Heurtebise from Cocteau's OrpheeThe Lipstick of NoiseReel to reel deck

 

Terminology note: By analogy with Barthes's lexias, I'd like to call those segments of auditory experience into which our hearing of a poem divides "audias" (singular: audia). I supply the following transcript, generated using the "label track" function of Audacity, as a preliminary way of thinking about how sentence, line, and audia interact and inform the analysis of poetry soundfiles. [Back to Lipstick of Noise.]

Charles Bernstein - Solidarity Is the Name We Give to What We Cannot Hold

(Note: time values at left correspond to track w/o introduction; ^ indicates increased emphasis)

<slow tempo, numerous pauses (...) >
01.370111            I ... am ... a
04.204825            nude formalist poet
07.937197            a sprung syntax poet
11.551457            a multitrack poet
14.173566            a wondering poet
16.512205            a social expressionist......poet
20.126464            a baroque poet
22.276122            [audience laughter]
24.543892            a constructivist poet
27.083323            an idiolectical poet

30.059772            I am a New York poet....in California
34.134672            a San Francisco poet on....the lower East Side
38.433987            an Objectivist poet in Royaumont
41.859266            a haven't yet figured it out poet....in Amien
46.264883            [audience aughter]
47.528693            a surrealist poet in Jersey
50.564198            a Dada poet in Harvard Square
53.198119            a ^Zaum poet in Brooklyn
55.749361            a Merz poet......in Iowa
58.773055            a Cubo-Futurist poet in.......Central Park

63.403087            I am a Buffalo poet in Providence
66.237800            a London poet in Cambridge
68.576439            a Kootenay  School of Writing Poet...in Montreal
73.017489            a local poet....in Honolulu
76.253787            I am a leftist poet in my armchair
79.206613            & an existentialist poet...on the street
82.490156            an insider poet...among my friends
85.726454            an outsider poet...in midtown

<medium tempo>
89.210789            I am a serial poet a paratactic poet a disjunctive poet
xx.xxxxxx            a discombob-bob-bob-bobulating poet
96.510176            a montage poet
98.293683            a collage poet
99.829152            a hypertextual poet
101.659905            a nonlinear poet an abstract poet
104.636354            a nonrepresentational poet a process poet
108.226990            a polydiscourse poet
110.069554            a conceptual poet

111.664080            I am a vernacular poet
114.475171            a talk poet
116.128754            a dialect poet
117.510676            a heteroglossic poet
119.471353            a slang poet
120.971389            a demotic poet
122.707651            a punning poet
124.656516            a comic poet

126.841608            I ^AM          an IAMbic             poet
130.774772            I am
132.038582            a dactylic poet
133.869334            a tetrameter poet
135.971747            an ana^PEStic..........poet [audience laughter]

139.715930            I am a capitalist poet...in Leningrad
143.259322            and a socialist poet in St. Petersburg
146.672789            a bourgeois poet at Zabars
149.542936            a union poet in Albany
152.294971            an elitist poet on t.v.
154.787156            a political poet...on the radio

<much faster>
157.173040            I am a fraudulent poet
158.838434            an incomprehensible poet
159.972319            a de^GENerate poet
161.106204            an incomplete poet
162.181033            an incompetent poet
163.161371            an indecorous poet
164.248012            a ^CRUDE poet
165.027558            an incoherent poet
166.137820            a flat-footed poet
167.165404            a disruptive poet
168.523704            a fragmented poet
169.468608            a contradictory poet
170.519815            a self-imploding poet
171.854492            a CONSPIRATORIAL poet
172.964755            an ungainly poet
174.382112            an anti-....dogmatic...poet

177.476673            an infantile poet
178.846785            a theoretical poet
180.086972            an awkward poet
181.020065            ^SISSy poet
182.118516            ^EGGhead poet
183.216968            perverse poet
184.256363            clumsy poet
185.283946            a cacaphonous poet
187.067453            a vulgar poet
187.776132            a war poet
188.685602            a silly poet
189.618695            a queer poet

191.012429            an erratic poet
xxx.xxxxxx            an erroneous poet
193.327445            an anarchic poet
194.898349            a cerebral poet
196.516498            an unruly poet
198.004722            an emotional poet
199.410267            a...no...nonsense...poet......

<tempo slows>
203.142640            I am a language.......poet
206.095466            wherever people try to limit the modes of expression
211.020781            or..........nonexpression
213.784626            I am an experimental poet
216.595717            to those who value    craft
219.418619            over interrogation
221.922615            an avant garde poet
224.308499            to those who see the future
226.906986            in the present
229.009399            I am a Jewish poet
231.336226            hiding in the shadow of my great-grandfather
235.139466            & great-grandmother

237.312746            I am a difficult poet in Kent a visual poet in Cleveland a sound poet in Cincinnati
243.253833            I am a modernist poet
245.403490            to postmodernists
247.777563            and a postmodern poet
250.057145            to modernists

251.840652            I am a book artist in Minneapolis
255.218685            and a language artist in Del Mar

258.927435            I am a  lyric poet in Spokane
260.888112            an analytic poet in South Bend
262.647996            a narrative poet in Yellow Knife
265.128370            a realist poet
266.415802            in Berkeley

267.974895            I am an anti-absorptive poet in the morning
271.352928            an absorptive poet in the afternoon
274.010472            and a sleepy poet at night

<tempo quickens>
277.234958            I am a parent poet
278.392466            a white poet
279.219257            a man poet
279.668087            an urban poet
280.282275            an angry poet
280.990953            a sad poet
281.534273            an elegiac poet
282.597291            a raucous poet
283.494950            frivolous poet
284.215440            a tatch? poet
284.983174            a rollercoaster poet
286.270607            a volcanic poet
286.884795            a dark poet
287.912378            a skeptical poet
288.715547            eccentric poet
289.577772            a MIS GUIDed poet

291.810109            a reflective poet
293.381012            a dialectical poet
295.081840            a polyphonic poet
296.180292            a hybrid poet
297.491347            a wandering poet
298.625232            an odd poet
299.310288            a lost poet
300.349683            a DIS OBEDient poet
302.274925            a bald poet
304.306470            a virtual poet

<tempo slows>
306.503373            and I am
307.566390            none of these things
309.066426            nothing but the blank wall of my...aversions
313.672835          writ in disappearing ink