Recursive
Avery, Milton. Painting, Baby. 1944.
Rembrandt. Painting, Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicholaus Tulp. 1632.
Cangiullo, Francesco. Book Cover Poesia pentagrammata (Poetry on the Staff), 1923. Cover by Enrico Prampolini.
Johns, Jasper. Lithograph, Skin with O'Hara Poem, National Gallery of Art.1963/1965. © Jasper Johns and U.L.A.E./Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.
Rivera, Diego. Painting, Night of the Rich. 1928.
Van Haarlem, Cornelis. Painting, Titianmachia. 1588.
Van Haarlem, Cornelis. Painting, The Fall of the Innocents. 1591.
Poem, “The Text is Body (Part 2)”. 2002.
Recursion is a fundamental principle of several theories of embodiment including cultural evolution as discussed by Lakoff, Bolter, O’Donnell and Peirce. For this composition of the glyph for the letter “R”, the pragmatic principle of reproduction is represented as masses of human bodies in the paintings by Rivera and van Haarlem. Titianmachia portrays questions about origination and the self. The leg of the letter “R” is formed from Rembrandt’s painting of an autopsy, a portrait of the Enlightenment’s foresenic pursuit of empirical knowledge.

The glyph is overwritten with a poem that interrogates contemporary usage of the term ‘pregnant’ along with the poetic impetus of various twentieth century avant garde poets: William Carlos Williams, Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara and Laura Riding, in a contemplation of the urge to speak. Multiple speakers in the poem comment on the poem’s declamations as projective and reflexive inclinations. The poem text is reprinted for readability.

The text is body Part 2 (the text)

the text is body the page is body (reflexive passive)

the body I am hungry (reflexive passive)the text is tool (projective active) menial A notation A laban
when will the musicians discover visual scores (projective active) see John Cage and Francesco Cangiullo
who would read the music should we

hieroglyphics beautiful (reflexive passive) meow is the English transcription of Egyptian hieroglyphic for cat

spatial arrangement expresses emotion (reflexive passive)
what is feeling if not I subjective (projective active) not the same as rhetoric’s chagrin (projective)
the logic of metaphor projects memory maps (reflexive projective)

this empty blank the right left edge
not i
these hollows spaces ornamental flourish (reflexive passive)
do they say give me nothing emptiness the total
erudite infinity of a stretched drum
there are two things (projective active)the there here the projective reflexive
the me you the nothing all empty so full it can not take anymore can a poem take decades to find its mind (projective active)
pages of pages experimental experience (projective reflexive(projective)passive(projective))))
this word
I love the way you
you hunger slows the muscles
dulls the brain worries the soul looses confidence in the day
turns ugly venal opportunistic adaptive (adam tine) cries (reflexive passive)

dispense with this fragile bio hummp? hunts for words
I’ll take hybrid-cyber human (project) give me those implants oh yes that body
get rid of that hunger womb (projective) sweat smell
talk about bodies deeply (projective reflexive)
do safe sex so you don’t get pregnant a bun in the oven knocked up
he got me pregnant i got her p regnant i got pregnant i have a baby
this word ( thing) pregnant(cy) a condition of sexes
binary dualities denies I made a life human
can a human make a human can you make life Pregnant my condition am I
0h what we say the body of text ababy achild adult ahuman an other not i
Scientists predict within another generation women will be free to choose
to carry their children in artificial wombs is it hers her choice her human life
instinctual edict pregnant mom visits her growing embryo
at the womb plant sings Blakeian lullabies from a rocker nearby the farm
the open filed is a plant now
you know! ol’ buddy Charles Olson
you know! William Carlos Williams your farmer
out standing in his field projecting furrows of
into a harvest of
At springtime is anachronism
Olson your handfuls of dirt hurled searching the fields of antiquity’s lost time
are found more lost in me AUTOCHTHONIC
Frank O’Hara, I say yes I am personism too--binaries dancing around a pas de dieus
soo busy shallow deeply with everyone let’s go smell the pot aux roses wafts
something in Laura Riding’s anti-modern vacuum plants fields Recursive  
 

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