writing as instrument

language has become the instrument of our doings and undoings in ways that it wasn't prior to
writing as instrument. there were writing instruments (pens pencils typewriters etc). but not
writing as instrument in this environment of generalized programming in which one writes the
instrument, the instrument to create instruments, etc, in a generalizing of nth generation
languages arrayed hierarchically toward a meshing of machine and natural languages.
hierarchically and then horizontally as they proliferate rhizomatically to fulfill specific
constellations of needs and situations, much like natural languages have proliferated
geographically.

all undergraduates who study computer science eventually take a course in language and the
theory of computation, study work by chomsky, for instance (who was trained initially as a
mathematician), in this course which can fall like a revelation on students of language used to
quite a different approach to and study of language.

what does it mean to be a poet?

this question could be answered in at least as many ways as there are poets. but most of them
would have something to say about an intense engagement with language in their work. part of the
heat, the intensity of that engagement now is focussed not simply on understanding writing as
instrument, but writing instruments that are themselves poetry in language that reaches through
the floor into the sky like a hand reaching for its answer.

http://vispo.com/misc/RITposter.htm
poetry reading in Rochester, Wednesday Jan 29
writing as instrument

ja
vispo.com