Melissa's New IP IP Paradigm

Thursday, January 16, 2003

Actually, the secret point of this project is this: if I'm going to spend all this time looking at the internet, I may as well spend it doing some kind of writing. The truth is that I've been paralyzed in my writing for a very long time, and maybe this will change.

So I encourage you to read, and you will encourage me to write?

--Melissa O, at 20:59 * 

I've also been reading some Virginia Woolf. Most notably The Waves and some of her essays, including "Letter to a Young Poet." The comparison of the two is amusing, since in the latter she declares herself to be possessed of "defects" that "invalidate all I have to say about poetry." Well! I have to say that The Waves, even as prose, even on the terms of poetry, would trounce most comtemporary poetry in a fair fight.

Her criticisms, brief as they are, of modern poetry then still seem relevant to contemporary poetry today. She sees two trends: a response to the quotidian demands of the modern world by including its mundanity to make it fit, and a retreat from the modern world into idiosyncracy. Both trends continue to plague contemporary poetry. I refuse to read one more poem about riding the bus, or that exists only to deploy slang or jargon, or that drowns in a morass of unexplained personal symbolism. Woolf's solution, at least as offered to the young poet, is to practice writing in voices or of situations other than one's own. This kind of practice allows one to see not just the world from all sides, but also the words. The ramifications of language can only be seen when words are inspected from all sides, and there the potential for beauty lies. I'm suddenly thinking of the facades Hollywood movie studios used to build on their immense sound stages: they look precisely perfect from the camera's point of view, but if you venture too far to one side, you can only see them as farcical.

Woolf also alludes to the relationships between things as well as the relationships between words as the subject of modern poetry. But now I'm thinking of the giant of contemporary American poetry, John Ashbery, and wondering how Woolf's ciriticisms can help with understanding Ashbery's rather--how shall we say--opaque body of work. Those critics and poets who are not completely put off by his work often try to explain it by alluding to the "post-modern" project of "deconstructing" personal identity. Certainly, it is often completely unclear who is speaking in his poetry, and with what voice, and in what circumstance. As a result, there is no identity to identify, but there is also none to identify with. It has been rightfully pointed out that that is hardly enough to sustain an aesthetic project, yet Ashbery's work is often heartbreakingly beautiful. I can't begin to say that I understand precisely why or how his work makes such beauty, but I wonder if it has something to do with taking all these disembodied, fragmented, denatured voices and placing them in relation, a relation that we can intuit without understanding. The relations feel "true" (in a limited way), even if there is no narrative, no coherent characters, no recognizable world. It's as if the asphalt of the interstate highway system had been boiled away, leaving only its painted white stripes. Their shape, in close-up or from space, triggers a memory, even though all the things we personally care about are gone.

--Melissa O, at 18:52 * 

Larry Lessig says that to his mind, following the principle of enumerated powers means that an interpretation of the Constitution that doesn't result in a practical limit is a wrong interpretation. He expected that the justices who advocate this principle would therefore either agree with his argument or explain why they didn't. I still think that while there has to be some limit, it doesn't seem at all clear to me why this particular law has violated this particular limit, or what that particular limit even is. I don't think simple extension of a copyright term is a prima facie violation of that limit. "[T]o promote the progress of science and the useful arts" is also too vague to be of use.

I'll go reread the arguments, I suppose.

--Melissa O, at 18:16 * 

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

Today the Supreme Court ruled against Larry Lessig in Eldred v. Ashcroft. What struck me about the opinion is that apparently Lessig argued that it wasn't for the Court to decide whether 70 years or 90 years is too long for a copyright to last, and opted instead to argue that simple extension of a copyright term after it has been granted is unconstitutional.

Why? It seems to me that unless you can give a rationale, one of those fun and esoteric tests that legal precedent always seems to be creating, the argument has little constitutional force. Everyone seems to agree that 95 year copyright terms are ludicrous, and they are. Everyone also seems to agree that whatever the law says these days, it will soon be functionally true that copyrights will never expire, if it isn't already. I mean, think about it: even as it stands, the life of the author plus almost a hundred years means that nothing of your contemporary culture will ever be available for your use. And everyone knows that further extensions will keep on coming.

There has to be a limit, a functional limit substantially less than "forever minus a day," and you have to be able to articulate a rationale for that limit before you go arguing before the Supreme Court of the United States. Even just arguing that the life of the author is a reasonable term, but adding a hundred years to that is ridiculous would be something

I think it's not unreasonable to say that you ought to be able, at some point, to incorporate the culture that formed you. But I guess that's hard to form into a legal argument.


--Melissa O, at 18:14 * 

Sunday, January 05, 2003

So the business of poetry writing pays terribly. Of all the forms of media or intellectual property generation, it probably pays the worst. In the worlds of music or film, you can say things like "Unless you're Steven Spielberg, it's hard to make the big bucks," but in poetry there is no Steven Spielberg equivalent. If you want to make money in music or film, your goal is the big label contract or the Hollywood studio, but poetry doesn't have an equivalent of that either.

It's a unique sort of freedom, but what it means is that even well-known poets have to take teaching jobs and give readings to pay the bills. In other words, you get paid for your expertise, and not for your output per se. The things you write become a means toward making a name for yourself.

So this site is a step to that end. If I can publicize myself, increase readership, and impress you, the reading public, then maybe I can take the next step.

--Melissa O, at 08:28 * 

Saturday, January 04, 2003

Alright. I think I can now begin in earnest. As of today, I've replaced the Blogger-supplied template with this one of my own design. I'm not sure why this kind of individuality is so important on the Internet, since nearly everyone in America, at least, eats and wears and drives and reads mass-produced things that are sure to be identical copies of what somebody else has got. But individuality matters here.

Maybe it only matters to me.

It felt like moving in, so now I'm moved in. The house is mostly decorated, but a few things still need to be unpacked. I direct you to the list of poetry journals; one of my goals for this site is to make that list comprehensive and useful.

The rest will wait until later.

--Melissa O, at 11:04 * 

Friday, January 03, 2003

The first new news of the last new year is a poem of mine in the online poetry journal Can We Have Our Ball Back?

Maybe this is the encouragement I need after all these months.

--Melissa O, at 06:12 *