In a previous entry, I touched on something that I’ve “had” all my life - Foerster’s Syndrome. In short, it is a condition, a compulsive need to pun.
“I wish to draw my last breath through a pipe and exhale it in a pun.” Charles Lamb
Dr. Foerster accidentally discovered the condition while operating on the tumor of a brain and reaching deep within the brain compartment. He found that if he poked a certain part of the mid-brain, the patient (unsedated - the brain does not cause pain) would break into a fit of associated words and phrases. Coherent but with a special interior rhyme and reason. Much like how a good poet, hides so much meaning in the interior sound of the poem.
All my life, I’ve been at the service of words. Words overcome me. One word leads to another word and another word. Slowly through time, I’ve gained more control over this condition that sends words running through my brain. So I’m not at the extreme end of the syndrome anymore. But it’s been a struggle and when it comes to music, or when I’m in a certain mood, I’m off to the races and words just flow, one word leading to the next and so on … Alcohol is a big trigger.
“Affinities of sound provide the threads which lead from contemporary words and concepts back to the Greek and Sanskrit womb … in the infantile and primitive imagination, the ties between sound and meaning are still very intimate; name and object form an almost indivisible unity, shown in the universal practices of word magic, incantations, and verbal spells.” - Arthur Koestler, 186-187, Act of Creation.
Punning is said to be the base and original form of intelligence. Also, humor. It’s a crack in the logic, the rational world we think we live in. It’s more than just wordplay, it is word association. We expect one thing and get another - the brain fizzes momentarily and we get the sensation of the pun - a laugh or a deeper meaning.
I’m a big fan of Lewis Carroll and I’m sure he also suffered from Foersters’ Jabberwocky, probably his most famous nonsense-sense poem. So too, Baudelaire and his forest of symbols. I loved William Gass for his flights of prose fancy, in the same vein. Also, many surrealists with their automatic writing, Mallarme, Lautremont, Breton. Knowing there are others out there like this, has helped me handle my own condition.
“As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.”
-- Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont
In my teens, it was very hard to have a normal conversation. I’d be throwing out puns, others didn’t understand. Couldn’t help myself. Words and meaning merged into so many different forms, in so many different manners.
So, just wanted to mention this aspect of my poetry. And how it informs who I am and what I do. And in celebration of this, let me have a glass of wine and write a poem automatically, to end this journal entry. Enjoy, if you can follow …
blablabla, etcetera etcetera, lalalalala
We’re sorry for
the civilian casualties but blablabla …
and they shot first etcetera, etcetera …..
God bless America.
Hallow be thy name.
Kumbaya my lord.
Put another record on …
lalalalala
and let them eat cake.
Got no time, only rhyme,
the check is in the email,
the pope is washing Oprah’s feet,
we’re researching each and every whale
etcetera, etcetera …..
António Guterres just appointed
a new envoy, blablablablabla ….
Yep, all we need is love.
We shall overcome.
Fiddly dee, fiddly dum.
Blablablablabla.
Need to get me some.
Etcetera, etcetera …
Thou shalt not
Only if you’ve been caught.
A chicken in every pot and
Cable TV bought
and on and on and on ….
Bread and circuses and busy bees.
Guns, booze, sleaze etcetera …
But not on Sunday, please.
Blablablablabla.
Do re mi fa so la ti da
until the fat lady sings
falalalala ……
Ashes to ashes, dust to rust
etcetera, etcetera …
we drone on
blablablablabla,
I can’t go on,
so I’ll go on,
by Godot ‘cuz
what goes on, goes on.
Ah men!
Wow. What a meaningful poem.
Your poems are truly an example of postmodern poetry.