing conceptual literature. While brainstorming ideas for our re-contextualized language project, my group was assigned the constraint process when writing re-contextualized language. The idea of using a constraint is to limit oneself when it comes to process while taking a piece of existing text and re-inventing it. For example, Kelly used a refrigerator manual for her re-contextualized project. While recreating her refrigerator manual into something else, she limited herself to using words that only started with a certain letter. This is similar to the tic-tac-toe poetry because you are limiting yourself to certain lines in a poem in a specific order.
ReplyDeleteA big question I have when thinking about this method of writing poetry is how do you choose where to place what lines in the boxes, is it purely random? Also, how many lines would be included in each box? It seems that this process is completely up to the author creating it, but what method would give the most interesting poem? Also, is the author writing their own lines or taking lines from a poem that already exists? I would assume that the lines in the tic-tac-toe board would be lines of existing poetry, since that is the whole point of contextual literature: recreating existing text.
I would love to see an example of this type of poetry; it really intrigues me when I consider it as a method of constraint while placing language in a new context. It would be interesting to see what a poem would look like if lines were used from different poems, like placing one line of different poems by Edgar Allen Poe in each box. This blog post is very interesting and it gives me a new point of view on how to re-contextualize language into something completely different and interesting. I would like to know, where and how did you find this?
Thanks! I actually just randomly came across a tic-tac-toe grid online and was wondering if you could create poetry (the way I described it above) with it. I made a couple of Google searches and found a paragraph of a blog post vaguely describing it. So I had to do about a night of research to write this post.
DeleteI just want to say that you've opened my mind to this. I never thought of getting lines from other poems and arranging them in the grid. That would be really great. It could also be poems across multiple authors. That would be the apex of re-contextualized language. Thanks for your contribution.
I assumed that the lines would be arranged randomly and it would be one line in a box but it doesn't necessarily have to be. You're right, I think how the poem is written should depend on how the author feels. In other words, there shouldn't be a standard structure or set of rules. There should be freedom. Isn't that what poetry's all about?
This is seriously one of the coolest ideas! I decided that I wanted to make one (also I wanted to try to answer some of Natalie's questions) so I used just a 3x3 box and then took the first line of the first 9 songs on my phone and this is what was made!
ReplyDeleteWhite lips, pale face
Things were all good yesterday
This could be all you need
I don't mind letting you down easy
Things were all good yesterday
According to you
Baby, baby, are you listening?
Things were all good yesterday
So you're saying that you don't have rhythm
Maybe I'm wrong, you decide
Things were all good yesterday
When I watch you, I wanna do you right where you're standing (yeah)
I picked what pattern of winning would be done by making a star/snowflake with the lines (so I went both diagonals and then vertical through the middles and horizontal through the middle).
This was one of the easiest methods I have ever experienced in writing anything! Also, the poem that resulted from the song lyrics came out almost artistic which really surprised me. I think a big thing because of the method used in this re-contextualization is the initial positioning of the lyrics. I did it just by assigning each column left to right a lyric and then moving to the next row when there were no more columns.
I think it would be really really really cool to take like the first line of every song on my phone(which is way too many) and do a huge version of a form of this, but I think that would be a little more like BINGO! Speaking of BINGO, that would be another very cool way to re-contextualize something! I wonder if that has already been done?
That's actually really cool! Thanks for your help. I got to know, did you do that more than once or that was just the first try? You got the pattern of winning right, though I didn't really think of having more than one winning pattern per grid, I just thought that when you get three lines in a row you move to the next grid (just like how the tic-tac-toe game is actually played) but this works (and really well) too! Thanks a lot.
DeleteThe initial positioning of the lines (or lyrics), as Natalie said, should be completely up to the author so your method is fine. The BINGO method would also be really cool. I'd like to see a poem made form it. You up for it?
Great post Lotanna! This is an interesting example of a constraint for a piece of conceptual poetry. The method used to here to limit the author actually creates a process that can lead to a large and varied outcome. With a lot of the conceptual poetry we have studied the constraint only leads to one outcome like the piece where the author alphabetized every word in the Bible. That specific constraint can only have one outcome. The tic tac toe poetry you have shown here has really given me a new perspective on conceptual poetry because it is so different. The constraint, method, and process here can lead to 26,830 different unique poems instead of limiting the recontextualization to one result. I think its also interesting that you brought Kenneth Goldsmith into this because I think while he would appreciate this form of conceptual poetry, this really strays from his usual asthetic. A lot of Goldsmith’s work is very cut and dry in the process and outcome usualy leading to something that isn’t as broad as this tic tac toe poetry. While it isn’t in his usual style of recontextualization I think you made an interesting connection to other works of conceptual poetry we have discussed and I would be interested to see a Kenneth Goldsmith tic tac toe poem.
ReplyDelete